Chapter 3
Three
I have selective hearing. I’m sorry you weren’t selected today.
—Creed to his boss
Creed
I was home for an hour—still thinking about a certain curly brown-haired woman—when my phone rang.
Not recognizing the number, I answered it with a hesitant, “Hello?”
“Hey, Creed. It’s Cody.”
I sighed. “Cody, what’s up?”
“I wanted to see if you could go get Birdee from the hospital,” she said. “I called a few other people, but they couldn’t go. Her options are to walk home or get a ride, and I was hoping you’d give her a ride. I don’t want to worry about her getting home.”
I looked at the clock. “You think she won’t have a problem getting into the car with a stranger?”
“Birdee has no sense of self-preservation,” she said. “She’s a thrill seeker. She’ll probably have no issue getting into a vehicle with a practical stranger.”
“Why do you say that about her like it’s a bad thing?” I laughed. “She can’t be that bad.”
“She’s a snake milker.”
I blinked.
“Your sister does what?”
“She’s a snake milker,” Cody repeated.
I blinked hard, and I wasn’t sure if that was why I couldn’t hear Cody correctly.
“You’re serious?” I asked.
“Dead serious,” she promised. “Though, that’s not all she does. She’s a scientist in real life. But she does the snake milking and works at the medical facility that also makes anti-venom for people that get bitten by poisonous snakes.”
“Venomous,” I corrected automatically.
Cody scoffed. “She’s the smartest person that I know.”
“Yet, she’s terrible with computers?” I found myself asking.
I’d met Birdee several times in a group setting, but I’d yet to spend time with her alone.
And getting her from a hospital that was thirty minutes away from her home and driving back with her when I barely knew her?
That was going to be crazy, even for me.
“My stepsister is so smart that she’s scary,” Cody admitted. “Though, she does have a few issues, and one of those issues is her ability to do anything electronically. It’s like her and electronics don’t get along.”
I snorted. “I guess I’ll go get her.”
“Thanks, Creed,” she said. “You know where she lives?”
“I know about where she lives,” I offered.
“That’s good enough,” she sighed. “Thank you, again.”
Thirty minutes later, I found myself at the emergency room entrance standing in front of a frazzled-looking elderly nurse.
“Who did you say that you were here to see?”
“Birdee Calvert.”
“Ahh, Birdee Calvert used to be Watts.” The nurse nodded.
“That’s been pretty confusing. She’s bounced back and forth between the two names since she got here.
” She leveled me with a look. “In case you’re not aware of her entire life story, she changed her last name to Calvert to be free of her stepfather and mother’s name.
She thought about using her actual father’s name, but she didn’t want to be associated with that, either, thanks to her father being a complete douche to her for her entire life.
” The nurse paused. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, though. ”
She kept speaking as if she’d dismissed her own concerns.
“We’ve had some issues with the system today. Every time we input her driver’s license information, it picks up her sister, Mable. It’s been the weirdest thing.”
I didn’t bother to tell her that Birdee’s mother was responsible for that mess, and instead said, “What’s her room number?”
The nurse gave me directions, and I started heading that way moments later.
I found her with her eyes closed and her hair a riot of curls around her face.
I didn’t think I’d ever seen her so approachable.
Every time I met her, she had this huge “back the fuck off” sign stamped on her forehead.
Now, she looked tired and vulnerable.
And tiny as fuck in the hospital bed that she was practically curled up in.
“Are you Mr. Daugherty?”
I looked over to see a doctor on my right. “That’s me.”
“Good.” The doctor nodded. “You know what happened to her?”
I was what happened to her…
“Yes,” I admitted. “What’s the next step? Do I need to get her prescriptions?”
Romeo’s wife was going to kill me. Birdee had literally just gotten out of her arm and leg cast from when she’d been in a car wreck not too long ago.
“Yes, but that can wait until tomorrow. We gave her a dose of pain meds that should last her through the night. Tomorrow, she’ll need to take the antibiotics, though.
” He looked at me shrewdly. “You’ll have to wake her up once every hour.
If she starts acting off or her pupils are looking odd, I want you to bring her back in immediately. ”
I just shook my head.
