Chapter Eleven

Brooks

Fuck.

Fuck.

How could I let that happen?

No, not even let. I'd been a really active participant.

I'd been the one to roll her under me, to explore her, to slip between her thighs and taste her.

And, fuck, did she taste good.

So good in fact, that it was taking everything in me not to turn around, go back in there, and bury myself between her legs again.

Instead, I grabbed one of the donuts out of the box in the kitchen, shoving half of it in my mouth to try to stop obsessing about her.

"Did Boss Man Brooks have overnight company?" Sully asked, coming into the kitchen in nothing but a pair of boxers in, yes, a Hawaiian pattern.

That was not the kind of thing a man bought for himself. I had to imagine the girls club had given it to him for his last birthday.

His hair was mussed and there was a row of lipstick marks down his neck, despite there not having been a party the night before.

"It's not like that," I insisted.

"No?" Sully asked, smirking. "It sounded like that to me a few—"

He didn't finish that sentence.

Because I was across the room, shoving him back against the wall with my forearm across his throat.

"Don't fucking talk about her like that," I snarled.

"Whoa whoa there," Dezi said over a mouth full of donut. "As much as I wholly condone violence in all forms, I have a feeling I should be stepping in here," he said, grabbing me around my elbow as Sully and I glared at each other.

"What's going on here?" Callow asked, coming into the doorway, eyes still red from sleep.

"Running my mouth, as usual," Sully said, but it took more effort than it should have, what with my arm still attempting to crush his windpipe.

"Well, carry on then," Callow said, smirking as he went to peruse the donut selection.

"Didn't know it was like that, man," Sully said, making me loosen my hold, enough that Dezi easily pulled me back.

"It's not."

"Far be it from me to deny a man his secrets," Sully said, suddenly more serious than I'd ever seen him. "But seems like you're going through some shit. Might help if you told your brothers about it."

He wasn't wrong.

I'd been locking shit up since I joined the club, not really having anyone I could speak to once Clay and I were on the outs. It got worse when Fallon gave me a leadership role in the club. That made it feel like I couldn't share, couldn't unburden myself, because I didn't want to look weak in front of the prospects.

Sure, I talked here and there with the guys, but it never got deep.

And grief, yeah, grief was some deep shit.

"Cali is my best friend's baby sister," I admitted, watching as understanding crossed their faces.

Best friend's baby sisters were always off limits.

"He died a few weeks back," I added. "His last wish was for me to keep an eye on her. Shit's… complicated."

"Sorry for your loss, man," Callow said, clamping me on the shoulder for a second.

"I'm sure big brother wouldn't want you fucking and dumping his baby sister," Sully started, saying the obvious thing out loud. "But," he went on. "You ever consider that seeing the two of you together and happy might be exactly what he would have wanted for the two of you?"

Then after dropping that little bomb, he grabbed a small pile of donuts, stacked them on a mug of coffee, and headed out to eat them in front of the TV. Likely watching those fucking rom-coms that he apparently liked.

I hadn't really considered that.

In my mind, Clay would never want my hands—or any other part of me—on his sister.

"I got a sister," Callow said, surprising me with that information, making me realize just how many secrets these prospects still had from the rest of us.

Or maybe it was more accurate to assume that I didn't know because I never spent time with them that didn't involve bossing them around.

"If I were gone, and they had those kinds of feelings, think I'd be alright with my best buddy marrying my sister. Protecting her. Keeping her happy. Just… something to consider," he said before taking his donut and coffee out to the living room with Sully.

"You got any advice for me?" I asked Dezi.

"Who, me? Ah, just… having a chick all to yourself is kinda sweet, man."

"You just say that because she gets you all the donuts you can eat."

"That's a definite perk," he agreed, smirking at me as I turned to get myself a cup of coffee before taking myself back to my room.

I dropped down on the empty bed, her vanilla and rose scent fucking everywhere, making it hard to think past the desire that bloomed through my system again.

The fuck would Clay have wanted in this situation?

Sully was right.

He would have killed me himself if he thought I was using his sister.

But if there were feelings? On both sides? If we wanted to pursue that? Would we have his blessing?

I knew the answer before the question even finished forming.

Yes.

Yes, he would be okay with it.

Clay wanted nothing more than for his sister to be happy. And, when we were close, for the same for me.

If we found happiness in each other, he would have been okay with that. Even happy about it.

