Making Choices (Black Shamrocks MC Book 2) (9 page)

“You Timber’s bitch?”

Well, that answers the main question running through my head.
Why is someone breaking into my house?

Because I’m fucking an outlaw biker appears to be the answer. Stupid, stupid me for thinking I could ignore the dangers of his alternative lifestyle.

Shaking my head in answer, my hope that they might leave if I can convince them it’s a case of mistaken identity are shattered when the man holding my chin replies.

“Yeah, you are. You’re the bitch from the hospital. I remember you.”

What the hell?

Is this someone from Lucas’s Club? I’ve been vaguely aware of the problems they’ve been having over the last few months, but I haven’t paid too much attention to details. I’ve been friendly from a distance when he’s taken me to events, uninterested in getting to know any of them very well.

The only things I know for sure about the Black Shamrocks is that Lucas has had to leave me without warning sometimes for “Club Business”, and that Joel was discharged from rehab after about eight weeks. Apart from seeing him a few times at the Clubhouse, I haven’t followed up with his progress. I don’t know what he was like before his injuries, but he’s now a very cold, closed-off person who quite frankly scares the crap out of me.

Letting go of my chin, he motions me toward my front door with his gun.

“We can do this the easy way, or the hard way. You can walk out of here without making a fucking scene, or I can knock you out and carry your skinny ass.”

The gravity of my situation finally sinks in.

With a loud scream, I dodge around him, dashing for my front door.

I need to get out of here. I need to find someone to help me.

“The hard way it is.” He grunts as he sweeps out one of his long legs and trips me. I fall face-first onto the carpet with a loud
oomph
.

Before I can right myself, he straddles my back. Yanking my head back with a handful of hair, he jams a damp cloth over my face. The sickly, sweet smell that overcomes me tells me that it’s ether. My stomach rolls. A million thoughts fight for acknowledgement in my addled mind.

The last thought I’m aware of before darkness obliterates everything is that my father is going to kill me if I’m not at the meeting he demanded in the morning.

***

T
he constant dripping sound is annoying me. I’m trying my hardest to ignore it, but I can’t. After waking up on a ratty, smelly, single bed in a dark, damp room, I’ve been sitting curled into a ball on the bed. My head faces the entrance, my back jammed into the corner furthest from the locked, steel door—the door that offers my only escape from this room.

I’ve been too scared to move, so apart from a quick inspection of the room where I discovered the entry into the dirtiest bathroom I’ve ever seen, I’ve maintained my position on the disgusting bed. Nausea still threatens me from the ether they used to render me unconscious. My joints ache from the men’s rough treatment of me.

Apart from that, I’m okay.

I’m still clad in the black yoga tights and racer-back singlet that I was wearing when they took me from my house, and they’re not offering much in the way of warmth in this cold room. There’s a tattered blanket folded on the end of the bed, but I’m loath to give into the warmth I might receive from it. Who knows when it was washed last?

There’s one window in the room, but it’s too high for me to look through. The small rays of sunlight filtering in make me aware that it’s morning. I’ve been here all night, so hopefully my absence from work has been noted. I never take sick days, let alone not appear at work without phoning, so someone should have raised the alarm about my no-show.

That thought is the only thing keeping me from completely losing it.

“Let go of me, you dumb fuckers.”

An angry, familiar, feminine voice breaks through the repressive silence. The door to my room rattles before it’s thrown open, slamming into the wall next to it.

Two big men dressed in black jeans and dark hoodies wrestle an agitated, blonde woman through the doorway. She’s putting up much more of a fight than I did, and shame threatens to drown me. I wish I’d tried to fight them when they were in my house last night.

I don’t see exactly how she does it, but she manages to kick one of the men in the face with a roundhouse kick before she punches the other in the face and knees him in the balls. The first guy is barely rising to his feet as the second hits the floor. The woman’s about to run from the room when she catches a glimpse of me from out of the corner of her eye.

