I grabbed one of the washcloths and ran it under hot water. I unwrapped the cheap disc of soap and rubbed it into the cloth. She wasn’t going to be able to get up to wash her hands, so this was going to have to do.
I moved back to the bed. “Wipe your hands on this.” I pressed the cloth to her hands.
“There is sanitizer in my bag I think.”
“All you have in your bag is a few clothes and a coat.” After I had found food, I grabbed the bags and was once again skeptical that she packed anything. Her suitcase weighed absolutely nothing, and that was because she had almost nothing in it.
“Oh, yeah. That was Raven’s sanitizer.” She finished wiping her hands and dropped the cloth.
“Good?”
“As good as it’s going to get,” she mumbled.
I grabbed the washcloth, launched it on the direction of the bathroom, and moved to the mini fridge. I pulled out the paper bag of fast food and stuck it in the microwave. “I wasn’t sure what sauce you liked with your nuggets so I got you ranch, BBQ, and honey mustard.”
“Ranch.”
“Talked to the pharmacist, and he told me what I needed to do for you if you had a concussion.”
“I don’t have a concussion,” she insisted.
“I don’t know for sure, but I’m pretty sure you do. He said I can give you some pain meds, but I need to wake you up throughout the night to make sure you don’t slip into a coma or anything.” The guy had freaked me the hell out when he had said coma, but he assured me that Mayra would be more than likely okay.
“Do I get the whole bottle of pills?” she asked. “I feel like I should get the whole bottle.”
“No,” I laughed. “You get four and ten chicken nuggets.”
“Ugh, fine,” she grumbled. “Though, I’m telling you right now, four pills are not going to make me feel better.”
“As long as they take away a little bit of your pain, you’ll be okay, M-baby.”
The microwave dinged, and I pulled out the bag. I had eaten over an hour ago after I had taken a hot shower and found something to watch on TV. Food Network really wasn’t my thing, but it was the only thing that held my attention.
I opened the bag and dumped the nuggets onto a couple of napkins. I pulled open two containers of ranch and twisted open the bottle of Tylenol. “He also said I needed to keep you hydrated.”
“Sounds like you found a pretty helpful pharmacist.”
He was helpful, and I was thankful as hell that he had taken the time to give me any information he had about concussions. I shook four pills into my hand and set them next to the nuggets.
I watched as she managed to wiggle her way up the pillows and somewhat sit up on her side. She was at least up enough to where she would be able to drink to wash the pills down. “Pill me.”
“That was pretty good.” I walked to the side of the bed and put the pills in her hand.
She popped them into her mouth and held her hand out for the water. “Water me.”
I pressed the bottle to her hand then grabbed the nuggets off the counter and laid them in front of her. “Can you manage?”
She tipped the bottle of water back, swallowed the pills, and handed me back the water. “I can get it. Just don’t ask me to sit on my butt, though.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” I set the bottle of water on the bedside table and grabbed a beer.
“Nuggets are good,” she drawled. She dipped the nugget to the tips of her fingers and moaned when she popped the whole thing in her mouth.
I laid back on the bed next to her and kept my eyes trained on the TV.
“Did you figure out where we are or where we are headed?”
“Yeah,” I drawled.
“And?”
I glanced down at her. “And I’m not telling you in case you try to make an escape again.”
“My ass isn’t allowing for escapes anytime soon.”
I looked back at the TV. “Still not going to chance it. Just know we’ll be somewhere tomorrow.”
She laughed. “I guess I’ll just have to read the road signs.”
“You’ll be in the backseat laying on your side. All you’re going to see is the back of my seat.”
“Hmph.” She knew I was right.
“We might make a stop at the doctor’s too.”
“Uh, no. I don’t need to go to the doctor.”
“We’ll see.” I had already scoped out the doctor’s office in town too. We were in a small town in Kansas that thankfully wasn’t too small.
She grumbled as she finished her food but I chose to just let her talk.
“So, what are we supposed to do when we get to wherever it is you’re taking me?” She crumpled up the makeshift plate I had given her and handed it to me. “I need a drink.” She eyed the beer in my hand. “That will do.”
“Nope.” I took the paper from her and tossed it in the trash. “You’re not drinking with a concussion.”
“You’re really no fun, Boink.” She gently adjusted the pillow under her head and laid her head down slowly.
I grabbed a straw from the table and popped it into the water bottle. I moved to the other side of the bed and held the straw to her lips.
“And now you’re being sweet,” she muttered. She took a long sip and sighed. “You’re going to give me whiplash on top of the concussion.”
I set the water next to my side of the bed, turned off the light, and grabbed the remote. “You good with watching this?”
“Yeah.” She still sounded tired.
“You gonna sleep again?”
“As soon as you tell me what is going to happen tomorrow.”
I pulled the covers over her body and slid in next to her. “No one is supposed to know who we are when we get there.”
“Does that mean I get to pick a new name for me? This is like witness protection,” she said excitedly.
“Uh, you get a new name but you don’t get to pick it.”
