Rest & Trust (8 page)

“I don’t know, smarty. What is it they say? Find your bliss? You need to find your bliss.” He picked up his soda and took a loud slurp.

“Don’t ever write a self-help book, Gordo. It’d suck.”

~oOo~

Blake was released the following day, after his ex-wife posted his bail—and with that, Sadie learned that Blake had an ex-wife. He called a meeting for that night, so after her work shift—uneventful, thank God—she washed around her arm, then redressed her wounds, which looked pretty good. Not red or puffy or anything. Sherlock had done a good job. She’d dug up an old sling she’d had from ages ago, when she’d sprained her elbow in gymnastics class, and her arm felt better resting in the sling.

She put actual clothes on for the first time that day and headed over to Blake’s house. She drove a stick, and that turned out to be harder than she’d expected with a bum left arm, but she took her arm out of the sling for the drive and worked it out.

Chloe and Grant were already there, as were a couple of people Sadie didn’t know—a woman in maybe her forties, about Blake’s age, and a boy in his teens. Blake’s face was a swollen mess, and he had a line of stitches across the bridge of his nose, but he was in high spirits.

“Sadie! Hey, girl. I heard you got hurt, too. Let me see.” He grabbed at her sling, and Sadie turned out of his reach. She felt uncomfortable. Gordon’s comments the night before had wormed into her head somewhere.

“I’m okay. Just a scratch. How are you?”

“There’s a reason we call ‘em pigs. But I’m okay. And we’ve got a great result! Chloe did a media analysis today—oh, that’s Yolanda, my w—ex-wife. And Brody, our boy.”

Sadie nodded a greeting at them both, then turned her attention to Blake, who was holding Chloe’s super tablet, which showed a table with several columns of information—media sources, numbers of mention, minutes devoted, slant of item.

“Look at that—an aggregate of nearly six hours over all media sources. Do you understand how huge that is? We got national coverage—
international
coverage. People are paying attention. What a great day it was!”

Sadie looked up at Blake. She’d known him less than a year, but she liked him a lot. She admired him. He was passionate and committed to his cause. But his enthusiasm for what had happened the day before freaked her out.

“People got hurt, Blake.”

He waved her off, not even bothering to look her way. “Nobody died. Everybody is expected to make a full recovery.”

Why wasn’t he angry that cops had fired on innocent, unarmed civilians? “Did you plan this?”

Now he turned and looked down to meet her eyes. But he blinked before he answered, and there was something sketchy in the ways his eyes moved. “Of course I planned the protest. So did you. And Chloe, and Grant.”

He knew full well what she’d meant and was being intentionally obtuse. “No. Did you plan the riot? Was there somebody in the crowd with a gun, and did you know that?”

He blinked again, and she had her answer. It didn’t matter that he said, “Of
course
not. What do you take me for, Sadie?”

She had no idea what she took him for, but he wasn’t who she’d thought he was. Thinking about her conversation with Gordon, she smiled brightly. “Okay. Sorry. Shit got too real. I gotta go.”

And she turned and walked out. Blake chased her as far as the door, calling, “Sadie! Sadie, come on! We have work to do!”

~oOo~

Sadie liked to run in the heat. She usually felt cold unless the temperature topped ninety, so she didn’t really like running in the morning, when the desert air carried a chill. Her workdays started on Central Time, since her cohort was based in Dallas, so she took lunch around ten-thirty or eleven in the morning, and she ran then. On weekends, she did her distance running, trying to get ready for the following year’s L.A. marathon. She’d originally thought she’d try for this year’s, but it was in September, and she didn’t think she’d be ready for it. So, new goal.

In the meantime, she’d do some smaller races. She’d done a 5K already. That had been pretty dull. She needed more challenge. She needed something positive to focus on.

She’d taken a week off after the protest, or the riot, or whatever it was, because her arm hurt too much, and elevating her heart rate made it hurt more. But after three days back on the road, she’d found that she hadn’t lost much ground taking those days off.

So she was feeling good and still moving at a decent clip when she turned the corner onto her street and saw a huge, black and chrome Harley parked near the front of her building.

She pulled up short and stared at it for a minute, trying to be sure it was Sherlock’s. She didn’t know much about bikes, and she honestly hadn’t paid more attention to his than ‘big, black, chrome,’ but she was pretty sure it was his. Then she got up close and saw the decal or whatever on the gas tank: Night Horde.

He wasn’t around, though. She scanned the street in both directions. Nope. Then she headed toward her building.

