“Violet, why the hell do you keep running in the direction of bullets?” Chevy’s voice curls into a dangerous tone I never wanted to hear again and his form appears out of the darkness. It’s eerie how he goes from shadow to being in the moonlight.
“Because I don’t want the people I love to get shot. That’s why. What else do you expect me to do? Let you get shot?”
“Yes!” all three of them shout.
Idiots. Every single one of them.
“I need to go home.” I’m pleading with Chevy to rein in his temper and get us out of this situation without alerting the Terror we have problems. “Just take me home.”
“Take you home?” Oz’s expression says he’s about ready to turn the gun on me or himself at the idea of how insane I sound. “Someone just shot at you.”
“At me.” Razor’s extremely calm and that causes my head to tilt. “They were shooting at me. For the same fucking reason they shot at me before.”
Chevy swears under his breath and Oz is the only one scanning the trees, scanning the horizon. “What the hell is going on?”
Chevy and I share a look. Razor’s gone internal again. We had a few minutes of happiness, but our weights returned, crushing us.
“What the hell is going on?” Oz yells this time.
Nothing from any of us. I know what’s trapping me and Chevy, but I have no idea what’s bogging down Razor. Before the kidnapping, he had reached out to me, helped me with a problem with guys from school. Now he’s drowning and I’m doing nothing but watching him sink from the shore.
But that has to be how he feels about me and Chevy. He asked me to come to him the night I stayed at Chevy’s. I think of the pain in Oz’s eyes and the pain that’s still etched on his face as he waits for one of us to crack.
“We’re a family, dammit,” Oz says. “When are we going to start acting like one?”
“Now,” I whisper, and I flash two fingers before standing. From the way Oz’s head straightens and the narrowed way Razor’s studying me, they both caught it. “I don’t feel good and I don’t think I can ride on the back of a bike.”
We aren’t safe out here and we need someplace safe to talk.
“You can crash at the cabin,” Oz says. “Cyrus won’t mind.”
If you don’t feel safe at home, the club will protect you.
“You look pale, Vi,” Chevy pipes in. “Maybe we should get you something to drink first. I think I saw some Sprites in the kitchen in the clubhouse.”
She’s not safe at the cabin.
Razor finally rises to his feet and offers me his hand and helps me up. “Want us to take you home? I’m sure Chevy can lift someone’s car keys.”
Are you safe at home?
That gets forced chuckles as they’re all trying to play along.
“I’d like that Sprite and I told Mom I’d be staying with Chevy.”
No, I’m not safe at home and Chevy knows what’s going on.
Razor leans in, pats leaves off my back and whispers, “Stay in the middle of us and do not break rank. Oz will take point, Chevy at your side, I’m taking your six. We stay that way through the woods, we stay that way through the party. I don’t fucking care if God comes down and calls your name, you stick with us, do you understand?”
I nod and whisper back, “Where are we going?”
His blue eyes go ice-cold. “To the only place it’s safe. We’re going to Church.”
CHEVY
TOOK RAZOR “ACCIDENTALLY” bumping into one of the food tables and flipping it to cause a diversion, but Oz, Violet and I made it to the stairway undetected and headed up. On the second floor, Razor leans against the wall and watches to make sure no one’s coming up the stairs, while Oz watches the hallway to confirm no one is leaving the bedrooms. I pull the pick out of my belt and within two seconds the door’s open.
I tilt my head and Violet walks in. The brace is still on her knee, but a slight limp replaces the severe drag of her leg. The running in the forest didn’t help—at least not her knee, but for a few minutes, Violet had a light in her eyes and color in her cheeks.
Oz flicks on the light as he enters, and I close the door, relocking it once Razor strides in. When we were kids, Oz, Razor and I broke in here. Cyrus caught us and busted our asses. We were breaking rules and we knew it, but even back then, we didn’t consider bringing Violet. A girl in Church was unheard of and we weren’t willing to cross those lines.
Violet does a slow spin as she takes in the view. She didn’t have much time to check out the decor the last time she was here. For all I know, Violet was the first woman to be in this room when she kicked down the door a few weeks back. Seems like a shame. There are some damn good women related to these men and she’s one of them. I can see where she feels like not being able to be in here is, to her, a disrespect.
“Sit,” Oz says to Violet. “Get off your leg and prop up your knee.”
He drags a chair around for her once she does sit and I hand her a bottle of water I swiped on the way here.
“They’ll kill you if they knew we were in here and more specifically if they knew I was in here,” she says.
On the other side of the table, Razor flips a chair and straddles it. “Considering I’ve already been hit with a bullet and just had another one shot in my direction, I’m not worried about death. I’m feeling invincible.”
Violet squishes her lips. “Fantastic.”
Razor only grins, but it’s short-lived. He lifts his finger and circles it as he points at the wall. “Soundproof. Whatever we say in here stays in here.”
In case either my or Violet’s cells have been bugged, Razor took our phones and left them in the kitchen. We’re technology free and breaking rules. Oz takes the seat at the head of the table as I sit next to Violet. “I don’t care who goes first, but someone needs to tell me what’s going on.”
Squeaks in the chairs as we shift and I meet Violet’s eyes. She nods. Damn, this is going to suck. “I have a brother and he lives in Louisville. He’s maybe a year older than me and looks exactly like James.”
Razor’s and Oz’s heads snap in my direction.
“The Riot are trying to use me to put Eli in jail,” Violet says within a heartbeat of my news. She knows me. Knows I haven’t processed having a brother yet and knows I’m not ready to talk. “I broke into Dad’s office, swiped account numbers, and I have to give them to the Riot tomorrow night so they can frame Eli, but I’m working with that Louisville detective, wearing a wire for them, so the plan is for the Riot to go to jail.”
Razor and Oz are now one million percent focused on her and so am I. My heart beats so slow it hurts. “Tomorrow night?”
“Yeah.” She bites her lower lip. “We didn’t get around to naming a time, since Razor came racing over, but we have a place.”
Oz leans forward on the table. “You were the one the Riot were after?”
“Shocking, right?”