Chapter 18 – Rook
ROOK
A va Jade didn’t make a mess anywhere as Diesel suggested she might. We brought her straight home, all of us tense with nerves as we waited for the inevitable pain.
But it never came. Nothing more than the knot between her brows to prove she was in any discomfort at all. I didn’t know what the fuck to make of it.
I remembered the night after my poison trial and I wouldn’t have wished it on anyone.
Except maybe the motherfucker stalking her.
The cramping had been bad, but it was nothing compared to the pounding headache that lasted days, or my stomach expelling every ounce of its contents and then some.
And don’t get me started on how badly I destroyed the bathroom.
I shuddered, hefting the massive water bottle onto my shoulder to trudge it up the stairs to the loft to replace the one Ava Jade and Becca had emptied.
I rapped twice on the door and Becca answered, stepping aside for me to enter.
She’d hardly left the loft at all since they moved in, and I was curious if she was too afraid to.
I wouldn’t blame her. Fear was a powerful form of natural self- preservation, that’s what Diesel was always trying to remind me, anyway.
“Ghost?” I asked as I placed the jug onto the cooler, popping the seal so the water could flow down into the chamber.
“Bathroom,” she replied with a sigh, and my stomach tightened.
Had it finally started? Ava Jade went straight up to the loft when we got back last night, and we hadn’t heard from or seen her since.
We all agreed to stay clear of the upstairs bathroom to give her some privacy while she was sick, but I never heard a peep.
Even with my bedroom the closest. There were no vomiting sounds. No pained cries. I would have brought her water. A cold towel.
“How long has she been in there?” I asked, staring at the closed door across the room.
Becca lifted one of her dark brows at my question, hesitating before her reply. “Um, why?” she asked, like it was the most ridiculous question and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why I’d want to know.
I considered that. “Is she not sick?”
“Sick?”
The door opened, and Ava Jade stepped back into the loft, fixing her hair with a pin. My cock jumped in my jeans at the sight of her, my mouth going dry.
She definitely wasn’t sick.
Looking more like a wraith than a ghost in all black with a leather skirt and a tight black shirt with little cutouts running up both sides from her waist to her underarms, exposing more than a little side boob. Dark makeup on her eyelids with wicked slashes of black liner making them look winged.
“Rook?” she asked, and I realized I was still staring.
I gave her all black outfit one last go over before reining in my expression. “Whose funeral is it?” I asked, my lips pulling upward on one side.
“I haven’t decided yet,” she quipped, smiling back with a wink.
She really wasn’t sick. Had Diesel not poisoned her?
That didn’t seem fucking likely. He always poisoned both chalices.
He’d done that trial in some capacity or other on every member of the Saints.
He was used to the poison, had built up a tolerance to it over the years that allowed him to get by without too much discomfort.
Plus, there was the antidote always at the ready just in case he should need it.
The antidote…
My brain worked to solve the equation, trying to figure out how she got away unscathed.
Grey. That sneaky son of a bitch.
I should have seen it before. He went off to do a loop of the bar, said himself he was headed for the kitchens.
The poison needed to be kept chilled. He’d have found it in the cooler.
But how had he gotten his hands on the antidote so fast?
It was a ballsy move, but I couldn’t say I wouldn’t have done it myself given the opportunity.
We’d have to tell Ava Jade eventually. Diesel would want to know she suffered. The only way that was going to work was if she were in on the lie. A problem for another time.
“Are you almost ready, Aves?” Becca asked, leaning over the desk to look into a small circular mirror as she applied dark cherry lipstick. “We should get going.”
“Going?”
“We have a concert to go to tonight,” she said offhandedly. “Thought I already told you guys’”
“You didn’t.”
“Oh. Too bad. If you’re all busy tonight then it’s no problem, Becca and I will be just fine without you.”
Devious little fucker.
Why did her defiance just make me even harder?
I licked my lips, sucking in a breath as I bit my lip ring. Until I realized what today was and my amusement waned.