After giving me the whole ‘If you hurt her, I'll pull out your guts through your mouth and give it to her as a necklace' speech, of course.

So did I really need to keep my hands off of her now? Out of some misguided idea of honoring his memory.

"Fuck," I sighed, sipping my coffee, trying to clear my mind. Which wasn't going to happen if I kept trying to find arguments for why I could fuck Caliana.

I forced my mind back to why she'd shown up in the first place.

The watch.

She was right.

Clay never would have sold or lost that.

And the shit about the car?

That was rubbing me all sorts of wrong ways.

I didn't want to think Clay was into some shady shit.

Clay had always been the more straight-and-narrow of the two of us, knowing his parents' hearts would break if they found out all the hard work they'd done to keep him on the right path had backfired.

But his parents were long dead.

If shit got complicated, maybe there was a chance that he would seize the opportunity to get a little more in his life.

Fuck, it wasn't like I was one to judge.

Getting up, I went into my closet, finding the box of paperwork from Clay's unusually cluttered desk, and bringing it back to the bed with me.

The Corvette.

The life insurance.

Getting his affairs in order.

It was all spelling out something not great.

And the only thing in his entire life that seemed out of order was this desk.

Was that some sort of sign?

To me, who would know how wrong it was?

To dig deeper.

To find clues he might have left behind?

I didn't know.

But I was damn sure about to find out.

A lot of the paperwork was bullshit. Bills dating back over a year. Shit that would have been paid, since his lights and water were still on.

It was crap to make the pile look innocent. Just your average guy who doesn't care enough to go through and shred their old paperwork.

Nothing to see here.

That was exactly why, as I kept sorting shit, I became more and more sure that there was something to see there.

I looked through the shit for hours, though, not seeing any sort of note, some message to me about what was going on.

Eventually, I piled it all back in the box in the sorted order, deciding I needed some time away from it, to come back with fresh eyes sometime later.

Besides, I had some leads to track down.

About the watch.

The car.

That kind of thing.

Because I got a really bad feeling that none of this was what it seemed like on the surface.

Not even, I had to accept as I got showered and changed to head out, the note he left about keeping an eye on his sister.

It made no sense to pick me when we hadn't been in contact for years. He had no fucking idea what kind of man I'd become.

But one thing he did know?

I was an outlaw biker.

I was someone who specialized in shady shit.

And, yeah, someone who would be capable, if shit hit the fan, of protecting Cali in his absence.

There was a thread here, connecting things, leading to… somewhere.

I just had to follow it.

Cali was right that I wasn't blood, but I was a pretty good liar when the situation called for it. And I had a pocket full of cash if the lies didn't work.

First step was the hospital, but they were sure that all of the possessions of the victim would have gone to the morgue. So that was my next step.

Unfortunately, though, it was another dead end. The possessions would have gone to the next of kin.

And no matter how strong the shock and grief might have been, I was reasonably sure that there was no way Caliana would have missed that.

"Shit," I hissed at the blinding summer sky as I stepped out of the funeral home.

I was nowhere closer to figuring anything out.

What was the next move?

The car?

A fatal crash might not have meant there was much left of it. And my stomach fucking sloshed around at the thought of seeing evidence of the crash. Blood or… anything else.

But there could be clues in the car.

If he was trying to hide what was going on, keeping shit mobile might have felt like a smart move.

I exhaled hard, climbing on my bike, and heading in the direction of the closest junkyard.

"What were you looking for again?" the guy asked, counting the cash I'd just handed him.

"Corvette. White. New. Totaled."

"Yeah, think we had one of them come in a while back. Nice wheels."

"Did you crush it already?"

"Probably not. The crusher was down for a while. Owner didn't want to spend the cash to fix it. We got real backed up."

"And if it isn't crushed, where could I find it?"

"Dunno, man. Out there somewhere," he said, pocketing his money, and already dismissing me.

I glanced at the junkyard. Just rows and rows of cars, some stacked up in rows that created aisles, others in a giant garbage heap.

This was going to take a while.

"Taking a water," I said, pulling one out of the glass door fridge, then moving outside, trying to ignore how the heat and humidity had sweat trickling down my back within minutes of stepping out.

I moved pretty quickly past all the shit close to the building, figuring that would have been around the longest, and made my way toward the back of the lot.

I'd drank half the water and nearly sweated through my t-shirt by the time I finally saw the back end of a new-looking, shiny white sports car.

