Shit.
I type back.
Stone
Don’t engage unless necessary. Take a car—if she’s headed somewhere specific, I want you mobile.
Brick
Already on it.
I stare at the phone, wondering what Brick might find—and whether we’ll like the answer when we get it.
8
JOSIE
Three hours after Isabel disappears out the bathroom window, I’m going out of my mind.
Not because of Isabel—though that’s part of it. Brick is tracking her, Stone has people on alert, and there’s nothing I can do from here except worry.
No, the real problem is simpler and more infuriating.
I’m bored.
The clubhouse is full of people doing things—important things, urgent things—and I’m stuck on this couch like a decorative pillow, forbidden from working, forbidden from helping, forbidden from doing anything except resting.
Ihateresting.
Maggie has confiscated my laptop. Ginger has hidden my phone charger. Emma has cheerfully threatened to sit on me if I try to get up again. The Stoneheart MC women have formed a unified front against my productivity, and they’re terrifyingly effective.
So I sit. And I stew. And I watch the clock tick by, minute by agonizing minute.
I’m so bored I decide to call my parents and tell them about the crash. In unsurprising news, they send me to voicemail. About half an hour later my mother sends a text.
Mother
Thinking of you, sweetheart. Get well soon!
My father follows up an hour later asking if this would affect my billable hours. Neither of them offered to come. But I expected nothing different.
By 5 PM, I’ve memorized every crack in the ceiling. By 6 PM, I’ve counted the bottles behind the bar (forty-seven). By 7 PM, I’m seriously considering making a break for it, broken ribs be damned.
That’s when Stone finds me.
He appears in the doorway looking like he’s been running on caffeine and willpower for the past several hours. His hair is disheveled, his jaw shadowed with stubble, and there’s a tension in his shoulders that hasn’t been there this morning.
That’s when Stone finds me.
He appears in the doorway looking like he’s been running on caffeine and willpower for the past several hours. His hair is disheveled, his jaw shadowed with stubble, and there’s a tension in his shoulders that wasn’t there this morning.
He looks exhausted, stressed, and unfairly, devastatingly attractive.
My stupid heart does a little stutter-step in my chest, and I have to look away for a second before I can trust my face not to give me away.
Get it together, Bright.
“You look like you’re plotting,” he says.
