Stone Deep: An Alpha Bad Boy Romance (Stone Brothers Book 3) (3 page)

“If he killed her, shouldn’t the police be after him?”

I thought about the whole ugly story, the voicemail I’d missed, the coroner’s report, Perris’s final plea for help. All of it spun through my head day after day. “It’s complicated. All I know is, my other half is gone, and I won’t ever be whole again.”

The room was quiet and dark as I lay in his arms. It was the most content I’d felt in a long time. I covered my mouth to stifle a yawn. “I think those energy drinks are finally out of my system, or maybe you’re just that comforting to snuggle up against.” It was late summer but the nights on the coast were always damp and cold. The crummy motel room was chilly. I wriggled closer. “Like a big, soap scented, tattooed warm bear whose skills, by the way, did not disappoint.”

“That’s good to hear.”

I sighed. “Thanks, Bolt, for carrying my silly ass out of that bar before I got flattened.” I closed my eyes. “And thanks for this. I really needed it.”

“Anytime, Tink.”

Chapter 5

Slade

A loud knock woke me from a deep sleep. “It’s past checkout time. You’ll have to pay for another night if you don’t get out now,” the voice said sharply through the door.

I opened my eyes and looked around the shadowy room. The faded drapes had blocked out the sun enough to keep me fast asleep. I looked over at the dented pillow next to me and sat up. Her clothes were picked up, and the bathroom door was open. She was gone. She’d been so unreal, I almost wondered if I’d just imagined her. But her sweet perfume still lingered on my skin and on the sheets.

I was fucking bummed, which shocked the hell out of me. How many times had I swept up my shoes and tiptoed out of a girl’s room? Now it had happened to me, and I was realizing just how bad it sucked to have someone take off without saying a word. Guess this was payback for being an asshole.

Another knock.

“I’m leaving right now,” I called.

I climbed out of bed and pulled on my jeans and shirt. I picked up my shoes. There was a piece of paper inside one of them. I pulled it out. It was a coupon for another night in the room. There was writing on the back. “I’m really bad at saying good-bye. I hope those scars heal completely one day. XO Britton. PS. if I ever find my magic fairy dust, I’ll be sure to send some your way.”

I reread the note three times before folding it and putting it into my pocket. I fished out my phone as I walked out the door. The grumpy motel manager scowled at me before stomping back into his office. I dialed Hunter.

“What?”

“Good morning to you too, ass. I’m stuck near the highway right off the Tatter Lane exit.”

“Yeah,” he mumbled, his mouth full with something, “good for you. What do you want from me?”

“A ride would be nice. My keys are on my dresser.”

“Fuck, Slade, I’ve got shit to do.”

“Then send Street. Tell her I’ll wait by the onramp near the bus bench with the creepy looking realtor picture.”

“I’ll come get you, but it’s gonna cost you a twelve pack.”

I hung up and headed toward the bench. My mind rolled back to the night before and the petite cutie with the slightly hoarse and extremely sexy voice. Pretty much everything about her was hot. It was definitely a motel room hook-up I wouldn’t soon forget. I couldn’t get rid of the disappointing feeling that kept inching into my gut knowing that I wasn’t ever going to see her again. It seemed she had a lot of shit going on in her life. Hopefully, she’d find a way out of it all.

I sat on the bench. The morning sun was starting to burn off the layer of coastal fog. It would be another warm summer day. I’d planned to wake up and head out for some bodysurfing, but that idea had been squashed by my over sleeping in the dingy motel room. The water and sand would already be too crowded for a decent morning of waves. The offshore breeze that came with the afternoon temperatures usually made the swells choppy and flat.

I glanced at my phone. The batteries were nearly dead. Cleveland had sent a text last night. “The bar owner called the cops to check out the gun the girl dropped. Turned out to be a real looking toy gun. Where did you end up?”

