Snitches Get Stitches (The Bear Bottom Guardians MC Book 8) Read online

  She blinked. “I don’t…understand.”

  I grinned. “Chickens can drown themselves by staring up at the sky during the rain. That’s my guys if I’m not there. Plus, I like to supervise when they have thousands and thousands of volts of electricity that they’re playing with.”

  She stood up, giving Monster one more pat on the head.

  When she was straightened all the way, I realized that she was still short, even when she wasn’t in her wheelchair.

  She was about five foot two if that. And compared to my six foot four? Well, she was downright tiny.

  Her bones were tiny. Her hands were tiny. Her lips were plush but tiny.

  I’d break her if I ever held her.

  But I immediately shook that thought off. I wouldn’t be holding her. I wouldn’t be doing anything with her.

  Nope. No. Nuh-uh.

  She smiled at me as Monster tried to worm his way into her arms.

  “I like your dog, Liner…”

  “Josiah Ampere Paldecki,” I answered. “Liner is something I got when I started working for my dad at the age of eighteen.”

  Her head tilted slightly.

  “As in Ampere Electric?”

  I grinned. “The one and only.”

  She followed me to the red line that was in the middle of the floor that led to the bedrooms.

  I saw her stop just short of it.

  My eyes went to the line that slatted across the floor, butting almost completely up to the front of the nurses’ station, then to her.

  “A line you’re not supposed to cross?” I teased.

  She shrugged. “Beyond this line is the doctors’ lounges, the private quarters for those that stay overnight, and the pill room.” She jerked her chin up in that direction. “They don’t want us crossing it without permission. And since I’m not a rule breaker, I do as I’m told.”

  I winked. “Come on. Cross it. You know you want to.”

  Her eyes went to a nurse that was standing near the room she’d indicated had the drugs in it, then went back to me. “I’m sorry…but no.”

  The nurse had her eyes locked on Theo as if she was just waiting for her to do it.

  “Maybe another time then, darlin’.” I winked. “I’ll see you next week.”

  Her face fell. “Next week?”

  Was that sadness in her eyes?

  I was a masochistic bastard, because I was hoping it was.

  “Yeah, next week.” I paused. “At the earliest, to be honest. If the storm’s half as bad as the National Weather Service is predicting it’ll be? I could be gone longer.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Be careful.”

  I tugged on a lock of her hair. God, she was beautiful.

  “I will, darlin’.”

  With that, I took off and tried not to look back.

  I accomplished my goal, but I didn’t feel like I’d won.

  Not even a little.

  There was something about that woman that drew me in, and I couldn’t help but think that the longer I allowed this to go on, the worse it was going to be.

  Chapter 6

  Hey girl. You’re looking like a king cake. Let me put a baby in you.

  -T-shirt

  Theo

  The storm was worse than they predicted.

  How did I know?

  Because a tornado tore through the middle of the town, heading straight for The Bridge.

  I’d never, in my entire life, been so scared as when I heard those tornado sirens go off.

  The one and only nurse that liked me, Maddyn, who happened to look a lot like me, turned her head and stared at me with a look of horror on her face.

  “They’re saying they spotted a tornado headed straight for us,” one of the doctors, Benjamin Wheeler, said. “My wife just called. She said it passed right by our house. Took the neighbor’s house but not ours. She also mentioned that the tornado sirens are malfunctioning, and none of them are going off on the other side of town.”

  I closed my eyes tightly and prayed that Tyson and Linnie would be okay.

  Hopefully they would. Their house in town was nowhere near this part of the city for obvious reasons. It was also as far away from my dad’s place as it could get while still being in the same town.

  “Time to take cover, then,” I heard said from the man at my other side.

  It was one of the orderlies. A large black male that had arms the size of my waist. His name was Tyrel, and he had a voice like sin.

  He was also hot as hell and had lips that just begged to be kissed.

  He was in college to become a mathematician and had about two years left before he graduated.

  So not only was he hot, but he was smart as hell, too.

  “Where? We won’t be able to handle getting all of the patients out of their rooms. They will be fine where they are at, won’t they?” the nurse that I didn’t like, Sharona, asked.

  I stared at her with anger plain on my face.

  “They’re in exterior rooms. What, would you just like them to die? Then you’d be out of a job,” I snapped.

  Sharona’s eyes were on me.

  “I could lock you back in your room,” she suggested sweetly.

  “Sharona,” Dr. Benjamin said. “Now’s not the time, and of course we let them out of their rooms. We need to take cover in the hallway. That’s the most interior place that we have in this facility, and it’s on the protocol in case of emergency. Please, start unlocking the rooms and rousing the patients.”

  Of course, the tornado would happen at night.

  Of freaking course.

  That was usually how it went, correct?

  But it didn’t matter what time it was.

  I’d been up for hours and hours thinking about the man that was in this storm.

  I’d never really given it much thought before, but I could see how his job would be dangerous.

  During my computer time this morning, right before the storm had hit, I’d done a Google search on ‘lineman’ and hadn’t really liked what I’d found.

