Page 67 of Caution to the Wind

I rolled my eyes. “Most gyms praise etiquette. Not playin’ dirty.”

Wrath grinned, that mean curl of lips that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Yeah, well. Those gyms aren’t owned by The Fallen.”

“Axe-Man,” Heckler hollered again, wavin’ my cell in the air. “You got a call, man.”

“Who is it?”

“Kodiak.”

A chill instantly swept through my body. I was leapin’ up and over the boxin’ ring and stalkin’ toward him with a scowl the next moment.

“You didn’t think I’d wanna know it was Kodiak on the fuckin’ line?” I growled. “He’s lookin’ out at Cleo’s bedside.”

Heckler shrugged, but there was an edge to his expression, a childish kinda petulance that coiled that anger in my belly a little tighter. I shoved him into the wall and wrenched my cell outta his hand.

“’Lo,” I said into the speaker. “What’s wrong?”

There was a brief pause. “Nothin’ wrong, exactly. There’s some girl here to visit Cleo, though.”

I sighed, suddenly fuckin’ exhausted. “My girl’s got a lotta friends. As long as they don’t upset her or some shit, it’s good for her to have the company.”

“Yeah, man, I know. Just…I don’t recognize this one. There’ve been the usual girls in and out the past couple of weeks, but this one’s new.”

“You sure?”

“Woman’s got a face you don’t forget. Not to mention, I’m sittin’ vigilant at the bedside of a woman who means somethin’ to me who was attacked. I’m thinkin’ if there’s a time I ever forget a face connected with Cleo, it won’t be for a good few decades at least.”

I grunted my own agreement, then trapped my cell between my shoulder and ear so I could grab my gym bag and wrestle my tee out from inside. The cotton stuck to my skin as I pulled it over my head, but I was in a rush. If there was some strange girl in with Cleo, there was no way I wasn’t headin’ over there to check it out.

“I’ll be there in twenty-five,” I told him. “Cleo’s okay?”

“She fell asleep the second this girl put her hands on her,” Kodiak said in that muted voice of his, a little awe creepin’ into the deadpan.

We both knew Cleo hadn’t been sleepin’ for shit since the accident. Only the drugs the nurses gave her for the pain helped, and I dreaded what we’d do when she was discharged soon.

Who the hell was this girl with her?

Cleo was a reporter at the local newspaper in Entrance, and she had a ton of friends, though none as close to her as Bea and the rest of the Old Ladies in The Fallen. If it wasn’t one of them with her, I assumed it was some woman from the paper I’d never met before. The girls who worked with my daughter there tended to make themselves scarce when I was around. It could’ve been my cut, the club, but they seemed fine to visit when it was King or Nova standin’ vigil with Cleo, so I suspected it had more to do with my temperament than anythin’ else.

“Call me if anythin’ changes,” I told my brother, who grunted in affirmation before hangin’ up.

“All good?” Curtains asked from behind me.

I turned to face our red-headed hacker, scrubbin’ a hand over my face and back into the hair I’d tied back for the fight. The band came loose, and the heavy mass of gold swept down across my shoulders.

“Some new visitor for Cleo.”

Curtains had huge green eyes on his pale face, his gaze sharp as fresh sea glass. “You want me to do some diggin’?”

A flood of warmth in my icy chest. Curtains was practically a kid next to me, but there was no denyin’ he was one of my closest brothers in the club. We were both geeks in our own way. I was the only man in our chapter other than King who’d been to university, and Curtains was born some kinda genius. We got each other, and we worked together on club financials and business specs.

But none of that meant anythin’ without this right here.

The casual, easy offer to look into someone for my peace of mind.

I clapped the kid on the shoulder and squeezed. “Yeah, let me head down there and figure out who she is. Could just be some sweet girl from Cleo’s office.”

“Could be,” he agreed, but we both knew with the world we lived in that the odds of easy answers were slim.