“Sweet tea will be fine. Thanks, sweetheart.”
“Will Bash be joining you all soon? I can grab his drink while I’m back there if you want.” I glanced at Raven, who was answering a text.
“He’s on his way. Just bring him some tea too. And we would love some fried pickles, Gracie.” Raven rubbed a hand over her stomach and licked her lips. “With blue cheese.”
“Yuck, pickles.” Lexa made a disgusted face. “I don’t want pickles.”
“You liked pickles yesterday,” Raven reminded her. “You said they were your new favorite.”
The three year old gave her a deadly serious frown. “I was being nice.”
I burst out laughing with Willa and Spider. There were times when Lexa acted so grown up that it was both scary and amusing. Luckily, Raven made sure that she acted her age more often than not. Raven rolled her eyes at the little girl that was basically her stepdaughter. “Fine, smarty pants. What would you like for an appetizer?”
“What’s that?” she asked with a frown.
“Something small you can snack on while we wait for our dinner,” Raven explained patiently.
“Oh.”
“So do you want anything?” Lexa shook her head and leaned forward so that she could blow bubbles into her cup of water. Raven smirked and looked up at me. “Just the pickles and dressing, Gracie.”
“No, wait.” Spider stopped me when I started to go and place their order. “Is the blue cheese pasteurized or unpasteurized?” When I gave him a blank look he gave a small laugh, as if he was self-conscious. “She’s pregnant. If it’s unpasteurized then she can’t eat it.”
My eyes weren’t the only ones that widened at his explanation. Raven and Willa looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “How do you know that?” Willa asked.
“Bash was telling me. He’s been reading some books or websites, something. One of the things was what pregnant women can and can’t eat. Unpasteurized milks, dressings, cheeses; that sort of thing.” He frowned when Raven’s chin trembled. “What?”
“Bash has been reading pregnancy books?” Raven whispered.
Spider shrugged his massive shoulders. “Yeah. He’s been doing all kinds of research and shi—um, stuff like that since he found out you were pregnant.” I bit back a smile at him catching himself before saying a bad word. The big, bald and deliciously sexy biker censoring himself was both amusing and adorable. Of course, Raven would have gone all kinds of crazy on him if he had cursed in front of Lexa. She was definitely a protective momma where that little girl was concerned.
“Okay, I’ll check to make sure it’s pasteurized,” I promised.
The rest of the evening went by quickly. I handled my tables, went back and took their orders once Bash joined them, and made sure that Raven could eat her blue cheese dressing with her fried pickles. I barely had time to breathe until closing.
I was tired, cranky, and a little hungry by the time I walked out the back door with Quinn and the rest of the girls. All I wanted was to go home, wash off the sweat and the smell of food that seemed to have seeped into my pores during the last six hours. Yawning, I pulled out the keys to the Chevelle and slowly walked toward the car on feet that felt like they were the size of watermelons.
“See you tomorrow, Gracie,” Quinn called as she got into her little Honda.
“Yeah, see you.” I yawned again and tossed my purse onto the passenger seat before collapsing down into the driver’s. I shut and locked the door before turning the old car on and then leaned my head back against the seat. Eyes closed, I fought not to fall asleep as I tried to push my tiredness away so that I could drive home. I heard everyone else leaving, but didn’t move.
I wasn’t sure how long I sat there, but finally I reached for the gearshift as I forced my eyes open. I hoped my body got used to this crazy schedule soon or I was going to be a freaking zombie before long…
A tap on the driver’s side window made me jerk before I completely got the gearshift into drive. I turned my head to find Harley standing beside the car, smiling down at me. Maybe if it hadn’t been nearly midnight and I wasn’t so tired I wouldn’t have really thought much about his sudden appearance, but I wasn’t in any mood to deal with him or the attitude that Hawk was most likely to get when he found out about Harley approaching me.
Sighing, I rolled down the window just enough so that I could talk to him. “Hi?” It came out as a question because I didn’t know how else to ask him what he wanted without sounding like a complete bitch.