I didn’t have enough juice in my phone to text back, so I stuck it in my pocket, leaned back against the creepy realtor’s smiling face and closed my eyes. If I knew my brother, he’d take his sweet fucking time. Thinking about the girl and the almond shaped brown eyes that took up half of her face, my mind melted into a sleepy, satisfied state. With the sun to warm me and the traffic at this particular onramp being almost nonexistent, I was close to dozing off when screeching tires startled me awake. The faded gray cargo van had pulled up directly in front of the bench. It took me a second to get my bearings. In the distance, I saw my own car rambling toward me. I stood from the bench just as the van door slid open.

Two of the guys from the bar lunged out of the van. They’d caught me by surprise, and before I could dive out of the way, they grabbed me and shoved me headfirst into the van. I swung around, and my fist hit one solidly on the jaw. They hadn’t had time to shut the sliding door before the driver screeched off. The motion sent me backward, and my head smacked the wall of the van. I jumped up, deciding I needed to leap from the vehicle before we hit the highway. As I sprang forward, a horrible stabbing pain shot through my side.

“That was for coming into our fucking bar last night,” the guy with the knife growled.

My hand pressed against my side. Blood seeped between my fingers. The shock at knowing I’d been stabbed stunned me at first, but when I saw his big knuckles and the blade coming at me again, I shot up from my crouch and jumped through the open door. I pulled my body tight and rolled as I hit the hard dirt lining the road. The impact knocked my shoulder out of whack, but I could hardly feel it over the searing hot gash in my side. Road grit stuck to the blood that was soaking my jeans and shirt. My body was writhing with the pain and an angry voice in my head was asking ‘Is this it? Am I finished with this life?’

A cloud of dust kicked up, and I heard more tires screech behind me. “Slade!” Hunter yelled.

I pushed to sitting and struggled to get to my feet. Hunter had the phone to his ear as he ran toward me. Just as I got my feet under me, my head spun and I collapsed.

Hunter caught me before my ass hit the dirt. “I’ve got you.” He lowered me slowly to the ground. He yanked off his shirt, balled it up and pressed it against the knife wound.

In the haze, I saw a few more faces leaning over us. “I just gave the highway patrol a description of the van,” a man said to Hunter.

“Thanks.” Hunter’s free arm went around my shoulder, reminding me of when we were kids hiding in my closet trying to avoid our drunken old man. Sometimes, when we had been really scared, Hunter would put his arm around me to stop the shaking.

Every movement hurt. “Fuck.” I felt my body and mind weakening from blood loss, pain and shock. “Do you think I’m going to die? Not a great ending just bleeding to death out on the fucking onramp.”

Hunter pressed his hand harder against the blood flow. My side had grown numb. “Don’t you even fucking think about it, Slade. Do you hear me? Just hold it together until we get you to the hospital.”

Sirens sounded in the distance. I rested my head against his shoulder. “Fuck,” I repeated. I looked down at the blood soaked shirt he held against my side. “Guess I’m going to owe you a twelve pack and a shirt now.” I could feel consciousness drifting out of reach.

“The ambulance is here, so hang on, buddy.” Hunter’s voice sounded different, less confident, less strong as it floated through the fog in my head. He reached up and rubbed my head. “Hope she was fucking worth it, dude.”

A fleeting image of the girl went through my mind. “She looked like fucking Tinkerbell. And yeah, she was worth it.”

Chapter 6

Britton

In my attempt to slip by Nina’s cubby without her seeing me, I’d taken the extra long route through the employee lunchroom and out the far door. But, it seemed, nothing short of an invisibility cloak was going to do the trick.

“Brit, wait,” Nina squealed.

I froze and smiled weakly back at her over my shoulder. She’d changed her hair color yet again, this time opting for a dark red henna color. It didn’t seem to be working with her fair complexion, but who was I to judge? I’d been walking around with a pixie haircut for three months. It had been a drastic attempt to change the way I looked. One impossibly hard thing about losing an identical twin was seeing that person’s face in the mirror every morning.

