Chapter 14
Bear
M y head felt like a bag of chisels. The chemical taste in my mouth was steeped in the toxicity of whatever was killing me. I barely moved and saw white stars behind my closed eyelids. I groaned because while I needed to move, it only meant more pain. But if I didn’t move soon, I’d puke on myself.
Slowly , I rolled to one side and tried to breathe through the urge to hurl. The only thing that kept me from emptying my stomach was the acute understanding that if I did, it would hurt more.
I needed something cold to lean on.
Almost as if I’d conjured it, a wet cloth pressed against my head.
“ Take it slow.” Wolf’s voice registered.
And there was something wrong about that. It should be someone else’s voice. My memory was fuzzy, but there were at least two times in the haze that I remembered Rose’s voice, and her gentle touch, not Wolf’s sledgehammer mitts on my skin. “ Take it off.”
I rolled until I was on all fours. The floor was cooler than the mattress, and I hugged it, trying to find a position where, if I puked, the vomit would land somewhere I wasn’t.
“ Here .”
A cold steel pan bumped my cheek.
Just what I needed.
What felt like an hour later, I finally rolled to my back and tried to open my eyes. The slicing pain returned and throbbed through every inch of me I could muster into motion. The rest of me was a grungy graveyard of confusion. “ What the fuck happened?”
“ You were roofied.”
I squinted at Wolf’s silhouette. The lights were off in the room, thank the Gods , but the hallway lights were too bright. “ By who?”
“ Remember that hooker who gave Baldy crabs last year?”
Could I possibly vomit more? Naw . But my head spun. Or the floor did. “ Monica ?”
“ That’s the one.”
“ Bitch .” I felt my junk. Pants on, zipper up. Nothing funky going on down there. Good .
“ You’re cool. Rose played bodyguard for you most of the night. By the way, she’s worse than Tits when it comes to people getting taken advantage of.”
A memory drifted through my head along with a wave of heat.
I’d kissed her. And it was awful. Not the whole kissing her part, but the rest of it.
The reason why I’d done it. The force I’d used to make it look like we were an item.
Her lack of response. The terror in her eyes when I pulled away… Sweet Freya , I’d fucked up .
“ Where is she?”
“ Tits ?”
If I could have opened my eyes, I would’ve glared at him. “ Rose . Roishin .” I’d fucked that up, too. I’d begun to shorten her name like we were friends or something. “ I need to apologize.”
“ She’s crashed in my office. Under guard.”
Oh , hell . She should be safe and free here, not a prisoner. “ Why ?”
Wolf made some noises as he shifted. “ Because she pissed off just about everyone last night.”
Great , another headache to deal with. “ How ?”
Wolf grunted. “ Let’s start with putting hands on me.”
That I had to open an eye for, just to see if he was joking or serious. If he was joking, that was one hell of a bluff.
He wasn’t joking, and told me as much. “ She did.”
I tried to stop the brain stew in my head from sloshing. “ And ?”
“ And , she made Ma monitor your blood pressure until four A.M . Sprout was pissed.”
That should have made sense, but it didn’t. “ What ?”
“ Your BP was way too low, man. She , Roishin , argued with Ma about your body mass, height, and the general average for a person your size and thought that one-ten over sixty was too low for you.”
I’d never had a reading that low.
“ About four or so, you stabilized at one-forty over ninety. That’s when she let Ma go home.”
Okay , while getting in Wolf’s face, and Ma’s was awful, it wasn’t exactly everybody . “ Who … or what else?”
Wolf started counting off on his fingers.
“ That club visiting last night? Yeah , two of their guys. Monica , because Roishin didn’t drink the drink like she thought your girl should, and then she got blamed for your condition.
Hammer , because he was supposed to be watching your girl, and paid too much attention to the stripper and hangers instead.
Baldy , because he hates mouthy women, Skinner …
but I have no fucking idea why he’s pissed. And? —”
I cut him off. “ Who didn’t she piss off?” That list might be shorter.
“ Get this, KC .”
“ Who ?”
“ Kill Count .”
It was as if I’d been dropped into an alternate universe. “ Who the fuck is that?”
