“Told you my name yesterday. I’m also the VP of a local motorcycle club.” The way he said that, not as a random fact,but the way a plumber says, “I’m a plumber” when he sees your faucet leaking. Like he was offering me a solution.
I figured the MC thing out on my own based off the cut he was wearing. Saint’s Outlaws, according to the patch. You saw enough bikers in my line of work to recognize them. They came in with broken limbs, stab wounds, and yes, as pavement paste.
“And we help people who’re in trouble.” He paused, his jaw flexing as though he was grinding his teeth. “Boyfriend?”
“Huh?”
“Did your boyfriend hit you? Give you that black eye?” He searched my face. “Husband?” he guessed again when I didn’t respond.
“I don’t have either,” I told him, watching the way his shoulders relaxed just slightly. “I told you, I tripped.”
“Sure. And fell into a door handle right?”
Rolling my eyes, I ignored that. “Look, I’m a paramedic, sometimes you help people that don’t want help.” He wasn’t buying it for a second. “Thank Camila for these cookies for us. Gary’s going to lose his mind. He loves chocolate chip. Doesn’t think any other kind of cookie should exist.”
“Give him some of the oatmeal raisin,” Overdrive suggested with a smirk.
I scoffed. “He’d say I really was poisoning him.”
Overdrive hesitated, then said, “If you decide you need anything…anything at all…” I gasped as he reached his hand into the pocket of my uniform pants and pulled my phone out. I didn’t say anything as he punched his number into my contacts. He reached his hand out and gently tilted my chin up to look into his dark brown eyes. “Just call. Day or night.”
I looked up into those dark eyes wondering why I wanted to bare my soul to this man that I hardly even knew. I couldn’t possibly drag him into my business.
“Sure you can.”
Blinking, I frowned when I realized I said that last part out loud without meaning to.
“My brothers and I are all former military,” he added when I didn’t say anything. “There isn’t much we can’t handle.” He handed me back my phone. “Just think about it.”
I watched, clutching my phone and the tin of cookies to my chest as he walked away. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t trust anyone with this. I didn’t even know what it was I’d stumbled on to. All I knew was that my brother was gone and more kids were going missing and dying in that part of town. I was going to get to the bottom of it. But I needed to be more careful.
Shaking my head, I pushed all those thoughts from my mind and headed off to do my job. Everything else was going to have to wait until later. I had work to do. People to save.
CHAPTER 5
Overdrive
Camila looked over at me and pushed pause on the remote. The TV froze. “You’re bored out of your mind.”
I’d been hanging out with her for five days. We’d finally broke down and hired a couple employees to run our store since we’d been so busy. This was a time where I was glad for that decision. It’d only been days, yet I couldn’t get Rue out of my damn mind. I wanted to go scour the city looking for her. I wanted to go to war against whoever’d given her that black eye. She was so damn closed off though, there was no way she’d tell me what happened. It was driving me nuts not knowing. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know anything about the woman. In fact, that was part of the problem. I wanted to. Bored wasn’t my problem. Far from it. My mind was racing with a thousand things to do, and my woman wasn’t helping with any of them. I was also ignoring the fact that I’d started thinking of Rue as my woman.
“Why don’t you go out?” Camila suggested. “I’m fine here.”
“The last time I left you alone you ended up in the hospital,” I reminded her, absently stuffing some popcorn into my mouth.
“That’s not going to happen again,” Camila chided. “Is that why you’ve been sticking so close?”
I sent her an amused look. Of course it was. I already couldn’t hand her back over to Kilo in pristine condition. He was going to be pissed. I didn’t need her accidentally hurting herself again and having to explain that, too.
“Kilo will be home tomorrow…”
“And tonight we’re going to finish watching,” I winced as I said it, “Gone with the Wind.”
Camila laughed at the look on my face. “I’m sure you’ve just been dying to watch this.”
“Pretty sure I could’ve gone my whole life without seeing it,” I muttered around another mouthful of popcorn.
“You-” She broke off with a gasp as the front door opened and Kilo stepped inside. “Kilo!” She was off the couch like a shot and in his arms before either of us could say anything.
