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  “Are you saying—what are you saying? They’ll kidnap me?”

  “I don’t think they’ll go that far,” Lucas said, his eyebrows drawing down. “And I won’t let that happen.”

  “But?” she prompted. “I really feel like there’s a but here.”

  “But…if they claim you, and I ignore that….”

  Additional horror swept through her. “You’ll be in danger.”

  “And so will you,” he said miserably. “And if they claim you, there’s no us, Julie. There’s no dating. No kissing.” He cleared his throat. “I’d be expected to give you up to respect the club and not bring fire down on my own brethren.” He shook his head and folded his arms. He was an impressive male specimen, but Julie could barely appreciate his muscles at the moment.

  “I hate all the speculating,” he said. “I can’t talk in circles forever. But you asked, and I think you should know it’s possible.”

  Julie felt like he’d cut her off at the knees. “And then what?” she asked, her voice slightly squeaky. “I…I—then what?” She couldn’t pretend to understand his culture.

  “And then the Breathers protect you,” he said. “Not me.”

  “Protect? By kidnapping me the way they have Lawrence?”

  “We don’t know that he’s been kidnapped,” Lucas said quietly, glancing out of their booth.

  “Yes, we do.”

  “No, Jules.” Lucas looked at her, his gaze earnest. “He got on the back of the bike willingly. They didn’t force him or compel him. It’s not a kidnapping.”

  “He could be being held against his will.”

  “He could,” Lucas said. “But in my opinion, he’s staying willingly, because he knows it will protect his family.”

  Julie’s eyes pricked with tears. She wanted to blink them back before Lucas saw, but he wasn’t looking anywhere but at her. He reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure you’re safe,” he said. “And your parents. And your brother. We’re working on it.”

  She nodded and sniffled, because she wasn’t sure what else to do. He’d just told her he might be forced to break up with her. That, or she could be kidnapped as ransom so her brother would keep doing whatever he was doing for “the Breathers.”

  She finally looked away, one tear boiling over and splashing her cheek. She swiped at it quickly, because she’d spent a lot of time to look like a million bucks tonight, and she didn’t want to ruin one more thing.

  Chapter Eight

  Lucas woke with the image of Julie swiping at her face in his mind, and he sure didn’t like that. A sigh moved through his body, because there wasn’t much else he could do about the situation. Maverick had all of his eagles out, and all of his moles employed, and all of resources at work.

  A couple of days had passed since their Monday night date, and Lucas had stuck true to his promise not to bother Julie on Tuesday, her day that she was going to sleep forever. He’d taken a long nap after work too, because switching schedules wasn’t the easiest thing he’d ever done, and he rarely got home before one or two in the morning.

  He wasn’t the type where he could immediately change into a pair of basketball shorts and drop into bed the way Jordan did. His roommate was often snoring while Lucas took Smoky out for a walk. With his breath steaming in front of him and the dog so happy to finally be outside, Lucas could finally unwind.

  An hour after that, he went around the house checking doors and windows, though he and Jordan kept everything locked tight all the time. And finally, finally, after that, he could lay down and try to go to sleep.

  Three hours wasn’t a night of rest, that was for sure. When he set his alarm most nights, he thought he was just getting ready to take a nap.

  “You’re going to be late,” Jordan said from the doorway, and Lucas lifted his head off the pillow.

  “I’m up.”

  Jordan loitered in the doorway, but he didn’t say anything. They just looked at one another until he finally said, “We’ll figure something out tonight.”

  “I should just break up with her now,” Lucas said. “Then it won’t be a problem when they claim her.”

  “Ah, so we’re going right to when.”

  Lucas groaned as he sat up, already in need of four ibuprofen as he’d obviously been grinding his teeth while he slept. “It’s going to happen,” he said. “We both know it, and I hate trying to push it away like it isn’t.”

  “So…how are you going to do it?”

  Lucas ran his hands up and down his face. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you’ve been out, what? Once? I mean, sure, you’ve shared a few more meals than that and all, but it’s not like you’re kissing her or—” He cut off when Lucas looked up, pure guilt streaming from him.