“ Damn , that shit worked fast on you. Whoosh . You and I named him for fuck’s sake.”
“ Why the heck did we do that?”
“ Because , and I’m quoting what you said here, ‘ Next time, just make it their head and save yourself some scratch.’ To which, Whoosh said, ‘ I’m trying not to add to my kill count.’ Then I named him KC and you agreed.”
Did I remember that?
Not really.
I scrunched my face to try to stave off the pressure between my temples, but it didn’t work.
“ And mostly, folks are pissed because I postponed the ride today.”
“ You didn’t.”
He got right in my face. “ Yeah , I did. See , I wanted to announce your nomination after we got KC patched in, but I couldn’t quite do that with you being the only asshole not along on the ride.”
Wolf had a point. But a horrible one. “ That announcement could have waited.”
“ Yeah , it could have, but more shit went down.”
Did I want to hear this? “ Can it wait?”
“ No .”
Wolf was firm in his answer. I sighed. “ Lay it on me.”
“ I’d rather not while you’re lying in your own puke.”
“ I’m not lying in puke.” At least, I hoped not. I rolled over and did a push-up, and tried to see where the basin was, where I was, and what the fuck kind of shape I was in. That’s when I noticed I didn’t have my vest on. “ Where’s my vest?”
“ Hanging up in my office. Your girl’s been anointed its guardian until you’re on your feet.
I figured if she was good enough to sit with you all night and make sure no one fucked with you like they did me that one time, that she’d be a good choice to respect it.
She knows not to let it touch the ground. Or to mess with it.”
I curled onto my knees and tried to sit on my heels. It hurt, but I felt a little more human once I was upright. “ And who knows you ordered this?” It was a bad look, giving a brand-new piece of ass a man’s vest.
“ You and I , and KC . He’s on the door.”
The alliance between those two was a mystery I couldn’t unravel with my head hammering so hard. But Wolf said there was more shit going down, so I focused on that. “ What else did you need to talk to me about?”
“ Carl .”
I didn’t have to close my eyes, because they’d fallen shut on their own. “ Has he surfaced?”
Wolf laughed, short and bitterly. “ Yeah .”
I didn’t like the look on his face. “ Well ?”
He inhaled and let the air out slowly. “ Monica fingered the visiting club. And while we don’t normally just believe things on face value, Sprout , who— again, was pissed off because of Ma —went after the two who were bothering Roishin .”
I gritted my teeth, waiting for bad news. Sprout did not do heavy lifting like that. Especially when it was two against one.
“ Don’t worry, Smoke backed him up.”
Thank the Gods . “ And ?”
“ And they claimed to have gotten it from a dealer in Harrisburg who approached them.”
“ Carl .”
“ Bingo .”
“ When did he do that?”
Wolf smiled. “ The night he disappeared.”
I pieced together the timing. “ Before or after midnight?” I had to know whether he’d gone there directly after being at Beth and John’s house or if there was a gap in there.
“ Before .”
So , he’d planned on going to the drop from his sister’s. Or maybe he hadn’t.
I replayed Rose and John’s conversation in my memories. Rose was right to worry about the kids. If one pill could knock me out like it had, it would have killed a toddler.
But instead of doing that, Carl went to our feeder chapter, but only after confirming whether Roishin was with me or not, and testing John .
Even if he hadn’t planned it all out like I suspected he had, Carl visited his sister’s four kids while holding onto date rape drugs strong enough to knock me out. What a piece of work.
I laid out my concerns for Wolf . “ Am I imagining things?” I asked.
“ I don’t think so. I’d bet he’s not planning to let Roishin live once you return her. And , he’s using the situation to set us up, or to weaken us.”
“ That’s what Jackson thinks, too.”
Wolf studied the wall for a moment. “ We’re one ‘accident’ away from getting framed. We’ve gotta move her.”
“ No .”
“ What do you mean, no? Dump her on Hagerstown . You said yourself that Betty Jo took a shine to her.”
“ Even if we did that, and nothing happened, which I highly doubt would be the case, Walt would bitch to his boss, our old boss, and you know what would happen then, right?”
