The bike doesn’t budge. I take it from there before she pulls a muscle. “Then we’ll go to another hotel. I know how to cover our tracks, Birdie. Don’t worry. They can’t know who you are. Why the hell are you so scared of them?”
“Because if you think they shunned Shane for the atrocity of his crimes, you’re wrong.” She walks next to me as I haul the beast in the other direction of the street. “They shunned him because he left the MC, for me. They blame me for everything. I took Shane from them, and if it weren’t for me, he wouldn’t be where he was now.”
Every muscle in me tightens. It makes a lot more sense, her panic. It runs deeper than just being recognized. This neighborhood—this whole city—holds something darker than just bad memories of a terrible childhood.
I peer down the road right and left as I angle the Ducati toward the curb and keep us moving, my body between her and the street.
We round the corner and I guide the bike into the lee of a shuttered barber shop, half-hidden behind a busted soda machine tagged with old stickers. The gas station looms from a distance.
“We’re almost there,” Birdie announces.
I’m scanning the area, looking for threats, when I see boots coming out of a flower shop. They’re heavy on the concrete. Confident. The kind that announce themselves.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
Birdie turns to stone at the voice. The boots belong to a woman walking toward us—leather vest, worn jeans, graying hair pulled back in a ponytail.
The woman stops a few feet away, hands on her hips, studying Birdie like she’s a ghost made flesh. “Reagan, is that really you?”
Birdie goes white. Completely, utterly white.
I step forward, ready to intervene, to get Birdie out of here before this gets any worse. “No, she’s not. Sorry, ma’am. You’ve mistaken my wife for someone else.”
The old woman steps closer, squinting. “No, no, I’d know that face anywhere. You’re little Reagan Fletcher.” Her face crumples with sympathy. “Oh, sweetie, I was so sorry to hear about what happened. Such a tragedy. Your mother, Shane…and Mason. And then you just disappeared. We heard you were dead.”
“You’re mistaken.” Birdie utters. “My name is not Reagan.”
But the woman isn’t buying it. She’s coming closer. I step into her line of sight. “Ma’am, she said you’re mistaken.” My tone is polite. My body isn’t. I widen my shoulders, give Birdie my left side so she can tuck in under my arm, and angle my stance to block the woman’s view from the street. “Now if you’ll excuse us. We’re in a hurry.”
The woman’s gaze lifts to mine. There’s no fear in it, just a weary recognition of men who take up space on purpose. “You’re her husband, you say?”
“Yes.”
Her head shakes slowly, and then she gazes back at Birdie. I incline my head to tell Birdie to get behind me so I can handle that woman, but, for a moment, I hear Birdie whisper, “Please,” and then she mouths something to the woman.
Suddenly, the woman drops her head, backing away. “When they told me they saw some girl who looked like little Reagan, I had to come down and see it for myself. Too bad they were wrong. Some things are too good to be true. I’ll make sure those old farts know that poor girl is still dead.” She throws another glance at me. “You take care of your ol’ lady. She deserves a good man.”
CHAPTER 34
Birdie
“We need to leave immediately.” I drop my half-unpacked suitcase on the bed and almost rip the zipper off.
Tristan closes the door to my hotel room. “It’s been taken care of. Brandon arranged for everything. We’re going to another hotel as soon as you’re done packing.”
“No. We need to leave the city. And can I please get my phone back?”
He starts getting my clothes out of the wardrobe. “We can’t leave the city yet. What about your husbands, ex and soon to be?”
“You have Shane’s tablet clone, and I told you I could stall Blake until you found a way to disable his goddamn app. All I need is my fucking phone.”
“You’re not calling him.”
“Then you do it,” I throw my things inside my suitcase, “like you said you would.”
“Fine. I’ll call him and set a meeting tomorrow. What’s the farthest place in town from that MC?”
“Not in Jacksonville, Tristan, because we’re not staying here a second longer.” My face twists with all the pain this city has caused me and continues to cause me. “I should never have come back here. What the hell was I thinking, going for a ride on the most conspicuous bike?”
