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Standing outside my window.
I couldn’t tell if he was looking in or facing away from the room.
But panic surged through me as I grabbed my phone and rushed into my bathroom, closing, then locking the door.
I stood, listening to the blood whooshing through my ears for five minutes, ten, twenty, with my finger hovering over the nine on my phone’s keyboard, wondering if the motel’s lock was enough to keep a determined bad man out.
When I was sure no one was breaking in, I crept back out, glanced outside, pulled the blinds and the curtains, slid the bolt into place, and rammed the dining chair under the door handle.
Then I sat up, awake in silence.
It turned out I free-fell after all.
Just into a panic attack instead of an affair with a hot biker.
CHAPTER NINE
Cain
“I don’t think I want to know what the hell all that is,” I said, still pulling on my shirt as I walked into the common room. The walls were covered in splats of pink, yellow, blue, green, and white.
No. Not just the walls. The bar, pool table, and ceiling too.
Croft was already seated, wide awake, on the couch, posture straight, fingers in a steeple, looking very much like a very disappointed father waiting for his children to stumble in for a lecture.
“That appears to be a paintball fight that somehow ended up inside. Which we can only assume took place directly after the responsible few of us went to bed.”
The responsible few? Just a few months back, Croft would have been right there with them—hurling paintballs at each other and the club girls, but getting a lot of collateral damage.
It was kind of funny to watch him become the stern big brother figure now that Vas was prospecting.
That said, Fallon did explicitly say that he wanted us to lean on the legacies hard. So I guess I couldn’t fault Croft for wanting to follow orders.
“Shit. Is that paint on the felt?” I asked, looking at the pool table. “I hope that comes out.”
“If it doesn’t, they can all pool their money and pay for it to get redone. It might be cool to try out a new color. Saw a tie-dye one once.”
“Saw one with a whole scene on it once. Fucked with my game something fierce, but it was all anyone who saw it could talk about.”
“Almost makes me want to smash some paint on it and blame them…” Croft said, shooting me the devilish smirk I was more accustomed to seeing from him.
“I won’t tell,” I said. “Any word from Fallon about the guy coming in from Michigan?”
“He didn’t have an ETA. Just sometime today. What was his name again? Riggs?”
“Briggs.”
“Right. Briggs. The guy with a house on one of the lakes.”
If my memory served me, he lived in a remote area of the Upper Peninsula. Right on the lake. On an old vacation property with a lodge and a bunch of small cabins.
With a dock.
On said lake.
With direct access to Canada.
It was no wonder Fallon thought it was the next good expansion point for the club.
