Chapter 28 – Ava Jade #2
“You heard the man. Get your ass out of here.”
His lips pressed into a taut line as he stood, coming to stand in front of me where I sat on the side of his hospital bed.
He stared at me for a moment, with an emotion I couldn’t name raging behind his eyes.
Then he brushed the hair back from my chest, his fingers running along the skin behind my ear as he leaned in and pressed a chaste kiss to my forehead.
“I swear to you,” he whispered in my ear.
“You will never have to endure anything like that again. Not while I’m still breathing. ”
His hand fell away, and he walked past me to the door. “Don’t leave for Sanctum without me.”
“AJ, if I bring up a map of the area around where we found you, do you think you could pinpoint the location of the underground shelter? Or at least the direction?”
Grey turned the laptop screen around on his lap, and I frowned at the crisscrossed lines of the map there. “I-I don’t know.”
“Try?”
I sighed, but got to my feet, crossing the room to kneel in front of him, squinting at the screen. “Well, there’s the tracks I crossed.”
I pointed to them, tracing the line in a northeasterly direction. “I crossed about here, so maybe somewhere in that direction.”
Grey leaned over the screen, watching my finger trace a path further into the national park. He nodded. “Okay, that’s good. I can work with that.”
He turned the laptop back around, and when I didn’t move from my spot in front of him, he lifted a brow at me.
“Thanks.”
The word was a dismissal, and I felt it like a slap to the face.
“Come on, Ghost,” Rook called for me, his hand extended in my direction. “I don’t know about you, but I need a fucking drink before we head over to Sanctum. Want to go see what these docs keep hidden in their office drawers?”
“Only if we can go torment the emergency patients after.”
“It’s a date.”
Something about leaving the hospital and driving the familiar streets to Sanctum felt surreal. And I realized that for all my stubbornness and shit talking in that fucking hole in the ground, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be here again.
I rested my head on Rook’s shoulder in the backseat as he smoked a cigarette out the window of the Rover, absently stroking his tatted fingers through my hair.
I knew this wasn’t going to last. The second we left this car and went into Sanctum, the little bubble that’d been forming around us in the hospital would burst.
If the Kings were out for Saint blood, it meant there was another war on the horizon. And the puppet master of the whole damned thing was still out there. He could be waiting around any corner. Hiding in the shadows. Waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.
His number one target aside from me? My guys.
Even though my blood buzzed with the need for vengeance and a thirst for the blood of a dragon, I couldn’t take it if anything else happened to them. Not because of me.
“You ready for this, Sparrow?” Corvus asked, catching my eye in the rearview from the passenger seat. “We can postpone.”
“No we can’t.”
He worked his jaw, but nodded in reply, knowing I was right.
Diesel had already begun putting precautions in place in case of an attack by the Kings.
He’d also set up a meet with the Mexicans to get some more firepower.
It was all hands on deck, now. The Saints were outmanned.
But they weren’t outwomaned, and maybe that would be the difference that saved us all.
It was me Drake wanted after all. And since we’d already discerned he was the true head of that Kingsnake, I’d just have to cut his off to end it all before it could begin.
Before any more of us could die.
I didn’t know the other Saints very well, but I’d come to respect the hell out of most of them.
Oddly enough, it was Axel’s death that hit me the hardest out of those who lost their lives in this bullshit.
Even though he liked to watch Becca with fuck me eyes, I knew he was harmless, and would never touch her if she didn’t want that.
He was a good man.
So were some of the others who fell at the Docks.
All because I couldn’t help pulling that trigger.
I let out a shaky breath as the three story building came into view at the end of the downtown strip. Would they want me crucified?
Were my chances of ever truly being accepted into their ranks dashed now forever?
I shook my head, sighing at myself, finding Rook staring down at me curiously, with a dopey smile trying to curl up the edge of his mouth.
“I’ll cut anyone who looks at you sideways, Ghost. Promise.”
“How do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Read my mind.”
He shrugged, and I sat up in the middle seat, clutching the leather beneath me.
“Because it’s the same as mine.”
I snorted as we pulled into the parking lot out front.
I hadn’t seen Diesel yet, either. He’d been through the hospital a couple times since the guys found me, checking on Corvus, bringing some supplies to the Saints he’d positioned there as sentries.
