So compelling I can’t get him out of my head.
“Tattoos,” she said, a little ashamed at how curt she must sound but unwilling to feed the obvious curiosity in her employee’s eyes. “He needs them removed.”
Purnima nodded slowly, twice, before lowering her eyes to the screen. “Interesting” was all she said. As always, a mistress of subtlety.
As she continued down the hall to close herself in her office, George looked deep down inside and recognized an embarrassing truth: she didn’t want to discuss Andrew Blane with her nurse or with anyone. She wanted to hide her new patient away, to keep him all to herself in a way that felt shameful. There was something else warring with the shame, however: a thread of titillation or excitement or whatever buzzy spark of interest this was, vibrating through her body.
She had patients to see, but all her wayward brain could think about was that man. This wasn’t healthy, and it wasn’t right, but George couldn’t seem to stop counting the minutes until Andrew Blane walked through her door again. She glanced at the clock.
Maybe he wouldn’t come back at all.
* * *
Too many hours spent hunkered down in the motel room, trying hard not to drink, with only the shitty-ass TV to distract him, was more than Clay could bear. After weeks in the hospital, then months of PT and brain-numbing television, he’d developed a hatred for the device—especially shows that glorified the bad guys. Those were the worst. He’d destroyed his television the first time he’d come across one particular show on bikers.
That had led to his new rule: no vodka during the day, and no TV ever.
Breathing hard and still sore from running the past couple nights—that and beating the shit out of those two kids—he grabbed his keys and headed out the door, needing air, space, anything to distract from the new set of memories working through his mind on repeat.
The doc on the ground, rolled into a protective ball, those fucks kicking her. He’d wanted to kill them, had barely held himself back. Because, yeah, if he killed a couple of tweakers right now, he’d sure screw the hell out of the Sultans case.
But he was a Sultan, now, wasn’t he? More Sultan than cop, that was for damned sure. He’d seen the way everyone looked at him back at the field office after his discharge from the hospital. Jesus, his colleagues had eyed him like he was scum.
Course then Tyler’d caught sight of him, and everything had changed. What a shock it had been when they’d eventually stopped typing and set down their phones, and stood up for him. A few of them had even clapped. A huge case. With him at its center.
Didn’t matter that he didn’t feel like a hero.
In his truck, he looked both ways before pulling away from the downtown area, where traffic had thickened only slightly during what passed for rush hour in Blackwood.
Ahead of him stood the first small foothills before the slightly grander line of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He knew, looking at the beauty of their bluish-purple crests, that he should feel something. He’d spent so much time in slums and projects, filthy biker clubhouses and run-down police stations that he hardly recognized the power of beauty anymore. Maybe it was gone forever—that ability to see the good in things.
He drove on, unsure where this road led, and enjoying the lack of control. Well, not entirely that, maybe, because lack of control was something he’d felt time and again in situations where some psychopath held the reins. That wasn’t what he sought.
No, what he needed right then was to feel like anything was possible.
Up he drove, over asphalt, then gravel, then just dual, overgrown tracks in the dirt leading higher and higher.
Finally, long past the End State Maintenance sign, he parked, truck facing back the way he’d come, and got out. Up a path he walked, ignoring the way his steel-toed boots rubbed his feet with every step, until the trees thinned, the trail grew rockier, and finally, finally, he emerged.
It was high here—the top of a mountain. The air had lost some of its oppressive humidity and heat, and here…oh, here, he could breathe.
And the view… Jesus Christ. He turned around 360 degrees, an action that forced him to take it all in until he couldn’t do it anymore and had to bend, drop his hands to his knees, and breathe.
Just breathe.
Survive.
The polygraph had been about survival. Animal instinct and training had gotten him through that. Later, they’d given him his colors, the Sultans patch sewn onto the sleeveless leather cut he and the other guys wore every single day of their lives. He remembered the feel of Handles’s arm around him—fatherly, welcoming, warm. Jesus, that was almost the worst part, how good it had been to have brothers—a family. The only thing that had come close in years had been finishing Special Agent Basic Training with Tyler. They’d been like family back then too.
Nothing like Handles and the club’s acceptance, though. The cut, the rides, the way he could do no wrong with them, now that he’d beaten the box, survived the hazing, accepted his patch with tears in his fucking eyes, gotten his ink, and been proud—truly proud—of it.
Jam had hugged him, hard, and Clay had felt it deep in his soul. Brothers. Family.
He remembered Ape’s scowl when the asshole had taken him in back for his club tat—the big one on his back. But while the dude had always hated him, he sure as fuck had enjoyed tattooing him. Jesus, Ape loved that shit, didn’t he? The light in his eye confirming he was one hundred percent sadist.
Ape, who’d disappeared the night of the raid—one of a handful of guys they hadn’t managed to pin down. How the hell had he known?
On a deep sigh, Clay pulled his brain back out, let himself see the mountains instead of memories.
