Chapter Twenty-Nine

Hawk

I 'd been waiting outside the ER on my bike for almost thirty minutes and there was no sign of Laura. I knew sometimes she worked late, but she'd not even sent a text. Leaving my motorcycle in the parking lot I made my way to the entrance. Inside, the hospital buzzed with activity, but I didn't notice anything specific as I pushed to the front of the line. "Nurse Carpenter, please."

The woman glanced up. "She's not here."

"Are you sure?" I just couldn't believe that she would be foolish enough to go home knowing how dangerous it was.

"She left an hour ago," the woman said.

I was getting a bad feeling about this. It wasn't like Laura, to just take off. Though maybe she hadn't? I saw a spark of recognition in the receptionist's eyes, she'd seen me come to meet Laura on a few occasions. I tried another tactic and gave her a winning smile, "She was supposed to meet me here. Maybe she's visiting Kristy on the ward? What room is she in again?"

"Room 468," she said, and directed me on how to get there.

"Thanks, darlin'."

"Visiting hours are almost over," she called after me, but I ignored everything but the directions she'd given me, plowing straight ahead until I arrived at the right room.

I knocked and opened the door at the same time, surprised to see the woman looking pale and much frailer than I'd remembered. "Kristy. You're still here?"

Surprise flashed on her face as she nodded. "Yep. Laura isn't here, you just missed her."

"Has something happened?" I kept my focus on Kristy's face. You could tell a lot about a person by the expressions they made without thinking about it, and right now her eyes were filled with concern.

"She's gone home," Kristy said.

"Home, her home?" My heart was racing.

"Yours," her friend replied. "Though that was only after I'd talked her down."

I took in her friend's appearance, she looked sick, and I felt like the world's biggest asshole questioning her, but something had obviously happened, "What's wrong?"

"She got a visit from her ex, Eric. He's a cop and he gave her an evidence folder on you and your club."

"Fuck! What was in it?" I couldn't imagine what evidence he had on me. After that meeting with Los Ochos, this was the last fucking thing I needed, but I made a promise to her, dammit. "Look Kristy, I don't know what you know about me, but someone is spreading lies about me which has pissed off the people I was protecting Laura from. They're going after her. Definitely."

Kristy looked alarmed, "She didn't have it with her, I think she left it in the car. But it was photographs of you doing bad things."

"Bad things?" I exclaimed. My mind raced through my recent club activity. Okay, we were no boy scouts, but if there had been anything linking us to crime, then we'd be behind bars.

"Trafficking, drugs, ex—"

"Dammit!" I punched the wall, then suddenly realized where I was. "I'm sorry," I said to Kristy. "I shouldn't have shouted, but I thought we'd gotten all this sorted. I told her that I have never been involved in people trafficking or any shit like that."

Kristy sat up straighter in bed and reached towards the water pitcher. I lifted it up and poured some water in her glass.

She took a drink and then was silent for a long time, and I thought maybe she wasn't going to say anything, before she finally spoke. "She told me that she liked you, that you were more than what you seemed on the outside." She shook her head and let out a sad sigh. "She likes you, really likes you, so I can only figure that Eric's gotten in her head. Again."

Yeah, that was what I suspected too. "What's this Eric like?"

She grimaced. "He's bad news, he works Organized Crime and doesn't like criminals. I think when he learned she was seeing you, it made him pissed. He wants her back."

Well, fuck. "That makes sense." In fact, it made a lot of fucking sense. It had to be him who orchestrated all of this.

"You have to talk some sense into to her, Hawk. Because Eric is such a straight edge cop she sees his word as literally law. I don't know what evidence he's given her, but maybe if you speak to her? I told her not to listen to him, but I know what she's like. She's gonna go home and look through those photos and start spiraling again. I don't know if things can be fixed between you guys romantically, but she's my best friend and I'm going through a difficult time right now. I can't lose her."

I nodded. "Did you get any news yet?"

Her smile brightened. "Not yet. Any day now," she offered, and held up both hands with her fingers crossed.

"Good luck."

"Thanks. Now please, go make my best friend see reason. Use guilt if you have to."

My lips tugged into an amused grin. "Yeah, thanks."

***

I made short work of the drive to my place. I didn't want to argue with Laura, that wasn't part of my plan, but the minute I walked through the door and saw her face, that all disappeared.

"What happened to talking about things?"

She folded her arms and scowled up at me. "That's why I'm here and not at my place."

I kicked off my boots and walked through to the living room. "There's still an active hit on you. Do you have a fucking death wish or something? Do you think I'm such a huge piece of shit and a horrible human being that you'd prefer to drive home by yourself, like a sitting fucking duck?"

She rolled her eyes at me. "Don't be so dramatic, Hawk. I needed to come home. I wanted to think, and I can't think when you're there looking all—"

"Looking all what?" I said with a raised brow.

"Aaargh!" She reached for the open bottle of wine and poured herself another glass. By the level it seemed as if she'd had a few.

"Tell me what happened, darlin' I'm not a mind reader, if you've got worries, then you gotta tell me."

She sat there shaking her head, then grabbed her wine glass and upended it. Thumping it back on the table she muttered, "Fine," and reached down for something at the side of the sofa. "This, Hawk. All of this is evidence of things you said were lies!" She tipped the contents of the folder over the coffee table. There was a bunch of photographs and some papers.