That hadn’t been in the plan…
“With the main issues being her head, and how hard she hit the grill of that truck, I really think that it would be better for her to stay overnight, but she’s unwilling to stay. And I can’t very well keep her without her consent.”
Dammit.
“I’ll take care of her,” I lied.
I wouldn’t be taking care of her.
I didn’t do taking care of anybody.
That taking care of people thing had ended when I’d “died” about nine months ago now. When Apollo had told me that I was going to have to ‘be’ dead for this to work, that meant leaving the people that I loved behind.
Well, one person.
Bernice.
Every time I thought about her, my fucking heart ached.
She’d done so damn much to get me out of that hellhole, and this was how I repaid her?
I was lower than dirt.
And I didn’t deserve to be happy.
Honestly, the only reason that I did it was because I knew that Bernice wouldn’t stop. She’d fight until her last breath. And to do that, she would put off living.
I couldn’t let her live like that anymore.
Apollo and I had talked long and hard about allowing Bernice to be in on the action, so to speak.
We’d decided in the end that Bernice couldn’t come.
Bernie had really, really bad asthma. She could barely tolerate Alabama weather, let alone freakin’ Montana.
On top of that, she had anemia. Both of those pairings meant that she could not deal with the cold weather.
She would literally suffer like crazy up here.
Apollo and I had talked about it at length.
We’d contemplated moving the whole setup somewhere else, but we had eyes and ears on this small town.
It was safe. And overall, we could do what we wanted when we wanted here.
It was also a biker town, and the club that ran it was affiliated with Apollo’s MC.
Dixie Wardens, Sawtooth, Montana Chapter, was fucking awesome. And they’d allowed us to patch in when we got here. They’d vouched for us and ultimately given us an alibi as well as backup if we ever needed it.
They’d come in handy when we were all trying to find places to live and jobs.
Romeo had been the lone holdout in joining the MC. He’d just wanted to go his own way, which was acceptable.
The rest of us had integrated ourselves into the MC, and I found that I liked having them all at our back, even if we were still ‘technically’ prospecting with them. We were considered fully patched members, but they wouldn’t trust us until we put the work in.
Needless to say, Apollo and I couldn’t find the support that we would need to make it look like I’d always existed as Creed Justin Daugherty. A place where I wouldn’t be questioned for just showing up.
And since we’d decided that it was pretty necessary to be in a small town since smaller towns tended to have less traffic, video surveillance, and larger police departments, Sawtooth was where we were at.
Or, at least, Romeo and I were, along with Weaver and Odin. I originally was in a different town, but the Wildlife department changed my assignment, and I wanted to be closer to the job.
Pairing all of that along with Bernice’s notoriety—she’d been a very vocal girl that’d grown into an unforgiving adult that would do just about anything to see her brother free—we just couldn’t see how to get her here without garnering notice.
“Anyway, if you have any questions, you can call back up to the ER and we can answer any questions you might have.” The doctor brought me back to the present. “If you’ll follow me, we’ll get you her discharge instructions while the nurse gets her ready to go.”
I cast a glance at the woman in the bed. My first instinct was to not leave her. But I slapped that thought down.
I followed behind him as he zipped through the emergency room with the type of confidence that only someone that’d worked there for a while would have.
There were so many things going on.
People everywhere. Nurses hurrying in and out of rooms. ER techs taking vitals. Orderlies moving patients. Hell, there were even a couple of janitors cleaning up rooms.
Then there were the beds and the equipment.
My surprise must’ve been evident on my face because the doctor said, “Being a county hospital, and funding is hard to come by, we have a lot going on in a small space.”
“I can see that,” I mused as he walked right up to a long counter that spanned the back of the room and pulled some papers off the printer.
He handed them to me and said, “Pull your vehicle around and we’ll get her out to you.”
I was dismissed just like that, so I exited the ER, trying to make a wide berth around all the chaos as I headed outside to my truck.
I pulled my vehicle around just when she was wheeled out of the doors.
She shivered at the cold, and I cranked the heater up to high before I got out to help.
“Her jacket and things are in this bag,” the nurse said as she handed the large bag to me.
I opened the passenger door and shoved her things onto the floorboard before turning back to help her stand.
The nurse held on to the wheelchair as I helped Birdee to her feet and got her into the truck.
She didn’t complain once, even though I knew that the movement was jarring her head.
