I was lying diagonally with my head on Mute’s stomach, his hands in my gold hair he loved so much, and my legs over H.R. who had Bea curled into her side when Zeus called.
“Little warrior.” His rumble came over the phone and pierced my heart like an arrow. “How’s my girl?”
“Better,” I said, because even though I had the portable respirator beside me and my body ached like it was decomposing, my mind was happy and that was enough for me. “We’re watching a super violent show.”
He laughed and I could picture him leaning against his bike in the open air outside a bar while he talked to me, rolling a cigarette in his hands by habit but not smoking it because he’d made a promise to me to quit.
“Glad to hear it.”
“Tell Dad I say hi,” H.R. called out with popcorn in her mouth and more in the fist she was ready to shovel in just as soon as she had the space.
“Tell my other girl I love ’er, yeah?” Zeus said, hearing her over the phone.
“I will but just saying, you never told this girl you love her,” I pointed out.
“Love you, little girl. Loved you for ten years and love you for ten decades more,” he told me as if it was the simplest thing to do, to declare your undying love for a person like it was nothing special.
To Zeus, it wasn’t the miracle it was to me. To him, it just was.
There was a beauty in the simplicity of that that I knew I’d never cease to appreciate.
A low rumble sounded through the cabin and at first, I thought it was the TV show but Mute had turned the volume down low when I picked up the phone.
Immediately, my protector slid my head off his lap and went prowling to the window. I watched frozen but electric with static as his posture slammed ramrod straight.
“What is it?” I asked even though I knew whatever it was couldn’t be good and I knew it even before Mute reached into his boot for his knife and ducked down beside the couch to grab his gun.
“What’s goin’ on?” Zeus asked me, somehow sensing my fear through the radio waves.
“Mute,” I whispered as he took up his spot beside the front window and used a single finger to push aside the curtain slightly.
He looked out the pane then turned his head until our eyes locked. His dark gaze was filled with muted horror.
I was on my feet in a second, wincing at the tender pain in them but so far past caring I barely noticed.
“H.R., I need you to take Bea into the back, hide in the closet or under the bed or something, okay?” I asked, already hobbling over to the duffle bag I’d packed for the trip.
Ever since he’d given it to me for Christmas, I’d carried the gun Zeus gave me everywhere I went.
“Lou, what the fuck is goin’ on over there?” Zeus barked into the phone.
I was startled to find myself still holding it loosely in one hand. I tucked it against my ear as I searched for my gun and watched as H.R. kicked into gear like the biker girl she was and raced to the kitchen to grab a knife. Bea sat in the middle of the sea of pillows looking so young and so afraid it made my heart ache.
“Loulou,” Zeus snapped again.
“Sorry, sorry. I don’t know what’s happening but Mute is standing at the window looking out at the front yard of the cabin like someone really bad is outside.”
“Hand ’im the phone now,” he ordered.
I half crawled across the floor below the open window to put the cell in Mute’s outstretched hand.
“Three guys,” Mute said immediately, his eyes still on the action outside.
Vaguely, I heard the opening and shutting of doors.
Bea whimpered.
I went over to her and wrapped her up in my arms, keeping my gun ready in my right hand.
“Recognize two of ’em, Lysander Garrison and Ace Munford.”
Shit, Lysander was Cressida’s brother. The guy had been blackmailed into working for the Nightstalkers and spying on The Fallen. His actions had nearly gotten Cress killed and as far as she or I knew, Zeus and King had beaten him close to death then told him never to come back to town on fear of death.
He was back and clearly, he was back with the rival MC.
“Don’t know. They’re all carryin’ far as I can see but that’s it. They look calm. Someone told ’em we were here,” Mute continued.
My stomach clenched and before I could help it, I was sick all over the pillows behind Bea’s shoulder. She stroked my back with a shaking hand.
“Only got my Glock and blade, Foxy and H.R. got theirs and a coupla kitchen knives. ’S not enough,” Mute admitted quietly.
Not quietly enough for a room gone thick with silence.
Bea pressed her face into my breasts and burst into tears. H.R. returned from the kitchen and knelt beside me on the other side of the puke.
“We need to figure out what to do with her,” she said, tipping her chin at my little sister.
I couldn’t think of anything. There was no space inside the house, it was just the rustic three rooms, no basement, only one closet and…
“You can get up on the roof,” I said, prying Bea’s face out of my breasts. My thumbs rubbed at her tears as I held her tight and drilled my eyes into hers. “Harleigh Rose is going to lift you up so you can get into the crawl space in the closet and then you’re going to climb onto the roof. You have to be really fucking careful and don’t make one single noise, okay?”
She shook her head manically, her tears spraying out onto my own cheeks as she did. “I can’t, I can’t.”
“Listen to me,” I ordered her so harshly, she stopped shaking and blinked at me. “You’re a Lafayette and they might not have given us a fuckuva lot but they gave us a cool head, okay? You can do this. I need you to do this because we can’t concentrate if we know you might get hurt.”
“One’s comin’ to the door,” Mute muttered into the phone he still held to his ear.
My heart thudded in my throat and bile churned volcanic hot in my belly. “Bea, please baby, you’ve got to go with H.R. now, okay?”
“I don’t want to leave you,” she whispered brokenly, her huge blue eyes glazed with tears. “You’re the one who’s sick. You should go up there.”
“It’s a small roof, honey,” I tried to explain with a tight smile. “And you’re right, I’m already sick so if only one of us gets through this, I want it to be the one with better odds.”
Bea burst into tears again but I’d done my part and when H.R. took her shoulders to lead her to the closet in the bedroom, Bea went willingly.
As soon as she was out of the room, I got to my feet and walked gingerly over to Mute.
“What do you think they want?” I whispered to him.
Someone knocked forcibly on the door.
I looked up at Mute and tried to suppress the fear I felt like an electric current running through my blood. I saw it mimicked in his own eyes and we shared a moment of pure terror. He broke the moment by pressing an awkward hand in the middle of my chest and saying in the clearest voice I’d ever heard him say, “Something bad is gonna happen. Need you to promise me you’ll get yourself safe.”
“Mute,” I breathed. “We’ll be fine.”
“If not, you gotta promise me,” he ordered.