  “You kissed her?” Jordan entered the room completely now. “When?”

  “Monday.” And it had been fabulous. Amazing. Life-changing. Lucas never wanted to kiss any other woman again. Which made the thought of breaking up with Julie absolutely nauseating.

  “Wow, Monday.” Jordan grinned down at him. “Before or after the date?”

  “We’re done talking about this,” Lucas said, standing up. “I’m going to shower before you hog all the hot water.”

  Jordan burst out laughing, but Lucas just walked away from him. As he went past his friend and into the hall, Jordan said, “I guess it was before.”

  Lucas didn’t give Jordan the satisfaction of a response other than closing the door a little extra hard behind him. He got the water running, because it took a few minutes to get warmed up. As it did, he looked at himself in the mirror. He looked exhausted, as he expected. He wasn’t expecting to look so agonized over Julie. “I need some help with this one,” he said to himself, but he was really talking to a higher power.

  He didn’t need help with showering or getting himself to the hospital. His shift was nothing exciting, and he even managed to squeak out a lunch with Julie for twenty minutes. He couldn’t bring himself to break up with her, and he headed home feeling worse than he had that morning.

  Back at Jordan’s, Lucas downed a couple more pills, drank a whole bottle of water, and took Smoky outside. The dog ran and played in the snow, and Lucas just watched him instead of getting the leash out.

  He went back to bed, setting his alarm for twice as long as he had the night before. He just needed some rest before he made any huge decisions or did something that he would regret later. That was what he told himself as the reason why he hadn’t been able to say anything to Julie.

  He’d let her talk about her best friend who was now her boss, and he’d pressed her against the wall and kissed her out of sight of everyone else. He couldn’t break up with her after that.

  “Honestly, if the Breath would just claim her, everything would be easier.” He rolled over and whistled for Smoky to come lay by him. The dog did, circling and curling into Lucas’s side. “Yeah, that’s a good spot, bud.” And finally, he fell asleep.

  Hours later, he finally felt like himself again. He walked into the living room to find Felicia and Jordan making out on the couch, and he cleared his throat before saying, “Hey, you should put up a sign so I know not to come down the hall.”

  “Hey,” Jordan said too loud. The couch squeaked as he leapt from it and came into the kitchen with Lucas. “I was just going to come wake you up.”

  “Sure,” Lucas said, glancing out him out of the corner of his eye. He poured himself a cup of coffee. “When did you guys make this?”

  “Recently,” Jordan said.

  “I should go,” Felicia said behind them, and Lucas kept his back to them so Jordan could say good-bye to his girlfriend in semi-privacy. “Recently” for Jordan meant within the last five hours, and Lucas had a feeling no amount of sugar or cream would make this coffee palatable. He dumped his poured cup down the drain and leaned against the counter while Jordan closed the front door.

  He leaned agai
nst that one, and the two of them looked at each other. Lucas finally cocked his right eyebrow, and Jordan said, “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s embarrassing for me too,” Lucas said.

  “I know.” Jordan put a smile on his face and headed into the kitchen. He dumped the coffee out and started making more. “We’re going to get some answers tonight.”

  Lucas just grunted, because he wasn’t so sure. But he enjoyed a half an hour with Smoky and Jordan before they rode over to Ruby’s, one behind the other. Lucas had never minded riding in Jordan’s shadow. Or Mav’s. Or anyone’s really. He’d never wanted to stand out. In his younger days, he’d done everything he could to fall behind, actually.

  Lawrence had played a big part in that, and Lucas hated that the man had formed so much of who he was.

  “We are,” Jordan said. “I just know the Breathers are going to do something or go somewhere that gives us a clue as to what they’re doing.”

  “You got nothing from Chandler?” Lucas had been praying Jordan’s boss at the law office would have some insight.

  “He said every lawyer specializes in something, and he doesn’t know much about tax law.”

