Chapter 10
Ten
I’m a sucker for deep conversations. I wanna know why you’re missing a tooth.
—Apollo’s secret thoughts
APOLLO
When I started to miss her, I would pick up my cell and tap into the cameras at her apartment or work, and stare at her for a half hour.
This time, she wasn’t at any of her usual places, though.
I ended up finding her by accident while I flipped through the hospital’s cameras, hoping to catch sight of her since I knew that she was working today.
She always worked.
She worked more than I thought possible, and she looked like she was close to dragging when I happened upon her walking through the halls of the ER.
I tapped into the audio to hear as she walked and talked with some man I hadn’t seen before dressed in blue scrubs.
“…just floating today. I’m not here long term, so don’t get your hopes up,” Dru said.
The doctor with her chuckled. “We sure do miss you down here. It’s not the same without you.”
“Yeah, but I’m not in a constant state of anxiety anymore, and I don’t see people dying all the time,” Dru pointed out.
“You may have a point,” the man said.
I zoomed in on his nametag and saw “Dr. Phillips, M.D.”
“Where do you want me today, Destiny?” Dru called out to the nurse walking toward her.
“Would you be mad if I put you into the trauma rooms?”
Dru sighed. “No. But I won’t be very happy at the end of this shift, which’ll remind me why I’m not down here anymore.”
Destiny scrunched up her nose. “I wish you’d come back.”
I wondered why she left.
That was something that I didn’t get to just search for on the internet.
Dru sighed. “I’m telling you. You have no idea how nice it is to have a little room to breathe. You don’t even realize you don’t have it until you’re gone.”
Her words hit me like a sledgehammer.
Because I felt that in my soul.
I never felt like I had room to breathe.
At least, until I met her.
When I first saw her at that restaurant, it was like I’d taken my first breath of fresh air in months.
“Where the fuck is Knight?” Audric grumbled as he walked into the room. “He’s not answering any of my phone calls, and my wife was supposed to meet up with his old lady today, and she’s not answering, either.”
“Ridin’ with his old lady,” Webber explained his absence.
“He texted that he lost track of time and was heading back now. You know you can’t hear shit on the bike when you don’t get those helmets that lets you answer calls—which, might I add, he refuses to do.
He said that it’ll be another hour at least, though.
And that he probably won’t make it back in time for us to get finished. ”
“Well, all right then,” I grumbled. “Let me give you all the information that I found on ‘Max.’”
Max was actually Maxine Annmarie Cisneros, a twenty-nine-year-old undercover agent for the FBI.
Months ago, she was instructed to take over the job that Jasper had left behind.
Jasper, also known as Hush to our club, had come along years ago when he’d been tasked to go undercover in our club. But he’d slowly fallen in deep with us, and his desire to do anything undercover was no longer there, so he’d fed them a bunch of bullshit so that they’d think we were clean.
Newsflash, we aren’t.
The government knew it.
Jasper’s superiors knew it.
We knew it.
But there was nothing that his superiors could do to him but let him take the walk he wanted to take anyway.
Though, that had been decided for him when he was shot when he’d been trying to protect Webber’s wife, Silver.
Webber had found out that Jasper had come into the club for devious reasons and had been in the process of kicking him out of the club when he’d protected Silver. That’d been the one and only thing that would’ve kept him in the club, and he’d done it without a second thought.
In the meantime, he’d taken a bullet directly to the chest, nearest his heart, and had almost died.
So Webber had let him stay on as a Truth Teller and had decided to tell no one.
Only, Jasper had been tired of keeping it a secret and had told everyone anyway.
Everyone was justifiably pissed, but they’d gotten over it.
Which led us to now, the government trying to send in other people that could possibly get an inside scoop into the inner sanctum of the Truth Tellers MC.
But they didn’t know that I was a computer genius and could literally get anywhere I needed with just a flip phone if I needed to. Let alone if I had my full setup with me.
Needless to say, Max wasn’t a welcome sight, and despite her trying to get into our club, she hadn’t been able to make it yet.
