Chapter 4
FOUR
brINLEY
My heart beat violently in my chest, a thunderclap of blood thumping so hard I thought I could taste it on my tongue as I tried to keep my footsteps quiet.
Breaths shallow and jutted as I slipped along the outside of the building in the dark of night.
Trying to convince myself that the lightheadedness I was experiencing was due to the adrenaline and not the fact that I was shaking in my literal boots from fear.
But I promised myself a long time ago I wouldn’t allow the fear to hold me back.
Okay, fine. This wasn’t exactly correlated to the promise I had made to myself. It wasn’t like I’d sworn to go looking after trouble for the sake of proving that I hadn’t been broken.
But I couldn’t stay put for a second longer.
I tried, but by nine o’clock, I was crawling the walls and feeling like I was going to come out of my skin.
Locked in that room that looked like a girl’s dream retreat, complete with little designer shampoos and soaps in the bathroom.
Someone seriously had to be playing mind games with me.
That and the sounds of the clubhouse reverberating through the floorboards and the hatred for a man I had just met seemed to drive me to madness.
That’s what this had to be.
Madness.
The fact that I was here.
Held in some sort of weird hostage situation where I had the code to enter my cell and was sentenced to work in a freaking autobody shop.
I didn’t buy it.
I didn’t buy any of it.
Not Dereck’s lame explanation or the bizarre threats Silas Mercer had made.
There was just something about them that made me think he was bluffing.
Or…hiding something.
Lying about something I couldn’t clearly see.
Either way, I couldn’t sit idle. Not when my texts to Dereck had remained unanswered after two hours.
Me
I need to know what’s really going on here.
Should I be afraid of this guy?
Am I a prisoner?
Please, Dereck. This whole thing is freaking me out.
Just tell me this. Are you in danger?
He’d seen them. I knew he had. I’d seen those little bubbles dancing on and off for about five minutes before they’d been completely silenced.
I loved my brother, but God, he could be such a coward. Always hiding when he got himself into hot water. Allowing me to step in front of his accusers.
Throwing him lifeline after lifeline.
And yes, my therapist had encouraged me to recognize that I was one hundred percent enabling it, but time and again, I always seemed to be right back doing the same thing.
I guess I’d reached my tipping point.
Because this?
After what I’d been through?
What he was asking of me was too much, and I was going to get to the bottom of what the hell was happening.
I wasn’t going to be some pathetic wilting flower who bent to the will of a psychopath.
I kept creeping along the edge of the building. My Docs I’d ditched my heels for were quiet on the soft earth, not that my footsteps could have been heard over the blare of music coming from within the clubhouse, anyway.
But still…
I kept low as I crouched at the corner and peered out into the shadows in front of the club.
The number of motorcycles must have tripled since I’d followed Silas up to my room a few hours earlier.
Bikers mingled about. Sitting at picnic tables or standing around the bonfire that raged in the clearing.
Laughter and voices rolled as they drank beers and probably bragged about their latest kill.
Half the men wore jeans and black leather vests with a morbid emblem on the back.
A gathering of three crows sitting on a headstone with blood dripping from their talons. Another prancing on the grave.
Crimson Crows was stitched in red and arched over the scene.
It was no shocker that a group of crows was called a murder.
For these guys, it was undoubtedly fitting.
My stomach tightened, and a little of that fear flashed up my spine.
This was seriously fucked up.
Fiction that I shouldn’t be living. The type of fiction it seemed only Dereck could drag me into.
I glanced around, trying to decide on my next move. Discern exactly what I hoped to achieve by slinking around here, having no idea what I was even looking for.
Shrill laughter rang from a woman who was being tossed over a man’s shoulder, the brute carrying her away as he pawed at her ass.
I nearly rolled my eyes.
How cliché.
Is this how they really lived? At least from where I was standing, no one was having sex right out in the open.
I started to edge around the corner when my skin prickled in awareness.
A shivery sensation flying across my flesh and lifting the hairs at the nape of my neck.
That was only a second before I felt the actual breath panted against the same spot.
Terror gripped me, and panic streaked through my veins. My mind spun through every self-defense move I had ever learned.
Only before I could ram my elbow into the offender’s gut, that elbow was encased by a hot, heavy hand, held firm as I was yanked back against a wall of stony muscle.
Fire burned at the contact point, and the air was ripped from my lungs, hurled into the shadows where we were concealed beneath the trees.
The low voice that had tormented me all night rumbled in my ear, “Thought I told you to be a good girl?”
Each word was a blade. A shallow carving against my flesh.