She lived on the second floor of four. There was an elevator, but she rarely used it; the staircase to the second floor was wide and open and right near the front door. And Sherlock was clomping down it now, his heavy boots—not the Docs he’d been wearing the other day but straight-up combat boots—striking the terrazzo tile.

“Hey,” he said, as if it were totally normal for him to just drop by. And why was he in her building, coming down from her floor? She hadn’t told him exactly where she lived.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to check on your stitches.”

“How did you know where my apartment was?”

“That’s what I do: know things.”

“Yeah, that’s not creepy at all.”

Instead of addressing her comment, he pointed up the stairs. “I stuck a note in your door. Your neighbor told me you went for a run.”

“Neighbor?”

“Chubby guy? Combover?”

“Burt. Right.” Burt lived across the hall. Retired or independently affluent, or something, he was the building snoop.

Still feeling stung from his rejection of her—whether or not he’d been a gentleman or a hero or a saint about it, it still hurt—she headed up the stairs, meaning to pass him right by. “Okay, well, I have to get back to work.”

He caught her good arm as she passed. “Don’t blow me off, little outlaw. I want to see your arm.”

Twisting her arm from his hold, she huffed, “You don’t get to tell me what to do. Ever. You blew your shot at that. And that’s a dumb thing to call me.” She liked it, actually. She got a tingle every time he said it. Which was what made it dumb.

He smiled, and she couldn’t help but notice the ring through his lip. He had a habit, she’d noticed, of pulling the ball back and forth with his teeth; now the ball was right on his lip. “Did I blow my shot? Really?”

Oh, what an arrogant jerk. “You’re the one who dumped me on the sidewalk and drove away.”

“Little bit of revisionist history going on there, I think.” Still grinning. His teeth were really good. And those eyes, jeez.

His hair had flopped over his forehead the day of the protest. Today, he had it slicked back. She preferred it floppy, she thought. But with it off his face, his eyes seemed even more intense. She wondered what he looked like truly angry. She could practically imagine cold fire shooting from those eyes.

“What do you want, Sherlock? If that’s even your real name.”

“It’s the realest name I have. And I told you—I want to check on your stitches. How’re they feeling?”

“Like I got shot and some weirdo sewed me up in his sewer of a kitchen.”

Now the smile went away, and he turned to face her full on. “I’m being serious, Sadie. You healing okay?”

“Why do you care?”

His expression then was like parental disappointment—and so was his tone. “Sadie. Come on.”

“You want to dip that sentence back into your bucket of condescension? I think you missed a spot.”

She got a hint then of what he would look like angry. He stepped forward and pushed her against the wall. He was standing one step down from her, but he was still at least a whole head taller. He leaned down so they were face to face, so close that his beautiful, lush beard brushed her face as he spoke.

“You bought this attention when you launched yourself onto my bike, little outlaw. I risked heat of my own getting you out of there, and I brought you into my house and fixed you up. You’re pissed because I wouldn’t fuck you when you were gagging for it, but I was trying to take care of you then, too. Now, all I want to do is make sure my handiwork is holding up and see if maybe the stitches are ready to come out. I can take a look right here if you want.”

Sadie was acutely aware of how good he smelled—not heavy enough to be cologne or aftershave. Maybe his shampoo, or whatever he’d put in his hair to slick it back. Enticing, whatever it was. He seemed to be much more conscientious about his personal grooming than he was about his housekeeping.

She was also acutely aware that she’d just run several miles, and she did not smell nearly so great.

She pushed on his shoulders, and he stepped back. “You can come up.”

“Good girl,” was his reply.

CHAPTER SEVEN

When they got to her door, she pulled out the card he’d slid into the frame.

She read the front, then looked up at him with an incredulous cant to her mouth. “Your biker gang has business cards?”

“Motorcycle club. And sure.” He took the card out of her hand. These were different from the Virtuoso Cycles cards that all the Horde who worked there carried. These bore the Night Horde SoCal patch, the bearer’s road name, and the general number and email to the clubhouse.

They’d been Lakota’s idea, shortly after he’d taken over the PR work for the club. He’d suggested it as part of the ‘charm patrol’ that Hoosier often talked about: the idea that the more good work the club did in the community, the more positive their presence among their neighbors, the less those neighbors would care about the other, less-good stuff they did. So they participated in pretty much all the charity events in the county, especially in and near Madrone, and they helped out people who needed help—the club as a whole, and individual members, too.

Lakota thought that it would be a good idea, when a patch pulled off and helped a disabled driver or rider, or just did something helpful and decent, they could hand off a card and say, “give us a call if we can help.” Hoosier had thought it a brilliant idea.

