Chapter Twenty Nine
I watched Sophie slip back through the doors, a nurse flanking her as she gave instructions I couldn’t hear, her hands moving animatedly.
In the waiting room, it grew quiet. Brothers talking amongst themselves in low, hushed voices. Fellow patients peeking in our direction and quickly averting their eyes when one of us caught them looking.
Indie stood with Suzy, comforting her with an arm around her shoulders as she buried her face in his cut.
“Don’t like this,” Barry the Blade droned from just over my left shoulder.
We both stood away from the crowd. Both stood watching the doors Sophie had stepped back inside.
“What don’t you like, Baz?” I asked, knowing that he was going to tell me exactly what it was anyway, even if I hadn’t asked.
“DCI Mercer’s kid treating one of ours.”
“What the fuck do you think she’s gonna do?” The familiar bubbling started in my chest.
“She’s too close. To this. To us.”
“Fuck’s sake, Baz. You want to know how fucking close she actually is? She’s in my bed. In my shower. She can’t get much fucking closer. And right now, she’s the only thing Magnet has. The only thing we have.”
His voice turned colder. He didn’t back off. “Indie know about all that…closeness?”
“Aye.”
“And what does he think about it?”
But I didn’t really know. Because I hadn’t asked, in case he thought the same thing.
“She’s not her father, Baz,” I said now, softer.
“You know what that old fucker was like. You more than anyone.”
I did. But Sophie couldn’t choose her parents, and I couldn’t choose the person I loved. Had always loved. Even when he’d got between us.
“Does Mercer know you’re fucking his daughter again?”
“Careful, Baz,” I warned. “Officer or not…”
“It was an honest question, Reap. Does Mercer know?”
“I dunno. Why would I know?”
“He made sure you were out the picture the last time. I’m pretty fucking sure he’ll try to do the same again.”
“We’re both adults now. Who Sophie is with is entirely up to her.”
“And you think that will stop him? You don’t think when it comes down to it, she’ll do as she’s told.”
Something dropped into the pit of my stomach. Heavy, swelling up inside of me. My phone rang in my pocket, the noise shrill in the sudden silence between us. I dragged it out.
“Brie?”
“Need to speak to Indie.”
“Now’s not a good time, Brie.”
“Reap…”
“Really, Brie. It can’t be now.”
The president of Angels and Demons MC paused like he was considering reacting, but then understood my tone.
“Ok Reap. Send him round mine when he’s done. He’s gonna want to hear this pretty fucking damn urgently.”
“Ok. Clubhouse?”
“Nah. My house.”
The line went dead.
“Brie?” Barry the Blade asked from beside me.
“Aye. Something urgent for Indie. Needs to see him.”
“Now’s not a good fucking time. Indie needs to be here.”
“I know,” I agreed, running a hand through my hair.
My side ached. The muscles complaining for the first time from where I’d tried to steady the bike when I dropped it in my haste to stop.
“I’ll go talk to him. See what’s going on.”
“He wanted Indie.”
“Aye. Well, he’ll either have to wait or he can have me.”
I nodded. Indie was needed here. Protected by the rest of us. Brie and the Angels and Demons were allies, but having our president running around alone was not sensible. Not right now.
Baz turned.
“You going straight away?”
“He said it was urgent, didn’t he?”
“Aye, but…”
“What can I do here, Reap? What can any of us do? And I’ve seen enough fucking hospitals to last more than a lifetime. I’ll go see what’s happening.”
I nodded again, rubbing absently at the ache building in my bicep now the adrenaline had ebbed away.
“He’s at his house, Baz. Not the clubhouse.”
“Gotcha.”
*****
The waiting room had settled into an uneasy silence, the low mutters of the men I shared this life with broken only by the occasional crackle of tannoys and the distant beeping of machines somewhere deeper in the building.
Some of us moved. Fury paced. Beanz smoked three cigarettes back-to-back outside and came in smelling like an ashtray and cold night air.
Indie hadn’t moved from beside Suzy once.