“Totally unfair. First, I bust my ass and head, and now I don’t even get to pick my new name,” she pouted. “Please let it be something cool at least.”
“Uh, Bertha Norman.”
She tilted her head back to look up at me. “Well, it’s official. Wrecker hates me.”
“Yeah, you and me both.”
“Please tell me he gave you a name as horrible as mine.”
“Melvin Norman.”
She blinked twice and licked her lips. “Uh, are we married Melvin? Or brother and sister?”
No way on hell anyone was going to believe Bertha and Melvin were related. “Married,” I drawled.
“Were you just going to leave that little tidbit out?”
“At least until we got there.”
“You do realize how insane this is, right? We’re driving freaking clear across the country to some place Wrecker told us to go where we have to pretend like were married. I think surrendering to the Banachi’s would be less stressful.”
She was possibly right, but I knew surrendering to the Banachi’s would more than likely lead to her dying. So, just a different kind of stress. “I’m going to keep you safe until we get the Banachi’s off your back. Speaking of, I think it’s time you tell me exactly what is going on.”
“Um, what did Wrecker tell you?”
“Your dad died. Your mom took over his debt. She died, and now you’re saddled with it, but you ran.”
She closed her eyes. “I’m pretty sleepy. Maybe we can talk about this another time.”
“Ignoring the Banachi’s is not going to make them go away.”
“Figured that out seeing as I’m in a hotel with you God knows where.”
I brushed her hair back from her face. She tensed under my touch, but she didn’t move away. “You can’t run away forever, M-baby.”
“Just give me one more night,” she whispered.
One more night, I could do.
But after that, I was going to get some damn answers.
*
Mayra
“So, I bruised the hell out of my butt, and I got a goose egg on the back of my head.” I looked up from the pile of papers in my hand. “You could have just paid me the two hundred dollars and I would have told you the same thing.”
“I needed to make sure you were okay. You looked about ninety trying to get out of bed this morning. I was worried you broke your tailbone.”
I rolled my eyes and tossed the papers on the dash. I was moving somewhat better than yesterday, though my whole body was sore as hell. “I wouldn’t be moving if I had broken my tailbone.”
“Can we stop pretending you’re a doctor now?”
“Maybe I am one?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I did diagnose myself today.”
Boink started the truck and glanced over at me. “Just sit on your tube and try not to hurt yourself anymore.”
I leaned into the door and adjusted the inflatable ring the doctor had given me to sit on. “Don’t be jealous.”
“Yeah, so jealous,” he muttered.
I held up the small, orange bottle of pills. “Though, I have to admit, I wouldn’t have been able to get these super-duper amazing pills if you hadn’t made me go to the doctor.” I gave the bottle a shake and laughed. “I think they’re already working.” My butt was still sore, but the pain was slowly fading away.
“Good. We’ll stop at a fast food place to get some food in your stomach and then you can sleep the rest of the way.”
“You’re bound and determined for me to sleep, aren’t you?”
Boink pulled out of the parking lot of the doctor’s office and headed out of town toward the interstate. “The doctor said you’re in the clear with your concussion, and my mom always said when you’re not feeling good, sleep always helps.”
“Your mom, huh?” I asked. It was odd to think of Boink having a mom, let alone listening to her. “I figured you just kind of appeared one day as a twenty-something biker with a crazy road name.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Mom and a dad, M-baby. Grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and was normal as the next kid.”
“And then the Fallen Lords happened?”
He nodded. “Yup. I moved away, got into a bit of trouble, and ended up at a bar the same night that the Lords were there.”
“From the suburbs to a bar with the Lords. Sounds like the makings of a song or a good book.”
“Sounds much more exciting than it really is, M-baby. Ended up getting in a fight and Wrecker helped me out.”
“And the rest is history, huh?”
“That it is.” Boink pulled into a drive-thru and ordered three bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches with two large coffees.
I pulled out one of the sandwiches and opened it. “You know, I much prefer sausage.”
Boink looked over at me with a smirk. “That’s what she said.”
I rolled my eyes and thrust the sandwich at him. “Do I have fun-loving Boink with me today?”
He grabbed the sandwich and tore off a huge bite. “I’m always fun-loving,” he insisted around a mouthful.
“Really?” I pulled out another sandwich and unwrapped it. “You could have fooled me yesterday.”
We merged onto the interstate, and he set the cruise control. “Tensions were high yesterday.”
“Oh yeah?” I muttered. “So today is a new day where you don’t hate me?”
“Didn’t hate you yesterday.”
I rolled my eyes and munched on my sandwich. “Could have fooled me.”
“A lot of stuff going on, M-baby. Most of that doesn’t involve you so it’s hard for you to get why the problem you have caused a hell of a lot more stress on the club.”
“That was why I didn’t tell anyone. If you guys wouldn’t have gone snooping around, I would have been fine.” The less people I got involved, the less people who would get hurt.