The grimace on her face was very apparent as I got her belted in.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
I didn’t reply, only closed the door as quietly as I could manage.
Which, admittedly, wasn’t all that soft.
I’d switched to my personal truck, and that wasn’t all that great.
When we’d moved to Montana, I’d found the first thing that looked solid.
It was a 1993 Ford with peeling paint and bucket seats that could probably use a little revamp.
But the engine was solid, the frame was great, and the tires were new.
“Thank you,” I said to the nurse.
She waved and hurried back inside.
It may not be snowing, but it was still cold as fuck out.
As I got to the driver’s side, I pulled off my jacket.
There was no way I could wear it in the cab and not suffocate with the heater on as high as it was.
I got into the truck and tossed my jacket over the center console.
She reached for it and covered herself with it, shivering slightly.
I didn’t comment as I drove out of the parking lot.
“You can just take me home and not worry about me,” she said. “I heard the doctor talking. I’m not going to make you stay.”
I looked over at her, her face glowing with each streetlight we passed.
“You hit your head really hard,” I said.
“Yeah.” She grimaced. “I know the neighbors that you were talking about earlier. They’re awful.”
Her neighborhood was smack dab in the middle of town.
Funny enough, she had Odin on her street, as well as a couple of guys from the motorcycle club.
And I’d heard Odin complain more than once about how awful one of his neighbors was.
“Well after today, I can really see how awful they are, too,” I admitted. “The doc told me that I can get your prescriptions tomorrow for you. I’ll get those in the morning before I head to work and drop them off at your place.”
“Okay,” she said softly.
“Can you put your number in my phone?” I asked. “So I can check on you?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have a cell phone. At least not one that’s hooked up to a cellular network or has the ability to connect to Wi-Fi. The only reason I carry my old one with me is because it has a lot of my old books on it, or for the off chance that I want to take a picture.”
“Landline?” I asked, not bothering to question why she wouldn’t have a cell phone.
“Maybe you can remember it,” she said. “Because I’m trying not to throw up here.”
She then rattled off her phone number, that I then repeated over and over until we hit the Sawtooth city limits.
When I pulled into the driveway of her place, she pushed the door open before I was even in Park.
I grabbed her bag that was on the floorboard still and walked with her up to the house.
I waited until she was fully inside before I set her bag of clothes on the floor right inside the door.
“Thanks,” she said again. “I’m sorry you hit me.”
My lips quirked. “Shouldn’t I be apologizing?”
“No.” She looked away. “Because we both know that it was my fault.”
Before I could argue and say that it really wasn’t either one of our faults, she closed the door and locked it.
I took that as my sign to head out and drove home.
I lived right outside Sawtooth at the base of a mountain.
My view was fucking stunning, and even in the dark, the sight always seemed to impress me.
I headed inside, slamming the door closed behind me.
I set the alarm, then headed to the shower where I took a quick one.
Then I went to bed.
And lay there.
And lay there.
And lay there.
I lay there so long that I eventually decided that I should call Birdee and check on her.
When I dialed her number, she didn’t pick up.
So I dialed it again.
Again, no pick up.
Shit.
I called her one last time, and that was the time that worry started to gnaw at my gut.
What if she was dead?
What if she was having complications?
What if, when I went over there in the morning, she was ice cold because she’d been dead since I dropped her off?
Switching gears, I switched to a different contact.
I hesitated before pressing Odin’s name in my phone, knowing this wasn’t going to be a good conversation.
Odin was ornery, and he wanted to be left alone.
Which was understandable since he’d, very likely, had it the worst of us.
But there were times that we needed him to interact with the world, and this was one of them.
“It’s nearly midnight, fucker,” Odin snarled instead of greeting me.
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. But I dropped off Romeo’s sister-in-law earlier after picking her up from the hospital. I…”
“After you hit her with your truck.”
I gritted my teeth to keep the words from spilling free, and only continued once I had better control of my temper.
“She isn’t answering my phone calls,” I said. “And she promised that she would. Can you go check on her?”
“No,” he said. “Because I’m not at home. I’m at the club.”
I sighed. “Fuck.”
“But you better go check on her because if you don’t, and she dies, Romeo will never forgive you.”
He wouldn’t.
“Fuck.”