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  “Make sure he never steps foot in Nebraska again,” Romeo said and walked away without a backward glance. “I need a new fucking chair.”

  Chapter Two

  “You’ve had impressive surgical training, Miss Matsumoto,” stated the voice through the computer’s speakers. “But I have to warn you that Bair, Nebraska, isn’t exactly a hip, happening place for a young woman.”

  Chloe gritted her teeth, but kept her smile over Skype. She wanted this job more than anything, and telling the surgical director of the very small hospital to go fuck himself wouldn’t win her any brownie points.

  “I’ve done extensive research on your hospital and on Bair, and your trauma rate is what appeals to me,” she answered.

  The director, Mr. Browning, sighed. “Yes, well, I should be brutally honest with you. Our trauma rate is mainly due to the motorcycle club getting into conflicts with the local drug gang.”

  “The Men of Hell, correct? And the Shanks?”

  Even on the slightly distorted video, admiration shone on his face. “You have been doing your homework. Tell me, Miss Matsumoto, why would you choose to come to our very small hospital when you have the pick of top-notch hospitals in the country? Traveling surgical technicians can make a lot more money.”

  “I’ve worked in top-notch hospitals, Mr. Browning, and with all due respect to their reputations, it comes down to bureaucracy and less about patient care. My surgical training was basically an assembly line with a twenty minute turnaround time to sterilize the OR and prep for the next surgery. It may sound very cliché, but I’m looking for an environment where I can make a difference.”

  “Well, I can certainly give you that here at Bair Memorial,” Mr. Browning said wryly.

  For the next half hour, he managed to grill her on the different procedures she’d assisted in, bringing into call her textbook training and even some of the things she’d had to learn off the cuff. When the Skype interview completed, Chloe sat back, relaxed and, breathing easy, touched her fingertips together. She was positive she’d hear from Mr. Browning soon with an offer of employment.

  “Wow,” her friend, Clement, said from the kitchen. She suckled loudly on a Popsicle. “I almost believed that load of crap.”

  Chloe shrugged and closed the lid on her laptop. “Interviews are easy. You just have to tell them what they want to hear.”

  “Are you sure this is a wise move, Chloe? After, you know…”

  “Don’t,” Chloe ordered stiffly. “Don’t go there. It’s over and I’m not in jail. Let’s leave it at that.” She loved Clement dearly, but it was always the same with her—the doubt and uncertainty shining brightly in her eyes. Of course, it didn’t help matters much whenever Chloe went off on a tangent. “Besides, it’s different this time.”

  “How?” Clement asked skeptically.

  “Well, for one—do you see any photos on the walls?” Chloe gestured around the room.

  Clement shook her head. “No. But this move does have to do with Kaiya’s abduction, doesn’t it? You’ve not been the same since she came back.”

  “Partly,” Chloe said with a shrug. “I have a life debt I must repay.”

  “There is no such thing as a life debt,” Clement said dryly. “That was a term made up for plot ideas in books and movies.”

  “For me, it’s real,” Chloe said. Her thoughts briefly touched on her cousin, Kaiya. “Now stop, I want to be excited about getting this position.”

  Clement frowned. “But Nebraska? I can’t imagine there’s anything to do there. I’d miss Los Angeles too much. And you know your grandfather will come after you, when he figures out where you went.”

  “If he questions you, give him the letter I wrote. You have it, right?”

  “Yep. Absolving me of all knowledge.”

  “Don’t be afraid to use it,” Chloe said. “My grandfather is the type of man you want to avoid pissing off.”

  Clement snorted. “Yeah, I know.” She took Chloe’s hand and squeezed. “I’ll miss you, you know.”

  Chloe’s heart lurched. Clement had been her one true friend, the only one to stick by her when she was hospitalized. “I know,” she whispered. “I’m going to miss you too.”

  Clement took a step closer and cupped her face. “I wouldn’t mind your obsessive love.”

  “God, I hate that word,” she muttered. “I don’t have obsessions. I have tangents.”

