Page 5 of Property of Bigfoot
Baffle nodded at me just as Jester walked up again. “Handed keys off to the prospect. He took the van back to the clubhouse for us.”
“Good,” Baffle replied. His dark eyes seemed almost black in the limited light, since his back was to my headlights. His dark hair blended with the night and the leather of his cut. It almost gave him a grim reaper appeal, except that was an unsettling thought considering I didn’t want the man I’d tended to in all of this to lose the battle for his life.
“She tell you about the dash cam yet?” Jester asked.
Baffle shook his head and then brought his eyes up to meet mine for the first time. Yep, they looked black even in the light. “So, I have a dash cam on my truck that recorded the whole thing. She’s probably still recording, since I didn’t think to turn it off.”
“Grab that cam!” Baffle ordered. “I want whatever backup file it goes to.”
“It operates off a large flash drive. When it runs out of space, it alerts me, and I can either record over what I already have or stop it there and feed it a new memory stick.”
“Why do you have it?” Baffle asked.
“Are you kidding? I hit a fucking elk a few years back and insurance tried to tell me I could have avoided the bastard. After having to fight with them to pay out the damages, I swore I’d never be without proof again.” I glanced back at my beat-to-hell, powder blue Toyota. “They shorted me so much that I wasn’t able to replace my old 2500-series. That’s all I could afford when all was said and done, and even that wasn’t cheap since it’s a Toyota.”
“Fair enough.” The man turned to another MC member. “Grunt, grab that memory stick.”
“Wait a minute!” I called out. “No offense, but I don’t know or trust you guys. There is clear evidence of me shooting a firearm at something across the road.”
Baffle stood to his full, beyond six-foot height and stared down at me menacingly, as if that would have some sort of effect on me. “It won’t show the person you shot, so it doesn’t matter.”
“It will show us standing here talking about it,” I sassed back.
Baffle rolled his eyes. “Look, the club already owes you for taking care of our Prez, what more do you want?”
I glanced around as they all waited for me to answer. “I want to stay with him until he wakes back up.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I asked before I narrowed my eyes on him. “Why would I want to make sure the man I saw thrown from his motorcycle, and who I killed someone for, wakes up? Gee, I don’t know, maybe because I need to know he’s going to be okay.”
Baffle nodded and then tipped his head toward my truck. “Follow behind us, then. I promise you can stay with him as long as it takes to appease your big heart. If he wakes up and wants you gone-”
“Then I’m gone,” I stated quickly.
I was destined to be in Arizona, apparently. That was where we headed instead of where I knew the MC’s clubhouse to be. The minute I realized we were headed back in the direction I’d come from earlier, I almost decided that it didn’t matter what happened to the man. Nothing good had come out of my little trip across the state line before, and I didn’t think that would change as I crossed into Arizona again. It took a few minutes for me to realize that we were headed toward the White Mountain Emergency Room. I breathed out a sigh of relief that they were going to take their buddy to an actual hospital to get him treated. I didn’t want to imagine what would happen if they tried to treat his injuries themselves.
When we got there, I parked as close as I could to the door without being in the way of all the men who had caught up and followed us there on their motorcycles. I was out of my truck and headed inside before most of them had even managed to back into their spots. Baffle was already there, along with a man who barked orders at the medical staff.
“Dr. Waters,” One of the nurses nodded her head toward the man who wore the same motorcycle club cut that the other men wore. I guess when they said they had a doc on the way, they hadn’t lied.
“We need to get him into an MRI, Mercedes.”
“Yes, sir.” The nurse and some other staff wheeled Bigfoot off behind a set of doors as Dr. Waters turned to speak in rushed, hushed tones with Baffle. I stood there, not knowing what to do with myself until Jester came in and pulled me aside.
“Come on, sweetheart, let’s settle in over here for a minute until they know more.”
I followed along, not that I had much choice, since his arm was wrapped around my shoulders as the biker who cleaned up after my mess earlier guided us toward some chairs in the corner of the waiting room. His warmth seeped into me, and it was only then that I realized I had no clue what happened to my sweater or the jacket I used to cover Bigfoot. Not that it mattered, except the air condition in the hospital was cranked to full-blast despite it being a chilly night. I shivered involuntarily and Jester pulled me closer.
“You cold or is the adrenaline starting to crash?” he asked. I leaned my head back to look up into a pair of deep brown eyes that seemed legitimately worried about me. I managed to shrug my shoulders before another shiver ran through me. “Prospect!” Jester called out in a tone that said someone better answer him immediately.
“What’s up, Jester?” A boy answered. There was no other way to describe him, as he was so thin, and looked incredibly young.
“Run out and grab a hoodie from the van.” Jester threw the kid a set of keys and then sat me down in a chair next to him. All the while, his arm remained around my shoulders.
We sat there for a few minutes as the rest of the club brothers filtered into the waiting room and took seats surrounding us. There was a wall directly next to Jester, since he’d seated us in the corner, but the seats in front and beside us were filled with motorcycle men, which put a buffer at least three men deep in either direction between me and the next non-motorcycle club brother in the waiting room.
Baffle finally made his way to us, but I didn’t like the angry look on his face as he did. When he got to us, he squatted down in front of me and looked me straight in the eye. Yup, his eyes were still so dark brown they appeared black, even under the shitty fluorescent lights of the hospital.
