Page 26 of Mischief

Tindra down here with a lens already on her, closing her shop at the same time every night, regular as a clock, easy to take.

The club at my back, starting to smell the rot on me, ready to put a bullet in whatever brought this to their door and not much slower to put one in the man who carried it in.

And me in the middle of all of it, a prospect with a stolen name and healing ribs, out of road and out of time, holding a secret that gets somebody killed no matter which way I let it fall.

Tell the club, and they protect Tindra, but my father sells Marit, and me they either kill or cast out for what my blood is.

Say nothing and cooperate, and I hand these people the daughter of a man who went through the same shit, and I become everything I've spent my whole life running from.

And if I do nothing at all, my father does something instead, and the choice gets taken from me.

There's no clean way through. I've turned it over a thousand times looking for the door and there isn't one, there's only which people I'm willing to lose.

I delete the photo so I never have to see it again.

I know, standing there in the dark with my ribs aching and my father's voice in my pocket, that whatever I do next takes something from me I won't get back.

CHAPTER FIVE

Tindra

The clubhouse is empty for the first time in the whole time I've been sneaking into it.

Half the club drove out to the lake this afternoon.

Coolers and kids piled in, Bjorn's boat hitched to the back of somebody's truck, a whole caravan of them gone until morning.

Mom tried to get me to come.

I told her I had inventory at the new shop and watched my own mother pretend to believe me, which she's gotten very good at.

And now here I am, where I swore I wouldn't be, breaking the one promise I keep making to myself.

Bodul's room sits at the end of the hall past the bays, a converted storage closet barely big enough for the bed, a dresser, and him.

It's the least private space a person can have.

A room the club hands a prospect and takes back on a whim, and we both know it, which is why we never do this here.

Tonight we’re doing it here.

Because everyone's been gone for an hour and I can't stop.

Bodul came back from wherever he went with a wall behind his eyes, and I've been trying to climb it.

Theonlytime it comes down is when he's inside me.

Now he's stretched out on his back with me tucked into his good side, both of us bare and cooling under the ceiling fan.

His heart slows under my ear.

For one stolen hour, the whole world is the size of this terrible little room, and I've never been happier or more afraid in my life.

"I could stay here," I say into his chest. "Just like this. Forget the shop, forget all of it. Live in a storage closet with a prospect. My grandfather wouldlovethat."

His chest jumps under me, half a laugh, and his hand traces up and down my spine, slow, like he's memorizing the knobs of it.

"You'd last a week." His voice is a low rumble I feel more than hear. "No espresso machine. You'd stage a coup by Friday.."