The wheels on Nina’s chair squeaked as she nearly leapt from it. I liked Nina. She was my closest friend in the office, but I wasn’t ready to talk to her about the weekend. I’d told her I was going down to the beach to clear my head.

She shuffled in her ridiculously high heels toward me. “I’ll follow you to your cubicle,” she said. “I want to hear all about your weekend.” She stopped suddenly and looked me up and down. “Shit, you look like you just stepped out of a clothes hamper. Wait, weren’t you wearing that skirt and blouse on Friday?”

I took hold of her arm and led her to my cubicle. I didn’t need everyone in the office hearing our conversation.

She dropped into the chair next to my desk. “You didn’t go home, did you?“

I stuck my purse under my desk, sat in my chair and turned on the computer. Nina was waiting for an answer. She knew that I was having a hard time adjusting to life without Perris, but she had no idea that I’d been out trying to find Damon. I’d told her some of the important surface stuff, but that was all. I didn’t need her to know more. She was one of those people who tended to give way too much unwanted advice.

“Brit, where are you staying?”

“Around. Look, I couldn’t stay at home anymore. I need to find a place of my own. Every day that I’m there, I lose a little piece of myself.” I took a deep breath. “Let’s drop the subject. I’ve got to get started on the reports, Nina.” I looked at her. “Please.” She was usually pesky about getting info from me, but she also knew when she’d stepped into a topic I didn’t want to dig through.

She reached forward and took my hand. “If you need a place to stay just let me know. Our house is small, but my mom won’t mind and she’s a great cook.”

Her generous offer made me feel guilty for cutting her off and dismissing her so quickly. “Thanks, but I’m fine. Meet you in the lunchroom at noon?”

“Sure thing.” She left looking more than a little hurt, but there wasn’t one moment of the weekend I could tell her about. It had started with my insane plan to point a gun at Damon’s brother and had ended in a motel bed with a complete stranger. I was still having a hard time convincing myself it had happened.

I leaned back in my chair and waited for my desktop to load. My reflection, Perris’s reflection, stared back at me in the monitor. That was the hardest part. Not being able to pick up the phone and dial my sister’s number to tell her about my weekend with the incredibly hot guy who saved me from getting pulverized and who had me pressed up against the wall of a motel room for the best sex I’ve had in a damn long time. I didn’t have that option anymore. Nina was a friend and we could talk about a lot of things, but I’d only ever told my deepest secrets to Perris. Now I had to keep them buried deep inside.

Tanner from accounting knocked on my cubicle. His arms were filled with reports, data that I had to enter into the system. “Here you go. I’m afraid it’s a big pile for Monday.” He looked down at me. He was one of those guys who had more fashion sense than most women, and it was obvious he spent a lot of time in front of the mirror. “You all right? You look like you were out late.”

Everyone in the office had their nosy parker hats on today. “I’m just peachy, Tanner. Anything else?”

“Nope. Just wanted to make sure you were all right.” Everyone knew that my twin sister had died and that I’d taken it extremely hard. In truth, they’d all been really supportive.

He turned to leave, looking just as hurt as Nina.

“Wait, Tanner.”

He turned back around.

“I’m sorry for sounding bitchy. I didn’t get much sleep last night. But thanks for asking.”

“Sure thing, Britty. Let me know if you need some help with those.”

I opened the first of many folders and sighed at the pile in front of me. My mind had been anywhere but work lately. As I pulled up the first report, my phone buzzed. I glanced at it and sighed again. The good thing about texts was that they could easily be ignored. I put the phone down and got to work. Three minutes later, it rang. I knew who it was before I picked it up.

“I’m at work,” I said sharply.

“You didn’t come home last night.”

“Told you I wasn’t going to come home.”

“Damn, Britton, we need to talk. What the hell are you doing? Are you still out chasing fucking ghosts? She’s gone and there’s nothing anyone can do to bring her back.”

I blinked back tears. “I’ve got work to do and as always, Ryan, thanks for being so damn understanding.” I hung up.