She stops dead, spinning around to face me.

“Oh, JJ. How long have you been here?” Maddi brushes the strands of her long hair that have escaped from the knot on top of her head out of her face. Then she calmly walks over to me, sitting down on the edge of the bed next to me.

What is she doing here? And why did she stop when she saw me instead of running?

She could have escaped.

The two men she injured are still picking themselves up from the floor when an emaciated-looking woman with straw-like, bleach-blonde hair walks in with a handsome man I’m sure I know, but can’t place.

Maddi groans rudely at the two new people, rolling her eyes and shaking her head at me. She’s very calm for a woman who’s sitting on a disgusting bed, in the grossest room I’ve ever seen, against her will.

Holding her hand in front of her face, she makes a show of checking out her long, painted nails before she brings it to her face to shield an obviously fake yawn.

“Sherri. Connor. Long time, no see,” she drawls. “I take it you’re not hiding anymore?”

The skinny woman narrows hate-filled eyes at Maddi before she holds her phone in front of her face.

“Say cheese, Princess.” Her voice is one of those put-on, saccharine-sweet, baby voices that some women think men love. Personally I find them as irritating as fingernails raking down a chalkboard.

She takes a photo of us sitting together on the bed and shows the guy standing next to her. He smiles at her, slapping her on the ass with appreciation.

“Get copies. Now. Then get them dropped off at the Compound and all their houses. ASAP!” he orders her. She nods in response, but doesn’t make a move to leave. He glares at her, but she’s oblivious. The woman that Maddi called Sherri runs her eyes over my body—not that she can see much since I’m hugging my knees to my chest—and smirks at me. 

“I see Timber’s downgraded significantly. He must be missing me something bad if he’s settled for you.”

I’m not sure what to say to her.

I have no idea who she is, or what her connection is to Lucas, and I’m not brave enough to sass her back at this stage. Maddi, however, doesn’t stay quiet. I’m beginning to get the feeling that she is incapable of it.

“Oh my God, Sherri. Get some new insults. It’s always the same old crap with you. Your man likes me better. I’m a better fuck than you are. Blah, blah, bloody blah,” she tells Sherri, who turns white at her hostile taunting. “You’re a goddamn whore. You know as well as we do that’s all you’re good for, and all you’ll ever be. You’d wanna hope you have a tiny bit of talent for it. So just shut up.”

The guy who told Sherri to get copies of the photos starts laughing.

“Good to see you’re still the same hardnosed bitch you always were, Princess. I was worried you’d be fucked up. Too broken to be fun anymore.”

Maddi flinches at his words. This is the first time I’ve ever seen her unsure of herself. He laughs at her again. There’s a whole back story here that I’m not privy to, one I need to know now that I’m caught up in it.

“And you’re still the same traitor you always were, Connor. You disgust me. We both know that Mik and the Shamrocks are going to kill you when they find you. You’ve just sped up the process by taking us.” She gestures between the two of us.

Studying Connor again, I realize where I know him from. He’s one of the men who guarded Joel’s room during his hospital stay. He’s what Lucas called an Enforcer, but I gather from Maddi’s comments that he’s no longer a member of the Club.

That can’t be good.

What the hell am I caught in the middle of?

Signalling the two men who brought Maddi into the room by crooking a finger in the air, Connor turns his back on us and walks out without another word. Sherri follows him on spindly high-heels that make her take mincing steps, and even with the seriousness of the situation very apparent, I can’t help meeting Maddi’s eyes and sharing a grin with her.

The biggest of the two men left—the one I think Maddi kneed in the balls since his face is almost as red as his hair—looks at us, a grim smirk covering his face. “Don’t go anywhere now, bitches. We’ll be back soon for some entertainment.”

I gasp at the implication of his words, but Maddi raises her middle finger and flips him the bird.

“Don’t get too far ahead of yourself, asshole. You have no idea what those two out there have dragged you into.”

