Rush - Blue Devils MC Book 2 (Book 1 Included FREE for a short time only!) (8 page)

“Oh fuck!” Lopez exclaimed and then with an apologetic glance towards Hannah, “I mean, darn! We better get the Tucson guys right on that. I imagine finding one of those bastards - I mean, ass—jerks,” he finally stumbled into, “without any warning would give a nurse a heart attack.”

Hannah hid her smile against Turbo’s fur. It felt good to have
something
to smile about.

“I hadn’t thought about that,” Rush said apologetically. “I just wanted him out of the way while I got Hannah out of there.”

“Speaking of, I didn’t believe Mr. Wright’s story for a moment,” Lopez said, with another apologetic glance at Hannah. “Not to call him a liar, but what the hell really happened last night?”

Rush quickly ran through the night’s activities, and Lopez shook his head in disgust. “The whole Tucson police department oughta be lined up and shot for not thinking to protect Hannah from
Chupa
retaliation.”

“That was my thought, too,” Rush said drily. “Someone’s head ought to roll for that decision.”

Lopez and Davis stood up, shaking hands with Rush and Lain, but Hannah slipped back into her funk, unable to move.
Goddamn Miguel, you almost got me killed! And Isabel…you may have actually killed her. May you rot in hell, you bastard
.

Rush left with the two policemen, escorting them outside, leaving Hannah and Lain alone in the living room. It was awkward, to say the least, and so Hannah did what she’d been brought up to do - have good manners. She forced herself to sit up, rather than slump against Turbo’s welcoming presence, and make eye contact with Lain. “Thank you for all of your help with this. I know you’re not my biggest fan, and having you help with this search for the little girls just because of me is way above and beyond what I’d ever expect you to do.”

Lain looked at her, the puzzled look on his face again, but as he opened up his mouth to reply, Rush jumped in smoothly. “It’s the least we can do, Blue.” Hannah jumped, surprised he’d come back - she hadn’t heard him close the front door. “Lain, shouldn’t we let her rest?” They exchanged glances and then Lain gave a jerky nod of the head.

“Absolutely.” He left, shutting the front door behind him quietly.
I heard
that
door closing,
Hannah thought to herself crossly.

“Rush,” she said aloud, a don’t-fuck-with-me tone in her voice, “what was that all about?” She glared at him, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

“You know Lain,” Rush said dismissively. “I didn’t want to give him a chance to yell at you.” Hannah stared at him.
What the hell? Lain was confused, not angry. He was
not
just about to yell at me
. She opened up her mouth to ask him what the fuck he was talking about when there was a rap on the front door and then it opened.

“The guys must be here,” Rush said, heading back out into the foyer. “I’m going to walk with them around the grounds and show them what areas I want them guarding. I’ll be right back.” She heard the men chat and then the front door closed and the sound disappeared with them.

“Turbo, what am I going to do?” she asked the old, wizened dog. He thumped his tail at his name and reached his nose up beseechingly. She obliged and put her head down by his face and he bathed it, his tongue even swiping through her ear. “Ack! Turbo!!” she laughed, pulling away. He thumped his tail harder against the couch cushions, and she swore she saw him smile. “You’d love Isabel,” she told him as she petted him. “She was abandoned as a baby at an orphanage - she’s a
huérfana
, you know - and I don’t know how she’s stayed so sweet in the intervening years. She was so damn trusting of me - she knew I’d protect her.

“But Turbo, I didn’t. I didn’t protect her. The
Chupas
took her and all I did was manage to get shot in the head. I failed her.”

And she buried her face in his fur and felt him nuzzle her head and swore to herself that if she got Isabel back, she was never going to let her go.

Chapter Eight

Rush

Rush stood in shock in the doorway and listened to Blue’s broken-hearted confession to Turbo.

She has no idea how brave she was that day on the bus. She thinks she
failed
? She was trying to stand up to bastards and assholes who think that kidnapping little girls is an acceptable Sunday evening activity, and were armed with goddamn assault rifles to boot. How can she think what she did was anything less than heroic??

He opened up his mouth to say something, to ease the pain off her face, but realized that words weren’t going to mean anything to Blue. She’d heard it ever since she’d woken up - what a hero she was. It was all the news broadcasters could talk about, and the headlines of the newspapers could say. Him telling her this yet again wouldn’t mean a damn thing.

Right now, though, he needed to take care of her. She’d been trying to take care of others for long enough; it was time for him to take over.

He shuffled his feet on the hardwood floor, intentionally stepping on a board that creaked, and then walked into the room. “Hey Blue!” he said, too cheerfully.
Dial it back
…

“So,” he started again, a tad less enthusiastically, “I was thinking that you’d probably appreciate a shower, and I think we should maybe take a look at your wound on your head. While I was tying up the
Chupa
in the closet, I may or may not have helped myself to a few bandages. Where’s your purse?”

“My purse?” she echoed, confused. “I think I saw it in your bedroom. Why?”

