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"Oh, Duke. I'm so sorry," she said, shaking her head.
And then she did the damnedest thing.
She closed the small space between us, her arms going around my back, her head resting on my chest.
She fucking hugged me.
My body reacted immediately. I bent forward, resting the side of my face on the top of her head. One of my arms went low on her hips; the other went over her shoulder, pulling her to me perhaps too tight, but needing the contact. Her hands moved up and down my back, offering comfort. And I took it, finding how much I needed it right then.
I released her what felt like forever later, but still too soon, when I felt my shirt starting to stick to me because of the heat from the shower steaming up the room.
"I don't want to go back out there," I admitted, surprising myself.
"I can..." she started to offer, but I was shaking my head before she could finish.
"We need you to stay in here and stay quiet until the cops are out of here."
"But..."
"Penny, please..." I said, shaking my head, not able to have the argument.
"Okay," she rushed to say, nodding. "Alright, I can do that. But what if they search..."
"They don't have a warrant. And even if they get one, you just be honest. You didn't see anything. You heard the gunshots and that's it."
"But what about... why I am here and all beat up?" she asked.
"You're with me," I said with a shrug, maybe finding that I liked that idea a little too much. "And you were mugged. Random street violence."
"You want me to lie," she said, and I couldn't tell from her tone if she was upset by that idea or not.
"I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."
"Because you will get in trouble if I don't."
I nodded. "Me. Renny. Reign... everyone."
She bit into her lip for a second and shrugged. "Alright. I'll do what I have to do I guess. But I hope I don't have to."
"I hope so too," I agreed, tossing the knife into the sink to rinse off the blood.
I turned all the water off, putting my finger to my mouth to remind her to be quiet, then moved into the bedroom where I grabbed the bottle of pills off the nightstand. "Need any more of these right now?" I asked, barely more than a whisper.
She shook her head and I quietly moved to the dresser, pulling it away from the wall, pulling a latch in the wall and exposing a small hole in the wall between the beams where I kept some spare cash and my old IDs. I slipped the pills in and put the dresser back.
"I'll be back as soon as I can," I told her, my body half an inch from hers.
"Okay," she said with a nod, then moved away from me toward the bed.
I went to the door with a heavy feeling inside, knowing I had to face the questions from the cops and the reality of my dead friend.
But somehow, in a very small way, the idea of coming back to find Penny in my bed made all that just a bit more tolerable.SEVENPennyOkay.
So I was genuinely starting to believe I was either in a drug-induced sleep still or that I had somehow fallen asleep and woken up in some freaking different dimension.
Because, really, how else could one explain the course of events that happened to me in two days?
First, the kidnapping. Alright, weird, but not completely unheard of. Actually, if I wasn't mistaken, human trafficking was at an all-time high. Even in the United States.
Second, I was beaten. Again, not an every day occurrence for most people, but not a rare occurrence either.
But then I woke up at a biker compound getting makeshift medical attention and am asked to stay there for my own safety.
As if all that wasn't enough, I woke up to machine gun fire. Now, I had never heard a machine gun in real life before. That being said, I had seen enough action-packed movies to know it when I heard it.
I had shot up in bed, ribs screaming, my heart in my throat as I watched the door like it might burst in at any moment. I could hear the bullets ping off the building and I was pretty sure I understood why the entire building was windowless right about then.
I sat there for a long time, too terrified to move, wondering what the hell these Henchmen guys were into to bring fully-automatic weapons to their clubhouse.
Then, when the sounds died down, the quiet somehow even more eerie than the shooting, I climbed out of the bed, looking for weapons. I was relieved to find a knife in the nightstand and moved to stand behind the door in case anyone came in.
