Downstairs, the clubhouse was alive in that low, tired way it got after a long night.Boots moved across the main floor.Someone cursed near the bar.A drawer slammed.Every now and then, I heard the low rumble of Twister’s voice, then Swift answering him, both of them sounding like they’d slept about as much as I had.
Which was damn near not at all.
Goldie had been in that room since a little after one in the morning.It was now noon, or close to it, and she hadn’t made a sound.Not a shuffle.Not a creak of the bed.Not a trip to the bathroom.Nothing.
At first, I’d thought she would sleep a couple hours, maybe three, then wake up wild-eyed and ready to either run or spill everything she knew about The Ledger.
Instead, she slept like the dead.
That told me plenty.
The woman hadn’t been sleeping.Not really.Maybe not for days.
I let my head fall back against the wall and stared at the ceiling.The old plaster had a crack running down the middle, and one corner needed patching.The whole damn building still needed work, but it was ours.A month ago, this hallway had smelled like dust and mildew.Now it smelled like old wood, laundry detergent, gun oil, and whatever cleaning shit Tempi had decided made the building less “biker dungeon” and more “habitable.”
Her words, not mine.
Goldie was safe now.At least as safe as she could be with us.
I hoped she knew that.I hoped some part of her had finally realized she wasn’t alone in a car with headlights bearing down on her anymore.She wasn’t running back roads in the dark.She wasn’t watching every mirror, waiting for a bullet or a black SUV to slide up beside her.
She was behind a locked door in the middle of a clubhouse full of armed, pissed-off men who had been waiting for a reason to hit back.
The Ledger had given us one.Hell, they’d given us ten.
I shifted in the chair and kept listening.
I wanted her awake.I wasn’t gonna lie about that.
That envelope she’d shoved into my chest had been sitting in the safe most of the night, and I wanted to know what it all meant.
Goldie knew.
She knew more than what was in that envelope.I’d seen it in her eyes in that field.She had the look of someone who had found the bottom of something ugly and wished to hell she hadn’t kept digging.
She needed sleep, though.
For now, the club was safe.We were on high alert.No one came near the building without being seen.No one sat across the street without getting clocked.No SUV rolled past twice without three men writing down the plate and two more ready to follow.
Nothing was getting by us again.
Not if I had a damn thing to say about it.
A floorboard creaked at the end of the hallway.
I dropped the front legs of the chair to the floor and turned my head.
Tempi came up the stairs carrying a mug in one hand and wearing the expression of a woman who had already decided she was about to be a pain in my ass.
Great.
She stopped a few feet away from me, planted her free hand on her hip, and looked me over from boots to face.“You sleep at all last night?”
I leaned back in the chair again, though I kept all four legs on the floor this time.“Nodded off for a few minutes here and there.”
Tempi snorted.“So, no.”
“Pretty much.”