“Well, I couldn’t exactly shove the bandages down my leather chaps, could I?” he asked with a naughty grin. “That would make
all
the tongues wag. So I put them into that giant sack you call a purse.”

“Hey, that purse has a lot of uses!” she called out after him as he walked towards his bedroom. “Like, sometimes, I use it to whack motorcycle gang members upside the head, so I can knock some sense into them.”

He grinned to himself at her response. Yup, she was definitely feeling better already. He pulled the bandages and the syringe out of her purse carefully, placing the syringe into the nightstand drawer next to the bed, and then bringing the bandages and gauze with him back to the living room.

“I…borrowed enough to hopefully get you through,” he said, dumping the bandages on the coffee table. Her eyes widened at the pile in front of her. Large pile in front of her.

Okay, so maybe he’d…borrowed enough for three head injuries. Whatever. At least Blue would be taken care of.

“But I really think you should go take a shower. I think that’d make you feel a hundred times better. Then I can patch you back up again.”

With a final pat to Turbo, she stood up.

“That sounds like a good plan. We should probably also go clothes shopping sometime soon, because I didn’t exactly pack for this trip to the US and although I appreciate my father bringing me some clothes, they’re not exactly in fashion now. Thank God I haven’t gained too much weight since high school.”

He looked down at what she was wearing, which looked perfectly fine to him, and gave a mental shrug.
Chicks worry about weird shit. Don’t try to talk her into believing anything else, ‘cause she won’t. And anyway, if I can convince her to try on some bathing suits for me, that’d make the whole shopping trip worthwhile.

“Whatever you want, Blue,” he said aloud, doing his best to sound…supportive, like a real boyfriend would.

She laughed.

“That
almost
sounded believable,” she said drily. He grinned back at her. Damn, she knew him a little too well.

He walked her back to the master bath, pulling out fresh towels for her -
thank God Suzi helps me out with this kind of shit or I’d have beach towels for my bathroom and nothing else
- and then left her to it.

Leaving Turbo at the door of the master bath to stand guard - g
oddamn dog switched loyalties awful fast
- he wandered out to the garage to pound nails again out of boards from an old barn. The boards were going to look great as wainscoting - really give the old feel to the house that he was going for.

As he swung the hammer, his mind drifted back to Suzi and John Abernathy, the only adults he considered to be “real” parents to him. He’d always been insanely jealous of Lain’s family - to have parents who actually gave a shit about you, rather than only caring what you could do for the family legacy…it was a foreign idea to Rush for the longest time, but as Rush began spending more and more time at the Abernathy household during his childhood, Lain’s parents began to take him under their wing.

In a piece of trivia he wasn’t even sure Blue knew, it was John who gave Rush his nickname of “Rush,” saying that he was always in a rush to go do something exciting. Hell, he was just a boy - of course he was.

In a rush to be anywhere but at home, that is. As he pounded nails and stacked boards, he thought back to the first time he’d done something as a “real” Blue Devil.

“Dad says he’ll pay us to help him load trucks today, if we want to.” Lain’s voice came through the phone line, excited and bursting with enthusiasm. Of
course
Rush would want to help load trucks and make money! He ran through the house, yelling at the nanny as he passed the living room that he was going to Lain’s house and would be back later. The nanny wouldn’t care - she’d probably be relieved. Now she could watch her soaps without him bothering her.

He jumped on his bike and tore down the street, letting the slight hill give him a boost in speed that had the hot summer air whistling past his ears. He and Lain had never been allowed to work at the clubhouse before. Rush imagined one of the Blue Devils letting him try on their cut. Wouldn’t that be rad!

He skittered to a halt at the clubhouse and hid his bike in the shade, then walked in. The cool air washed over his sweaty, skinny body, and he closed his eyes in appreciation for a moment. Gosh, that felt good!

“Hey, Rush!” John called out and Rush’s eyes popped open.

“Hi, Mr. Abernathy,” he said. He’d started calling him John at John’s urging, until Dad had heard about it. He hadn’t been able to sit down properly for a couple of days after that. He was careful to not make that mistake again.

“Let’s go out to the warehouse - Lain is out there already,” John said warmly and gave Rush a one-armed hug that allowed Rush to maintain his cool status - really, what kind of guy hugs other people? At age 11, he couldn’t go around just hugging everyone - but the gesture still told Rush that John cared about him.

John was a giant bear of a man, or at least he seemed like it to Rush. He could lift anything with his burly arms, and he had a grizzly beard that he loved to rub on Lain and Rush’s stomachs to tickle them with. Rush was getting too old to get tickled, of course, but secretly he loved it. He tried to imagine his dad tickling him, or growing a beard, or hugging him, and drew a blank. There was no imagination in the world that could come up with something that nuts.

They got to work loading boxes into semis out in the warehouse but even with the swamp coolers working overtime, Rush was soaked with sweat when they were done. He’d worked right next to the super cool Blue Devils, listening as they ribbed each other about being wimps or snail bastards. Snail bastard…Rush rolled that phrase around in his head, tucking it away for future use when he beat Lain at a race.