“Hey,” his smile turned smug and for some reason I became even more uneasy about this. “I was hoping to catch you before you went home.”
“Why?” I gave him a forced smile as I carefully reached for my phone sticking out of my purse beside me. I hated that he was intimidating me and didn’t know why. I hadn’t felt like that earlier in the day and it was freaking me out a little that I felt that way now.
He bent down and I got a closer look at his eyes. They raked over my face and then lower. My thumb swiped over the screen on my phone and for once I was glad I knew my phone so well. I could easily type without looking at the screen if I needed to. “Hawk can be an overbearing prick. The way he just took you over at lunch today was a dick move. I thought we had something going for us, you know? Chemistry.”
I tried to keep my eyes from widening. I’d talked to him for a total of ten minutes all day and I hadn’t once felt like we had chemistry. I hadn’t thought much of him, honestly, except to be mad at Hawk for making threats because this guy had merely talked to me.
Now, I was starting to wonder if Hawk had had plenty of reasons to make those threats. “Um…” My thumb hit the last number I’d called, thankful that I hadn’t called anyone since Hawk two days before.
“Why don’t you come hang with me tonight? I’ll show you a real good time, babe.”
I heard the muffled sound of Hawk answering my call and tried not to gag at the thought of spending the kind of time with Harley that he was suggesting. He wasn’t bad looking, but the way he was making me feel right at that moment was enough to repulse me to the point of vomiting. “I’m really tired, Harley.” I spoke a little louder in hopes that Hawk could hear me clearly. “I think I’m going to pass and go home.”
His smug smile turned cold in the blink of an eye and he straightened to his full height. “Oh yeah?”
The way he said it, the look on his face, and the new tension that felt thick in the air made me nervous. I was anxious to get out of there, away from this guy that had seemed so harmless hours ago. I’d been so wrong earlier. Hawk could never make me feel like my dad had made my mom feel. Weak. Defenseless. Terrified.
This guy? That was an entirely different story. I knew that look and swallowed hard as I tried to keep my calm. That was the look my dad had gotten in his eyes right before he would hurt my mother.
“Gracie, I’m on my way,” I heard Hawk yelling from my phone and was quick to turn the thing off before Harley heard him.
“Yeah, I can barely keep my eyes open,” I smiled brightly, hoping to hide my new fear of the man standing just feet from me. “But I’ll see you at the garage on Monday.” I reached out blindly for the gearshift. “Bye.”
I should have just put it in drive and put my foot on the gas. I should have never even rolled down my window in the first damn place to talk to him. There were a thousand ‘I should haves’ that ran through my mind in the instant that Harley’s fist went through the driver’s window and he caught hold of my hair in a grip that made me scream out in pain.
His grip on my hair tightened and I tried to fight free, my nails scratching at his wrist. The next thing I saw was an up close and personal view of the steering wheel as he slammed my head into it…
Chapter 8
Hawk
My heart had never pounded so hard in my life. My hands clenched around the cellphone in my hands as I stared down at the silent piece of technology. I knew I should be moving but I felt like everything w
as frozen.
This was fear like I’d never felt in all my twenty-nine years.
Raider pulled my phone from my hands and I realized my hands were shaking. The screen to my phone was cracked, but I didn’t care. “Go,” Raider ordered, pushing me toward the door. “I’ll call Bash and Spider.”
All I could do was nod once before my brain finally rebooted and I made a run for the door. Behind me I heard my brother yelling for everyone to listen up. Since church earlier, most of the guys had hung around with the exception of Bash and Spider…
And Harley.
My gut twisted as rage boiled in my veins. I jumped on my bike and burned rubber as I tore out of the parking lot. Aggie’s was five miles away so there wasn’t a second to lose. The quiver I’d heard in Gracie’s voice made me want to hit something.
I was going to end Harley. End. Him. I didn’t care if my club brothers didn’t approve, that I could be kicked out if I ended him without their voting on it. If he touched one hair on her head and I was going to chop him into so many pieces and scatter him across the state so that they would be putting him back together for decades.
