Silence. Heavy and thoughtful and just like Aiden. “Doing what?” he asked finally.
“Don’t be obtuse,” I said. “You can be as big of a jackass as you want, but don’t pretend to be a moron. Why, Aiden?”
“Some things just have to be the way they are,” he said, almost sounding regretful. Almost. “I got caught up in you and forgot the rest of the world. Don’t get me wrong—I enjoyed myself. But reality always comes back, Angel. You know that.”
Know that? I didn’t even know what the heck he was talking about right now. “Aiden?”
Movement sounded over the line. “I have to go. I’ll be at your place after dark.” Then he disengaged the call.
After dark? What was he—a vampire now? I bit my lip and tossed my phone to the passenger seat. The top was down on my car, the sun was out and on my face, and I felt like crap. My phone rang again, and I pressed speaker. “Hello.”
“Hey there. Had a feeling I should call,” my cousin, Lacey, said. She was Pauley’s big sister and always had a sixth sense when it came to me.
I sucked in air. “You were right.” Lacey was my best friend and had been since we’d been in diapers. We shared our whole lives, including the worst day for us both. The day I’d been kidnapped, and Aiden had saved me. “How’s the bullet wound healing?”
“I’m fine.” Lacey worked as a cop in Detroit and had been shot the month before. “Tell me about Tess.”
I gave her the entire story, which she’d no doubt already heard from her mom. “What I can’t figure out is what Aiden is doing,” I admitted.
“Talk it through with me,” Lacey said, horns honking around her.
I turned off the freeway toward the apartment complex. “Okay. He was a member of the Lordes Motorcycle Club, and they were part of a drug running operation. He turned against them and saved me, which resulted in many of the members being charged and most taking plea bargains.” Which kept them nicely in prison.
“Okay,” Lacey said. “So far, so good. Then he disappears for two weeks and shows back up in Tessa’s living room over a dead body.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Not only that, but apparently he’s been traveling around and gathering new members for the Lordes. Why would he do that? He was out, they were over, and he could’ve made a fresh start.” It hurt that he hadn’t taken his second chance. Or third. Or however many chances there had been for him.
She sighed. “I checked every contact I could find with the FBI, and he’s not one of them, Anna. He’s not undercover or some hidden hero. Get that out of your head right now.”
“I know,” I said, lying my ass off. “So what’s he doing?”
“Well, there’s only one reason he’d want the Lordes back together. Something is happening.” Lacey was quiet for a few heartbeats, and I heard more horns honking in the background. “They’d be stupid to still be in the drug trade, but criminals are often stupid. There’s a reason he has recruited more members, and I doubt he needs a brotherhood. Have you talked to Detective Pierce about it?”
“No,” I admitted. “For one thing, Pierce doesn’t trust my loyalty to Aiden, which I understand. But Pierce did say something about keeping an eye out for Aiden, and he seemed to know about the Lordes regrouping.” Yeah, I needed to track down Pierce and get him to talk somehow. “First, I’m going to talk to Aiden.”
Lacey was quiet for a few minutes, no doubt struggling between her knowledge as a cop and her knowledge of me as her cousin. “Just be careful, okay?”
“Definitely.” I pulled into the main area in front of the Lordes apartment complex, which was vacant. Silent and still, although a new Lordes banner hung from a balcony on the second floor of the two-story building to the south. “I’ll call you later. Bye.”
“Bye.” Lacey sighed as she hung up.
The apartment complex consisted of two buildings angled toward each other with the parking area in the middle and a forested area across the street. Fields stretched out behind the buildings, and nobody else lived near. The place probably had been built in the seventies, and bullet holes still marred one side of the structure from the gun fight we’d been in last month. I shivered.
Gathering my rapidly dwindling courage, I stepped out of my Fiat to the warm asphalt and looked around. Heat shimmered between the buildings, and not an ounce of breeze calmed the sun beating down. Taking a deep breath, I strode in my flip-flops to the northernmost building and climbed the steps to the second floor, walking past several apartments to Aiden’s.
His blue door was faded, and the doorknob seriously scratched through the metal. Okay. This was trespassing, and I was an officer of the court since I worked in the prosecuting attorney’s office.
But we had been lovers, and maybe I was just visiting him. Yeah. That’d go over like a fart in church. I twisted the knob. Locked. Darn it. I knelt down and studied the wimpy lock. Well, what the heck. Drawing a credit card from my purse, I sliced it down through the side of the door to the lock and then twisted the old knob hard.
It opened easily. Yeah, sometimes the lessons from my Uncle Gino came in very handy as long as my mom never found out about them. That would teach Aiden to have such a cheap lock. I mean, it’s like he wanted somebody to break in. It’s possible I was actually doing him a favor.
With that thought giving me courage, I pushed open the door and stepped inside, instantly holding my breath.
Quiet reined. The place felt…empty. Worn sofa, rickety wooden coffee table, and old television on an even older wooden stand. Dust covered every surface, but the carpet looked fairly clean. It was a gold shag that had mellowed to more of a rust color, and it was a little crunchy under my flip flops.
The picture of a teenaged Aiden and his Grams still sat on the end table by the sofa, and the cheap plastic blinds were up on the one window, showing a view of the dried fields extending to the west.
I gulped in the quiet, shut the door, and turned toward the one bedroom to the right. His bed was made with a thick blue comforter, and the sight caught me off guard. Did bad guys make their beds? A damaged plastic white clothes basket perched in the corner with dirty clothing piled in it.