  Another dead end. Lucas wasn’t sure why he was surprised. It felt like every avenue the Sentinels knew about led to a dead end. Sometimes he wished his club could do what some others did. Break rules. Do whatever it took. Take and take and take.

  As quickly as that thought came, he dismissed it. He was not interested in being a member of an outlaw club. He loved his place at Ruby’s, loved the way Ian grabbed him in a hug and pounded him on the back with one hand. Loved the way Electron brought in homemade caramel sauce while Mav followed with a vat of ice cream that better have chocolate in it. He sat next to Gramps and listened to him tell a story he’d told before, a smile on his face.

  Yes, Lucas fit with the Sentinels, and they fit with him. With them at his side, he could do anything.

  Even break up with Julie? he wondered, but he didn’t have to answer that right now.

  “All right, guys,” Maverick said a couple of minutes later. “Officers up front, please. We have a lot to talk about tonight, and we’re getting a late start.”

  Lucas clapped his hand on Gramps’s thigh, and the two of them got up to head up to the front row. Maverick waited until everyone was in place, and then he said, “All right, church is open. We’re still dealing with the Breath, and we have a new development I’m going to let Vice talk about.”

  Jordan got up and said, “House’s girlfriend is the sister of Lawrence Paige.”

  Lucas might have imagined the gasp that came from the other members. As if it was so shocking that he had a girlfriend. He glanced around, and a couple of others were looking at him. So maybe he hadn’t imagined the murmurs or inhalations of shock.

  “We expect the Breath to claim Julie Paige, at which point, we need to decide what our next move will be.”

  “House will have to break up with her,” someone said.

  “Agreed,” Jordan said, and Lucas wanted to bolt from the room. He didn’t feel so welcome anymore. Maverick had continued to date Karly even after the Hawks had claimed her. And a lot of people paid for it, Lucas’s mind whispered, thinking of Jordan’s ribs that still gave him problems from time to time. He wouldn’t do that to his brothers. Not only that, he didn’t have the same clout Maverick did.

  “But what we really want is for things to just go underground,” Jordan continued. “House would keep seeing Julie, and they’d be working from inside the Breath to find out what’s going on.”

  “What?” Lucas demanded, already turning toward Maverick.

  “Give him a second,” Mav said, holding up his hand. Lucas glared at the back wall and folded his arms.

  “We’ll need to get Julie Paige in here,” Jordan said. “And propose the plan to her. She’d be putting a lot at risk, but Lucas—” He cut his eyes to Lucas. “Would be there the whole time to protect her.” He swallowed, and Lucas saw his nerves when maybe no one else did. Vice was the best friend Lucas had ever had, and while he wasn’t as loud as Lucas, or as brash as Ian, or as tough as some of the other men in the crowd, he hadn’t become Vice because he was a lightweight.

  His loyalty was only matched by Lucas’s, and probably Maverick’s, and if this was his plan, he’d spent a long time coming up with it. And it seemed Maverick and Gramps and Ian had too, as they all stood right behind Vice at the front.

  Electron said, “Wait, I’m coming,” from the back of the room. When he got to the front, he added, “I was stirring something. I didn’t know the speech was going to go so fast.”

  Lucas felt like he was facing a wall of men he would never cross. He trusted each of them with his life, and he listened to what they said. “Guys,” he said.

  “We think this is the best way to get the information we need,” Maverick said, joining the group by shifting his weight toward Vice. “We just need to vote on allowing Julie to come to meetings.”

  “What?” Lucas’s breath left his body. “No. No, she can not come here, Mav.” It wasn’t that he didn’t want her there—maybe that was part of it. He wasn’t sure, honestly. He had his worlds, and if Julie came here, they’d all collide.

  “You can’t ask her to do this,” he said, his panic rising. “What if they entrap her into their club too? We saw what happened with Bulldog and the Hawks. Even if we manage to blow up their club from the inside out, there are consequences for that. Big ones.”

  And he would not have Julie risking herself like that. The image of her crying on Monday night moved through his mind. “No.”

