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“The car parked outside my building,” I told him. “We can’t… we can’t go back,” I told him. “We have to go,” I added, trying to yank him with me, but he was stubbornly staying in place.
“Go where?” he asked, voice soft, trying to counterbalance my rising panic.
I didn’t even care if I was getting that way.
If there was ever something to get hysterical about, it was the person driving that car.
“My other safe house,” I decided. “I need to… to rent a car. Or buy a new one,” I said, half talking to myself.
I had money in several different locations.
Different accounts, some at regular banks, others at credit unions. Still more in safe deposit boxes. I even had some in my father’s old shop, even though I knew that place got broken into all the time. I kept it for nostalgia purposes. And there was nothing worth stealing in general. Save for the money I had hidden so well that even years and many robberies later, it had still been there the last time I’d checked.
“Okay, Murphy, you gotta work with me here, honey. The fuck is going on?”
“The person driving that car…” I said, hearing my voice catch, knowing my eyes were swimming since they were stinging.
His shoulders slumped a bit at that, some sort of realization dawning on him.
“Someone you see in your nightmares?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze. “I know somewhere we can go while we work shit out, alright? You’re just going to need to trust me.”
“Okay,” I agreed, even though I never trusted anyone. At that moment, I knew I could trust him.
Or so I thought until we walked up to the motel room door, he knocked, it opened, and there he was.
The other guy from the woods.
So much for him being my only babysitter.
“You lied to me?”
“Well, no. You never exactly asked if Coach followed us,” he reasoned. “Or if Detroit joined,” he added, grimacing a bit when another man moved into the doorway of the room. “What are you doing here?” he asked the new man.
Detroit was a wall of a man. Tall, broad, extremely fit in the way that I was pretty sure he could bench press me without breaking a sweat or making one of those pained faces. He had deep skin and dark eyes, but there was a, I don’t know, kindness in them.
“Slash sent me here to keep an eye on your ass,” he said, shaking his head.
Something about the look on Sway’s face said he knew exactly what Detroit was talking about, even if I was in the dark. And that he maybe resented it a little bit.
“Everything okay?” Coach asked, his keen gaze looking over me.
“No,” Sway and I said in unison.
Then Coach and Detroit were moving into the room, allowing us and the dogs inside.
I had the most insane thought as the door closed behind me, though.
My life as I know it is over.
CHAPTER NINE
Sway
Murphy was silent beside me, her gaze trained out the windshield between the front seats.
Behind us, sprawled in the roomy trunk of the club’s SUV that Detroit had driven out to Santa Monica, were Miranda and Samantha, not seeming overly bothered about having to take yet another road trip.
Four hours only this time, though.
Not back to her cabin in the woods.
Or even to whatever other safe house she’d mentioned wanting to retreat to.
After discussing it between the four of us, then getting Slash on the phone and debating it out some more, we’d all eventually agreed that the safest place for Murphy right now… was the clubhouse.
She didn’t give us details about whoever was driving that sleek black car outside of her apartment building.
Somehow, we all just sensed that it wasn’t appropriate to ask.
Me, because I’d witnessed those nightmares, had held her when she’d cried after one. The others, they followed my lead.
That was the perk to working so closely with your best friends. They could read a lot between the lines, in your silences as much as your words.
I would talk to them later in private, tell them my suspicions, and how we really couldn’t press Murphy on it. At least not until she got a chance to unwind.
They’d get it.
And maybe some time with the girls, especially Crow’s girl Morgaine, would help. Morgaine who, much like Murphy, spent her life hiding away from people. A woman who made it her mission to make bad men pay with their lives for hurting women. Like Morgaine had once been hurt.
I wondered what was on her mind as the hours stretched between the occasional stops to let the dogs move around and get some water, and for us to fuel up the SUV, get some coffee.
No one ate.
And Murphy hardly even sipped her coffee, something that seemed uncharacteristic of her.
