Chapter 15 Bear
BEAR
I stared at myself in the mirror as I placed my palms down into the double vanity.
This massive bathroom, and I’d been sharing it with myself for the past six weeks.
I stared at my face. My torso. The wounds that had healed.
The scars they left behind. And in my mind, I imagined Margot wrapping her arms around my body.
Coming up behind me and kissing me against my back before peeking underneath my arm.
If I had a dollar for every time I envisioned that, I could’ve bought myself a damn island to escape this bullshit from.
In the last six weeks, my body had healed up fine.
Piper was a great doctor, and she made sure I was taken care of.
And wonderfully drugged-up during the process.
But my chest still ached. There was a hole the size of Margot in my heart, and nothing Piper did stopped that bleeding.
Stopped that hurting. Stopped that insane spiral my mind made every night whenever my dreams decided to conjure her.
Conjure the hurt and pain in her eyes before she stormed out of this place.
Pushing Margot away was one of the worst things I’d ever done.
Even though I told myself it was for her safety, I still regretted it.
I still wished I could have gone back and done something different.
And yes, she didn’t need to be seen as involved with us after the mafia came back into our lives.
She didn’t need to be caught up in this shit.
But I’d fully caught myself up in her.
I wonder if she misses me, too.
“You damn well know she doesn’t,” I murmured to myself.
I scoffed as I bent down, going through my normal routine. Drag my ass out of bed. Take a shower. Stare at myself in the mirror until I was dry. Brush my teeth. Put on clothes. Go get some coffee. Grimace at how shitty it tastes after brushing my fucking teeth.
Think about Margot until the sun set, then get up and do it all over again.
This warehouse was a castled fortress. And while I’d finally memorized the pattern of the winding hallways, I still found things about it I didn’t know.
Like the armory rooms, where each of us could hole ourselves up with guns, ammunition, and gear in order to wait out an attack.
Or the library with books. Fucking books, from floor to ceiling.
Who the fuck read that many books?
“Probably Saint,” I said, chuckling to myself.
Myself.
I talked to myself a lot nowadays.
Because every since Piper had been threatened, things had been eerily quiet.
Not just from the mafia and Lars Norden, but from everyone else around me.
It was like we were all waiting for the other shoe to drop.
For the other bomb to hit our tracks so all of this made sense.
And even though six weeks had also healed up Piper’s mark around her neck, Rock hovered over her and the kids in some of the worst ways possible.
Whenever I passed by their bedroom at night to get a snack, sometimes I heard them arguing.
Other times I saw Piper slamming out of the room, heading for the entertainment room with the kids.
And other times, I saw Rock slinking out of there with his tail between his legs before his eyes connected with mine.
We were all in a shit place with all this.
I mean, we all had our jobs. During the day, Rock dug up information and dirt on the mafia and Lars.
Or at least he tried to. Diesel and Grave were on lookout duty on the rooftop of this damn place.
Hunkered down behind barricades on the top of the warehouse that looked more like heaps of junk than anything else.
I was tasked with cleaning up all the guns and gear we had around the place, since my body couldn't do much of anything else until after it had healed.
But once Piper gave me the all-clear about a week ago, I took my place up at the front door.
Just in case someone had the balls to storm into this place.
The efforts were pretty much fruitless, though.
I had to admit Diesel did a damn fine job of making this thing still look abandoned.
With the junk on the roof and the dusty dirt in the front lawn and the outside crawling with grime and rust around the edges.
It helped to conceal us while Rock tried to find something that could help us in this random-ass fight.
He wasn’t digging up much, though.
The only thing he could dig up was chatter about some big deal going down about an hour away.
Not even on the outskirts of Redding. It was rumored that dirty money was exchanging hands for the purchase of some construction site.
One that had been abandoned for years. And according to Rock, after Toxin and Ryker questioned the finance man brokering the deal, he confirmed that the men involved were criminals.
From a drug-dealing criminal empire based out of Redding to what the man called a “more snazzy, black-suit wearing kind of criminal empire.”
Sounded like Lars and his men to us.
It was the only explanation as to why they hadn’t focused on Sutton and the club for now.
But that begged so many other questions.
Why a construction site an hour away? What were they doing there?
I mean, Rock couldn't even get positive IDs on the men using the mediator to broker the deal in the first place.
For all we knew, the assumptions we drew were wrong.
Deals like that did take a while, though. If people did them right, they sometimes took two to three months. Research had to be done. Excavation had to take place. Movement of equipment had to be timed right.
And sometimes, those deals took longer if the criminals involved got paranoid. Or creeped out. Or generally felt as if they were about to be wronged.
So, with that information in hand, I did something Diesel would have looked down upon had he known I was doing it.
At night, for the past two weeks, I’d snuck out of the warehouse and walked my bike down the road.
I’d strike it up in the shadows and ride toward the hospital, wanting nothing more than a glimpse of Margot.
I wanted to make sure she was okay. I wanted to make sure she was happy.
Content. At the very least, still getting on with her residency.
I memorized her schedule. I knew when she took her breaks.
Took her lunch. So, I’d go and sit there for two hours.
Two fucking hours in the dead of night, concealed by all the cars in the hospital parking lot.
And during those two hours, she’d take a small break as well as lunch.
On her break, she’d come outside and draw in deep breaths.
Sometimes she’d have a nice white coat. Sometimes, she’d be covered in blood.