So now they all carried cards.

He flipped it to the back, where he’d handwritten the important part, and returned it to Sadie. “That’s my personal number. That’s how you reach me.”

“Why would I reach you?”

Feeling weary and frustrated, he sighed. Loudly. “Jesus fuck, sweetheart. Put your spikes down. I’m trying to be a good guy here.”

“Why?”

The temptation to throw up his hands and walk back down those stairs and out of this little chick’s life gave a sharp tug. But he liked her. He’d spent a disconcerting amount of the last week and a half thinking about her. He’d been drinking less, too. Correlation didn’t imply causation, but it didn’t preclude it, either.

Not that he had a drinking problem. It was just a personal observation he’d made. It had been nearly a week since he’d woken up with a hangover.

“Because I
am
a good guy. Because I put those stitches in, and I want to make sure you heal okay.” He smiled with an intent to soften her, and put his hand on her cheek. “Because I like you, little outlaw. Spikes and all.”

Her eyes—not violet in the bright light of the hallway, just a kind of pretty greyish blue—stared into his. He smiled and let his eyes travel down her body. She was a sweaty mess. Her black hair, the streaks a less vivid blue than they’d been, was plastered to her head, and her mesh t-shirt clung wetly to her body. It was July in the Inland Empire, but she wore spandex running pants that went down to her ankles. Her running shoes were hot pink and neon yellow.

“I don’t know what to make of you,” she finally said.

“Have I given you reason to think I’m trouble? I mean, besides not fucking you—which I’d say was also me being a good guy.”

“It was humiliating. And not helpful.”

“Was it wrong, though?”

Again, she stared for a few seconds. She had not yet opened her door. Finally, she slid her hand into a pocket in her waistband and pulled out a key. As she slid it into the lock, she said, “No. It wasn’t.” She opened her door and stepped through. “Come on in.”

Her apartment seemed to explode all around him. Everywhere was a mishmash of every color and lots of fabrics. There was a strange aesthetic to her décor: a little bit of West Indian, maybe, a lot of Asian, some South American. Just color and pattern everywhere. And all of it was absolutely pristine. There was clutter, but it was tidy. Everything coordinated; nothing was out of place. Even standing just at the door, he could tell that.

Her apartment was a studio: all the living in one space. The loft design meant high, wood-beam ceilings, rich wood floors, and an ‘exposed’ brick (which was probably just an overlay) wall. The kitchen area was in a corner at the street-side brick wall. Small, but upscale, with concrete countertops and shelves above for dishes. On the other side of the interior counter space, she had a long, unusual, bare wood table with six brightly-colored plastic chairs around it. A clear vase full of red tulips had pride of place in the exact center.

Most of the rest of the apartment was arranged like a living room, with a patchwork of different rugs laid over each other. There was no bed anywhere, and at first Sherlock thought that the apartment was a one-bedroom instead of a studio. Then he realized that the ‘sofa’ was actually a daybed.

For all the wacky, boho charm, what Sherlock liked best was her big television. Not nearly as big as his, but it sat atop a unit with all three of the newest major gaming consoles, and above it was a huge, framed, custom-printed poster of what had to be her main toon in the MMORPG that he also played. Her character was She’rah, a well-geared troll hunter.

He had a similar poster in his home office. He played an undead priest named Benediction.

Scanning the room again, he found her computer, and was disappointed to see that it was a decent unit, but not for gaming.

“What are you looking for?” she asked, and Sherlock realized that he’d been standing there, taking everything in. Research was what he did. He took information in and processed and synthesized it. There was a lot in this apartment to process. A lot about Sadie to get to know.

“I know you don’t game on that.” He nodded toward the unit on her desk.

She walked to it and sat down. “No. I game on the box by the window back there.” Nodding toward the back wall and the living area, she struck keys on the desk unit. “Hold on. I was supposed to log back in ten minutes ago. I need to let them know I’ll be offline for a while longer.”

As Sherlock turned to see what she gamed on, he asked. “What do you do?”

“Tech support.”

He stopped and swiveled back to her. “What kind?”

She answered while she typed. “Level 2 stuff. Pretty much anything that can be handled remotely…hold on.” A flurry of keystrokes. “Gimme five minutes, okay?”

“Sure,” he said, and turned back to look for her gaming unit. On a window seat, he found a huge, top-of-the-line gaming laptop. He personally wouldn’t game on a laptop, there wasn’t enough flexibility, but if he were going to, it would be on that one right there.

Shit, had he found a chick who actually liked the things he liked? And might actually understand the things he did?

