BILLIONAIRE BIKERS: 3 MC Romance Books (51 page)

Bill shook his head. “I feel the need for some back up.”

“How do you know it wasn’t Brighton making the sounds and disturbing the order of things?”

“I don’t. Something just don’t feel right, though.”

“Get Audra and get downstairs to the library. Lock the door from the inside and don’t let anyone in until you know who it is.”

The library was the only room in the house without windows, so it made a good safe room.

Lucas slung his holster over his undershirt and slipped into his shoes. He eased out the door and stood on the front porch, listening. Bill was right about the eerie silence. Frogs should have been really loud with the creek that ran right outside the backyard wall. He looked up and down the street. Fortunately, the house was landscaped in such a way that there was nowhere to hide. No vehicles were in sight other than in people’s driveways, close to their garages.

He went back inside, through the kitchen, and out into the backyard. He tried to peer into the trees, wishing to hell he had his night-lens binoculars with him. The sound that Bill had described came, sounding like something bumping against a hollow barn door in the breeze, except that there was no breeze.

Bill gently woke Audra and told her they needed to go to the library. She got up quickly and donned her robe, following Bill down the stairs. In the library, Bill stood by the door with it cracked so he could see and hear what was happening.

Audra stood a little way into the room with her arms crossed.

“What’s happening?”

Bill just shook his head without looking back at her. After a minute, he seemed to be satisfied for the moment, and he shut the door, locking the deadbolt.

“Sit down, sweetheart,” he said.

She sat on one of the leather chairs—but on the edge with her arms crossed in front of her.

“Just an extra precaution.”

“Come on. More than that, or you wouldn’t have gotten me out of bed and brought me to the safe room.”

“I think we’re all a little on edge,” Bill responded.

She nodded.

He leaned against the wall by the door, but adopted a casual stance, hoping to ease her anxiety.

# # #

As if on cue, the crickets and frogs started up in chorus, indicating that any danger they had sensed had passed. Lucas stood there for a few more minutes, but then took their singing as a sign himself and went back inside.

Brighton was standing in the kitchen when Lucas returned.

“What’s going on?” Brighton asked.

“Where were you just now?”

“I just came from my room.”

“From your room?”

“Yeah, I sat out back a little bit, then was on the can.”

“You didn’t hear Bill knock?”

“Nope.”

“Bill has Audra in the library. Go give them the all clear.”

Brighton backed out of the kitchen with a nod. He knocked on the library door. “All clear,” he said.

Bill nodded to her, and she got up. He took her by the arm and escorted her around the corner and up the stairs. She wouldn’t look at Lucas.

“Just a precaution, Miss Donahue. I hope you weren’t inconvenienced,” Lucas said. The comment dripped with sarcasm, and she pretended not to hear.

This was going to be unbearable, she thought. Could she complain? But to whom would she complain? Everything was going to hell in a hand basket. Lucas was being so unprofessional. If need be, she’d ask to have her meals brought to her room, and she’d just stay holed up for however long it took.

A few minutes later, a small pickup started up from in front of an empty house down the street where it had been sitting in a driveway. It pulled slowly past The Nestor House and then wound down to Main Street and onto Highway 4.

The next morning, Lucas decided to patrol the neighborhood just so he’d be familiar with the homes, vehicles, and the lay of the land. He’d been here before, but things change.

As he cruised down the street, he noticed that the house just a couple of doors down was empty. In his mind, he replayed his survey of the street last night, and he was sure he had seen a pickup in front of it that wasn’t there now.

The yard was only slightly unkempt, but there was a realty sign in the window, and the blank windows spoke of no occupancy. It had been after midnight, and unless the realtor was sleeping there, it was doubtful that anyone would have been there legitimately at that hour.

He pulled into the driveway himself and pressed the number of the realty company into his number pad.

“Calaveras Realty, how may I help you?”

“Hi, the house you have for sale at 613 Nestor Lane, is it occupied right now?”

“Just a moment, let me give you to the realtor for that property,” she said.

“Thank you,” Lucas said, keeping time by tapping on the steering wheel as the seconds ticked by.

“This is Josh. You are inquiring about the Nestor Lane place?”

“Yes.”

“Someone just signed a lease on it this morning.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. It’s a nice looking little place. Someone local or out of town?”

“Someone out of town on a short term lease. The owner is looking to sell it if you are in the market to buy.”

“I was just inquiring, actually, but I’ll let my client know.”

“No problem. Would you be interested in any of our other rentals…?” he asked, but Lucas hit the end button.

If they had just signed the lease this morning, they wouldn’t have been here last night. Of course, it was remotely possible it had been some cleaning company preparing the rental at the last second, but there hadn’t been any visible lights on that he recalled. He was going to have to keep his eye on this.

It was an oversight on the department’s part. They should have rented it to keep out-of-towners out of the neighborhood—but perhaps it hadn’t shown up as an empty rental. The sign in the window definitely read,
For Sale
. Still the department should have been ahead of the game on any empty houses nearby. He cruised the rest of the neighborhood but saw nothing else concerning.

He hoped he had missed breakfast by now as he returned to The Nestor House. He had tossed and turned all night, first seeing Elena’s face in his dreams and then Audra’s.

When he got back to the house, he found Brighton outside her room. Bill was sleeping, and it was Lucas’s watch. He dismissed Brighton, ascertaining that they had, indeed, had breakfast and that Miss Donahue was back in her room.

Brighton headed for the entertainment room, and Lucas retrieved Audra’s file to read it in depth while he sat.