  “Your last tangent not only got you fired, you were almost arrested and it brought your grandfather back into your life. If you had just loved me, I would’ve put up with any of your irregular behaviors.”

  Chloe sadly shook her head. “That would make sense, but, unfortunately, I just don’t find you sexually attractive, even though you are gorgeous.”

  Truer words had never been spoken. Clement was the complete opposite of her, with long blonde hair and sky-blue eyes, the epitome of a California girl. They’d been friends through high school and both had entered vocational college together, where Clement had finally come clean about loving pussy instead of dick. She’d wanted to have a relationship with Chloe, but after one night of awkward sex, Chloe had realized she definitely preferred cock.

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” Clement murmured. She bent and kissed Chloe on the mouth. Chloe allowed it, knowing her friend wouldn’t push for more, and soon Clement pulled back with a long, dramatic sigh. “Damn it, why can’t you be a lesbian?”

  Chloe patted her hand consolingly. “I’m sorry. Since you’re so into the fish smell, how about we get sushi? My treat.”

  “You’re such an ass sometimes,” Clement said with a snort. “Okay, sushi it is. You’d better get your fill here, because I have a feeling Bum Fucked Bair, Nebraska, doesn’t have too much fresh sashimi.”

  * * * *

  Two days later, Chloe received the call, and the next day, she went about packing up her efficiency apartment to make the move to Nebraska. Satisfaction consumed her and part of the itch inside her had been scratched. She walked over to her closet and opened the door to stare at the mural on the wall. Varied pictures crowded the small corkboard, one on top of the other. She was going to have to buy a bigger board.

  One man decorated the entire surface. Dark hair, piercing blue eyes… He stared at her from the shiny surfaces of the glossy four-by-sevens. She smiled, kissed her fingertips, and pressed them lightly to the man’s photo. They were from her grandfather’s personal files, from when he’d had Kaiya’s rescuers investigated. As soon as Chloe had set eyes on the dark-haired man with a lady-killer smile, lustful possession had surged within her. She had to have him. Her pussy had instantly slicked, followed by an ache settling deep inside that only his cock could satisfy. She’d taken the photos and used them for masturbation fantasies. Her shrink liked to use the word ‘obsessive’ so she went along with everything he’d said, because it had been a condition of her grandfather, and she’d pretended to take the pills prescribed. But no one understood her—not Clement and certainly not her fucked-up family.

  Except for Kaiya. Her cousin was the one good thing in her world, the only person who didn’t hold any judgment against her for what had happened in her past or what the consequences had wrought. When Kaiya had been taken, it had been a week of pure hell for Chloe until they’d all learned Kaiya had been rescued. Romeo Barrigan had saved Kaiya, and, now, Chloe was determined to help him somehow.

  She carefully took her little shrine down and packed it away in a box. When she was done sealing it, she stacked it with the other boxes that would arrive at her new home next week. In the meantime, she would have to get new pictures of Romeo Barrigan. She placed her camera bag beside her travel case and took one last look around her now bare apartment. Bair, Nebraska, waited for her. And so did Romeo.

  He just didn’t know it yet.

  Chapter Three

  Two weeks later…

  “Final tally is good, Doctor Pinder,” Chloe said from behind her mask. Even though it wasn’t an open procedu
re, she still needed to verify that all the surgical items were accounted for. Laparoscopic surgeries were her favorite simply because she didn’t have to worry too much about lost instruments or sponges within the body cavity.

  “Excellent,” the doctor replied. “I think we’ve now removed every gall bladder in Bair and the surrounding communities.”

  “I still have mine,” she said teasingly.

  “Hang out in enough restaurants around here and all the greasy food will certainly put you on my operating table.”

  Chloe chuckled. “No thanks. I like my gall bladder right where it is.”

  He handed her the trocar devices that punctured the abdomen for the surgery, and she placed them on the back table. The patient’s belly was slowly deflating since the carbon dioxide wasn’t being pumped in any longer.

  “Will you glue the holes shut and add bandages?” the doctor asked her.

  “Of course.”

