How pathetic am I? A complete mess, and—
With a gasp, she touched her face. Was there blood? Did she look horrible? Was that why he’d refused her offer, looked at her hand on his arm like it was poison, and—
What the hell is wrong with me? I’m out of my mind.
Shifting Leonard off her lap, she stood, went inside, and tromped up the stairs to her bedroom, shutting lights off as she went. She went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Crap. There were scrapes on her face, and grit was still embedded in her knees. She’d need to disinfect, but she didn’t want to. No, all she wanted to do was sink into sleep and forget about everything. Especially that last bit on her porch.
How had things turned upside down so quickly?
Instead, she settled for a stinging, lukewarm shower, a clean nightgown, and bed, where even the weight of Leonard purring on her belly was too much to handle.
Between her sheets, though, sleep didn’t hold the blissful nothing she’d hoped for. No, instead of oblivion, she lay awake in bed, eyes wide open. But there was clearly something wrong with her. A normal person would rehash tonight’s attack, not dwell on the man who’d saved her. A normal person would be scared, not…titillated. Instead, she sailed along on a strange blend of excitement and guilt, along with something supremely tender that she hadn’t been able to tamp down since Andrew Blane had found his way to her office.
* * *
It was the polygraph test that did it, every fucking night. As if living through it once hadn’t been enough—
No, twice.
He’d had to take two life-changing poly tests—one when he’d applied for a job with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and once for the Sultans. The first had been nothing—child’s play—compared to the one in the club, Ape and Handles and a couple of other guys hovering around him. Ape with his signature ax in his hand.
“We trust you, bro,” Handles had explained. “Just gotta keep our guys safe, man. Fucking cops are on us like flies on shit, and you never know who you can trust anymore. Never know.”
Clay, in deep sleep, relived that conversation every night, saw the smile on Handles’s face. Handles, the national club president, who’d taken him under his wing, had been like a dad to him.
Clay’d been nervous the first time he’d gone to the Sultans’ bar, the Hangover. He and Lil Dino, the confidential informant who’d vouched for him. Dino’d made a deal with the prosecutor and now had to tell the club guys he’d done time with Clay—a job made a hell of a lot easier by the ink Clay’d gone out and gotten done the week before.
That first day, he’d walked in with Dino, waited for his eyes to adjust, and slowly taken the place in, wondering if any of them would recognize him.
They hadn’t. Not one of them, but that feeling of being a lone sheep in a den of wolves had never quite died down.
After that, it had been a slow, slow game. Riding into Naglestown every few days, eventually getting a job there, then making his trips to see the guys a daily thing until he’d given them that game-changing intel.
He remembered other things, in flashes. Like the day he’d made initial contact with his targets: Handles and Ape, the club’s national sergeant at arms, who, it was quickly apparent, was a psychopath.
Handles and the others had been wary of Jeremy “Indian” Greer from the beginning, as they were of most newcomers, but Ape had hated him on sight—had beaten him and played with him to prove it. Funny how that fucker’s crazy instincts had been so dead-on.
There’d been no warning the day of the polygraph—just a tap on the shoulder and a beckoning finger. Clay’d set down the glasses he was cleaning behind the bar, glanced around to catch every eye on him, and followed Handles into the bowels of the building.
It was like a goddamned fort, that place, an impenetrable fortress in the middle of these big, open fields in Nowheresville, Maryland. You couldn’t get a jump on the Sultans. Not with their insane security and paranoid business dealings. Not to mention the firepower those guys had.
Halfway down the inner hall, where the Sultans kept their private on-site quarters, he’d started to feel the cold sweat of anxiety. It wasn’t just a normal event, being summoned like that. No, it was fucking serious.
“Ever taken a lie detector test, Indian?” Handles had asked.
“No,” Clay had lied.
“Me neither,” Handles’d replied, gold-toothed smile destroying his bearded, bald, Daddy Warbucks look.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck. Nobody’d warned him about the test. Thank God he’d trained for this, but fuck, it had been years.
This is good, he realized. Home stretch. McGovern had been threatening to pull him just the other day, and now, if the club was doing this, he had to be close to being a full-patch member. Close to getting in.
Sucking in his belly to quell the nausea brewing there, he’d forced a grin. “Fuck, man. You guys are paranoid.”
“Just keeping the family safe. You seen what happened to the Mongols?”
“No.”