The ride over to the diner passed in a blur. I saw nothing of the scenery that I passed. Couldn’t tell you how many other vehicles I’d met along the way. My mind was on autopilot as visions of what I could possibly find when I got to the diner flashed through my mind, making me half insane with a pain and rage that were beginning to consume me.
I pulled into the parking lot to find the Chevelle still running, the driver’s door wide open and glass from the door’s broken window scattered on the ground. Blood was dripping down the door and it covered the glass on the ground. Someone was hurt and there was no sign of Gracie or Harley.
Was it Gracie’s blood? Was she hurt and scared? I wasn’t used to the fear that was making my stomach churn. I didn’t normally let my emotions get in the way when shit needed done. This was different, though. Gracie was my heart, the goddamn air in my lungs. Fuck! I was going to kill Harley and take my time to maximize the pain before ending him. Yesterday I’d thought that the biggest threat to her was Kevin Samson. Less than a day later she had an all-new danger to contend with.
I leaned into the car and found her purse on the passenger’s seat and her phone on the floor. I turned off the car and slammed the door shut. Raking my hands through my hair I bellowed to the dark sky, “He’s fucking dead!”
The sound of approaching bikes had me stiffening, wanting with everything inside of me for it to be Harley coming back, but I knew it wasn’t. He must have used his truck or some other cage, because he wouldn’t have been able to take her on his bike.
I turned to find Bash, Spider, and six others coming to a stop several feet from my own bike. “Any idea where he would take her?” Bash asked the men beside him, and I tried to concentrate on which of my club brothers had come to help, anything to calm myself down enough to think clearer.
Raider, Matt, Tanner, Uncle Jack, Razor, and Trigger had come from the bar while Spider and Bash had come from my house. Tanner took off his helmet. “He wouldn’t dare go home. That would be extremely stupid and Harley wasn’t usually stupid.”
“Did you guys cull out all of Westcliffe’s followers when Jet went inside?” Bash looked from Uncle Jack to Spider.
“We were confident we had gotten them all,” Spider’s voice was low and rough, a very dangerous sign. The enforcer was at his most dangerous when he used that tone of voice, but there was no way in hell that he was taking care of this.
I was going to handle Harley, not him.
“Harley didn’t follow Westcliffe,” Trigger’s deep voice rumbled. “But there’s always been something off about that boy. Gets too obsessive over things. I should have kept a closer eye on him when he got so heated over Hawk showing up for lunch with Gracie today.”
Uncle Jack’s eyes were glassy, showing how upset he was, but from the way his jaw was clenched I knew he was thinking. I turned my full attention on him as he pulled out his hunting knife and started scrapping the tip under his nails, a sure sign that he was considering someone’s end. “There’s a place just outside of Creswell Springs. Abandoned, secluded. Belongs to the university, but its worth a look.”
I didn’t hesitate to get back on my bike. Bash split our group up, sending Razor, Trigger, and Tanner searching any possible haunts that Harley was liable to hole up. Raider and Matt he sent to Harley’s house. “Search it. I want to know what he’s been doing behind closed doors recently. When you’re done, if we haven’t called you, help Razor, Trigger and Tanner.”
Uncle Jack led the rest of us across town and outside of the city’s limits. We all did twice the speed limit, but it felt like we were moving in slow motion. My heart felt like it was going to explode in my chest, my lungs struggling to take in oxygen. I prayed for the first time since I was a kid, praying that we would find her and that she would be whole once we did.
When we stopped in front of an old, run-down building I knew that we hadn’t found the right place. There was no sign that anything in or around the building had been messed with in years. Cobwebs hung from the broken windows; there were no tire tracks, no glimmer of any lights coming from inside the abandoned building.
It took everything in me to not start freaking out. My female was in danger, and I had no fucking clue where she was.
Spider pulled his phone from his pocket and put it to his ear. “Yeah?” All eyes turned to our enforcer. His black eyes were narrowed in the headlights from our bikes. “What did you find?” When he said nothing for a long pause, but just continued to listen to whoever had called to check in, I had to grip the handlebars of my hog to keep from reaching out and snatching the phone from him.