  It was ranked one of the top ten most dangerous jobs in the world, and fifty out of every one hundred thousand people died while doing it. And that was just the fatal parts of the job. You could also be injured by the actual electricity or fall off of the electrical pole. Many opportunities to maim and hurt yourself and be forced to go on living with that pain for the rest of your life.

  Needless to say, after my Google search, I hadn’t been too comfortable about his job title.

  Moreover, I didn’t know why I cared…but I did.

  A lot.

  The wind started to shake the building we were standing in, and I went ahead and grabbed my blanket, pillow, and book and walked to the hallway where we’d be for the foreseeable future.

  Maddyn followed in my wake, unlocking the two closest doors that were near to where I was sitting. Once she had both patients out of their rooms—and luckily seated away from me seeing as they really were crazy—she came to sit next to me.

  “If this place gets hit with that tornado, and I die, I want to make sure that I do it sitting next to him,” Maddyn whispered.

  Maddyn had a crush on Tyrel. And when I say crush, I mean a crush that would make one of my romance novels proud.

  “I’m sure he’s going to make his way over here,” I assured her. “But, you may want to move away from me so he’s not thinking he has to sit next to a crazy person.”

  Maddyn looked at me like I was nuts. Which was funny since I was ‘supposed’ to be.

  But Maddyn was a different kind of person. Despite knowing what I’d ‘supposedly’ done, she’d never treated me as anything less than a worthwhile human being.

  She also knew that, at this point, I was in here on my own volition.

  See, my mandatory ‘time’ that I needed to serve was up last August. Now I was just here because here was safer than there.

  P
lus, I had a feeling Maddyn saw more than she was letting on, and her eyes always narrowed when Tara showed. I was fairly sure Maddyn wasn’t fooled even a little bit.

  “He’s so beautiful,” she replied dreamily.

  I snorted and waved at Tyrel as he started looking for a place to sit.

  He came over just as Maddyn started to whisper curses in my ear about how she was no longer going to slip me the good meds.

  I tossed her a look over my shoulder as I said, “You don’t give me any meds at all.”

  Her face tilted. “And why is that?”

  I shrugged and turned back to Tyrel as he bent down.

  Man, he smelled good.

  Were men supposed to smell that good?

  Granted, Liner had smelled divine, but I thought that was just me being attracted to Liner. And though Tyrel was pretty to look at, he wasn’t mine…he was Maddyn’s. He just didn’t know it yet.

  “Yeah?” he asked.

  I patted the ground next to me.

  “I have a couple of questions for you,” I said softly.

  Tyrel took a seat on my other side, and I felt Maddyn quiver next to me with excitement.

  “What’s up, Hobbit?”

  I looked at him with a raised brow. “I thought we discussed you not calling me that.”

  The window in one of the bedrooms at the end of the hall shattered, and my heart leaped into my throat. Glass pinged to the floor, along with the rain that was surely falling completely sideways now due to the wind.

  “We also discussed you and your habit of not eating, and yet you still have trouble accomplishing that,” he countered, seemingly unaffected by the glass shattering.

  I bit my lip.

  “I ate today,” I admitted.

  “You ate because a boy gave you another muffin,” Maddyn said from my other side.

  The entire building felt like it shook, and my breath once again caught.

  “That boy sure does make me happy,” I admitted. “Or maybe it’s his dog.”

  “It’s the man, darlin’,” Tyrel said. “Trust me on this.”

  I snickered and felt my heart lodge somewhere in my throat just as what felt like a bomb went off.

  Then eerie silence.

  I looked over at the person that was across the hall from me, Sharona, and shared her terror.

  “Cover your heads!” I heard called.

  I turned and covered my head, feeling like I’d practically crawled into the wall as I did.

  I felt Tyrel’s body on one side of me, and Maddyn’s on the other.

  Then…nothing.

  Chapter 7

  I hate ranting to you. You’ll just use sound reasoning and logic where all I’m really looking for is a person that says, ‘I hate that bitch, too.’

  -Text from Liner to Rome

  Liner

  “Tornado went through town,” I heard my father say. “Took out that bakery.”

  My eyes sharpened on my father and I stared as he tried to tell me something. All the while my heart rate felt like it was nearing tachycardic levels.

  That was when it all clicked into place.

  The bakery.

  Next to The Bridge.

  Son of a bitch!

  “Is it bad?” I asked worriedly.

  Dad’s eyes were hard and unyielding. “Place is a mess. The tornado picked up and touched back down right on top of that building…it’s in ruins. So far they haven’t found any fatalities.”

  I looked at my computer, bleary-eyed, and wondered if I could go down there under the pretense of wanting to check on the happenings.

  Then I remembered I was on the volunteer fire department and didn’t fuckin’ need a reason to go down there.

  I had a legitimate reason.

  “Can you survive without me?” I asked, standing up and gathering my keys.

  I didn’t bother waiting for him to reply. I knew he could survive without me. Sure, he didn’t have to do it all that often anymore, but he was a fully functioning adult capable of pointing fingers and delegating tasks just like I’d been doing all morning.

