CRASH: An Evil Dead MC Story (The Outlaw Series) (9 page)

“I
heard that,” came the response up the elevator shaft. The gate clanked open,
and then he sent it back up to her. She threw the switch, locking it on the
second floor. A moment later she heard the steel door rolling up and his bike
fire up. The door rolled down with a clank, and she could hear the bike roaring
away in the distance. And then there was silence.

Turning
she took in the empty loft. She ran her hands up and down her arms. Was she
really safe here? She wanted to believe him. The place seemed safe enough. It
was locked up like a fortress, she’d give him that. But what if Nicklaus had
had her followed? What if he knew about the cab? What if he’d bribed the driver
for the location where he’d dropped off the ‘pretty blonde’? All kinds of crazy
thoughts started running through her head. She knew she was being paranoid, but
considering all she’d been through, she had good reason. Nicklaus was nothing,
if not determined, and she didn’t think he’d give up so easily. Not until he
found her.

Her
eyes fell on the tarp covered thing in the corner, and she wondered what it
was. Well, Crash wasn’t around, so she’d might as well have a peek. She walked
over and lifted a corner, looking under it. Frowning she pulled it back for a
better look. What the…? She pulled the tarp completely off and stood staring,
speechless. It was a beautiful metal sculpture. Now why would he buy it and then
keep it covered? Why would anyone cover anything this beautiful?

And
then she realized it wasn’t finished. My God. Had…had Crash…made this? Stunned,
she backed away, and then retreated to the kitchen. She poured herself a cup of
coffee and stood at the island, staring at the sculpture. That man was such a
puzzle. And the pieces just didn’t fit together. Shaking her head, she took her
coffee and walked back to the bedroom.

As
she walked through the doorway, one of the strands of paperclips snagged on her
sweater, which then made her spill the coffee on her white leggings. “Damn it!”

Not
only were her leggings ruined, but her sweater as well. Pissed off, she slammed
the mug down on the dresser, and then in a fit, she grabbed the stupid
paperclips and started yanking the strands down. Who makes a beaded-curtain out
of paperclips, for God’s sake? How ridiculous. She rolled them all up in a ball,
like tangled Christmas lights and threw them in the wastebasket. Stupid things.
She looked down at the arm of her sweater. It was snagged beyond repair.
Fabulous! She’d might as well toss it in the trash, too. Stomping over to her
suitcase, she rummaged through it looking for something else to wear.

CHAPTER FIVE

Crash
pulled up at the Queen of Hearts. The guys were standing in the parking lot,
smoking. Cole was leaning back on his bike, his ass parked on his seat. Crash
cut his bike off and walked over to him.

Cole
looked up at him, a sly grin on his face. “You get you some coffee this
mornin’?”

Crash’s
eyes cut to the others, knowing they’d told him all about
that
fiasco. He grunted.

“She
all settled?”

“If
settled means a shit-ton of chick crap all over my bathroom sink, then, yeah,
she’s settled.”

Cole
let out a laugh. “High maintenance, brother. You called it.”

“Can
we get this done, so I can get back before she redecorates the place?”

“Yeah,
we can ‘get this done’,” Cole chuckled. He nodded over his shoulder toward the
door. Crash’s eyes followed the direction of his gaze. “Artie upgraded the
muscle at the door.” He stood and ground out his cigarette.

Crash
saw the two bouncers standing, one on either side of the door. Musclebound body
builders. He snorted, if it’s one thing he knew about bodybuilders it was that
they were shit fighters. He looked over at Red Dog and Wolf. “You take the one
on the right.” He looked at Green. “We got the guy on the left.”

They
moved toward the door.

*****

It
was almost seven by the time Crash got back home. He rolled down the street.
When he got to within fifty feet of the building, the sensor on his bike
activated the garage door, and it began rolling slowly up. He rolled inside and
parked the bike. He was pulling his phone out to call Shannon to send down the
elevator, when he heard her yell down the shaft. “Crash?”

He
slid his phone back in his pocket, moving toward it. “Yeah,” he yelled back up.
A moment later, the elevator began descending. He climbed on and rode back up.
Leaning against the elevator bars, he rubbed the back of his neck. Damn, he was
beat. A nice hot shower sounded fucking great. He shook out his hand, flexing
it. His knuckles were cut, but the bleeding had stopped a while ago. Now the
joints just ached. It had been a pleasure to teach Artie a well-deserved
lesson. Arrogant prick.

The
elevator jerked to a stop, and he pulled the gate open. He didn’t get two steps
into the loft, when something caught his eye, and he turned his head to the
right. His sculpture. Uncovered. Fuck.