I watched the doors. Every fucking time they opened my chest tightened. But it was never her. A nurse. A porter. A patient who had been patched up and was on their way home again.
Then, finally, she appeared again.
Grey scrubs now. She’d worn green before.
I swallowed down the heavy lump of lead that was rising from my stomach into the back of my throat.
Tiredness and strands of hair clung to her face, shadows sitting beneath her eyes, but she still held herself together in that same controlled way she always did.
Conversations stopped instantly. Everyone’s gaze turning to her. Waiting. Sophie’s eyes found mine first before moving across the room towards where Indie and Suzy sat. Those of us who were already on our feet moved in, others watching intently from where they were.
“He deteriorated during the scan,” she said quietly, professionally. “They found internal bleeding.”
Suzy made a tiny, strangled cry, and Indie tightened his arm around her.
“There was something else. A gunshot wound to his back. We hadn’t identified that initially because of the trauma from the crash. That’s also started to bleed out.”
The room changed. Not loud. Worse. Still like all the oxygen had just been sucked clean out of it. I felt Fury straighten beside me. Demon muttered a curse under his breath.
“He’s on his way to surgery now,” Sophie continued carefully. “The surgeons are waiting for him. They’ll try to stop the bleeding and remove the bullet if they safely can.”
If. That fucking word landed like the gavel at church, and I was sure it echoed around the waiting room for everyone else to hear.
Sophie’s composure slipped then. Just slightly. A flicker. Tired. Worried. Carrying all of this on shoulders too small for it. And standing there under the fluorescent lights, telling a room full of Northern Kings whether one of their brothers might live or die.
Indie looked across to Emmie, something said in silence between them. When he stood, Emmie slipped into the seat he’d vacated and wrapped her arms around Magnet’s wife.
“Thank you, Dr Mercer,” he said steadily.
“Sophie.”
“Thank you, Sophie. For everything you’ve done today. Me, Suzy and the club really appreciate it.”
The muscles in Sophie’s neck twitched very slightly, yet her eyes held Indie’s.
“You’re welcome. I just hope it’s enough,” she said, quieter this time.
Indie nodded, then patted her gently on the shoulder and turned away.
Her eyes searched for me now. Wide and dark.
Uncertainty showing. I crossed the space in two strides, wrapping my arms around her, pulling her into me.
She stiffened at first, and then I felt her melt into me.
I buried my face into the top of her hair, inhaling.
Shampoo. Hospital. That clean clinical smell clinging to her skin beneath something softer that was just Sophie. Familiar enough to hurt.
My hands spread across her back, holding her tighter than I probably should have, but I needed it.
Needed the feel of her against me. Warm.
Real. Steadying something inside me that had been spiralling since Magnet hit the ground.
I didn’t understand it. Never had. Just knew that somehow, she quietened the noise in my head in ways nothing else ever could. And she always had.
“Ry,” she said quietly, and I detangled myself from her. “The gunshot wound. It’s hospital policy. The police have to be informed.”
For a second neither of us moved, but I watched the apology flicker across her face, subtle but there. Like she hated even saying the words to me.
“They’ll want statements,” she continued carefully. “Questions about what happened.”
A humourless smile pulled at my mouth.
“Good luck to them getting those.”
Her eyes held mine a moment longer, worry creeping into them now. Not for herself. For me. For all of us.
“I just thought you should know. You know, in case there is anything you need to do?”
“Thank you, Grey.” I kissed the top of her head and then stared across her to Indie.
Before I could say anything else, a voice cut across the waiting room.
“Dr Mercer?”
Sophie’s head turned instantly, the softness leaving her face so fast it was like a flick-knife snapping open. A nurse stood a little way down the corridor, clipboard clutched tightly against her chest, urgency written all over her.
“Cubicle seven’s deteriorating. Chest pain. ECG changes.”
Sophie nodded once. Calm. Controlled. Already moving.
The woman in my arms a second ago disappeared beneath the doctor again.
Shoulders straightening. Eyes sharpening.
Every inch of her slipping back into command, like it was instinct instead of effort.