  “It has to be unanimous,” Vice said. “And it might be our best chance of finding out what the Breathers are doing in Forbidden Lake and getting them out of our town.”

  Murmurs swept through the crowd then, because that was something everyone in the Sentinels wanted. Freedom from the Breath, who had bombed them last year on a stretch of road outside of town.

  And mentioning that was Vice playing dirty.

  Lucas muscled his way between Vice and Ian and faced everyone else. “She can’t do this,” he said. “I’ve had to educate her on motorcycle clubs multiple times. She doesn’t even know how they operate. She could be somewhere in a situation she doesn’t understand and ruin everything with a single word.” As he spoke, more ideas popped into his head. “And trust me when I say the woman has a very hard time keeping her mouth shut. She’ll give the whole plan away before it even gets off the ground.”

  “Dude, she’s your girlfriend,” Vice said. “Have some faith in her.”

  “I have faith in her,” Lucas said. “If you have surgery, and you need a nurse for your aftercare, Julie’s the best. But this? No.” He shook his head. “No, she’s not cut out for this.” They couldn’t let Julie into their church meetings and expect her to play a rat inside the Breathers club. How would she do that anyway?

  And how would he be there to protect her? “This plan has very soft feet,” he said, going on to ask the questions in his mind.

  “It’s simple,” Mav said. “You break from us, at least to everyone on the outside. And you join them.”

  Lucas’s mouth dropped open, and his heart pounded with a loud drumbeat. “How? Why would I do that? They’re not stupid.”

  “When they claim her—”

  “First, we don’t even know if they’re going to do that,” Lucas said. “It’s been almost a week, and we’ve heard nothing from them.”

  “When they claim her,” Maverick said again, leaning out of line and glaring at Lucas. He didn’t care that he’d just cut off the President of the club. This was absurd. “We’ll create a ruse where I tell you that’s it. You have to break up with her. And you’ll refuse, and we’ll have a big falling-out. And then the two of you will go to the Breath for refuge.”

  “Insanity,” Lucas said. “You’re talking about dumping gas on a fire and then tossing in a book of matches. You’ll make the turf war bigger if they t
hink they’ve gotten your Road Captain to switch sides.”

  No one said anything, and Lucas couldn’t tell by the expressions on the club members’ faces who they believed. A lot of people listened to Maverick no matter what. He’d done so much for each and every one of the men and women in this room.

  “It has to be a unanimous vote to allow Julie Paige into our club and meetings,” Vice said.

  “She hasn’t even pledged,” Lucas said, throwing his arms up. “The Breathers aren’t going to believe she went through that whole process in the matter of a few days.”

  “Questions?” Maverick asked.

  “I get to vote, right?” Lucas asked, glaring down the row of stoic men. Each of them had been in on this, and he felt the weight of half a dozen knives twisting through his ribcage. Why were they doing this?

  “Actually, Lucas,” Maverick said, and Lucas knew it was serious when the boss used his real name. He spoke very quietly when he said, “I’m going to call a contest on your ability to vote, because I think your judgement is compromised.”

  “Compromised?”

  “I second the contest,” Gramps said as if Lucas hadn’t spoken at all.

  “We only need a fifty percent majority on that,” Vice said, and Lucas felt whiplashed all over the place. He felt his very core being ripped from him as the proceedings continued around him.

  He lost his ability to vote, and Lucas just stood there, in complete shock.

  “Sorry, House,” Gramps said. He hugged Lucas again, but Lucas couldn’t even feel the older man’s arms. He saw the agony on Jordan’s face, and the way Mav wouldn’t look at him. Ian tried to smile, but his chin wobbled, and Electron was the only even one when he said, “Lucas, we know how you feel.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. Electron never even dated. He came from a home with a mom and a dad who didn’t drink and hit each other, or their kids. He’d gotten into some trouble with some chemicals, because he loved science and cooking things up. That brush with the law had brought him to the Sentinels, but the man still taught high school chemistry, for crying out loud.