Sherlock was impressed. And absolutely ready to wrap up the chitchat. His cock was about to tear through his jeans. “You make your calls?”
“Got what I needed with one. Everybody I know but Blake got clear. Nobody’s heard from him, though.”
“Blake?” That was the second time she’d said the name. Hot as Sherlock was for her, he wasn’t interested in getting caught in the middle of a couple. He’d ridden that ride with Taryn, and it sucked.
“My friend. He’s sort of our leader. He’s been arrested a bunch of times. He says he knows the drill.”
He nodded. Good. Enough of that, then. “Sadie. Come here.”
Her expression turned sly. “Is this where you start telling me what to do?”
When he didn’t answer, she came to him. That sly look became shy as she stood before him and looked up, and she seemed incredibly young and innocent. He cast his eyes along her arm. The gauze over the through-and-through was beginning to show red seepage.
“How’s your arm?”
She looked down at it. “Hurts, but it hurts so much it’s almost numb. I guess I’m getting used to it.”
“Good. Don’t move it much, or you’ll pull the stitches.” She should have it in a sling, but he didn’t have one to offer her.
What the fuck was he doing?
He bent down and took her mouth again; she swayed toward him with a whimper, letting her head drop back, offering herself up to him. Everything he wanted: surrender. Holy hell, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted somebody like this. Not just wanted sex; he wanted that all the time. But
her
. He put his hands around her waist and lifted her off the floor. “Put your legs around me.”
When she did what she was told, also hooking her good arm over his shoulder, he changed his hold on her, seating her securely in his arms. He’d have been surprised if she weighed much more than maybe one-ten. Her legs were thin, and the bones of her ass dug into his forearms.
“What are you going to do?” she asked on a breath.
He turned back toward the kitchen. “I’m going to be a grownup and take you home.”
~oOo~
She’d fought him at first, tried to get loose from his hold, but he was a great deal stronger than she was—and not winged. He kept hold of her until he got to his truck and wrangled her into the passenger seat. After he buckled her into the seatbelt, he leaned over her, his face almost touching hers. “Be still, little outlaw. This is the right thing.” He kissed her forehead, and she simply stopped fighting.
Other than to give him directions, she didn’t speak again. She sat and stared out the side window until he pulled up in front of what she’d said was her building.
She lived in one of those fake loft apartment buildings, not far from the UC campus. Sherlock was surprised; these places weren’t cheap, and she didn’t look like somebody swimming in disposable income. Her phone was top-shelf, too, now that he thought about it. He turned in his seat and considered her in this new light. Did she live with her parents? Shit.
But doubtful—these places were studios and one bedroom units. Unless she was up in the penthouse.
“I’ll walk you to your door.” He rolled his eyes at himself. This wasn’t the end of some date. But he didn’t want to just leave her on the sidewalk, either. He was worried about her. He felt responsible for her.
“No, that’s okay. I’m just right there.” She didn’t point or anything to indicate where ‘right there’ was. As she unbuckled the seatbelt and put her hand on the door handle, she turned to him. “I wasn’t joking. I’m in trouble. I need…”
He reached out and squeezed her leg. “That’s why, sweetheart. Fucking a stranger is a bad idea when you’re doing it like that. You have a sponsor?”
She nodded.
“Call your sponsor. That’s what you do when you feel like that. You don’t go looking for a different kind of fix.”
“This is the drunk in denial preaching now?” she sneered.
A jagged shard of anger spiked his spine, and he took his hand back. “This is the guy who’s lived a lot of years with a junkie brother. Call your sponsor. I’ll sit here with you while you do it, and I’ll wait with you.”
“No. Fuck you.” She got out of the truck, almost falling as she misjudged the height of the cab, and then slammed the door. When he didn’t pull away, she flipped him off and shouted. “GO!”
He put the truck in gear and drove away. She wasn’t his responsibility.
When he looked in the rearview mirror before he turned the corner, she was still standing right where he’d left her.
~oOo~
He’d remembered to set his alarm, and he actually managed to get out of bed when it went off the next morning. He sat on the side of the bed, head in hands, until the room stopped tossing about. When he felt like he could walk in something resembling a straight line, he got up and went about his hangover routine: cold shower, greasy breakfast, much coffee.