I inhaled a shattered breath. Too bad I was sucking the scent of him down into my heaving lungs.
He smelled like cherries drenched in whiskey.
It was a horribly delicious combination.
“You never told me I couldn’t leave my room.” I snarled it through clenched teeth, my back bowed as I tried to peel my body away from the gravity of his.
“No, I didn’t, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know you’re up to no good.” He cinched down tighter on my elbow, and my heart hammered at my chest.
Fear and something else there was no way I was feeling careened through my senses.
“Let me go.” I yanked my arm, the words coming out a whole lot more like a plea rather than the vicious demand I was going for.
I expected it to be a fight.
To have to wrestle out of his hold.
But the second I said it, his hand was gone.
It sent me lurching forward, and I barely caught myself before I fell to my knees.
I whirled back in his direction.
I shouldn’t have.
I should have remained facing away.
Or better yet, I should have remained locked in the confines of that room upstairs.
I definitely should not have been standing so close to Silas Mercer right then.
Half concealed in the shadows created by the branches of the trees, though silvered moonlight dabbled down through the leaves to illuminate his face.
The man was all sharp angles. Like one of those animations where his jaw and cheeks were drawn with a single, slashed stroke. So defined you could take a ruler to it, and it wouldn’t go out of line.
Brow just as severe.
Too violently beautiful to be real.
Wearing dark jeans and a black shirt, the sinewy muscle that outlined his deadly frame carved in the same severe striations.
But where things got dicey were with his eyes and lips.
That was where the harsh, flat planes came alive.
Expressive and roiling.
Teeth clamped down on his plush bottom lip and the flecks of green in his hazel eyes glowing like he was a beast.
Hunted.
That’s what I’d been.
I bet he knew the second I sneaked out of that room.
His head canted to the side. “Is that what you are, Brinley? Up to no good?”
I searched for the missing oxygen, forcing myself to get it together. I was not about to let this man see me flustered.
I searched around for a good excuse.
“I was looking for something to drink.”
“And a full refrigerator wasn’t enough for you?”
Right.
There was that mini fridge in the closet. You know, stocked full of every drink imaginable. The selection was far better than the last hotel I stayed at.
They should win a medal for being such good hostage hosts.
I tipped up my chin. “I wanted ice.”
A slow, wicked smile crept to Silas’s obscenely handsome face, and he took a measured step forward.
I gulped but held my ground. Keeping my eyes pinned on him as he came to cover me in his shadow.
Energy crackled. Zapped and zipped across my skin.
He was so freaking tall it meant my head was tipped all the way back, and he leaned down even closer.
“You want to know what I think?” The words were gravel.
No, I probably did not want access to this guy’s mind. Instead of telling him so, I narrowed my eyes at him. He seemed to take it as an invitation and dipped in even closer.
Heat rippled from his ink-covered flesh, and his lips were so close that I could feel their movement against mine when he spoke.
“I think you’re looking for something else.”
My pulse scattered, and somehow, I managed to grit out, “And what am I looking for?”
Silas’s big hand was suddenly on the back of my neck, holding me up since the man had me nearly bent in two.
“Trouble.” His eyes blazed, and I realized they were more green than anything else. “Think you’re lookin’ for trouble, Brinley, and I don’t think you have the first clue the kind of trouble you’re already in.”
Confusion pinched the corners of my eyes, and a ball of dread filled the entire cavity of my chest.
There was something different laced in his voice. His gaze flitting all over my face like he was searching for my understanding. Like he was trying to get me to hear something he couldn’t say.
He straightened then, pulling me upright and leaving me disoriented, my knees weak as he shoved his hands into his pockets and backed away.
Then his tone turned cold again. “There’s plenty enough of it to go around for each of us. I’d suggest you don’t make it worse.”
He turned on his heel and strode back through the trees.
I guess the man was completely right about me looking for trouble.
Because I staggered along behind him.
Dipping behind the trunks of giant oaks as I went like he didn’t fully know I was there.
Ridiculous, but I couldn’t stop.
That gravity beckoning me forward.
Or maybe I just had a grim sense of curiosity.
He finally broke out of the trees ahead of me where there was a dirt road.
I stalled out because standing there waiting on him was a young woman who was probably a few years younger than me, though I could be wrong since I couldn’t make her out very well in the distance.
But what there was no mistaking was the small child who was holding her hand.
A child who bobbed his knees then went running toward Silas.
Silas swooped him up and hooked him onto his hip, and the man tipped his laughter toward the star-strewn canopy above before they casually turned and strolled down the lane.
While I stood there gaping, wondering who the actual fuck this guy was.