Page 28 of Ruin

His eyes met mine in memory of what he’d done to the shirt in question, and he turned and glanced into the bathroom at what I assumed were my jeans on the floor. When he turned back around, he looked thoughtful.

“I’m pretty sure Brock has a bunch of women’s clothes here,” he said. “And maybe some jeans I can borrow.”

I tapped my lips with my pointer finger like I was thinking about that. “And I’m pretty sure Brock is at least ten sizes bigger than you.”

Now he did crack a smile. “You’re right, but Tink isn’t, and he slept here a lot, too.”

He was through the door in a flash, his shirt and boxers the only items of clothing he had on, and I could hear the laughter of the guys in the living room—along with several teasing remarks about how much noise we’d made last night. Brock even asked if I was still alive in here.

“She’s alive, and she needs clothes,” Knight rumbled. “And I need... pants.”

More laughter.

“Fuck, man, are you sure she’s alive?” Remy asked, his voice fading as he walked into, I assumed, the kitchen.

I laughed gently and went into the bathroom to wash my face and see whether I looked like a girl who’d stabbed several men, run from murderers, crashed a bike, and then gotten only three hours of sleep, or if I’d managed to wake up looking human.

I was glad the guys were making Knight laugh.

It would make it easier for him to keep thinking of Tink as ‘isn’t’ rather than ‘wasn’t.’

I TOOK A SIP OF THE steaming hot coffee, then breathed in the heat of it. I’d always loved the way coffee smelled, and I’d wondered before if I could get the same amount of caffeine just from sitting close to a cup. If so, maybe I was getting twice the caffeine by both drinking it and breathing it in right now.

I needed it. The mirror in the bathroom had told me that I looked exactly like a girl who’d stabbed several men, run from murderers, crashed a bike, and then gotten only three hours of sleep.

Remy, on the other hand, looked like he’d never felt more energized in his life.

“Okay,” he was saying. “So we’ve got twenty men in lockup and only fifteen out, and that fifteen includes the five of us here. Those aren’t exactly good odds. We need to figure out how we’re going to make them work.”

“The problem is that we’re so spread out, to start with,” Brock said. “We don’t know where half of our men are, and if they’re smart, they’ve ditched their phones so no one can track them.”

I looked over at the big man, considering. Brock had always seemed larger than life to me, a man so big he should have been in a wrestling arena. I’d never had a conversation with him but had watched him enough to know that he was a gentle giant, more interested in conversation than in violence. I wondered if he’d joined the MC because his brother had wanted to, because he certainly didn’t seem the type. He’d been full of laughter and slow, quiet smiles. Someone you could sit and talk to for hours.

This morning, he looked like whatever had been in charge of lighting him up and bringing him to life had been shut off. A candle without a flame, nothing but cold wax and a mostly burnt wick. He looked as if he’d lost the most important person to him and had lost a piece of his soul with that death.

I didn’t know him well, but I didn’t think he looked like a person who wanted to go on with life. He looked cold and angry and calculating, like he was just waiting for a chance to get back at the men who’d killed his brother.

I hoped he snapped out of it soon, because we needed him. Knight needed him.

To Brock’s credit, his unwillingness to continue living didn’t seem to have affected his ability to plan or work hard. He’d come out of his room with ideas already in hand and had been passing them one after the other to Remy and Knight, waiting for one of them to resonate.

“Everyone will come back to the clubhouse,” Knight said in response to Brock’s observation. “They may have ditched their phones, but the plan has always been to meet at the clubhouse if we’re separated or in trouble. No one’s forgotten that.”

“And what if the clubhouse is being watched?” Remy asked, his eyes snapping. “We know the cops are out for us, Knight. We can’t be where they expect us to be. I’m not walking into another one of their traps.”

Knight leaned forward and cuffed Remy on the arm, grinning. “That’s why we won’t be staying at the clubhouse, old man. But if everyone else going to look there...”

Remy’s face dawned with understanding. “Then we have to make sure they know what’s going on.”

“Exactly.”

CHAPTER 17

KNIGHT

IT WOULD ALMOST HAVE been fun, if we weren’t in so much trouble.

Remy, Brock, and I crept down the alley that ran behind the clubhouse, our backs to the wall of the buildings that surrounded us and our guns up and at the ready. We knew this alley like the backs of our hands, having traveled it at least a thousand times, but we’d never come down it with the absolute certainty that someone was watching us.