Then he went to the bedroom that served as his headquarters and home office, sat down at the bank of monitors: two wide monitors that were his computer screen, and the twenty-eight monitors on the walls that were his security lens to the exteriors of the clubhouse, shop, and Hoosier’s, Bart’s, Connor’s, Lakota’s and his house. Only officers got security feeds connected both here and to his office at the compound, mainly because he just didn’t have any room for more—but also because officers were at the greater risk.
These setups sucked major power from the grid, too, and got mighty hot. He’d insulated and shielded both locations from infrared search, but there was only so much he could do to obscure the power draw. He had solar panels on his roof and on the clubhouse, but it wasn’t enough. The right person looking would see that he was doing something that took a peculiar amount of power.
The best security in this digital world was not to be digital. He pulled everything that could be used against them offline immediately; he’d written code so that his system could recognize trouble even if his own eyes weren’t on it, and then bury it somewhere only he could find it, where he would then pull it offline and erase its trail. But no human-designed system was foolproof. Humans were fools by nature.
While he sat at his desk, plotting out a new bi-directional route—drugs up and guns down—through the northern half of the country, Sherlock’s focus was for shit. He was worried about the little outlaw. Sadie. Had he abandoned her to a relapse? Should he have fucked her?
He’d wanted to. Damn, he really had. He could imagine that small, soft body in his hands, his mouth. And she’d surrendered to him completely.
She’d wanted it, too. He should have fucked her.
No. He’d have been taking advantage. She hadn’t really known anything but the need, and that wasn’t a good place to be making decisions from. He didn’t know why he cared so much about her recovery—she was a damn stranger, and she’d forced him into that whole situation, anyway.
No, that wasn’t true. Sitting at his desk with his hand holding up his forehead, he knew why he cared. She reminded him of Thomas. Not because they were alike, but because they were different. Thomas didn’t even try. He made the occasional half-assed effort to look like he was trying—whenever their mom finally got to the point that she was ready to cut him off—but he never really wanted to be clean.
Sadie was wrong about his brother. Thomas hadn’t started because he’d needed help dealing with something. They’d had an okay life, even without a dad and with their mom working all the time. They’d been good on their own. He’d started because he’d wanted to be cool.
Sherlock could see it, though—something in her eyes, or the way she carried herself, something that said that Sadie had really had some shit to deal with. And she was. She was fighting, trying to be better. Even trying to make the world better, too, in her silly, idealistic way.
He admired her. And he was worried about her.
After he finished working out the route, he did some personal research.
CHAPTER SIX
Sadie was furious. And humiliated. She stood on the sidewalk and watched his stupid, ginormous, guzzly black pickup drive away. It was just getting dark, and his taillights shone bright red as he turned at the intersection.
He’d just picked her up and carried her off, like some kind of caveman. A caveman in reverse, she guessed. He’d carried her
out
of his cave.
For the few seconds before he’d told her where he was taking her, she’d really enjoyed being in his arms like that. No one had ever carried her that way before—not since she was grown, anyway. It had felt safe. The fizzing had started to settle down right away. And then he’d said he was taking her home, and the fizzy foamed back up with a vengeance.
Well, he’d said he was a control freak.
She liked him. He’d saved her, and tended to her, and he was hot, and he was a geek. And also, strangely, a biker. One of the Night Horde guys. And hot damn, could he kiss. She liked the thought that he was bossy in the sack, too. That had turned her on extra much—which had sort of blindsided her, actually. Usually she initiated. Since she’d started having sex because she wanted to, at least. It had always felt safer to her to be the one bringing sex into the equation.
In fact, she’d initiated with Sherlock. But then he’d turned it all around somehow and had taken the lead. And then he’d rejected her.
Sadie was confused. And in trouble. She was afraid to go into her own house. Not because she had drugs there—she didn’t have anything but aspirin in there—but because she had other things, things she used when she needed to cope. But she didn’t want to use those, either.
She pulled her phone out of her jeans and opened her Contacts list.
Gordon’s cigarette-ravaged voice answered on the second ring. “Hey, smarty pants.”
“Gord, I’m in trouble.”
“Where are you? Were you in that mess at the courthouse?”