For the first time, he read her own account of the crime. She and friends, one of whom was apparently her boyfriend, had been driving back to Tucson from San Diego along Interstate 8. She needed to pee.
Go figure
, he thought.  They tried to wait until they got to a truck stop, but nothing appeared to be in proximity. They took an exit, even though they saw no signs for services and were quickly confronted with rural crossroads.

I just didn’t want to get out along the road, so we turned down a lane. We saw what looked like an abandoned house at the end of the lane and thought maybe it would be open and have a toilet I could use, running water or not. There were no cars there, so we couldn’t imagine there would be anybody around. Being the dumb kids we are and having read too much paranormal fiction, we decided we would see if we could scare ourselves. We cut the lights and creeped along up to the house. A couple of the girls had already scared themselves silly and weren’t about to go in the house, but the reality was that I still needed to pee. We decided not to go inside, and my boyfriend agreed to wait while I went around the side of the house to squat.

When I got to the side, there was a lot of junk laying around, and I was afraid I might trip or hurt myself, so I moved toward the back of the house and saw a dim light coming from inside. I snuck up to the window and peeked in. The last thing I expected to see was a man on his knees and another man standing over him. Almost simultaneously, I heard a gun go off and the kneeling man crumpled to the floor. I screamed, and the guy who had shot the first guy turned and shot through the window, shooting me in the thigh and again in the side.

The last thing I heard before I passed out was my boyfriend’s car spinning out on the gravel and the sound of the car as it fled the scene.

When I came to, I was laying in a room inside the house. I could see the shooter, and he was putting a body in a bag. I was sure I would be next, but before he finished what he was doing, someone else came in and shot the first shooter. The second guy didn’t look around, he just went right back out of the house, so he didn’t see me.

Shortly after that I heard sirens coming, and the next thing I knew, I woke up in a hospital.

Lucas read on, rapidly, but thoroughly.
Good god. Who had she seen?

Unfortunately for Audra, the story quickly became international news, and the media plastered her picture all over the place. Fucking boyfriend. He just left her there to die and didn’t even look to see if she was okay. His statement said he had thought quickly and decided he could help her better by getting out of there and calling the police. He said it was less than 20 minutes from the time she was shot until the police and ambulance arrived.

“Fucking coward,” Lucas said under his breath.  He was willing to bet that the boyfriend’s decision probably had a rather devastating effect on their relationship.

He read on. She had spent a month in the hospital under guard before she returned home. During that time, she had been able to give the sketch artists an accurate enough description that they were able to identify the second shooter who turned out to be one of the cartel captains, El Toro Blanco, who had eluded them for some time and had even been presumed dead.

A thorough search around the house had produced six other bodies and enough evidence to show that a great deal of drugs had passed through it on its way to other distribution sites. A list of the sites was also discovered in the house resulting in raids and massive arrests; but, there had been no sign of Blanco.

El Toro Blanco!
The White Bull. He had heard all about those raids, but he’d been kept far away from them. He had heard that it was Blanco who was responsible, but he hadn’t believed it. And Audra had seen him with her own eyes.

They had tried letting Audra return to her home where she lived with her grandmother and great uncle, but soon after they had started receiving threatening phone calls. Despite a detail on the house, when Audra had been away, someone had broken in and killed her uncle outright and knocked the grandmother in the head. The grandmother had died shortly after.

Jesus!
If they had been watching enough to bypass the detail, they had known that Audra wasn’t there. It had been a warning.

Three short days later, he had returned to duty, and now here they were. His thoughts agitated him. There was a reason no one had told him what this was all about. He was beginning to feel set up. Blanco was the reason for it all: the reason why he had been under psych eval, why he had to have therapy, and here they were, practically egging him on.

# # #

Near the end of his watch, the door to her room opened. She stood there briefly, and he closed the file which he had gone over and over throughout the day, looking at the minutest detail.

“Oh,” she said, “it’s you.”

“What’s up?”

She noticed the file in his hand. “Nice bedtime story?”

“Not really,” he responded. “A sad tale.”

“Isn’t it though?” she said.

“Why were you living with your grandmother?”

“Another happy chapter,” she replied. “My parents died in a car accident when I was eight.”

Jesus!
he thought. He cast his eyes to the floor, but then forced himself to look at her. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“I bet you are,” she said. “So much sympathy for poor little Audra; but, all that sorrow will quickly go away when she’s out of sight and out of mind.”

“Were you going somewhere?” he asked, his throat tight.

“Just to the entertainment room. I thought I’d see if I could get Brighton to entertain me since you don’t seem to want to,” she said, brushing by him.

Oh, God,
he thought,
if she turned that charm on Brighton.

# # #

Lucas could hear them laughing in the kitchen. They were going to make popcorn and watch a movie.

He went down to the kitchen, and they stopped talking as he walked in. Audra gave Brighton a knowing glance, and they started to laugh again. Slowly, Brighton started heading to the stairs.

“Want some popcorn?” she asked.

“No. We’ll have dinner at 7,” said Lucas.

“Oh. Why does it make me feel like a child when you say that?
Now don’t go spoiling your dinner, little girl
,” she said.

“I don’t know. Why does it?” responded Lucas.

She pushed by him. “I may be late for dinner. Or maybe I won’t come at all.”

“Brighton!” Lucas called.

“Sir?”

“Never mind.”

They turned around and walked up the stairs. Why did he feel like the two of them were going on a date? He was tempted to shut it down, to tell Brighton it was inappropriate, but he had yet to figure out how all of this was going to work. Maybe if he thought more about Blanco than about Audra, he would get mad and stay mad, and the other shit wouldn’t bother him.