Oh yeah, Wolf knew. “ Jackson would get involved.”
“ Precisely .”
There was a sports drink near the mattress. “ Is that mine?”
“ Yeah , no one’s messed with it.”
I cracked open the seal and hydrated slowly.
Not only did I have to keep Roishin safe in order to keep our club out of hot water, but I had to watch everything I ate and drank because Carl had proven he could reach out and touch us where it hurt.
“ What’s the verdict on our alliance with those bozos? ”
“ Broken . I sent a proverbial courier pigeon to the Demons . Just to let them know they have a rogue club in their territory.”
“ We’re practically pushing them to our enemies.”
“ That’s too fucking bad. I’d rather have them as enemies than friends. It’s easier to deal with them that way.”
“ Does Tits agree with you?”
His nod wasn’t convincing. “ She’s happy we’re not courting them anymore.”
“ But ?”
“ She thinks it’s a mistake to cut them off.”
I held up the half-empty plastic bottle in my hand. “ They tried to drug my girl, and by proxy got me. That’s disrespectful.” I sloshed the liquid around to keep his attention. “ And if they think that little of us, they’ll never be our allies.”
His face was grim. “ What do you suggest?”
“ Nothing . I think you did the right thing, cutting them off and making them crawl to the Wicked Legion for help against the Demons . More than anything, it will humble them.”
Wolf didn’t find it as amusing as I did, so I poked him.
“ We’re ruthless. Just because we don’t go around cutting down every single asshole who crosses us, doesn’t mean we’re weak. They’ll suffer longer, and more this way. And our hands are clean.”
That got a reluctant smile. “ You’re right.”
I tapped my chest. “ You gotta care to hold a grudge. Party line on this one? We don’t give a shit. They’re not worth it.”
He slapped my shoulder. “ Let’s get moving. Maybe we can do a small ride, you game?”
That was questionable. “ Where we going?”
“ That place near Hershey with the burgers. I think we’d have ended up there anyway.”
He was right about that. But did I have enough in me for all of that? “ When are we leaving?” I needed to collect Roishin , shower the funk off, and get at least another bottle or two of electrolytes into me in order to feel human again.
“ I figure, two?”
That didn’t tell me much. “ What time is it now?”
He laughed at me. “ Noon . You got two hours to get your shit straight. I’m going to relieve KC . Don’t make me wait in my office for too long.”
Right .
I made quick work of showering in the public space across the hall from the room I’d spent most of the night in. KC flopped onto his back on the couch, ignoring me. When I got out, I dripped on him to get his attention.
“ Fuck man, stop it. I’m tired.”
“ You’re not patched in yet.”
He groaned and rolled up to sitting position, but I slapped a hand on his chest to push him back down. “ Just got a question, that’s all.”
“ What ?”
“ What’s going on with you and Rose ?”
I was not jealous. At least it sounded that way in my head. But the growl in my tone spoke a different story.
He heard it, too. “ She was there that night Sketch’s girl got kidnapped.”
This was confirmation of what Carl hinted at. Although I expected that hadn’t been the first time she’d hidden behind his couch. “ And ?”
“ And , she’s cool. She’s not going rat us out for it.”
“ How do you know that?”
He sat up again. “ Because when I protected her last night, it clicked.”
My fist stayed at my side. “ What clicked?”
He grinned, his eyes dipping to the hand I’d clenched too tightly. Then he tapped his head. “ It clicked in her head. That we’re the good bad guys.”
Considering my treatment of her, KC was delusional. Or maybe she’d only relegated that status for him .
Which was how it should be. This thing between us was temporary. I only needed to keep her safe and relatively happy for a month. Then she’d be free. “ Speak for yourself.” I slapped his head to knock some sense into it.
KC laughed. “ Come on, man. Deep down, you’d like her to think that about you, too. Wouldn’t you?”
“ That’s never gonna happen.” Because I was the bad guy here. Like an idiot, I’d walked right into Carl’s trap. And there was no way to extricate my foot from it. Roishin should hate me. It would be better for us all if she did.
Because , if she liked me, Carl would use that to hurt her.