Crash (Twisted Devils MC Book 5) Page 5

  I hug her. It feels so right.

  “Tell me what happened next. Last night and this morning.”

  “Last night, when we got back from the Emergency Room, we finished half a bottle of bourbon and watched a bunch of trashy reality TV. We didn’t really talk, I think we were both just kind of numb, but we also just needed company, you know?”

  “I know. Sometimes it’s hard and sometimes you just need someone to be there.”

  “Right.” She breathes another sigh and sits back on the sofa.

  “We can take a minute if you need it.”

  “No, no. I woke up, and she was making breakfast. Then her daughter, Josie, went off to school. That’s when he showed up. Switchblade. And he had a gun. He bashed the crap out of my face and then, when I woke up, they were gone. I know he took her and I know that, whatever he’s got planned for her, it’s just awful. You know how he got his nickname? He got it because of the things he likes to do to women.”

  I can’t help myself, I sit down beside her and I pull her into a tighter hug.

  “We’ll find her, Violet. Before that sick piece of shit can do anything to her. And then we’ll make every one of those bastards pay.”

  Then, just for one perfect moment, she leans forward and kisses me on the cheek.

  “Thank you. You can be nice when you’re not a total dick,” she says, smiling.

  I laugh. “Don’t mention it.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t. I doubt anyone would ever believe me, anyway.”

  Standing up, I look around the room, finally able to focus on something other than the overwhelming urge to comfort Violet. The living room shows obvious signs of a struggle — tables and chairs are overturned, pictures that used to hang on the wall are now shattered on the floor — and it’s clear that Kendra did not go away without a fight.

  Then my eyes catch something off about one photo on the floor. Damage inflicted after the fall. Feeling my stomach sink, I pick it up and give it a closer look.

  That sick motherfucker.

  “Did you search the rest of the house?” I say. “Is there anything missing? Not just of Kendra’s, but of her daughter’s?”

  “Why?” She says, her voice tight with worry.

  I turn the photo around and show her — it’s a photograph of Kendra with her daughter. A recent one, from the looks of it, as the Kendra sitting in the shattered frame looks exactly like the one who was at the bar last night — same hair length, color, same laugh wrinkles around her eyes, and even the same outfit. But there’s one very significant part of it that’s been sliced away and taken: her daughter.

  “Josie,” Violet gasps.

  “Where is she?”

  “At school,” she says, then she checks the time on her phone. “But she gets out in thirty minutes. Do you think he’d really…?”

  She stops, unable to say the words.

  I nod.

  “Whatever Switchblade has planned for Kendra, it’s something sick enough that he needs to hold the threat of harming her daughter over her head. We need to get to her. Right now.”

  Chapter Seven

  Violet

  There’s a moment when I arrive at the school with Crash and two of his club brothers, Mack and Snake, where I come to a stop so abrupt that Crash almost bumps into me. It’s right outside the main doors to the elementary school, with children playing in the fenced-off playground during their end-of-day recess, and the sound of other children — en route from one class to another — flowing out of the open main doors to the school. It’s a moment where I feel like an entirely awful friend.

  “What is it?” Crash says, barely stopping in time to avoid hitting me. There’s alarm in his voice and I see him subtly reach for his gun.

  “This isn’t going to work,” I say, struggling to get the words out through the growing cloud of dread that’s been fogging my brain ever since I realized that, not only is my best friend in the hands of a monster, but her daughter is on that monster’s hit list.

  “What do you mean, lass?” Mack says.

  “I mean, I’ve never picked Josie up from school before.”

  “So?” Crash says. “We go inside, we find her, we bring her home with us. It seems simple enough.”

  I’m not surprised he doesn’t get it.

  “No, it’s not that simple,” I say.

  Crash gives me a confused look. As does Snake. Mack, however, is wearing a frown.

  “What do you mean?” Crash says.

  “I’ve never picked her up. Schools don’t just let people wander in and grab whatever child they want. You have to be on a list,” I say.