But there was someone who would know this woman better than most, and that was Jasper again.
He just didn’t know it yet.
But I was about to inform him.
I’d bet I would get at least ten words out of him when I told him.
The man had earned his name “Hush” for a reason. He disliked talking, and when he did talk, it was usually in such short bursts that you often wondered if he was finished, or if he was going to add more.
Usually, he was finished.
“Hit us.” Webber did the “come hither” gesture with his hands.
I turned my gaze away from him and settled it on Jasper, whose brows furrowed. “What?”
See, man of few words.
“This really involves you,” I said. “Have you ever met an FBI agent with the name Max Cross?”
His entire face just…shut down.
Interesting.
Grinning internally, because it was nice to get the drop on a man that was two steps ahead of us at all times, I said, “I can see that you do.”
“We don’t, though,” Copper grumbled. “Get to the point.”
I shook my head. “Literally, I’m getting there. Give me a goddamn second.”
Copper grumbled under his breath, but ultimately didn’t say anything more.
“I know her,” Jasper said stiffly.
“I figured you would.” I flipped open the files and passed the pages around, handing out a small dossier of all I was able to grab about the new agent on our tail. I also made sure to include a photo of Jasper and a woman who looked eerily similar to the agent at the end, too.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Hush,” Webber grumbled when he got to the last page. “Again?”
Jasper flipped to the page he was on, then shot me a glare.
I held up my hands. “It would’ve come out anyway. It’s best to just rip the bandage off.”
“When I was dating Bernie, Max hadn’t made it through FBI training yet. It was honestly not lookin’ too good when I left. I had no clue that she’d even made it through,” Jasper grumbled.
“Bernie?” Gunner asked. “Who’s Bernie?”
“Bernie is Max’s twin sister who I dated before I went undercover,” he grumbled darkly. “We broke up, and I never saw either one of them again.”
Well, that was interesting.
I guess I’d hold the true surprise back and let him figure that part out on his own.
He hadn’t just left Bernie and her sister.
He’d left something else, too.
Something he wasn’t going to be happy about.
“So did she end up making it through the training?” Doc asked.
“She didn’t, technically.” I hit the button on the screen to fill it up with photos and timelines.
“She wasn’t going to finish. Didn’t finish.
But she started working at the local PD with her newfound training, and has been at New Orleans Police Department since Jasper left.
They recruited her after he told them to shove it. Because she knows you.”
“Great.” Jasper pinched the bridge of his nose. “Let me guess, she moved here.”
He didn’t have to say who “she” was. I knew.
“She did,” I answered. “Did you think that her twin sister could move hours away and she not move, too?”
Jasper continued with the grumbling.
“Why’d y’all break up?” Webber asked.
When Webber asked something, you usually tried to answer it.
He was the president, and we tried to accommodate him when we could.
This was one of those times that Jasper accommodated him, even though you could tell that he didn’t want to say anything more.
Ever.
“She wanted lots of kids, and I didn’t. End of story.”
“Didn’t want them, or couldn’t have them?” Cutter wondered from his half of the table.
“I can get it up, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Jasper grumbled, shooting Cutter a dark look. “I can also physically have kids. I just don’t fuckin’ want them.”
He wasn’t the only one.
I didn’t want any more myself.
I couldn’t handle that kind of heartache ever again.
I had no clue what Jasper’s reasons were, but it was surprising because he was really good with the kids belonging to the club members.
It was also unfortunate for reasons he didn’t know yet.
Reasons I couldn’t wait to see play out.
I wasn’t an evil person, per se. But I sort of liked seeing other people struggle.
It was nice when it wasn’t just me barely holding my head above water.
“I…”
My phone beeped, and I frowned, looking at the screen.
“What the…”
“What is it?” Webber asked, responding to the alarm in my voice.
“Give me a minute,” I said as I rushed out of church and headed to the front door where the object of my obsession now stood, looking like she’d seen a ghost.