Page 14 of Black Moon Rising (Black Knights Inc: Reloaded #4)

13

Majestic Ridge Road, Traverse City

Sabrina understood why sleep deprivation was used as a torture tactic.

She was so tired she hurt. Physically ached . Her bones cried. Her muscles screamed. And her eyes were so gritty she would not have put up a fight if someone tried to pluck them from her head and toss them on the ground.

Sleep. Darkness. Oblivion.

Nothing had ever sounded sweeter.

She longed for it the way she’d once longed for her parents to actually act…well… parental . If her mother and father had chosen their children over booze and pot and partying, maybe Cooper would not have fallen into a life of crime. And if he hadn’t fallen into a life a crime, he would not have partnered with Knox and the FBI on the sting. And if he’d never partnered with Knox and the FBI, he’d still be alive.

Still be teasing me about my abysmal taste in men. Still be randomly glitter-bombing my mailbox. Still be the first person I call when I’ve done something right and the last person who’d judge me when I’ve done something wrong.

Oh, Cooper…

Somewhere along the ride up Michigan’s coast, the shock of his loss had been replaced by a pain that was unlike anything she’d ever felt. It wasn’t simply an anguish in her mind; it was an agony that lived in her body. A deep, dull ache that radiated from her soul and mixed with her exhaustion until her limbs were leaden.

She’d spent the first couple hours of the trip carefully avoiding touching the big, brawny man named Hew. She’d already imposed upon his personal space enough.

She should’ve scrambled off his lap the instant her eyes opened in that pantry. But he’d been so warm, so strong—and his arms had been so comforting. Like a cat seeking the sweet warmth of a sunny patch, her instinct had been to remain exactly where she was.

She hadn’t realized she was taking advantage of the situation until she’d turned and caught him staring at her with a strange look on his face.

Not wanting to further trespass upon his person, she’d hung on to the edge of her seat instead of him anytime they’d taken a corner or bounced over a bump. It wasn’t until they’d been forced to shake the police cruiser that she’d reluctantly snaked her hands around his waist.

But now? Oh, now she didn’t have the physical strength to worry about his personal space. Nor did she have the mental energy to care whether or not she was taking advantage of the situation.

He was the only thing keeping her on the back of the bike.

Her helmeted head rested between his mile-wide shoulders. She’d shoved her hands deep into the pockets of his thick leather jacket. And he supported all of her dead, drained, absolutely debilitated weight against his broad back.

She’d begun to give up hope they’d ever reach the cabin. Somehow, they’d slipped into an alternate reality where there was nothing but endless twists and turns on a road that reached to infinity.

The gravel beneath the rumbling bike’s tires crunched softly as Hew executed yet another turn. This one put them on a narrow country lane. Pine trees, tall and solemn, rose like sentinels on either side, and the absolute darkness of the night swallowed the world beyond the reach of the motorcycles’ headlights.

She lifted her chin slightly to get a better look at her new surroundings…and immediately wished she hadn’t.

Shadows darted between the trees’ pale trunks, fleeting and formless. Off to her left, she would swear she saw the glow of eyes—some night animal tracking their progress through its domain. Off to her right, a tree branch fell onto the forest floor, the bed of needles absorbing the landing and oddly muffling the sound.

Trees. Trees. Nothing but unlimited, eternal trees.

But then...

The forest gave way to a clearing. And in the center of that clearing, caught in the sharp beams of the headlights, sat a cabin.

It huddled low and furtive in the night. Its siding had grayed with weather and age, and its roof was overrun by thick, cloying moss. Not a single flicker of light showed in the dark windows that stared back at her like a pair of soulless eyes.

The air seemed to grow colder as they approached, as if the cabin exhaled a chill breath that crept across the little clearing and tunneled down the neck of her borrowed coat to nip with sharp teeth at the skin of her chest.

The front door was painted bloodred and reminded her of a closed mouth. She couldn’t shake the sensation that it offered no welcome, only a malignant invitation to step inside, to become part of the darkness that clung to it like a second skin.

Either she shuddered or gasped or Hew simply sensed her horror because he slipped his big, gloved hand into his pocket to squeeze her fingers.

Good god, Sabrina. Stop letting your imagination play tricks on you , she silently chastised herself.

This wasn’t a Stephen King novel. The things she should fear weren’t a haunted car or an alien clown. They were real .

Her brother was dead. An entire cartel was after her. So was the FBI. And if she was to believe Knox and all the folks back at the motorcycle shop, that last thing was the most dangerous.

Hew cut the engine and toed out the kickstand. His helmet was unbuckled and off his head in one smooth motion. For the first time, she noticed the crescent-shaped scar on his temple—the smooth line was a silvery-white reminder of some long-ago injury.

When Knox walked his motorcycle up beside them and cut the engine, silence descended like a shroud. Not a cricket chirped. Not a night bird cheeped. Not a breath of wind rustled the needles on the trees’ limbs.

Hew cocked his head like a predator scenting prey, and Sabrina felt her stomach hollow out as visions of Pennywise and Cujo danced in her head.

“Sabrina.” The way he said her name, so clear and concise in the secret silence of the forest, made her jump. “You want to go ahead and hop off?”

It wasn’t a question—even though it’d been posed as one. It was a command. And it was offered up in such an easy, off-handed way that she knew he was used to giving orders and equally used to having them obeyed.