  “She’s right, Crash,” Mack says. “Sophia and I have been scouting daycare spots in Lone Mesa for Matty. And the security precautions childcare places have to take nowadays is shocking. The things we got away with as kids, like my mum letting me wander alone through the markets in Dublin, just don’t happen nowadays.”

  Crash shrugs, undeterred, and takes a step around me and toward the open doors to the school.

  “We can’t just stand around out here with our dicks in our hands, waiting to find the right kid,” he says.

  “Brother, do you realize what you just said out loud?” Snake says, mouth open and an enormous grin on his face. “And in a school?”

  “Say it a little louder and you’ll wind up on some kind of list, and then, don’t ever count on getting within a hundred yards of a school ever again,” Mack adds, laughing.

  “Shut up. Fucking Christ, enough wasting time. Let’s just go in there and explain to the secretary, or whoever we need to talk to, that Josie’s mother is having some kind of emergency and we need to pick up her daughter.”

  Crash doesn’t wait for any of us to respond, he charges forward and stalks down the hallway and, as I rush to catch up with him, I whisper a wish that no school official pokes their head into the hallway at this moment and sees the four of us — three very conspicuous, leather-clad bikers and one woman with a very prominent bruise on her head — charging down the halls like we’re on some kind of deadly mission.

  No, this isn’t how you get a third grader out of class.

  Still, despite all the protestations surging in my thoughts, I don’t say a thing as I follow Crash down the hall, with Mack and Snake at my heels. I keep hoping that his grim determination to get this over with and his fervent desire to protect Josie from whatever monstrous torments are befalling her mother will overwhelm the basic common sense and logic of whatever school official we run into.

  Yeah, even I know that isn’t much.

  We reach the school’s main office and Crash stops in the doorway, takes a deep breath, and puts on a smile so charming that it makes me stop in my tracks.

  What the hell is he doing?

  The suddenness of it stops Mack and Snake, too.

  “What the fuck’s gotten in to Crash?” Snake whispers.

  “Don’t know, brother. But, whatever it is, I don’t like it. Smiling like that? It’s fucking unnatural,” Mack answers.

  Hearing whispers, he looks over to the three of us.

  “The secretary is a middle-aged woman who looks like she hasn’t had a good fucking in decades. I’m going to go in there, lay it on her until she’s fucking wet and panting and ready to do whatever the hell we ask, and then we’ll get Josie. Got it? Now wait here for a second while I get this shit handled.”

  I know it’s for show, but hearing him talk about flirting with another woman spurs a twinge of jealousy deep in my chest.

  Crash takes a deep breath, then opens the door and steps into the office.

  Mack and Snake both trade a look, then they take a step forward and look through the window.

  “Oh Jay-sus,” he says, lingering on the word with thick Irish emphasis. “I do not envy him.”

  Snake shrugs. “I’d hit it.”

  “Fucking serious, lad?”

  “Yeah, she looks like she’d be grateful for the fucking, and they’re always mor
e into doing the freaky shit when they’re grateful. Plus, there’s more cushion for the pushin’.”

  “That’s enough cushion to pad the walls of a whole fucking insane asylum. Which is where you belong if you are even considering hitting that.”

  I finally work myself up enough to look through the window. The secretary, Calista, judging by the little nameplate on her desk, is a frumpy-looking woman who has spent too much of her life sitting behind her desk and dealing with the concerns and complaints of decades of pushy parents. Care and worry lines her forehead and the spaces around her eyes. She’s not ugly by any means, but she isn’t a threat, either; I can tell from the determined set of Crash’s shoulders and agitated way he’s tapping his foot that he’s forcing himself to flirt with her. It’s an awkward show, but at least this angle offers me a pleasant view of the way his jeans hug his tight butt.

  Maybe it isn’t so bad.

  I watch as Calista the secretary says something to Crash, I see his shoulders shake with laughter and I watch as she plays with her hair. Whatever he’s telling her, she is drinking it up.