“I’m home. And yeah.”
“Shit. Ten minutes, Sade. Sit tight.”
“Okay, thanks.”
She ended the call and sat down on the step at the end of the sidewalk that led to her building. The night was hot and still, and even in the last rays of sunset, the heat waved off the surface of the street. She wrapped her good arm around her legs and laid her head on her knees.
What a weird fucking day.
~oOo~
Sadie lived only a few blocks from the UC Riverside campus, and when classes were in session, street parking was a nightmare. All the buildings on the block shared a residents’ parking lot in back. So when classes were out, like now, the street stayed fairly empty. Gordon was able to pull his big old Acura into the same spot Sherlock had vacated ten minutes before.
She stood and went to the car. The automatic door lock made a heavy chunking sound just as she reached for the handle. Before she’d even settled herself in the air conditioned cool of his leather interior, Gordon asked, “What in the Lord’s holy name happened to you?”
The blood on her clothes had hardened to a crust. She probably should have gone in to change clothes. Luckily, everything she was wearing was dark. “It’s a long story. The whole day is one weird, long story.”
He shifted the car into drive. “Buckle up, then, smarty. You need comfort food.”
She knew where he was going; he’d taken her to the same place almost every time she’d called him in need: the Blue Lotus Buffet, a massive place that sounded Chinese but offered buffet bars of everything: Chinese and Korean food, sushi, pizza, pasta, fried chicken, plus big salad and dessert bars. One price for everything, and Gordon always heaped his plate at least twice—and demanded that she heap hers at least once.
When they were seated at a booth near a window, sipping Diet Cokes and digging into the chaos of their hodgepodge plates, Gordon finally said, “From the top.”
Sadie told him everything: how they’d set up at the courthouse, how psyched they’d been to see that a good-size crowd of people had shown up, how for most of the afternoon, everything had been normal. She’d even been bored, standing there handing out information flyers and directing people with signs to stand the way Blake had instructed—so that they weren’t all clumped together but also so that a lot of signs would show up in photos being taken by the professional media and by people with their phones. As the afternoon had drawn toward a close, Blake had spent more time with the bullhorn, getting people pumped up for when the parties involved in the suit left the courthouse.
Valiant Energy had tried for a change of venue but had failed. That was why they’d gotten a decent crowd, Blake had said—because the towns most affected were San Bernardino County towns. People there had been affected, or knew somebody who had, or knew somebody who knew somebody—or, at least, had heard of the towns, maybe had gone though them. It felt personal, close to home.
During their planning meetings, Blake had crowed about the chance they had. People would care.
And it looked like he’d been right. And then there’d been that shot. And then there’d been shots everywhere.
“I still don’t know everything that happened. Chloe and Grant said that at least eleven protesters required medical attention. I saw online that three cops got hurt. And nobody’s heard anything about Blake yet. I saw him get slammed with a rifle butt.”
Gordon reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “That’s what I heard, too. A bunch of arrests, too. I’ve heard numbers from over a hundred to forty-three. It’s good you got away.”
“Blake made me run—and then I was just running because I was terrified. A cop chased me all the way down the block. And he
shot
me.” She put her hand over the gauze on her arm. The whole arm felt like a hunk of hot iron attached to her neck.
“Lord, Sadie.” Gordon sighed and tutted. “Where’d you go to get fixed up?”
And here came the tough part. “Um…I was running, and the cop was still chasing me, and traffic was at a standstill, and then this huge motorcycle jumped the curb, and he was right there, so I…I jumped on and told him to go. He saw the cop and took off. He…uh…he took me to his place and stitched me up.”
Gordon’s eyes flared wide, but he said nothing. Sadie looked down and picked at the shrimp fried rice on her plate. “He was…he was nice.”
“Sadie...there’s more. I can hear it in your voice.”
Yeah, there was more. A lot more. Or not much more at all, depending on one’s perspective. Sadie put her mouth around her straw and sucked the rest of her Diet Coke down. “I need a refill. You?”
With a sigh pregnant with meaning, Gordon sat back and waved at his half-empty glass. “Sure. You’re not getting out of coming clean, though.”
“I know. Just need a minute.” She got up and went to the soda machine.