Two seconds later the phone rang again, and I was pissed enough now to answer it. “And another thing—”

“Britton?” The deep voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it at first. “What the hell are you up to? Two of Kyle’s friends just got arrested.”

“Damon?” I sat forward. I could feel my pulse pounding in my ears. “Where are you?”

He laughed. “As if I’d tell you.”

“I just need to talk. I need to know. And I want to collect her things, her diary, anything that meant something to her.” I heard the edge of hysteria in my voice but couldn’t stop it.

“There’s nothing to talk about. Why do you need her stuff?”

“Because you are a fucking douchebag, and I don’t want you near anything that belonged to her.”

“I’ve got it in a box. I was going to dump it.”

“Holy shit, you’re such a fucking asshole.” A few heads turned from surrounding cubicles, and I shrank down in my chair. “You never deserved her.” My voice broke.

“Yeah, you’ve told me that before. But the truth is, Britton, you just don’t want to face the fact that your sister was a drug addict. And she died of an overdose because that’s what junkies do.”

His words were so cruel, so harsh, that I had a hard time absorbing them. He’d left me frozen with hatred. I wanted so badly to see him hurt. I wanted him to suffer like my sister had, like I had.

“Now, leave my brother alone. He’s just lucky he wasn’t with his buddies when they went after your friend.”

I sat up. “What friend? What the hell are you talking about?”

“You’re little stunt Saturday night triggered some ugly retaliation against your tattoo boy. He embarrassed Kyle’s buddies in their usual hangout, and they were pissed. They went after the guy.”

My hands were shaking so much I nearly dropped the phone as I sat forward. “What do you mean? What the hell are you talking about?” My coworkers were trying hard not to pay attention, but it seemed everyone’s ears were turned my direction. I lowered my voice. “What did they do?”

For a second, it seemed he might hang up on me. “Damn it, Damon, I won’t go near Kyle again. What the hell did they do?”

“Heard they stabbed the guy.”

I braced my free hand on the desk to keep myself upright. Every drop of blood drained from my face, and the Plexiglas cubicle walls seemed to swirl around me. From the corner of my eye, I could see Nina walking toward me. I was sure I would puke right there on my desk and on the day’s stack of files. Nina stepped inside and looked down at me with worry.

I lowered my face and voice. I didn’t want her to know anything that had happened. “Tell me, tell me right now, is he dead?”

The word ‘dead’ made Nina gasp.

“Don’t know. I just know they arrested Kyle’s buddies. Now stay the hell away from me.” He hung up, and the phone slipped from my hand and bounced on the floor.

“My god, Brit, who was that? Who’s dead? You look awful.”

I tried hard to slow my heart, but it was thumping wildly in my chest. It took me a second to gather my wits. “Uh, sorry to scare you, Nina. That—that was my mom in Iowa. My Uncle Charlie had a stroke.” Part of the story was true. My uncle had had a stroke—three Christmases ago. I couldn’t tell Nina the real truth without her thinking me horrid. And I was horrid. I’d pulled an innocent man into my insane obsession. I forced a smile, but I wanted to curl up into a fetal position on the floor of my office and weep. “Thanks for being worried, but I’ll be fine. He’s not dead, and the prognosis is good. It was just a shock to hear, is all.”

She didn’t look the slightest bit convinced.

“Really, Nina, I’m fine.” I put my shaky hand on the stack of files. “I need to get back to work.”

Reluctantly, she turned and walked back to her desk. I yanked the monitor around so that no one could see what I was doing. I searched for local news stories, and the first one to come up was the stabbing of a local fisherman. Again, I felt the room sway as I clicked on the article. I nearly melted into a puddle of relief when I read that he was recovering from the attack in a local hospital. I wrote down the information and jammed the sticky note into my purse.

I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, hoping the dizziness and nausea would slow. Poor Slade. He’d stepped in to help, and he’d wound up in a hospital bed. When the hell had I managed to let my life get this out of control?