Page 70 of Wolf.e
I shrug as my phone lights up on the table. “I don’t know.”
Dell
The siding guy is here early for your meeting.
I’m done anyway. Want anything?
“Is that my brother?” Layla asks as she scarfs down her last bite.
“Yes, he’s been great at showing me the ropes.”
She giggles. “I think he always had a crush on you.”
I smile back. “Not a chance.”
“It’s true, he used to ask me every day after school, ‘is Brinley coming over tonight?’” Layla laughs. “I swear, he was a little lovesick teenager our senior year of high school,” she adds, taking her last drink and finishing it with a little slurping sound.
Dell
Nah I’m good, but thanks for thinking of me. Take your time, I’ve got you covered.
Layla reads it from my lock screen and laughs “He’s got you covered.” She winks.
“Shut up,” I say, tossing my napkin at her.
When we round the corner on Main, the bike with the red flames is back right across the street from my work.
Layla spots him at the same time as I do and stops dead in her tracks.
I stop too because I’m instantly on high alert with her. “What?”
She pulls her phone out and presses one button on it, then starts walking again. “Don’t look at him, just keep walking. Whatever I say, go along with it.”
“Who? What are you talking about?” I ask, even though I already know because my gaze follows hers.
I watch the rider who’s been parked in front of my work for the last week turn around and crush his cigarette butt under the heel of his boot. I can see it, even from a hundred feet away… The grim reaper on the back of a red Harley. The red banner above is glaringly obvious, and I already know enough to understand that this is bad news.
Disciples of Sin. My keeper isn’t a friend of the club, he’s the enemy.
Chapter 34
Gabriel
I put my phone back in my pocket. The AirTag I stuck under Brinley’s car tells me she’s still at work. I’ve run thirty-two miles in the last five days, tore my fists up on the bag and blew through almost a thousand rounds of ammo. Yet none of it is working.
I can’t get my fucking head right and I’ve resorted to tracking her every move. I told myself on Monday it was because I had to make sure she wasn’t gonna talk, but it became clear she has no intentions of going to the cops. Most of the time, from what I can tell, she seems skittish, like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The other shoe being me.
I’ve fallen into this primal need that I have to see her again. I watch her in the night, in the hours when her sleep is the deepest. During the day, I use my truck to follow her on the way into the office, to make sure she gets in safe, then return again to follow her home at night. I can’t shake her. I can’t get the wayher body molded to mine out of my head. I tell myself it’ll pass but then one day blends into the next and still…
“Boss,” Jake calls as I stare out the window. “Chapel.”
I nod.
“Steele Street Clinic was ransacked in the middle of the night,” Jake says as we all assemble. “Their entire methadone supply was wiped out.”
“How did that happen? We have eyes on them,” I say. We have multiple cameras in every location.