He tries hard not to buy into her threat, but his curiosity wins.

“And what would that fucking be?”

“I’m Beast’s daughter and Mad Dog’s Old Lady.” She points at herself, and both men’s eyes bug-out as her words sink in. “And she’s Timber’s woman. I’m sure you’ve heard of him too?”

Maddi points at me, and in spite of my reservations about the status of our relationship, I nod in agreement. I’m all for any intimidation factor we can gain by mentioning their names.

“Fuck off! Blake the Butcher?” the red-haired guy asks, unease in his eyes.

“The one and only.” Maddi laughs at him.

Personally, I’m disturbed to hear Lucas referred to as a butcher. I’m not naïve. I’ve read the newspaper articles that refer to him as Blake the Butcher. It’s different seeing the fear his nickname evokes in person, rather than chalking it up to media sensationalism.

With Maddi’s confirmation, the man closest to the door, the one who had been silent so far, curses loudly. “You’re with the fucking Black Shamrocks?”

“We are. So if you touch us, rest assured that you’re signing your own death warrant.”

They ignore her final statement as they leave, locking the door behind them.

Even in their silence, I can tell that her words shook them up because they’re nowhere near as cocky as they were when they arrived.

JJ

Present Day

I
watch Maddi check the locked door and window numerous times before she starts pacing around the room. She must make her circuit two dozen times before I finally snap.

“Would you sit down? You’re making me dizzy with your pacing.”

Her eyes fill with irritation, but she stops pacing and sits on the end of the bed. We’ve studiously ignored each other since we were left alone, but it’s time. I have a pounding headache, and I still feel like vomiting. My stress is eating me alive.

I need answers.

“Can you tell me what’s happening here? I’m mixed up in this bullshit, and I don’t understand a thing.”

Swinging her long, tanned legs in front of her—legs which are displayed in their full glory by the tiny jogging shorts she’s wearing—it takes her a few moments to answer me. I spend that time glaring at her legs as though they’ve personally offended me. I swear they’re twice the length of mine. Lucky bitch.

“They snatched me when I was jogging this morning. They hit the brother Timber sent to shadow me with a frigging car before they dragged me into it. The Club’ll know I’m missing, and they’ll be looking. We’ll be fine. We just have to wait for them to find us.”

What a fine non-answer that is. She’s told me exactly nothing.

“I understand the whole code of silence bullshit the Shamrocks follow, but I’m involved in this now, so I want to know the details. Why did Connor and Sherri have us kidnapped? What did Connor mean about you being fucked up and broken? What the hell is the story between Lucas and Sherri? Why did those two guys basically shit their pants when you mentioned your father, Mad Dog, and Lucas?”

As I throw my questions at her, I climb from the bed and stand in front of her with my hands on my hips. She looks at me with open curiosity, and a small bit of sympathy, before she rolls her eyes. She pats the bed next to her, but I disregard her invitation to sit. I’d rather stand so I’m looking down at her for once. The woman’s built like a damn swimsuit model. I feel better maintaining my slight edge over her.

“Have it your way,” she sighs. “What’s happening now stems from some stuff—bad stuff—that happened to me when I was eighteen. It caught up with me and the Club about seven months ago and is the reason Joel was hurt.”

I lift my right eyebrow when she stops speaking, indicating that she should continue. I can hear her counting from five to one in a quiet voice as she breathes in and out deeply. I’ve taken a few yoga classes, so I recognize the calming technique.

What’s she about to tell me that requires her to calm herself?

“The Club helped me fix my stuff, but it caused them a big problem before it was fixed. Sherri and Connor were part of that problem, and the Club’s been looking for them ever since. Apparently they’ve decided to come out of hiding. Now they’re using us as pawns in their game, because of our relationships with Mik and Timber. The Club’ll be one step ahead of them, and we’ll be fine. That’s all you need to know.”