“Wrecker checked into you because that’s what he does. If you would have told us right way that you were in some deep shit then we would have been able to help. Going two weeks with you laying low in the clubhouse could have led the Banachi’s straight to our door. There is no way of knowing how long it’ll be before they figure out you were there.” Boink finished his sandwich in three bites and crumbled up the wrapper. “So, since you aren’t asleep yet, you can keep talking and tell me just what happened to have the Banachi’s looking for you.”
“Everything you told me yesterday is true. There isn’t anything else.”
He laughed and shook his head. “There are a shit-ton more details that I don’t know. Start from the beginning.”
The sooner I told him, the sooner I could fall asleep. “My dad was great. He loved me and my mom. He doted on us like the perfect husband. The one problem he had was he liked to go to the racetrack.”
“A gambler,” Boink mumbled.
“Gambler with a capital G. He wasn’t half-bad at it either. About once a month, he would manage to win big, but he would gamble it away trying to win even bigger.” I sighed and stuck the last of my sandwich in my mouth. I washed it down with a hot sip of coffee and settled my butt better onto the tube. “I didn’t know just how bad his gambling was until my mom died.”
“He died before her, right?”
I nodded. “Yep. He died when I was seventeen. I came home from school to find my mother crying in the living room holding my dad’s hat he always wore. She told me he had gone to the track around noon to play a little bit so he could be home when I got off school so we could go buy a Christmas tree. He died sitting in his favorite chair cheering on the horse he had bet on.” I laughed flatly. “The horse lost and so did my dad.”
“I’m sorry, M.” He leaned over and laid his hand on my thigh.
“It’s okay. I know it sounds weird, but it was a sort of relief when she told me. I loved my dad, but the older I got the more I realized that he wasn’t the best person in the world. I mean, who gambles away all of the grocery money then wins big the next week? It was like whiplash the way things were always up and down.”
“I’m sure he tried his best.”
“He did,” I whispered. I dashed away the stray tear that streamed down my cheek. “He tried, but it was never enough.” I cleared my throat and forged on. “For ten years, I thought things were fine. My mom and I never really had much money, but things felt different. A weight had been lifted and it felt like we were finally able to breathe. That breath I was so thankful to have got knocked out of me when my mom died, and two weeks later two men in suits showed up at my apartment wanting to know where their monthly payment was.”
“She had been paying on his debt all of those years?” he asked.
“Over ten years, she paid Leo Banachi fifty thousand dollars.”
“Holy shit, Mayra. She paid over fifty thousand dollars, and his debt still wasn’t paid off.”
I shook my head. “Turned out all of those times he won big were times he would borrow money from Leo. My father owes over one hundred thousand dollars to Leo. My mother had barely paid off half before she died.”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “Jesus Christ. And Leo being Leo means he’s not going to write that money off.”
“He wants every penny of it back,” I finished.
“There’s gotta be something we can do, Mayra.”
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t have fifty thousand dollars just laying around.”
“Can’t you just pick back up on the payments your mom was making?”
I shook my head. “He wants it all. Now.” I had tried pleading with the men he sent, but they said I only had a month to gather all of the money. That had been three months ago. I had managed to go two months without Leo finding me, and I had been hopeful when I went to work for Oakley Mykel that he would help me out.
“So, you ran and wound up working at Oakley’s.”
He didn’t know I had purposely gone to work for Oakley. When my mom died, she left me with my father’s
debt, but she also left me with something that would hopefully save me.
I hadn’t been able to use it before, but now I had no choice but to see if the envelope she had left for me would actually help me or cause a whole new pile of problems.
*
Chapter Nine
Boink
“I hadn’t planned on carrying you across the threshold, but seeing as you’re stiff from the drive, it seems fitting.”
She slapped me on the shoulder and rolled her eyes. “Just get me inside so no one sees us.”
Not likely that anyone would see us.
Wrecker had set us up in an A-frame cabin settled in the middle of a large patch of woods. The only way someone was going to find us was if they knew we were here.
I angled us through the doorway and strode over to the L-shaped couch in front of a large fireplace. “Will this do?” I asked.
“I think it’ll more than do.”
I gently lowered her onto the couch on her side. “I’ll get the bags from the truck.”
After I got both of our bags, I set them by the front door and hollered to Mayra that I was going to grab some firewood. It was October, and from the chill that was in the air last night while I got dinner, I knew I was going to have to start a fire.
After four trips to the wood pile on the side of the house, I decided that would be enough to get us through the next couple of days.
Mayra was standing in the kitchen when I walked through the door. “There isn’t any food.”
“We passed a store on the way in.”
“We don’t need to get a lot. I had some money saved up that we can use.”
“Save your money.”
She rolled her eyes and walked stiffly over to her suitcase. “Nonsense. You paid for all of my snacks and the doctor today. The least I can do is pay for groceries.” She looked down at her suitcase and tried to bend over. “Uh,” she wheezed, “I might need a little bit of help getting into my suitcase, though.”
I walked over to her and picked up our bags. I set hers on the kitchen counter and unzipped it. “Looking for anything in particular?”
She waddled over to me and tossed back the top of the case. “Just a small wallet.”
Boink (Fallen Lords MC Book 5) Page 5