She looked back at me once. Just once. Then she was gone, grey scrubs vanishing through the swinging doors as the department swallowed her whole again.
A phone rang. My phone. Fuck’s sake. I checked the screen. Barry the Blade. What the fuck now?
“What?” I answered too gruffly, knowing Indie would be picking me up for lack of respect at a later date.
“Brie’s dead,” he said flatly.
“What?” I asked again, but this time it really was a question.
“Someone got here first. Stabbed. Blood everywhere.”
“Fuck.”
“I know. Someone’s gonna have to go tell the club.”
And I was guessing that someone was me.
“Take the twins.” Indie motioned at them, beckoning them over as we talked in hushed voices in a corner of the waiting room. “I don’t want you out there alone. No one rides alone in colours.”
“What about the police?” I asked.
“I’ll deal with that. You get to Angels and Demons before the police get there first. Just hope we’re not too late.”
*****
Our bikes growled deep and savage in the night, vibrating the tarmac underneath us and waking the neighbourhood up, if there’d been anyone around to hear it.
Nothing stirred inside the clubhouse. Not a flicker of light or movement.
A few bikes were parked on the street, positioned under a dull street light, casting shadows out onto tarmac cracked with weeds.
I glanced at Chaos and Carnage, a lump of dread filling my stomach.
“I don’t know what we’re walking into here,” I muttered, intentionally keeping my voice low.
“Do you think they’ve been hit too?”
I didn’t answer. Didn’t need to. The silence around the place already felt wrong.
Clubhouses were never truly quiet. Not during a war.
There should’ve been music. Voices. Someone keeping watch.
Something. Instead, the whole place sat there like it had passed out.
I pushed at the door, feeling it give easily.
“Careful, lads,” I warned, creeping forward, one cautious step at a time.
For a moment I peered through the frosted glass doors to the bar, neon light moving in the distance from the bandit machine, a low music droning. Carefully I nudged the glass door, the smell hitting instantly. Smoke. Stale booze. Weed. Something chemical underneath it all.
Chaos wrinkled his nose. “Fuck me.”
The main room was dimly lit, a TV still flickering silently in the corner.
A jukebox playing to itself. Bodies were everywhere.
A couple slumped on sofas. One prospect sparked out face down at a table with white powder still dusted under his nose.
Women curled into leather-clad bodies like they’d forgotten the world existed outside these walls.
No one even noticed us come in.
“Jesus Christ,” Carnage muttered.
A brother lay stretched out across one of the benches nearest the bar, boots still on, an empty bottle dangling from his fingers. I crossed the room and kicked the leg of the bench hard enough to rattle him. He jerked awake violently, eyes wild for half a second before recognition crawled in.
“Reap?”
“Aye.” My voice came out flatter than I meant it to. “Where’s Bill?”
The brother frowned slowly, still half-cut, half-sedated. Around us the clubhouse remained sunk in smoke and stupor, while outside the war carried on without them. And suddenly I understood exactly how someone had managed to get to Brie first.
I yanked my phone from inside my pocket and punched in some numbers. The phone burred against my ear, the call connecting almost immediately.
“Reap?” Ash Calder’s voice was clear and bright on the other end.
“Where’s your VP?”
“At home.”
“You not at the clubhouse?”
“Nah, mate. But you can see that as you’re standing right inside it.”
I glanced up at the corner where a red light flashed intermittently.
“Brie’s dead.”
Silence. Just for a moment, like Ash was just working out how to breathe.
“What?”
“Barry the Blade. Brie rang an hour or two ago. Needed to see Indie. Baz went. He was dead when he got there.”
“Fuck.” The word was whispered.
“You need to get there before the police do. Sort anything that needs sorting.”
“Where the fuck was Indie?”
I swallowed, the words swelling in my throat.
“Hospital. They took out Magnet.”
“Shit. How bad?”
“Bad, mate. He’s in surgery.”
“Fuck.”
“Ash?” I paused, glancing around at the bar full of younger, patched members and prospects passed out or half-incapacitated. “You need to get these fuckers sorted out. While they’ve been fucking partying, someone took out your fucking pres.”