“I think not, Ghost,” I replied without room for argument, not bothering to explain.
She knew why we couldn’t let her go anywhere alone.
It was more than Diesel’s orders now. There was someone out there who’d tried to put her down with a sedative.
I could vividly imagine a thousand reasons why and none of them would ever happen if I had any say in it.
“Always such a buzzkill,” Ava Jade muttered and I lifted my brows.
“No. That’s Corvus. Not me.”
She tipped her head this way and that, pursing her lips to show she agreed.
“What show are you going to?” I asked in an uninterested tone, leaning against the support beam at the center of the floor. “Anyone I’d know?”
“Doubt it,” she replied with a haughty sort of disdain.
“Humor me.”
She looked me up and down as she sat on the edge of the bed to tug on a pair of calf height boots, zipping them up tight. “Primal Ethos,” she said finally, watching me for any trace of recognition.
“He’s good,” I said, eager to drag more detail from her lips. “Not amazing, but good.”
An inside joke she wouldn’t get, but inside, I was laughing.
Of course she would be a fan of Primal Ethos. I should’ve guessed it, but this? Her actually going to one of his shows? A bolt of wild anticipation tore up my spine.
“Ha!” she barked. “He’s a fucking god and nothing less.”
“ Amen ,” Becca added, making a wicked sign of the cross as she shimmied her shoulders.
I couldn’t keep the amusement from creeping onto my face this time, and my Ghost looked at me like I might have lost my final screw.
“What’s so funny?” she demanded, and I cleared my throat, swallowing back my smile.
“Nothing at all.”
She rolled her eyes, snatching up some cash and what looked like a fake ID from her nightstand. “Ready, Becks?”
“Yeah, just let me use the ladies room, first.”
The door shut behind Becca, and Ava Jade adjusted her tits as she strode toward me. I let out a growl, loud enough for her to hear. She grinned at my reaction, leaning in close to my side to whisper in my ear. “So, will you be joining us?”
Her scent filled my nose, and I twisted a fist into her hair, knotting it in my fingers at the back of her skull to hold her there, inches from me.
Truth be told, I wanted to be there to see her face.
..but I had plans tonight. A little recon of my own.
Off the books. All of us were carving out time to try to find the bastard who attacked Ava Jade, but so far we’d turned up nothing.
I couldn’t accept that. I needed his blood coating my hands.
Splattering my face. I needed to hear his screams and watch the light leave his eyes so that I could sleep at night.
Tonight, I had one job. Find him. Or at the very least, find a fucking lead.
“Can’t, I’m afraid,” I murmured a breath away from her lips. “But I’m sure Grey would be happy to accompany you.”
“Too busy for me?” she asked, her steely grey-blue eyes flitting to my lips and back up again.
I tipped my chin down, desire aching through me like a searing blade as I replied. “Never.”
Her breath tripped from her lips in a quiet gasp as I tightened my fist in her hair, making her eyes squint with the bite of pain.
She closed her eyes and moaned, but as the bathroom door opened, I released her, stepping away as though the moment between us never happened.
She tripped forward a step, flushed and breathless, blinking at me standing three feet away like she couldn’t fathom how I’d moved so fast.
“Aves?” Becca asked, staring at her friend’s back. “You okay?”
She shook her head at me, the threat of returning my teasing ten-fold clear in her eyes.
“Fucking fabulous,” she replied. “Let’s go find Grey.”
She sauntered past me behind Becca on their way out, and I smiled in her wake. I snatched her hand before she could vanish down the stairs into the garage, pulling her up short.
She glared at my hand holding her tight and lifted her chin with a question in her hard stare. But I didn’t mean to stop her from going. “You’re armed?”
She visibly relaxed and lifted the hem of her leather skirt, flashing me the twin blades strapped to either side of her thighs and a damn good view of her black panties. I clenched my jaw, nodding.
“Good.”
I released her.
“Be careful.”
“Ghosts can’t die, Rook,” she told me in a light tone. “We’re already dead.”