Chapter Seven
The night was unusually quiet. No wind. No rain. Just an eerie stillness amidst a cloud free sky. Stars twinkled overhead; my breath was visible in the air in front of me. I’d been sitting outside the funeral home for a while, plans running through my head. I had to get this woman on side. She had shown no signs of falling for the usual Fury charm, and I didn’t think my bike was going to do much to convince her either.
I’d been staring at the glass doors since I got here. Beyond them were darkness and shadows, but now, suddenly, something moved. A prick of white light. Tiny at first and then growing, until it illuminated the woman I’d seen earlier today. Even from this distance, the light cast shadows over that figure. The beautiful bulge of hips I could dig my fingers into, the slim waist I could wrap my arms around and hold still, and those shapely legs that could wrap round my head. Fuck.
Tearing my eyes away, I slunk a little lower in my seat, making sure I wasn’t noticed. For tonight, I needed to watch. Get an idea of her routine. She stood at the door, hesitating, not moving out into the vacant parking space in front of the building. Then she turned away again, the light fading with her. Something didn’t feel right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but over the years I’d come to pay attention to the heavy feeling in the bottom of my stomach and had learned the hard way to ignore it.
I pushed the truck door open, straining my ears in the thick silence, listening for anything that would give me a hint why my senses tingled like someone had rubbed me with a balloon and why there was a pang of nausea creeping into my gullet. Outside I could hear nothing, not even the roar of passing traffic. Everything seemed to have been swallowed in the stillness. For once, there was real quiet. Glancing up, the stars watched on in the dark abyss, a sudden shiver rolling over me, the chill as winter crept amongst us.
Inside the Fischer Funeral Home, a light grew again. Quickly this time. Bobbing as she walked back towards the front doors. But now I realised she wasn’t walking. Running, Heidi was running. My stomach dropped, a sense of danger flooding my veins, deep, heavy as lead. She fumbled with something, snatching glances over her shoulder, her movements jerking, urgent. Something was wrong. Really wrong.
I crossed the gravelled car park. Urgent long strides, making the doors just as she burst out of them. Her head turned as she dashed through, watching over her shoulder, not seeing me. She barrelled into me, falling backwards, teetering on high heels much too big. I grabbed her shoulders, stopping her from falling flat onto her back. And that was the first time she had seen me. Her scream pierced my ears, desperate.
“It’s ok.”
But she couldn’t hear. Her panic consumed her, and I was a dark shape in dark clothes.
“Heidi. It’s ok,” I said again, pulling her towards me, towards the glow from the singular shit street light a few metres further back. “It’s Fury. From the Northern Kings,” I added when she didn’t stop struggling.
“Get off me. Get off me.”
“Heidi. You’re ok. What’s going on?”
I relaxed my grip, not fully letting go, not sure whether she would swing for me the moment I gave her the space to do that. Because that’s what I would do.
“F… Fury,” she stammered, her voice still an octave higher than what I knew it sounded like.
“Aye, doll. Fury. You’re safe, ok?”
I bent down a little, just to drop into her eyeline. She was a tall woman, slightly above average. But at 6’4” I still dwarfed her. She was out of breath, sucking in huge lungfuls of air as she tried to calm herself down.
“I’m ok. I’m ok,” she muttered, and I wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince.
“What’s happened? What’s going on?”
“I…I. There were footsteps. Someone is in there,” she whispered the last word, like it might alert them we were on to them.
“Do you want me to go have a look?”
Heidi shook her head, her blonde hair falling about her face, then she nodded.
“I…I…dunno. Yes?”
“Ok. Wait here. I’ll go have a look.”
I stepped round her, my boots crunching heavily in the gravel, and she jumped, the tiniest of squeaks leaving her throat.
“No. Wait,” she said suddenly, grabbing at the leather arm of my jacket. “I don’t want to be out here alone.”
“Ok. Well, come with me.”
“I don’t want to go back in there, either. I just want to go home.”
“Ok. I can take you home.”
“No. No. It’s ok. I have a taxi coming,” she glanced around, staring away into the darkness.
I watched her arms shake. From the cold or the shock, I did not know, but she was shivering.
“Right. Well, we can wait in my truck.”
The blonde woman looked at me, surveying my face, and slowly the hardness I’d seen earlier today returned to hers. The slowing of her heart chasing away that fragility I’d just seen on her. And I didn’t know which one I liked more.
“I’ll just wait out here,” she said, her voice lowering, losing the waiver of earlier.
It was growing colder, any residual heat from earlier in the day now quickly disappearing into a cloudless night. I shrugged out of my bike jacket, wrapping the leather around her shoulders, the three crowned skulls now at her back, rather than mine.
“Ok, we’ll wait out here then,” I stood next to her, not sure whether draping my arm across her shoulders was a step too far and then deciding it was.
“Fury,” my name sounded delicious on her lips, in her London accent. “What are you doing here?”
And now I didn’t know how to answer that, because any I gave would sound creepy as fuck, and I had no excuse for what I was doing.
“I was just passing by,” I lied. “Thought I saw a light in the windows, which was weird at this time of night, so pulled back round. Next thing I knew, you were charging through those doors.”
“Hmm,” she answered, not challenging me, and maybe I’d got away with that pathetic excuse of a lie.
Suddenly we were lit up by bright lights, a gentle rumble of a car engine close behind.
“My taxi,” she said, peeling the jacket from her shoulders. “Thank you, Fury.”
And there it was again. My name on her lips. And this time my dick twitched in my pants and thoughts of frightening her away were long gone.
*****
“So much for running her out of Newcastle,” Indie rolled his eyes as he passed me the wrench.
“I haven’t finished with her yet.” I twisted the metal in my hand hard, wincing audibly when the nut finally sprang free. “Fuck, that was a tight bitch.”
“Hmmm,” Indie grinned. The first grin I’d seen in a week.
“Aye, my thoughts too, mate.”
“She can’t be left to deal with the club account, Fury. It’ll raise too many suspicions, and we need a clear line into the crem when we need it, especially if I’m right about what is coming next.”
And Indie always was. He would have made a great officer for the British Army. He had a knack for intelligence, for understanding an enemy’s next move. The army had never seen that in him. Our northern accents too off putting for the rest of the officers with their silver spoons wedged up their arses.
“I’ve got this Indie. A few more visits and she’ll stay well away from us or be on our side.”
I had to have earned some Brownie points from saving her from whoever she had been running from last night. She’d been so frightened. It could have been the dark. Or an overactive imagination. I didn’t think I would have liked to have been locked in with a shitload of dead bodies in the pitch black of night. I would have imagined footsteps too.
“And what about Dave?” Indie mumbled into the bonnet of the Ford Ranger we’d been working on for the last hour.
“She seems to have sidelined him for now. He’s pretty hurt about it. That place is his life. She’ll fuck off back to London in a few weeks, though. We just need to wait it out.”
Indie stood up, staring at me.
“We’re gonna need to boost funds in the war chest, Fury. Just patching in the prospects ain’t gonna bring much more. And with a more expensive funeral to pay for, we’re really gonna be on the bones of our arses if we don’t come up with something.”
“What are you thinking?” Because if I knew Indie, I knew he’d have a plan.
“Magnet needs to step up production. Tez needs to hand us more of a cut. He’s not gonna say no now we know about his sidelines. Those people with secrets need to pay more for us to keep them quiet. And we need more members.”
Adding more people to the club was an enormous risk. And if Indie was even suggesting it, it meant the financial situation was pretty dire. But I did know a funeral home that could really use some CCTV. And that could serve two purposes.