Chapter 4: Third Floor

I woke up in a strange bed with my arm on fire and a biker sitting in the doorway.

He was not Boone.

He was a young man with a shaved head and a neck tattoo, balanced on a kitchen chair with a paperback open on his knee.

"Morning, Nurse," he said. "Hank says you get coffee, eggs and no stairs."

"Who are you?" I asked.

"The door."

"You're reading a romance novel."

"It's a good one," he said, and he did not look embarrassed. "The duke finally got his act together."

I laughed, and it hurt, and I laughed anyway.

The clubhouse was a long low building on a gravel lot by the river.

There was a kitchen with a table that sat fourteen, and a wall of photographs of men I didn't know.

Nine bikers were eating breakfast when I came in with Boone's jacket still over my shoulders.

Every fork stopped.

"This is Laney," Boone said from the stove, where he was frying eggs in a cast-iron pan. "She is a guest of this house. Say hello."

"Hello, Laney," nine men said at once.

"Hello," I said.

A man with a grey beard and a prosthetic hand pulled out a chair for me.

"We heard about the bullet," he said. "We heard you told Hank to slow down."

"He was flushing the wound wrong."

The whole table broke into laughter.

Hank, at the end, lifted his coffee at me and did not argue.

Boone slid a plate in front of me.

Eggs, toast, and bacon cut up very small.

"My left hand works fine," I said.

"Eat anyway."

I ate.

Somewhere through the second slice of toast, the shock in my chest began to thaw.

Then my phone buzzed, and I remembered.

It was Trent.

"Laney, pick up. We need to talk about the lease. You can't just disappear. Carl says you're making a big deal out of nothing."

The second message was a minute later.

"Also, I need your PIN for the utilities. Stop being so dramatic."