His
head turned back, searching out Shannon. She was sitting at the bar painting
her nails. He walked over to her, taking a deep breath and blowing it out. He
stopped next to her. One hand on the back of her barstool, one on the counter
next to her. She paused, the little brush thing hovering over her nail, and
turned to look up at him.

“You
got a nosey streak?” he asked.

Her
eyes moved past him to the sculpture, and then back to his face. “It’s
beautiful, Crash. Did you make it?”

“Think,
maybe, if I’d wanted you to see it, I’d have shown it to you?”

“Crash-”

Walking
away from her, he opened the refrigerator and grabbed out a beer. Turning, he
spotted a skillet sitting on top of the stove. He lifted the lid and looked at
the cold, unappetizing goo inside. Mac and cheese. In a skillet. What the hell
did she do, fry it? He dropped the lid back down with a bang and headed toward
the bathroom. “I’m taking a shower.” He walked in that direction and came to a
jarring halt as he passed his bedroom. It took him a second, and then he
realized what was wrong. The paperclips were gone. What the hell? He stalked
back to the kitchen. Shannon looked up at him with a questioning frown. “What
did you do with the paperclips?”

She
rolled her eyes. “I took them down. They were paperclips, for God’s sake.”

“Why?”

“Why
what?”

“Why
did you take them down?”

“They
snagged my sweater. Why? What’s the big deal? They were just paperclips!”

He
slammed his beer bottle down on the island. “The big deal, Shannon, is that a
little five-year-old girl made those for me. Cole’s daughter, Melissa.” He
watched her mouth part in surprise, but he didn’t care. “The big deal is, they
weren’t yours to take down. The big deal is, Shannon, I don’t give a fuck if
they snagged your damn sweater. ‘Cause, clue in, Princess, the whole world
doesn’t revolve around you!” With that, he walked back to the bathroom and
slammed the door. Fuck, he wanted to strangle her. This was a bad idea. Having
her here. He was going to kill her before this was through. He stalked to the
shower and flipped it on. Then he began stripping his clothes off.

Climbing
under the steaming spray, Crash dialed the jets to high and let the pulsing
water beat against the aching muscles of his back. He thought about Shannon
prying into his things, snooping where her nose didn’t belong.

Seeing
his art.

Let
it go, man, he told himself. Resting his palm on the slate tile, he dropped his
head and let the hot water sooth the tension out of the back of his neck and
shoulders. When he thought about Melissa’s precious little gift to him all
waded up in a heap in the trash, he wanted to put his fist through the tile. He
needed to calm himself the fuck down. He couldn’t even look at Shannon in the
mood he was in now. He breathed deep, trying to let go of the anger.

He
knew there was more than just the immediate anger eating at him right now. It
was having her here, in his place, in his things, in his life. He hadn’t let
any chick in, not like that, not since Erin. And that’d been a long fucking
time ago. Yeah, sure, he had women. A lot of women, a few he’d even brought
home, but not many. And none of them had ever been in his place alone, without
him here. They came, he fucked them, and then he got them gone.

This
had been a mistake. Bringing her here. He should have never volunteered for
this. But it was too late now. He was stuck with her. He was just gonna have to
lay down the law to her and get through this somehow.

Shannon
heard the shower come on. She sat stunned at the bar, thinking about how pissed
he was. Oh, sure, he hadn’t blown up. He’d mostly kept his cool, but he was
pissed. More than that. She’d hurt him, somehow. Her eyes strayed to the
beautiful sculpture. He hadn’t wanted her to see it. Why? It was beautiful. He
had to know that. She guessed it was a piece of him, he didn’t want to share
with her. And he had a right to that. She’d been wrong to pry.

And
the paperclips.

Dear
God, she’d acted like…like the thoughtless bitch he must see her as. Usually,
she could care less what other people thought of her. But for some reason, this
bothered her. She had to fix this, and she’d never cared about fixing anything
before. She found herself sliding off the barstool and walking into the
bedroom. Grabbing the waded ball of clips out of the wastebasket, she sat on
the bed. They were a tangled mess, but she could fix it. It’d probably take her
days, and it would be easier to just buy a new box and string them together.
But she couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be right. They wouldn’t mean anything to
him. She stared down at the clips. Not like these did.

She
got to work. She had half of one strand untangled when he came out of the
bathroom. Looking up, she froze. He walked into the bedroom with nothing but a
towel wrapped around his hips, his fist clenching it around him below the
waist. His hair was slicked back, wet from the shower.

“Get
out,” he snapped.

She
looked up at him, dazed.