"Who gave you this?" I asked, knowing full well who she'd got it from.

"Does it really matter? The evidence is here," she spat out.

"We're back to this again? I thought we cleared that up, that you saw beyond the things I do, to the man I am."

I pointed at the photograph of me and Mrs. Winchester, "That was taken after we'd paid her a visit. I'd dropped by to check if she needed anything else. The cash I'm passing to her? That's because she needed money to pay for the repairs. The bakery's bank account was in her husband's name, and it was gonna take a week or so before she could withdraw cash."

Laura just glared at me.

"And this?" I pointed to the photograph of me with three underage hookers. "One of our brothel girls had told us about a place operating downtown, and we'd raided it and found a bunch of trafficked teenagers. Sheriff Cross is just out of shot, we called him as soon as we got the girls out."

I was about to open my mouth to say something else when I stopped. All of these photographs looked like surveillance shots. Someone had been watching my club, none of this showed us doing anything wrong—if you knew the story behind the shots—but someone was getting a bit too interested in us.

"Your ex is Organized Crime, isn't he?" I said.

Laura looked surprised, "How do you know?"

"I waited half an hour for you today, when you didn't turn up, I went looking for you. Spoke to Kristy and she filled me in on a few things."

She reached for the wine bottle again.

"Is this a solo pity party or can anyone join in?" I asked, trying to lighten the mood.

"Here," she handed me the bottle, so I took a swig. I could tell she was coming down from whatever mindset she'd talked herself into, so I sat beside her on the sofa with my feet on the table knocking half of whatever crap Detective Shit-For-Brains had been feeding her, to the floor.

"You know what these are?" I asked.

She shrugged, "Evidence?"

"Nope. If they were evidence, then me and my club brothers would be locked up or awaiting trial. These are surveillance photographs. Someone has been watching the Steel Demons MC."

I threw my arm around her shoulder and pulled her in close, she didn't resist so I knew that she didn't want to turn my balls into paperweights anymore, I continued, "Care to think of anyone who might happen to have in their possession numerous surveillance photographs of a motorcycle club?"

"Eric," she said on a long sigh.

"Babe, the cops try and investigate us all the time. We aren't angels and I'm not gonna lie, some of what we do is skirting the boundaries of legality. And some has gone way beyond that." My eyes drifted to a photograph taken a few months ago of me standing beside a box of semi-automatic guns, we'd gone to scope out the hardware at another MC's clubhouse. We'd not bought the guns because they had no fucking firing pins, and that was probably the only reason why we'd not been pulled in that day. I needed to bring that particular bit of intel to my prez, going forward we were gonna have to be more careful.

I reached up and cupped her chin with my hand, "Sweetheart, you have to believe me. My club is not involved in dark shit, we don't traffic people. If whoever took these photos had any actual evidence, then I wouldn't be sitting here with you."

"I'm sorry I doubted you, again," Laura said. Her eyes were glossy, and I wiped away a stray tear with my thumb.

We sat in companionable silence for a while as I mused over everything.

"Your ex," I started, "how far would he go to get you back?"

She shrugged, "I don't know. I made it plenty clear that I wanted nothing to do with him anymore. I even threatened to get a restraining order if he kept bugging me."

"A restraining order? Has he ever been violent?" I sat up and turned to her. I'd never met the fucker but already I hated him.

"No, he was just a cheat and a liar, why? What are you thinking?"

"Someone has been putting word out that I'm a snitch, that's the reason the deal is off with Los Ochos."

"Eric wouldn't do something like that," she said.

"Can you be sure?"

"He's a good cop. I know he's a shitty man and I want him out my life, but he's good at what he does, and he was just looking out for me, as fucked up as it seems."

"Sweetheart, I hope you're right, because if this is his doing, then he's putting you in the crosshairs."

She rested her head on my shoulder, "Can't you just tell them the truth?"

I placed a kiss on her cheek, "I wish it were that simple, babe. But whoever is spreading shit around about me is convincing. No one wants to deal with a snitch, and that's what I am."

I felt her relax against me and snuggle in. I want to put everything out of my mind right now and just focus on what's right with my life, and that's Laura.

Tomorrow I'm gonna see if Slate can dig anything up on her ex. She might think he's squeaky clean, but I want to see fucking evidence of it. And I'd bet my last dollar on him being behind the rumors being spread about me.

"How do you like the sound of an early night? Reckon you've got some kinks that I might need to work on in the shower."

She giggled and it was the sweetest sound I'd heard, "Kinks? You feeling kinky?"

"I meant your neck from standing examining all those patients today. But feel free to examine me if you want, I need me some tender lovin' care from Nurse Carpenter."

Her eyes traveled down to my groin. At the thought of some shower time fun my cock had wanted to get involved and was making its presence known. "Looks like you have a nasty swelling there."

I leaned back on the sofa, "It wasn't there a moment ago, maybe you need to check it out?"

In one swift movement she'd swung her leg over me and was straddling my lap, I cupped her ass with my hands and looked up at her, "We good babe?"

She leaned down until her mouth was inches from mine, "More than good."