  “Perfect. In that case, I’m out of here.” The doctor stepped back from the OR table where the unconscious patient slept. The anesthesiologist waved him off while Chloe stepped up to use bonding glue to seal the puncture wounds. Minutes later, she was pulling off her surgical gown and loading up the surgical cart to haul the used instruments back to sterile processing.

  “Done for the day?” Susan, the OR nurse, asked.

  There was something about Susan that Chloe didn’t like. Maybe it was the woman’s narrow eyes where a deep divot between them gave her a perpetual frown. Maybe it was the highbrow tone she always used whenever she was talking to anyone she felt was inferior to her status as a nurse—like a surgical technician, for example. Chloe had dealt with her share of uptight nurses, and Susan seemed to be the type of woman who always judged on aesthetics. Chloe detested self-righteous cunts.

  “Yes,” she answered succinctly. Her brain was telling her to ignore the woman and move on. She couldn’t do anything to jeopardize her position.

  “Since tomorrow’s Saturday, why don’t we head out for some drinks together?” Susan suggested. She looked Chloe up and down, a pretentious smirk lifting the corners of her mouth. “You should head to my neck of the woods since there’s no decent place in this town.”

  Chloe cocked her head. “I thought Bair was a town full of bars.”

  Susan sniffed. “Bars that have the lowest life forms on earth inside them. Puh-leaze. I mean, granted, those lowlifes give us work, but people like us don’t need to associate at their level.”

  “People like us?”

  “Educated people,” Susan replied. “I live an hour north of here.” She lifted her hand to her mouth to talk behind it, as if to keep a monumental secret. “It has a country club and I’m a member.”

  “You drive two hours a day just for work? I thought people only did that in areas like LA, to make the traffic even more horrendous.”

  Susan shrugged. “They pay more money here in Bair because they’re desperate for an excellent-trained staff. The drug dealers and the nasty motorcycle club have kept this hospital in turnover hell.”

  Chloe’s protective instincts came roaring to the surface. Romeo was president of the motorcycle club and hearing this bitch talk down about him had her fighting her natural instinct to walk over and slap the smirk off her face. To get her surgical certification, Chloe had taken an oath not to harm patients, but that didn’t include knocking sharp-tongued shrews down a peg or two. She breathed through the beat-down inclination, but in the back of her mind, she’d already decided Susan had a target on her back.

  “I’ve already got plans tonight,” Chloe murmured.

  “Oh,” Susan replied. Her chin went up a notch, pushing her nose somewhere into orbit. “Well, maybe some other time.”

  “Maybe.” Chloe would rather shove a red-hot poker in her eye than go out for drinks with Susan.

  She walked away quickly, before her anger got the better of her, and wheeled the used cart to sterile processing. Then she headed to the locker room, where she showered and donned black jeans and a black shirt. She parted her straight obsidian hair down the middle and made two Scary Spice hair horns on her head.

  Surprised looks followed her out of the hospital. For the past week, she’d gone home looking like she’d come to work, drab and professional. But Friday nights were different. On Friday nights, Romeo drove to the Whiskey Lick Her Bar, and tonight she planned to get plenty of pictures to hang on her wall. She hadn’t seen him in a week, although she’d driven by the MC compound more times than she wanted to admit. She desperately needed her sexual fix. Masturbation simply wasn’t the same without seeing his face as she fucked herself with a vibrating pink cock. Soon, she hoped to replace the fake cock with the real thing once he realized he needed her as much as she needed him.

  A little voice of reason tried to break in through her focus. This was crazy, stalking such a man. Stalking any man, for that matter. True, she’d had problems in the past separating simple desire for love, but this was different. Her shrink would tell her she was obsessing once more, using that word she hated. He’d try to put her on pills again. And perhaps she was going a little crazy, but the goddamn shrink didn’t know what she’d lived through. No one did except for her grandfather and Kaiya. Motorcycle gangs hadn’t even been on her radar until her cousin had been rescued by one, then she suddenly knew where she belonged. Away from Los Angeles and the reminders. Away from her grandfather’s business. This was where she needed to be.