What’s his story? she wondered absently. What was his life like before going to work for Black Knights Inc.?

Everything about him screamed authority and self-assurance. Not arrogance. Just a soul-deep certainty that he could take all comers.

There was comfort in that, she supposed. Comfort in going on the lam with a man who’d been tested repeatedly and who’d come out the winner.

Maybe that was why she hadn’t scrambled off his lap in the pantry. Maybe some part of her subconscious had registered the safety he provided. The security he offered.

Her mind mutinied at the thought of getting off the bike. But she dug down deep and managed to swing her leg over the back of the machine.

It was wild to think she’d spent hours doing little more than sitting in one place, and yet it felt like she’d run a marathon. Muscles she wasn’t even aware she had ached, and her bones felt simultaneously heavy and hollow. When she pulled off her helmet, the whole world tilted.

“Whoa there.” Hew grabbed her hand to steady her. She could feel the warmth of his skin even through the leather of his gloves. “Easy now. Give yourself a little time to adjust. You’re like a sailor with sea legs. Sitting on the back of a motorcycle for hours on end puts a lot more strain on a body than you’d think.”

“Thank you,” she said absently as Knox cut off his headlight, halving the illumination around the little clearing and bathing the cabin in deeper shadows. “This place is…spooky,” she whispered. Her breath formed little clouds that glowed like pixie dust in the lone beam of Hew’s lone headlight.

“It’s ’cause it’s deserted and dark,” he reassured her. “Once I get the generator going, you’ll feel better. This is a safe place.”

She wasn’t so sure about that, but she didn’t say as much as she watched him dismount in a practiced move that was all easy motion and bunching muscles.

He skirted around her, heading toward the backyard, and the beam of his headlight cast his shadow against the cabin.

He was a big man.

His shadow was even bigger.

Something about the way it moved over the gray siding and green moss roof sent that creepy, crawly sensation skittering along the back of her neck.

She shuddered when Knox wrapped a hand around her elbow. He gave it a reassuring squeeze. “He’s right, you know. Britt wouldn’t have brought us here unless it was safe.”

His tone was…somber-sounding. Almost beaten. A quick glance at his face had her turning to stare at him more fully.

Knox Rollins had seemed so confident, so sure of himself throughout the entire ordeal that it’d been easy for her to be sure of him, too. Now he looked as awful as she felt. Broken and unspeakably weary.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” she whispered. “I know you’re worried about him.”

“Thanks.” He nodded. “I just wish I’d been able to?—”

The low rumble of an engine interrupted him midsentence. And, just like that, the shadows disappeared.

The porch light beside the front door lit up, highlighting the window boxes attached to the windows. Someone had planted mums in them, and the red, yellow, and orange blossoms looked cheery and inviting. The graying siding no longer appeared aged and decrepit. It looked weathered and rustic. And the moss on the roof no longer seemed wild and unkempt. Now, it looked more like the roof of a little hobbit house, bucolic and cozy.

Inside, a lamp burned on a table. In the golden glow, she could see a comfy couch, a grouping of black-and-white photographs, and an overstuffed chair whose well-loved cushions promised peace and comfort.

She was no longer living inside a Stephen King novel. This place was something out of a children’s book, cheerful and colorful and welcoming.

Hew came around from the back of the house and made a sweeping gesture toward the front door. “Your home away from home.”

She was already on her way to the door—and the armchair inside that looked big enough to curl up on—but Knox’s next words stopped her in her tracks.

“You think Britt’s okay?” She could hear the anxiety in his voice, the guilt .

“Britt’s the most resourceful sonofabitch I’ve ever met,” Hew assured him as he marched back to his bike to thumb off the headlight. His accent turned the word resourceful into re-sauce-ful . “If anyone can outsmart the FBI, it’s Rollins.”

She watched Hew pull a bag from the compartment on the back of his bike. He’d unzipped his jacket. So when he slung the bag over his shoulder, it made one side of the leather material swing wide. Her eyes rounded when she saw the nylon shoulder holster and the matte-black butt of the weapon inside it.

It wasn’t that she was shocked to find him armed. This was America—the wild, wild west of developed nations. A quarter of the population packed heat in one way or another. But Hew’s setup was one more piece of a puzzle beginning to take shape in her mind.

No one at Black Knights Inc. had batted a lash at Knox's story. The handsome, wild-haired man named Ozzie had seemed sure he could find the villain who’d outed Knox and her brother to the cartel, given enough time. There was that strange, terrifying tunnel that appeared behind a secret brick wall in the motorcycle shop—a tunnel dug down under the frickin’ Chicago River. And there was the way both Britt and Hew moved, with an economy of motion she’d only seen in stuntmen and soldiers.

All of that combined to tell her there was more to the men and women who worked at Black Knights Inc. than met the eye.

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, survey says it’s a duck.

But for the life of her, she couldn’t fathom what kind of duck she was dealing with.

Pinning Hew with a searching look, she asked, “Who are you people? The Black Knights, I mean,” she clarified a bit breathlessly. “You’re more than just motorcycle mechanics, aren’t you?”

“If I answered that, I’d have to kill you.”

It was said as a joke. But the hint of steel in his voice matched the hint of steel in his eyes.

When she shivered, it wasn’t because the night was growing colder by the minute.