Page 47 of Lockout

“Sorry, Lock,” he said in a low voice.

He knew Keely was still here. Hell, they all probably knew it. Otherwise he wouldn’t be keeping it down.

“No problem,” I told him. “What’s up?”

“You’re going to want to see this.”

“What’s wrong?”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw Keely standing there, in nothing but my t-shirt, her arms crossed over her chest. There she was, barefoot, hair a mess, and looking incredibly vulnerable. It just brought out the beast in me. I wanted to take her back into my bedroom and keep her there while I took care of every possible threat to her. “Nothing,” I told her, even though I didn’t actually know what was wrong. “Just something I need to take care of.”

She gave a hesitant nod, then smiled over at Riptide. “Would you like some coffee, Rip?” she asked as she stepped into my kitchen.

I left them to talk and went back into my bedroom to get dressed. I was finishing lacing up my boots when I smelled the coffee in the air. It made me wonder how many of my guys were going to be functional this morning. Rip didn’t look too bad, but I knew most of the men had fully let loose last night.

Keely looked up from the steaming cup of coffee in front of her on the table when I came out of the bedroom.

“I don’t know when I’ll be back,” I told her, shrugging on my cut. “You should go back to bed.” The clock on the stove read nine a.m., but we’d woken up much earlier than that.

I bit back the satisfied grin as I remembered exactly what we’d been doing around five this morning. Then we’d fallen back asleep wrapped up in each other. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been more relaxed than I was right now.

“Okay,” she said.

Rip was watching us with a calculating look. I just scowled at him. “We going, or what?”

He was fighting back a grin, but he nodded toward Keely and left my apartment.

Right. It shouldn’t take my brother subtly pointing out how to take care of my woman for me to realize what I needed to do.It’d been too damn long since I’d been in a relationship. I wasn’t used to this shit anymore.

I crossed the room and used my finger and thumb to tilt Keely’s chin higher so I could lay a kiss on her lips. When we broke apart, I studied her tired eyes. “Go back to sleep. Feel free to dig around in here for breakfast when you wake back up, even if I’m not here.”

She nodded, then her eyes strayed toward the door. “What’s going on?”

Of course she would want to know. She had a keen and inquisitive mind. I liked that about her. “I don’t know. Rip didn’t say.” Running my hand over her hair, I tugged on the end of a strand, pulling her focus back to me. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Be safe,” she said. There was worry building in her expression.

“We don’t even know it’s anything bad,” I reminded her.

“Riptide woke you up early after a night of partying,” she pointed out. “It’s bad. Otherwise he wouldn’t have brought it to you until much later.” She paused then grinned. “The guys are going to be hurting.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, they are.” Leaning forward, I kissed her again, then turned and walked out the door. It would be too damn easy to scoop her up and take her back to bed. To spend the whole day there. That’d been my plan for once we woke up until Rip had showed.

Keely was right. The only reason he’d be waking me up after a night like last night was for something bad. He didn’t say anything as we walked down the hallway and down the stairs. He didn’t stop until we were in the meeting room where I always held church.

Sitting down in my chair, I watched as he turned on the TV and tapped on his laptop. My eyes narrowed on the TV as a photo came up. “Goddamn it, is that Keely’s house?”

“Yeah,” Rip said, anger and guilt in his voice. “Code and Bolo headed over there this morning after I checked the cameras.”

“Shit,” I muttered, staring as he flicked through more photos. We’d spent time guarding her house at first, but when nothing happened, we’d left that up to the cameras. It was a risk that they might go there, but I figured they wouldn’t bother since she wasn’t there. They had to know she wasn’t living there. They weren’t fucking stupid. Which meant Hangman had his guys do this just to fuck with her. He was probably trying to draw her out. I wasn’t about to let that happen.

“It happened around two a.m.,” Rip said. “Cameras caught the action, so now I’ll be able to identify some of the LoS’s crew and look into their backgrounds.”

Rip had wired up the whole block with cameras and sensors the day after I’d found out Keely was back in town. “Could you make anyone out?” That was a mistake on their part. Dumbasses.

“Yeah.” He clicked the laptop and the photo was black and white but clear enough to see. It was two men coming through the back door. They had ball caps and heavy jackets on to try to hide themselves, but there was no hiding from Riptide.

“Come on,” I said, pushing out of my chair.

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