With the singular exception of Bart, who was as good a hacker as he was (they each had their strengths), his brothers all seemed to think that what they did was mostly magic and voodoo. He’d long ago stopped trying to explain how he got the information or where the limitations were, because their eyes would just glaze over. They were alternately shocked at the things he could find out and impatient when he told them he couldn’t simply strike a couple of keys and give them every piece of data in the known world. Hacking took time. It took design. It took creativity and patience.

And women? Forget about it. He’d never in his
life
met a woman who didn’t think his interests were silly and immature. Which was why he mainly kept them to himself.

Until, maybe, now. Of course, Sadie was young. Too young, probably, which didn’t do much to erase the taint of immaturity. But he didn’t give a shit.

He crossed the room and stood behind her. When he laid his hands over her shoulders, she paused, her fingers resting on the keyboard, and sighed deeply. Then she got back to typing.

Without really meaning to pry, with just his constant need to pay attention and take in information, he glanced at her screen. She was in a chat. The avatars for all the participants were characters from the old television show
Firefly
. And they were chatting in character. Sadie was Kaylee, and, in character, she was telling them that she needed the afternoon off.

Charmed, he laughed, and she looked over her shoulder. “Shoo!”

“Sorry.” He backed off and wandered around her apartment. Damn, it really was clean. The whole place gleamed, and it even smelled of some kind of cleaner. Lavender, he thought. He only knew that because Taryn had once had massive lavender bushes in her front yard. They drew bees like crazy, and last summer, Chelsea had been stung while he was there. Taryn had had to rush her to the ER, where they’d discovered that she was dangerously allergic to bee stings.

He really didn’t want to be thinking about Taryn and her kids right now.

“Okay. That’s done.”

He turned back to find her standing behind him. He grinned and reached for her good arm. “The afternoon, huh?” She didn’t resist when he caught her wrist and pulled her close.

“I still don’t know what to make of you.”

“Let’s just see what happens. Right now, I want to check your arm.” He led her over to her dining set and pulled out a lime green chair. When she sat, he said, “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.”

She had clean, well-sealed gauze bandaging over all her wounds. “You’ve been taking care of these,” he said as he eased the tape from the exit of the through-and-through. That wound had all but healed. There was a bit of scabbing left—and it was going to leave an obvious scar. He wasn’t sure how he would have stitched that, though, not without really pulling on the skin. Somebody with medical training might have been able to. “This looks pretty good.”

“No, it looks ugly. But it’s healing.”

“Sorry. Did the best I could.”

“Not your fault. You didn’t shoot me.”

“True.” The entry wound, much smaller, was fully healed and little more than a red dot on the back of her shoulder. “You’re pretty lucky neither bullet caught anything but meat. You don’t have that much meat.”

“I guess so. It’s weird to think of anything having to do with bullets going through my body as lucky.”

“Try getting gutshot. That’ll give you some perspective.” He set the bandage on the table. “I don’t think either of these needs to be covered anymore. They’re healed.”

When he turned back, she was staring wide-eyed at him. “You’ve been shot in the gut?”

“Yes, I have.” He lifted his shirt and beater and showed her the scar on the right side of his belly, a few inches below his ribs. “
Not
a through-and-through. I was laid out on a bar while somebody dug the bullet out with a hunting knife and a needle-nose pliers.”

That had happened back in the bad old Perro days. He sure as hell hoped La Zorra didn’t turn into another power-hungry psychopath. Hoosier thought she might, though, and he was rarely wrong.

All thoughts of La Zorra or Hoosier fled his mind as Sadie reached out and laid her little hand on his belly, her fingertips on the scar. Her nails were polished a bright blue; the polish was badly chipped and scraped, and the nails themselves were bitten to the quick. An amazingly sexy touch nonetheless. Her palms were soft and warm, so different from his own roughened mitts. As her hand wandered over his belly and down, almost to his waistband, he closed his eyes.

“Sadie…” His voice broke in the middle of her name, and her cleared his throat.

She took her hand away. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” He let go of his shirt, then reached for the bandage over her last wound.

The stitches had held well, and the skin wasn’t red or puckered. He palpated it gently, glancing at her face to see if he was hurting her; he wasn’t. But he wasn’t sure the seam was ready to hold on its own.

“This looks pretty good, too. Nice and neat, if I do say so myself. Not sure if the stitches should come out yet, though. Maybe a few more days.” The bandage was damp from her sweat, so he pulled it off and laid it with the others.

She looked at the arm he held. “That’s okay. It’s not really bothering me anymore, and I can take them out myself—like, maybe on Monday? When it’s two weeks?”