When she returned, Gordon had sat forward again and was digging into his dinner with gusto. “Come on,” he said around a California roll, “what’s the rest?”
So she told him the rest. All the way up to watching his truck drive away.
Gordon kept on eating, almost like he hadn’t paid attention to the last part of her story at all. Finally, she said, “I was afraid if I went back inside, I’d get out my little box. That’s why I called you.”
He sipped at his soda, then wiped his face and hands with a paper napkin and sat back again. She knew Gordon understood what box she meant. He was the only one outside of rehab who knew about that.
“You didn’t feel like you had to get high?”
“Not once the Oxy was out of sight.”
“You wanted to fuck, and when you couldn’t do that, you wanted to cut.”
It was never not strange to hear the word ‘fuck’ come out of Gordon’s mouth. He was in his fifties, and his hair was fully grey. That made him look older than he was. And he always wore a sport coat over a button shirt, like he was on his way to lunch at the club.
“Yeah. I guess.”
He squinted at her. “I’m trying to decide if that’s progress. You’re shifting to your coping mechanisms, and that’s good. But you need better coping mechanisms, smarty. Those are destructive, too. You’re lucky that biker guy wasn’t a son of a bitch. He was right, you know. He did the right thing, bringing you home. Should’ve stayed with you, but it sounds like you made that option pretty unpleasant, and I guess he’s not a saint.”
Sadie blushed and plowed a shrimp through its bed of rice. “I guess.”
“You need to find something that gives you peace and turn your attention to that.”
She dropped her forked and glared across the table at her sponsor. “I’m
trying
. I tried the whole wellness-meditation-mindfulness stuff in rehab, and I’ve been trying the Wicca-Gaia-elemental-balance stuff lately. The Wicca stuff makes some sense to me, but none of it occurs to me when I need it. It’s all too mellow. I tried to be mindful this afternoon, and I was in the middle of a freaking bizarre situation that I did
not
want to be fully present in. I don’t know how to be mellow or mindful or…fuck, or just balanced. I’m running and training as much as I can, and that helps, but I can’t run all day long. I got involved with Blake’s crew because you said I needed purpose, and now look where I am. I was supposed to just be informing the public, not running from the police and getting shot. I got
shot
, Gordon! Twice! It hurts so much! At least when I’m cutting I know when it’s going to stop and start. That feels good. Knowing that.”
Gordon’s voice was low and kind when he said, “You’re a control freak, too, Sade.”
She’d told him everything about her day. Even that. At Gordon’s comment, she laughed. “Well, then, I suck at it.”
“Yeah, you do. You need to find something that gives you focus and keeps you out of harm’s way. Maybe you should think about backing out of that group.”
She shook that idea away. “I can’t just say, ‘Sorry! Shit got too real! Gotta go!’”
“Why not? You didn’t sign up for what happened.”
“Because the fight matters. And it’s not Blake’s fault this happened.”
Gordon picked up another sushi roll with his chopsticks. He asked, “You sure about that?” and plopped the roll in his mouth.
“What do you mean? It was the cops. I was there.”
Still chewing, he replied, “Yes. But so were a lot of other people. A
lot
of people. You didn’t see who started shooting, did you?”
“No. But cops were the only ones I saw with guns.” The afternoon began to play behind Sadie’s eyes. Had she seen anyone other than people in riot gear with guns? No. She was sure she hadn’t. Or had she? She couldn’t remember.
“The only ones you
saw
. What if somebody in the crowd started shooting? That might explain—not excuse, but explain—why the cops were so extreme. That’s what the cops are reporting—that they were fired on from the crowd.”
Despite her suspicion about the cops’ take on the day, she supposed that could be true. It was irrelevant, however. “Even so, that’s not on Blake.”
“Maybe not. But the name Fred Blake is cropping up on the news. Looks like he’s been attached to a lot of violent protests. Dr. King the man is not.”
“You’re saying he set this whole thing up. No. No way. He listens to Miles Davis and smokes clove cigarettes. He’s a pacifist.”
Gordon put his hands up as if in surrender. “Okay. I only met the guy the one time, so what do I know. But I am saying that either way, it’s perfectly reasonable for you to step away after what happened this afternoon. Especially with what you’ve got going on in your life.”
“And do what?”