But our paths hadn’t crossed yet, and I didn’t know if that was coincidence or by design.
I wasn’t avoiding him. Not really. Okay, maybe a little.
It was me who got his men killed. Who almost got his first son killed.
I was sure I wasn’t wrong thinking it was more by design than anything else. He probably didn’t want to see me any more than I wanted to see him.
I followed Rook from the Rover, chewing my lips as I tipped my head up, taking in the bar.
The shining tips of sniper barrels glinted in what remained of the sunlight filtering between the buildings, placed evenly in three of the six upstairs windows with another on the roof.
Turning, I found a further two in the building across the street. Diesel wasn’t taking any chances, it seemed, and I hoped they were all at least a decent shot.
Instinctively, I headed for the door around the back of the building that would lead downstairs to the underbelly of Sanctum, but Grey whistled to get my attention, indicating the front door with the inclination of his head.
I fell in line behind and between my guys, who crowded me in as we entered the main bar.
A sign in the window said ‘Closed for Renovations’ but the guys had told me Diesel had no choice but to set up all the injured Saints here.
Better to keep everyone together, close, in case of an attack.
And it seemed, even now that nearly everyone was back on their feet, he was still using the bar as a makeshift safe house and Saint headquarters.
The warehouse where they usually met was too in the open for comfort given all the recent threats.
Rock classics hummed at a low volume in the background as Saints chatted, sipping beer at the bar and racking up at one of the pool tables in the back.
Heads turned as we entered and some guy in the back lifted his pint, letting out a loud woop! Others followed his example until Sanctum echoed with the raucous cheers of everyone in the bar.
I dipped my head, shrinking behind Corvus for him to enjoy his welcome home with a ball in my throat at the warmth in the room.
“What are you doing, AJ?” Grey asked, gently tugging my elbow, guiding me back out into the open, where I realized they weren’t looking at Corvus as they clapped and jeered, sloshing beer over the floor as they raised their cups. They were looking at… me.
“ Welcome back, Ava Jade ,” Pinkie hollered, his throaty bellow reverberating in my chest from where he stood in the middle of the room.
I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t breathe.
“ A-va Jade ,” Vance called from his wheelchair, turning my name into a chant that others soon joined.
“ A-va Jade, A-va Jade, A-va Jade. ”
My gaze caught on a familiar pair of steel blue eyes watching me from the bar, but I’d never seen them like they were now. Crinkled at the edges, pulled taut from how he was smiling around the cigar clenched in his teeth. Diesel stood from the stool, clapping with the others in time with the chant.
My stomach twisted. My throat burned. My hand went absently to my throat, fingers grasping at empty skin where a black stone used to rest.
I whirled on my guys, who’d joined the chant with the others. So much pride in their eyes.
“What is this?”
“This is for you, Ghost,” Rook answered, his black eyes glittering in the light. “Welcome home.”
A hand grasped my shoulder, and when I turned it was to find Diesel standing behind me… wearing the leather jacket I bought for him.
“The boys filled me in on what you went through escaping that bastard,” he said, shouting to be heard over the chant. “Hope you don’t mind, but I shared some of it with the others. You got guts, kid.” He leaned in close. Squeezing my shoulder. “More than most of my crew.”
I didn’t know what to say, but I was hella fucking shocked when he pulled me in for a hug. My chest squeezed, making me clench my teeth to fight back the tears at the complete sense of belonging. The paternal sort of affection I thought I’d never feel again.
Diesel released me, and I quickly sniffed, covertly wiping my sleeve over my eyes as he spun back to face the crew of Saints in the bar. “All right, all right,” he hollered. “Calm the fuck down.”
The chanting slowly petered out, most of them going back to what they were doing, but Pinkie and a few others waded through the crowd towards us to greet me personally.
“Damn, kid,” Pinkie said. “I already knew you were a badass, but…” he trailed off, shaking his head. “I don’t think there’s another girl on this planet better suited for our Crows. Isn’t that right, boys?”
Despite myself, I blushed. Something about everyone here knowing I was intimately with not one, but all three of these guys made me just a smidge uncomfortable. But Pinkie wasn’t judging, and the others next to him had only respect in their eyes.
“You know it, Pinkie?—”
“Boy, if you call me Pinkie Pie one more time, I swear to god?—”
I laughed, the ball in my throat shrinking until I could breathe again.