“Don’t listen to them,” a man said from the other side of the door. Startled, I turned to find another biker standing there.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. I was just coming to let you know that your car repair is going to take about another hour,” he explained as he held up my bookbag. “I apologize because it ripped a little when I picked it up.”
“Charmer, right?” I asked. His nod confirmed that I’d remembered correctly. “Don’t worry about the bag. It was already ripped. Thank you.”
“No worries. Kip sent me to let you know, so you wouldn’t be freaking out or bored out of your mind. He also wanted me to ask if you needed anything while you wait.”
“Some answers would be nice,” I insisted even while ducking my head so that my hair hid the blush on my face.
“About them?” Charmer asked as he tipped his head toward the room where Breakneck had disappeared with the mostly naked, nasty woman.
“No. That was pretty self-explanatory. I heard you talking about Creepy Dave before he barged in here.”
“Who?”
“Creepy Dave, my landlord before I moved in with Kip.”
“Oh.” Charmer backed up slightly and glanced up and down the hallway. “You should forget anything you overheard.”
“There were other women in the basement, and he did things to them?” My stomach rolled as I thought about what might have been going on in that house while I lived there. “I never heard anyone else in the house,” I admitted.
“You’re lucky you got out when you did. That’s all I can really say.”
“Did he have a camera in the shower, like I thought?”
“Not just in the shower.”
“What do you mean?”
“He had cameras all over the house, several in that bathroom.”
“Oh God! I used the toilet there,” I mumbled.
The grim look on Charmer’s face told me everything I needed to know. I turned and took off for the bathroom because there was no swallowing down the sick feeling after finding out someone had watched me while I peed and did other things like change my tampon.
“Nova!”
I heard Charmer yell from behind me. The poor guy probably didn’t sign up for dealing with my hysterical freak-out. Still, he must have followed me inside because I felt his warm hands pull my hair back and slip it into a ponytail that was out of the way.
“Sorry, I thought you already knew about the cameras.” He handed me a dampened washcloth to wipe my face as I stood and flushed all my sick down the toilet. I couldn’t help the way my eyes roamed around the space, wondering if I’d missed seeing cameras in the clubhouse, too.
“Come here,” Charmer ordered as he took me in his arms and wrapped me up in his leather and musk embrace. “Stop,” he ordered soothingly, as if his voice alone could calm me down. “It’s okay. Please, stop crying. I don’t know what all was seen and neither do you. Maybe he put them in recently, since he realized you weren’t showering there.”
While that made me feel mildly better, it was still bad enough. We both knew Charmer was feeding me a pretty little lie to make the knowledge of what was happening in that house go down a little easier. I rested my head on his chest and allowed his strong heartbeat to soothe me for a minute as the big man ran his hand up and down my back in a calming gesture.
“What the fuck are you doing, Prospect!” A voice boomed from the doorway to the room that we had left open when I ran to puke in the bathroom. I jumped and turned, though Charmer never relinquished his hold on me. Breakneck stood there, shirtless, his pants barely hanging onto his hips since they were undone, and he looked like he was either going to murder Mikey or me or maybe both of us.
“Just came to check on her, per Kip’s orders. She was upset by what her dickhead landlord has been doing.”
“And how would she know what he’s been doing? That’s club fucking business.”
Surprisingly, Charmer kept his cool and simply shook his head. “She heard what was said in the hallway before you went in her room and Connie came to drag you out by the tips of her talons.”
I wasn’t sure if it was wise for the man, who wanted to be a member of the club, to call out another member for his behavior. Then again, Connie was his girlfriend, so it shouldn’t be all that upsetting for Breakneck. It did make me wonder if he had planned to take me out on that date while he left his girlfriend here, none the wiser. That thought had my stomach rolling again.
“Yeah? She already knew about the shower cam, so why would that upset her?”
“Because she didn’t know there were more, or that the repugnant asshole was fucking dead girls in the basement,” the prospect spat out at him.