And there it was, the distinct Corvette symbol—the two flags joined at the center, one black and white checkered, and the other red with a gold cross and fleur-de-lis.

I hadn't anticipated the crushing sensation in my chest just looking at the back of it. I wasn't even seeing any of the damage.

But this was the machine where Clay had taken his last breath.

Had it been quick?

Had he been in pain?

Did he know he wasn't going to make it?

I had to take a few minutes, pulling in some deep breaths, trying not to tamp down the grief, but let it move through me without holding onto it.

When the pain had dulled, I moved toward the car, moving around it, and seeing the way the hood was crushed, the roof caved in, windshield gone.

It was an almost shocking amount of damage.

And I suddenly realized I didn't know exactly how the crash happened. What had he hit? Clearly, he'd rolled.

I didn't want to have to ask Cali the details, so the best I could do was hope there was an article written about it somewhere. Or a local neighborhood forum where they discussed it.

Taking a steadying breath, I moved around to the passenger side where the damage to the roof wasn't as severe, then worked at wrestling the door open in its bent frame.

This was the bad part.

Going inside.

Seeing the evidence of Clay's last moments.

And there were slashes of blood, dried to more of a maroon shade, but I forced my gaze away from that, knowing there was no good in focusing on it.

I went instead for the glove box, then the center console.

The interior was a cramped space, though, and there wasn't exactly a lot of room to hide anything substantial.

"Fuck," I sighed, climbing back out, and moving toward the engine instead, looking for anything out of sorts.

I was no mechanic, but my old man was the sort who didn't like to pay for anything that he could learn to do for himself, so I spent more than a few weekends bending over an engine or sliding under the chassis to learn to fix things at his side.

The car was too low to the ground to slide under, so I made my way back toward the building, finding a jack, and dragging it back with me, then carefully lifting it up, and placing some random crap under the front wheels to keep it from crushing me if the jack failed.

Finally, I found a piece of cardboard, then used it to slide under the car.

I didn't really know what I was looking for per se. Until the second my gaze landed on it.

A broken brake line.

The brake lines ran from the master cylinder, along the firewall under the car, and then to each wheel.

Sure, they sometimes corroded over time. But it caused cracking and a sort of fraying on the wire.

This was a neat break.

Like it had been cut.

It was a thing of movies that you would have no idea. I mean, in modern cars, you would see all sorts of idiot lights on your dash. There would be fluid under the car. And you'd notice the pedal going to the floor when you tried to tap it while backing out of a spot, or even when starting a push-start engine, since you had to step on the brake to get it to turn over.

The chances of being able to hit a high enough speed to total your car without knowing your brake line was compromised was really fucking slim.

But… but if something serious was going on, if you were trying to get away from something, if staying meant certain death, then I could see you taking your chances with a bad brake line.

I moved back out from under the car, walking around it once again.

I'd been wrong about the back being undamaged.

There was a little dent in the back.

And a transfer of red paint.

I went to the driver's seat, popping the trunk. A Corvette had two, a small one by the engine, and one in the rear.

At first blush, nothing seemed off in the rear trunk. There were two reusable shopping bags folded in a small cargo net and a first aid kit. Nothing else.

But I was sick of not finding shit, so I grabbed the kit, finding it odd. A roadside emergency kit? Sure. But a first aid kit? Odd.

Sure enough, inside of it, at the bottom under bandages and individual saline tubes, was a flash drive.

"Got ya," I said, closing my hand around it, and slipping it into my pocket.

I searched the rest of the kit and the empty reusable bags anyway before I finally decided this was all the car was going to give me.

It was something.

A hidden flash drive.

A pile of paperwork that didn't make any sense.

They were breadcrumbs Clay had left.

Likely, it seemed, for me.

Whatever this was, it was clearly dangerous. And he would never get his little sister involved in that kind of shit.

I wondered, though, if it was smart to keep her completely in the dark.

If there was any chance she was also in danger, that these people Clay was involved with would think she might have information they wanted, and would come at her to get it, I owed it to her to issue a warning, didn't I?

Especially when she was being kind of reckless with her time, not seeming to pay attention to normal dangers, let alone ones that might be coming her way because of something her brother may have been involved with.

I had to warn her.

And I was going to go ahead and pretend that the little thrill I felt inside of me had absolutely nothing to do with wanting to finish what we started back in my bedroom.