“Watch him. If he moves, you jump his ass. We’ll be there in ten.” He put the phone in his pocket. “Trigger checked Jack’s parts warehouse. His truck is behind the warehouse, and Harley is pacing the office. Gracie is with him—”
I didn’t wait for him to say another word. Revving my bike, I tore up dirt as I hauled ass across the ten miles to Jack’s spare parts warehouse. By the time I got there it had been more than thirty minutes since Gracie had called me. Thirty minutes alone with a man who I wasn’t sure wouldn’t hurt her in a way that would scar her for life.
I’d known Harley all of my life. His dad had been friends with mine, and had taken a bullet not long after my dad had. Harley had patched in at eighteen, after prospecting for three years. I’d done the same thing, started prospecting when I was sixteen and patched in not long after he had. We’d known that we were going to be lifers, knew that it was tradition, but kind of like a family business. Outlawing tended to be a family-run organization, and an MC was just that.
One big, happy family. A band of brothers that had each other’s backs.
Trigger was leaning against his bike when I stopped just a few feet from him. Trigger had come by his club name honestly. He was our best shooter, never missed anything he aimed at. He’d been a sniper in the army; he still was when we needed him to be.
I was jumping off my bike before the others even reached us. I didn’t stop to get any details from Trigger, didn’t wait for the others to make a plan to get into the warehouse. I was going in blind. Harley could have been holed up with a dozen guns, could have been waiting to end me. I didn’t give a shit. I was getting my female back.
Now.
Gracie
My head was killing me.
Moaning, I lifted a hand to my head, wincing when I came into contact with a tender knot in the middle of my forehead. A sticky, tender knot. My stomach rolled with nausea when I tried to open my eyes and a flash of florescent light felt like it had developed the power of a laser beam, shooting pain straight to my brain.
Fudge. I was going to be sick.
The thought had barely flirted through my dazed mind before I was turning on my side and retching. I didn’t care where my vomit landed, just that it got out of me as quickly as possible in t
he hopes that it would make my pain stop. I didn’t try to open my eyes again; I just blindly vomited into an unknown abyss.
From somewhere behind me I heard someone curse violently and curled up into a tight ball. I didn’t know who it was, but I didn’t trust them. Another wave of nausea washed over me and I threw up again and again while trying to make myself as small as possible. Tears leaked from my tightly closed eyes as I remembered my mother doing exactly that same thing several times during my childhood.
Just as she had been then, I knew I had a concussion. A bad one, from the pain that felt like it was slicing my brain into huge chunks.
Slowly, as my stomach began to calm a little, I began to remember the events leading up to this point. Flashes of memories overloaded my aching head and I moaned again, trying to piece them all together. Leaving Aggie’s after work. Feeling so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. Harley. Feeling scared. Calling Hawk…
Hawk. I mentally whispered his name as more tears fell. I wanted Hawk so much. He would help me, make my head stop hurting. But I didn’t even know where I was, couldn’t open my eyes long enough to figure out where Harley must have taken me after he’d slammed my head into the steering wheel of Hawk’s Chevelle. Did Hawk know where I was? Was he coming for me?
The sound of something loud suddenly echoed through the room. I covered my ears, trying to hide from the painful loudness of what had sounded like a gunshot. The shot hadn’t even faded when I heard another loud noise, this one sounding like a door crashing open.
I heard the voice that had cursed earlier yell out seconds before the room went strangely quiet for a moment.
“Did you end him?” a voice I thought belonged to Jack asked in a tone that was void of all emotion.
“Not yet.” I knew that voice! It represented everything that was safe and warm. “Just knocked his ass out.”
I couldn’t contain the whimper that left me as I tried to lift my head, seeking Hawk blindly. “Baby,” his rough voice was closer and a second later I felt his rough hands on my face. “Oh, baby. Your head… Ah, shit.” I whimpered again, embarrassed because he must have stepped in my vomit. “She needs a doctor. Has anyone been able to get hold of Doc yet?”