  Then Crash says something and Calista’s expression changes; she stops twirling her hair, her playful smile turns to a fierce frown, and she shakes her head.

  Crash says something else, leaning in over her desk, and the set of his shoulders changes; whatever he’s saying, it’s not flirtatious.

  Calista’s eyes widen.

  But she doesn’t break. Instead, she raises one arm and points defiantly toward the door and all three of us — Mack, Snake, and myself — step back from the door to avoid being seen.

  Crash comes out seconds later.

  “What happened, brother?” Mack says.

  “She wasn’t into it. Said she was flattered, but I wasn’t her type,” he says. “Then, when I tried to get some info about Josie, she told me to get the hell out.”

  “You aren’t her type?” I say, feeling both relieved and offended. Is Calista blind?

  Crash laughs. “Yeah. Says I seemed too safe. Apparently she writes plenty of fanfiction and letters to prisoners. That lady likes some really dark shit.”

  “Step aside, brothers,” Snake says. “I got this.”

  “Snake, you are not going in there and flirting with that woman,” Crash says.

  Snake raises an eyebrow. “Why not?”

  “You don’t think she’d find it suspicious if two bikers came in and started flirting with her within minutes of each other?” I say.

  “OK,” he says. “How about I go in there, introduce myself, take her to a nice private closet somewhere, and then—”

  “For the last fucking time, Snake, you goddamn deviant: no stabbing people for the sake of fucking convenience,” Mack says. “This is a fucking elementary school.”

  “It would solve a whole fucking lot of our problems. And it would only take, like, thirty seconds.”

  “It is disturbing that you think you could pull it off that quick,” Crash mutters.

  “Oh, it’s not just wishful thinking. I know I can,” he says.

  “No more talking from you,” Crash says. “Besides, we don’t need to seduce her. Or murder her. While I was talking to her about Josie, I got a look at her computer screen, I know what class she’s in right now. So, we just have to go wait there and get her to come with us when she’s leaving class. One of us has to keep Calista in there busy, because she’s got a clear view of the school’s security cameras and if she sees us, she will call the cops.”

  “Fine, I’ll go in,” I say.

  “You?” He says.

  “If any of you go in, it’ll tip her off. Crash, you should be the one to talk to Josie, you’re the only one who looks normal enough — no offense — not to scare the crap out of everyone. Just take your leather jacket thingy off.”

  Crash’s eyes flare for a moment. “You want me to take off my cut? The fuck for?”

  I sigh. Why do men have to be so difficult?

  “Because, if you’re wearing it, any teacher that gets a look at you is going to be instantly suspicious. But, if you’re not wearing it, you’re just going to look like some hot, kinda greasy dad here to pick up his daughter. The teachers might stare at you a little, but not in a bad way.”

  Mack and Snake both break out into knowing grins.

  “Come on, Crash,” Mack says. “I’ll take good care of your cut. You should probably give me your gun, too. Snakey-boy and I will go keep an eye out in the parking lot, make sure Switchblade doesn’t show up.”

  Crash grumbles, but he complies. Taking off his cut, folding it, and handing it over to Mack, who takes it with care. Then he hands over his gun. “I’m holding you responsible for both of these, brother. Anything gets fucked up, and it’s on you.”

  Crash looks surprisingly different without his cut and his gun, though no less handsome than before. Just different. And I like the look of both versions of him.

  “I’ll watch it like my own son, Crash. Now, go get Josie.”

  Crash, Mack, and Snake all leave and I take a deep breath, steeling myself for what comes next: distracting an elementary school secretary tangled with the worst that helicopter parents have to offer.

  This isn’t going to be easy.

  Throwing open the door, I stomp inside like I own the place and head right toward Calista like a laser-guided missile.

  She doesn’t bat an eye as I storm up to her desk and rap my knuckles on it like I’m banging on a door.

  “Can I help you?” She says, her voice bland and even.