  Psychiatrists might call it obsessive. The world would certainly call her insane, but her life had never been normal and it never would be. Nothing was normal for a girl who had to kill her mother when she was only thirteen years old.

  * * * *

  There’s that car again.

  Right away, Dax had spotted it across the street as he, Romeo and two others drove up to the Whiskey Lick Her Bar, the hangout they came to every Friday night. They owned it and needed to collect the profits. It was the only source of income the club had right now, so it behove them to sit, drink and pretend to be merry.

  Over the past several days, he’d seen the car outside the compound. It wasn’t hard to miss because there weren’t many Mercedes in Bair. The tinted windows prevented him from seeing the driver, but Dax suspected it was the Shanks spying on them. The gang operated all over the Midwest, from Arkansas up through Iowa. They’d slowly been infiltrating their drugs into the MOH territory, but they were small and poorly managed. The Mercedes, however, worried him.

  He tensed as the sensation of being watched stole over him. He might not be able to see the person who stared at him, but he felt the inspection nonetheless.

  “Coming, Dax?” Romeo called.

  He glanced behind him and nodded to his club president. As always, a measure of guilt washed over him. He’d let his duties as an enforcer slide with Shepard, and the man had turned out to be a fucking psychopath with delusions of grandeur. He wouldn’t slip again. When he looked back, he watched the car drive away, nothing but tail lights in the night.

  “Yeah,” he said. He turned and followed Romeo into the dark bar. Posh it wasn’t. The sticky floor kept sucking at his shoes. The low lighting forced him to squint, the band sucked, and the drinks were barely chilled. But the girls were smoking hot. The Whiskey Lick Her was located right off the interstate and the flashing neon sign that read A Lot of Girls was a magnet for truckers. The Men of Hell made a nice little profit, and, in return, they provided muscle and protection for the whores.

  The manager, Creole Jack, greeted them with a nod toward the back room. He and Romeo headed there immediately while the other Brothers, Babyface and Hawg, took up position outside the door. A minute later, Creole Jack entered with a towel draped over his shoulder.

  “Let me open this safe and I got your money here waitin’,” he said. His accent was thicker than his mud-like coffee. “You know, I had two men come in here the other day, askin’ about y’all.”

  “Shanks?” Romeo asked.

  Creole J
ack shook his head. He’d moved to Bair back in the seventies, leaving his home state of Louisiana behind. The darkness of his skin made the whites of his eyes stand out in stark relief. He pulled out a red money bag and handed it over. Romeo unzipped it, thumbed through the stack of twenties and nodded in satisfaction.

  “No, weren’t no cops neither,” Creole Jack said. “They weren’t wearing cuts but they smelled like leather and they looked like bikers.”

  “What questions did they ask?” Dax asked.

  “Askin’ about the town. About you. They were real curious about the feud between you and the Shanks.”

  Romeo folded his arms across his chest. “What’d you say?”

  “I told ’em I was just a manager.” Creole Jack shrugged. “Told ’em I didn’t know nothin’ about the Men of Hell.”

  “All right,” Romeo said. “If you see them again, call me.”

  “Of course,” Creole Jack said.

  “Would you give us a minute, Jack?” Romeo asked. Creole Jack nodded and left the room, closing the office door behind him with a soft click. “What’s up?”

  “There’s been a Mercedes following us,” Dax remarked.

  “Then that leaves the Shanks out. No one in their organization drives one of those cars. So who the fuck is tailing us?”

  “I don’t know.” Dax held out his hand. “I don’t like it. Give me the money bag and I’ll take it straight to the club.”

  “But I’m the one that takes it—”

  “We need to change up your routine,” Dax told him. “You’ve become a little predictable.”

  “You think that’s necessary?”

  “I do. So let me run it back to the club and you go find a way to let off a little of that restlessness you’ve had for a while. I’ll be gone twenty or thirty minutes, tops.”

  “We should go together.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Dax insisted. “Change up your Friday night, okay?”