Page 13 of Wall

But he’s a big man.Reallybig.

And Steel Bones isn’t a leisure club like Smoke and Steel. They’re the real deal. Not quite one percenters, but no one in this county messes with them.

The grip of my hysterics begins to ease, the tears ebb, and I suck down a deep breath. The meaty part of my palm is sore from beating on the car.

Am I really going to go crying to John Wall?

If I showed him the dent in my car door, I bet he’d help me. He hates it when people destroy public property, litter, stuff like that. He was raised really strict. And if I told him what Tommy said…he’d handle it. The Walls are old-fashioned. None of them would ever stand for a man threatening a woman.

But can I stand owing John Wall anything?

This is a bad idea.

But I’m already pulling into the parking lot in front of the Steel Bones clubhouse and parking in an empty spot. I run my fingers through my hair, but with the static, it’s hopeless. I tug on a gray knit hat that Miss Janice made me. It doesn’t help that I look like a depressed Hershey’s Kiss, my face is splotchy, and what am I wearing? A red parka, mom jeans, and rubber boots.

Oh, this is a terrible idea. He’s going to take one look at me and think I’ve lost my mind. I’ve got so much adrenaline still racing through my veins, I don’t feel quite right. I should maybe push pause, take a few deep breaths.

Fatty. Desperate stink. Pity fuck.

I should go get the rifle John insisted on leaving in the house and shoot all those beer cans off that…that…asshole’sporch railing. And if he comes outside, I should shoot straight through those stupid holes in his earlobes.

Nope. No. This is a better idea than that.

I summon all my courage—which is ninety-nine percent humiliated indignation—and I traipse across the asphalt past every make and model of big truck you can imagine. Guess the MC’s bikes are in the garage for winter.

Even though it’s hardly eleven in the morning, there’s hard rock spilling from the front doors. I’m not sure how this works—if this clubhouse is more like a bar or a private club or a business—but there’s no way anyone would hear me knock.

I throw my shoulder into sliding open the massive, wooden doors enough to slip through. The clubhouse is an old garage with a vaulted roof and a modern glass-and-steel annex attached in the back. The doors are in the original part, probably from the 1930s or 1940s, well-oiled, butheavy.

Whoa.

The instant I step into the common room, I feel…obvious.

Three grizzled men swivel in their bar stools to gawk at me. One is at least four hundred pounds. Another is missing both of his legs. And the third guy kind of looks like a graying Superman who’s tanned himself with cigarette smoke.

There’s a woman on a leather couch, passed out on her stomach with a hot pink spandex dress bunched around her waist. She’s wearing a black thong. No one seems to be paying any attention to her.

Two shirtless men are playing pool while a shirtless woman watches, sitting cross-legged on top of a table, swigging liquor from the bottle. She has really firm boobs.

The woman in the thong has a really firm butt.

What am I doing here?

“Hey, lady. You lost?” A younger man in a black vest that reads “Prospect” calls out from where he’s picking up empties and dumping them in an overstuffed trash bag.

I straighten my spine. “I need to see John Wall.”

“Who?” the young guy asks. “Ain’t no John here.”

One of the men playing pool, a guy with a shaved head and tattoos covering every inch of visible skin, strides over, cue still in his hand.

“She wants Wall.” He jerks his chin at the prospect, and he takes off, presumably to find my ex.

“You’re Mona, right?”

He knows my name? Maybe from the return address on the rent checks.

“Yeah. Sorry to, uh, interrupt.”

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