Finally, they were done, and John paid them each $4, which Rush carefully tucked away in his back pocket. That was a king’s fortune that he could use to buy a lot of baseball cards, if he was careful.

The Blue Devils roared away on their Harleys, their engines making it impossible to speak, and Rush felt a thrill go through him.

Someday, I’ll have my own Harley, he vowed to himself. Suddenly, the money in his back pocket morphed from saving for baseball cards to saving for his own bike. Real bike. Getting his own cut. Growing his own grizzly beard.

Rush and Lain rode their bikes back to the Abernathy’s and John tailed along behind them on his Harley, riding slow, his motor thrumming, making them feel like they were on a real ride with the Blue Devils. Rush and Lain pumped their legs on their bikes as fast as they could go, eager to go fast, like a Blue Devil would.

When they got there, Suzi fed them giant ham sandwiches and cold milk and as many chocolate chip cookies as they could stuff in, and for a moment, sitting at that table, listening to the chatter of the Abernathy family, Rush pretended that he was John and Suzi’s son. That Lain was his brother. That he belonged here and would never have to leave.

Suzi patted him on the shoulder as she passed by and said, “I’m sure proud of how hard you worked today, Rush. You’re putting all of that height to good use.” She winked at him and he grinned back, embarrassed but a little proud. It was true - he was the tallest kid in his class
and
the next older class. Lain was built like John - sturdy, strong - while Rush could already tell he was destined to tower over everyone he ever met.

Finally, horribly, it was growing dark outside and Suzi reminded him in a gentle voice that his family was going to be missing him if he didn’t go home soon.

Family…
he didn’t want to be a Blackburn anymore. He considered throwing himself at Suzi and John and begging them to adopt him, but he couldn’t. That’s what an eight-year-old little boy would do, not a grown-up 11-year-old. So he stood up and thanked them for dinner and let Suzi give him a two-armed hug because it felt nice and high fived Lain and let John give him a one-armed hug because John knew he was a man and then peddled his bike home, up the slight hill, in the growing twilight.

And it was just as he thought - when he got there, no one even asked him where he’d been or how his day went. He cleaned up and sat at the dinner table and ate more food - he was
never
full - and ignored his father’s rambling monologue about the deal he’d made that day at work in favor of imagining a Harley.
His
Harley. And he’d pull up in front of the clubhouse, so cool and awesome that all of the guys would invite him to ride with them.

“—which someday Timmy will take over,” Dad said, cutting into Rush’s thoughts. He looked up from his plate with a panicked look in his eyes. He had no idea what his dad had been talking about. Favoring muteness as a way of getting out of trouble, he just nodded and gave a half-hearted smile. Samuel, his younger brother, shot him a deadly look and Rush knew that Samuel knew that he didn’t want it. He didn’t want any of it. Just because he was the oldest in the family didn’t mean he gave a damn - that’s right, a damn! I can swear in my head - about financial deals.

Dad should just turn everything over to Samuel. He does give a damn.

I’m gonna grow up to be a Blue Devil!

***

“Rush?”

He heard his name and his head snapped up to see Blue standing in the doorway, Turbo leaning against her legs. She had a concerned look on her face, and he realized that she may’ve been standing there for a while, calling his name.

“Sorry, Blue, I was…thinking.” He looked down at the boards stacked in front of him and the bent, rusty nails in a coffee can beside him and realized he’d somehow finished the project on total auto-pilot.
Even my subconscious is a workaholic!

“Let’s go into the house and take a look at your head,” he said, wiping his hands on his jeans. As they started to walk out of the garage, Blue let out a strangled cry.

“Is that
the
couch?”

He looked where she was pointing and then began to chuckle.

“Maybe,” he said mischievously.

When he’d bought the rundown mansion, the real estate agent had offered to have the couch in the living room hauled off but Rush had turned him down. That couch -
the
couch - held a lot of really fantastic memories for him, and pretty much every other guy who attended Copper High School. He’d paid to have it professionally cleaned and then moved it into his garage, using it to complete his man cave in the corner. A small fridge with beers, a big screen TV, an Xbox, and
the
couch. It really didn’t get any better than that.

“Is that what it looks like with all of the dust and grime cleaned off it?” she said, laughing. “I have a lot of…fond memories of that couch. And you.” She winked at him and he grinned at her. Oh yeah, all of those times that they laid on that couch, her long, gorgeous legs wrapped around him, making out for what seemed like hours…he’d had to carry chapstick with him everywhere he went his senior year in high school, because she’d practically sucked his lips off.

Those truly were the good ol’ days.

His eyes dropped down to her lips and her breath caught as she stared back him, and then she
bit
her lip and he thought he was going to embarrass himself and sport a boner right there in his garage.

“We…uh…should go look at…your head,” he finally got out. It was hard to think and stare at Blue at the same time. All of his blood was in…a different part of his body.