  I’d started my day off outside fixing lines but had moved inside once relief in the form of other branches of Ampere Electric started to arrive.

  Once the eighth truck had shown up, I’d gone into the office to get a fresh change of clothes and something to eat. When I’d found Dad swamped as he tried to figure out which part of the grid he should fix first, I’d stayed and started helping him instead.

  Which was where I was when he’d gotten the phone call about ten minutes earlier.

  “I was doing this before you were even a desire in your mother’s eye.” He slapped me on the back. “Get out of here, kid. And don’t come back without her.”

  The smile didn’t reach his eyes, though, and I had a feeling that he thought I might not be coming back with her. More like, coming back with the news that she wasn’t on this planet anymore.

  And that didn’t sit well with me.

  Not at all.

  Not even a little bit.

  I was really, really attached, and I wasn’t sure I should be.

  That didn’t stop me from walking out the door, though.

  It also didn’t stop me from walking straight into the chaos the moment my bike maneuvered past a piece of the gate that used to surround The Bridge.

  “You can’t leave that bike there, man.” Wade, one of my club brothers and a cop for Bear Bottom Police Department, grumbled the moment I parked it. “We have an ambulance loading right there. At least when the next one shows, anyway. That’s as close as they can get.”

  I nodded my head at my club brother and backed it into a spot where I’d sat just a week ago while waiting for Tyson to come back from his visit to The Bridge.

  “This good?” I asked.

  Wade nodded. “You won’t be able to get out if that ambulance gets here, but looks like you’re in for the long haul, anyway.”

  I nodded my head. “I am.”

  For now, anyway. If Theo was hurt, I’d be taking her to the hospital.

  “Be careful in there,” Wade said as I stood off my bike. “The building is unstable.”

  I looked at the building and felt my heart lodge in my throat at the sight before me.

  The entire area surrounding The Bridge looked normal other than a few downed trees and debris. The Bridge, though? It looked like the tornado had sat down right on top of it and tore the entire center out.

  My father’s report had been wrong. The bakery hadn’t been touched, and neither had the building on the other side of the bakery.

  The Bridge looked to be the only building on the entire block that looked like it had sustained any damage. Hell, even the forest behind it looked untouched.

  Of all the luck…

  “I will,” I agreed. “The power cut off to this part of the street?”

  Wade nodded. “It is. Called it in myself, and I talked to your old man.”

  That must’ve been the call that my father had gotten. Made sense now.

  “All right,” I said softly. “See you later.”

  Wade fist-bumped me as I passed by, and I continued up the walk, pulling on a yellow utility vest that I’d grabbed out of my saddlebag as I’d walked away.

  I stopped next to Bayou, my MC president who happened to be the fire chief, and offered him my hand.

  He took it and shook once before turning his gaze to the mess in front of him.

  “All the residents were in the hallway,” he said softly. “As well as all the staff. We’re clearing a path to it right now.”

  I looked at the mess before me and knew that there was no way that all those residents had made it out alive. The building was a total loss.

  “Have you found anyone yet?” I asked softly.

  He gestured to the ambulance that was just pulling up. Wade was guiding it to the spot that he’d indicated I shouldn’t park, a
nd it was then I saw the body that was next to a tree, covered only in a purple sheet.

  “One. Female, about thirty years old.”

  Pound. Pound. Pound.

  My heart was practically beating out of my chest.

  “What’d she look like?” I asked softly.

  Bayou, our club president, didn’t ask why I wanted to know. He didn’t care and assumed I had a good enough reason for showing up, let alone asking about a deceased person that I shouldn’t care about.

  “Brunette. Around five foot or so.”

  I closed my eyes and counted to ten.

  “Tara’s sister is here,” I said softly.

  Bayou’s shoulders tightened, and he looked at me like I’d just spoken in tongues.

  “She has a sister?” he asked, sounding eerily calm.

  “Twin,” I replied. “Looks just like her…only with blue eyes instead of those dark brown, almost black eyes that Tara has.”

  Bayou cleared his throat.

  “I don’t know if it’s her,” he admitted. “I was informed that there was a nurse here that resembled that one.”

  There was no other choice.

  I had to walk over to the body and find out.

  Something compelled me to do it, and I wouldn’t be able to work knowing she might be over there.

  Walking stiffly, I made my way to the spongy, rain-soaked grass where the body was laying.

  I came to a stop next to the sheet, which I now realized wasn’t just purple, but a swirl of darker and lighter purple as well.

  Steeling myself for the worst, I lifted the sheet and stared into sightless blue eyes.

  Chapter 8

  Today I learned that there are female penguins who exchange sex for rocks. So if you’re having a bad day, just know that there are hooker penguins out there.

  -Text from Castiel to Liner

  Liner

  The very last thing I wanted to do thirty-five hours later was go home, but I didn’t have a choice.

  I needed a few hours of sleep that wasn’t on the hard ground, or upright in a computer chair, and I needed a shower worse.

  I was in a state of shock, I decided.