  “I sure hope you can, because if you can’t, well, it will be a very long day for you. Because I just looked at my son’s report card and I am furious at the lack of education your school is providing. To think my hard earned tax dollars are going toward some cut-rate school is just disgusting. How do you live with yourself?”

  Calista blinks. Even as I rant at her, she still keeps one eye on her computer screen and she hasn’t stopped typing for a second. This woman could work through a hurricane.

  “We sent out report cards a month ago and you’re just now looking at your son’s grades?”

  In one corner of her monitor, I see Crash’s unmissable shape — his lean, muscular body and his thick, wild, barely tamed hair — moving through the halls of the elementary school toward Josie’s classroom.

  I need to get Calista’s attention off the monitor before she sees him, or else she’ll call the cops.

  “I’m a busy woman. I work hard to pay your salary. And you’re trying to shame me for that? I can’t help it that some of us have jobs that are more difficult than sitting at a desk all day while playing Candy Crush. I want a meeting. I want a meeting with the school board, the superintendent, and the principal. Right now,” I say. Then, I raise my voice to a scream. “I want them right now. Do you hear me, you horrible walrus woman? Get them out here or I swear you will regret it.”

  That gets her attention. At a speed that is so slow it’s agonizing, she turns her head and stares cold daggers right at me.

  “What did you say?”

  I can feel the room go colder. All activity deeper in the office stops and I see curious heads poke out of office doors like suspicious prairie dogs.

  This is my moment. And I need to seize it, because I can already see Calista’s focus waver and her eyes ever-so-slightly flicker back toward her screen.

  So, I channel some of the worst, most-entitled customer’s I’ve ever had in the Timberline Tavern — the holier-than-thou people who venture down from the heights of Aspen and lord their wealth over everyone in town — and I reach across Calista’s desk, grab her coffee cup, and dump it over her head.

  “I said I’m sick of your attitude. And I’m sick of dealing with you. I’m leaving. I’ll just call your manager later and make that flaccid-dicked little weasel fire you.”

  Then I turn and storm away.

  Behind me, there’s the sound of a chair sliding across the floor, followed by heavy footsteps as Calista chases
after me.

  “Ma’am, you can’t just do that and run. That kind of behavior is unacceptable. Stop!”

  Picking up the pace, I run through the hallway and toward the exit door, hoping that I’ve bought enough time for Crash to pick up Josie. After two turns down the winding elementary school hallways, I cast a wary look over my shoulder and see that Calista’s stopped following me, and I slow my pace to a fast walk.

  Outside, I heave a sigh of relief. And then again, as I see Crash sitting on the grass of the play yard, with Josie by his side. She’s holding up a book and showing it to him. And, as I walk closer to their spot on the grass, I see that she looks not only at ease with Crash, but excited and happy to share whatever is in that book with him.

  As I get closer, I hear him laugh. A full, happy, deep-in-the-belly kind of laugh.

  I stop.

  Is he actually having fun with her? Crash, the all-business asshole is having fun talking about books with an eight-year-old girl?

  It’s enough to make me stare. And it nearly gives me a headache trying to process the thought.

  This gruff, angry, near-constant pain in my ass is actually having fun with Josie. And, even stranger, she’s having fun with him.

  It’s mind boggling. It’s maddening. And it is charming beyond belief seeing the two of them chat together like best friends.

  How is an icy bastard like him so sweet with her?

  “What are you two talking about?” I say as I get close enough for them to hear me.

  “Aunt Vi!” Josie exclaims, jumping up from her spot on the grass and running to give me a hug. She throws her skinny arms around me and squeezes me tight. “Do you want to sit down and read Goosebumps with me and Crash?”

  “Goosebumps, huh?” I say.

  Crash grins. It’s bright and boyish and it makes my own lips turn upwards in response.

  “It’s her assigned reading. It’s Night of the Living Dummy, which is one of the better ones. It’s no The Ghost Next Door, though.”