She’d come outside and sit on a bench off in the corner with her lunch, sometimes scarfing it down. Sometimes not touching it at all.
I was shocked I had the self-control not to approach her on the nights I knew she was struggling.
I went through the motions of the day, trying to bide my time until the evening.
I cleaned up the weapons and made sure they were stocked with ammunition.
I glossed up the leather gear and shined up the bulletproof body armor we all had.
Then, I took my spot up by the door. I picked up the radio on the door-side table that kept me in contact with Diesel and Grave on the roof.
And the hours ticked on without an ounce of trouble heading our way.
I was dismissed from door duty and Knox took my place. Sleeping through the day, then taking watch at night. Brewer did the same damn thing. Sleeping through the day, then taking his scoped sniper up to the roof with some snacks and kept perched throughout the night.
The hardest thing was getting past those two assholes with my bike.
But I found a way to do it.
I went back to my room and passed the time with movies and television shows.
And once one in the morning rolled around, I snuck out of my room.
I made my footsteps silent as I headed for the garage door, sneaking my way out of it.
I used a back door instead of the main garage door to get my bike out of the garage.
I stuck close to the outer perimeter of the building, using the roof overhang as a shade from Brewer on the roof.
I walked down the elongated side, until the dip in the rocks allowed me to sink underneath them if I clung tightly enough to the side of the cliff.
With rocks above my head and a thin sheet of rock below my feet, I rolled my bike in front of me.
I hunched down, steadying it with my hands until the rocks broke more than half a mile later.
Then, I slid the bike up the ravine, climbed to the surface, wiped the sweat from my brow, and struck my bike up.
It was a dangerous trek to make. But it was worth it to see Margot.
It was worth it to make sure she was all right.
As I rode to the hospital, something felt different.
I couldn't really explain it, other than I felt I’d been pegged.
I pulled over to the side of the road about four miles from the hospital, then decided to check my phone.
Maybe Brewer saw me this time. Or heard something and wanted me to report to Knox.
But I didn’t have any messages on my phone.
Still, I looked around me. Something felt off.
Something felt wrong about what I was doing.
Was Margot in trouble?
I pushed myself back onto the road, ready to speed my way to the hospital.
But I didn’t even get another mile up the fucking deserted highway before a black SUV came careening out from the shadows.
It screeched to a grinding halt, causing me to turn my bike as it skidded to a stop.
Burning rubber clouded my view as the door to the SUV opened, and out jumped a man in an all-black suit.
Holy fuck. They’d been tailing me.
Did they know where the warehouse was?
“Well, hello Bear,” the man said.
I clenched my jaw as I revved the engine of my bike. Just in case one of the guys had tailed me from the warehouse.
The one time I needed my stealth to not be as fluent as it usually is.
“You know, I’ve been trying to answer this question for damn near a week. My guys and I have a little bet running, you see,” the man said.
“Whatever it is, it’s none of your fucking business,” I growled.
The men surrounded me, drawing their guns as I stood there. With my bike between my legs. Staring this nameless asshole down.
“They don’t like your language, so I’d keep that in check,” the man said.
“Sure,” I said flatly.
“Good boy. Now, I’ve been racking my brain as to why you keep going to and from the hospital.
I think it’s because you need things from the hospital.
You know, not healing up so well and all that.
But, a buddy of mine here thinks it’s because of a pretty little thing that works there. Maybe, a particular resident?”
I put on my best game face, even though I wanted to rip the man’s throat out with my fucking teeth.
“Maybe I just have a hard-on for the ambulance lights,” I said.
The man chuckled. “That’s a good one. I didn’t take you for the joker of the group. I figured that was more Toxin’s alley.”
Shit. They’d been doing recon on us. Which meant there was a very good chance they knew where the warehouse was.
Keep him talking. See what you can get out of him.
“So, are your men gonna shoot me in the middle of a lit intersection with cameras on the poles around us? Or, are they just for show?” I asked.
The man in front of me gazed up at the poles.
He clocked all the lights as I grinned, then motioned for his men to put them down.
All right. They hadn’t reconned the area.
Which meant they probably hadn’t stumbled upon the warehouse.
Which meant their intel on us had been garnered well before we made our move.
Good.
“I mean, I figured you would’ve known that, what with the police station for this part of the district being right around that corner back there,” I said.
I was bluffing at that point, but they didn’t know that. The man’s eyes boiled with fury before he looked at someone behind me. I peeked over my shoulder, watching a scrawny man in a black suit tremble in his patent leather shoes.
I got a good look at him. Because that was for sure their recon man.
“You better watch your back, Mr. Bear,” the man said.
I slowly panned my eyes back around as the men holstered their guns.
“I mean, I could say the same to you. But, these cameras probably gotcha pretty good, if you ask me,” I said.
“Mark my words, me and my boss will take care of you and your little crew soon enough. And as far as that bet goes? I’m starting to think you really do have your eye on that pretty little resident,” he snarled.
I clenched my jaw as he eyed me, grinning.
“Seems like I owe my pal a hundred bucks for being wrong on that bet,” he said.
I eyed each and every one of them as they passed by me. I watched them get into the SUV, and I managed to grab the license plate as they sped off. I waited until I knew they were down the road. I waited until the sound of their vehicle was out of range for my ears.
Then, I cursed to myself as I struck up my bike again. Revving my engine and taking the back roads to the hospital.
Margot was officially in trouble. Which meant she needed to come with me.
Again.