“Unless
you want to sit there and watch me dress, get the fuck out.”

She
slid off the bed, clutching the silver ball in her hands and scurried from the
room.

“Shannon.”
His bark stopped her in the doorway. She turned, barely catching a glimpse of
his bare ass, before a wet towel hit her in the face. “There’s more on the
floor in the bathroom. Wash them.”

She
retreated quickly. Moving to the bathroom, she gathered up the wet towels and
bath mat. She carried them to the washing machine that was set up under the
metal stairs that led to the roof. She stared at the machine. She didn’t have a
clue how to use it. Crash strode out of the bedroom, dressed in a pair of jeans
and a tee and walked up the stairs and onto the roof. The door banged shut, and
she stared at it. She had to make this right. And that meant she had to do
something she rarely did.

Apologize.

Dropping
the towels to the floor, she walked into the kitchen and grabbed two bottles of
beer out of the refrigerator. She paused at the island for a minute, trying to
come up with the right words, and perhaps, if she was being honest, give him
another minute to cool down.

A
few minutes later, she headed toward the roof.

She
found him sitting in one of the chairs, his feet up, smoking his cigarette.
Approaching him quietly, she held the beer out to him. He looked to the bottle
suspended from her hand next to his right shoulder a moment, and she thought
maybe he would refuse to take it. And then his hand came up, accepting the
bottle.

She
sat in the chair next to him. “I’m sorry, Crash. Truly I am. You’re right.
About all of it.”

He
flicked his cigarette, his eyes on the horizon, saying nothing.

She
continued. “I had no business touching your things. This is your home.”

He
took a pull off the beer.

“Crash,
please, look at me.”

His
eyes came to her.

“I
don’t know if you’re more upset about the sculpture or-”

“I
don’t want to talk about the damn sculpture.”

She
swallowed. “I’ll fix the paperclips and put them back, I swear-”

“Yeah,
right. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

She
stared at him a long moment. “Please, tell me how I can fix this.”

He
laughed and shook his head. “Some things you can’t fix.”

Shannon
looked at the horizon, not knowing what to say. They sat there silently for a
long time, and then Crash finally broke the silence. “They’re silly, I know.
But those
silly
paperclips meant the
world to me.”

She
looked at him. His eyes were on the Bay Bridge. “Tell me, please.”

He
flicked his cigarette over the edge of the roof and leaned back, closing his
eyes. She thought he was done, and then he spoke, a slight smile pulling at his
mouth. “She’s the one that started calling this place the Batcave. Except, my
elevator went up instead of down, she told me. Cole helped me hang the support
for those chains, and Angel brought the kids over to see it. Melissa took one
look at the divider and said, ‘But Uncle Crash, you don’t have a door.’ When I
replied, ‘No, sweet pea. I sure don’t, do I?’ she told me not to worry, ‘cause
she was gonna make me one.”

Shannon
watched him lift the bottle to his lips. Crap. She’d really messed up. She
swallowed, looking down. “Do you want me to leave?”

He
huffed out a laugh. “Don’t matter. You’re here. Deal’s done.”

“I
could leave.”

He
turned to her then. “And go where? Back to him?”

She
closed her eyes a moment, and then looked away to the horizon.

“You’re
not going anywhere, Princess. You’ll stay here until this guy leaves the
country.” He rolled his head, facing the horizon. “But maybe we need to set
some ground rules.”

“Ground
rules?”

“Yeah.
One. You will stay outta my shit, and keep your hands off my stuff. Two. You
will keep your shit outta my bathroom. Three. You will do what I tell you, no
complaints.” He rolled his head back to her. “And four. I reserve the right to
add more rules as needed, or just because I fuckin’ feel like it. Agreed?”

“Well,
when you put it like that…”

“Agreed,
Shannon?”

She
huffed out a breath. “Agreed.”

He
looked at the horizon and flexed his hand. Shannon glanced down, catching the
movement, and she immediately noticed the swelling, bruising and cuts across
his knuckles. Frowning, she asked, “Crash, what happened to your hand?”

He
set it back on the armrest and took a pull off his beer. “Nothing.”

“Crash,
that’s not nothing.”

He
looked over at her. “I fell.”

“You
fell?”

“Yeah.”

“What
happened?”

“I
fell.”

Crash-”

“Babe,
there are some things you just can’t ask about. Okay?”

“But,
you’re hurt, I-”

“Leave
it alone.”

“But-”

“Shannon.
I said, leave it alone.”

She
took a deep breath and let it out. They sat there quietly for a while. She
noticed he’d almost drained his beer. “Would you like another one?” she asked.