Page 59 of A Brother At My Back

21

Tiffany…

“What’s that now?”

Shit, we had a bad connection and the fact that I was in my g-string, barely-there bra and nothing else had kept me inside the club, rather than let me be outside where the signal was both better and there wasn’t pounding music to contend with.

“Delia!” I cried. “I’m worried about her, Nik; she didn’t show up for work.”

“Shit, yeah, alright. Let me make some calls and I’ll call you right back, yeah?”

“Hold on,” I said. I turned and blinked at Alan, the club’s owner who had touched me on the shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” I said immediately, “I thought I had longer before my next dance.”

“You’re fine,” he said. “Cherry is going on for you, right now. Take the back stair up to my office, there’s a…” he paused and groped for the right word, “Situation at the front Zeke has alerted me to.”

“Tiffany, what’s wrong?” I heard Nik say distantly, but my adrenaline was spiking and I was already moving.

“I’ll call you back, I think he’s here.”

“What?” Nik demanded sharply.

“Go now, Tiff, my office,” Alan said gently and I went.

“Alan’s sending me to his office, Zeke’s handling it at the front. I’m okay for now,” I told Nik. Despite Alan trying to keep me calm, my heart was pounding. I almost didn’t register what Nik said.

“I’m on my way, just do what your boss says.”

“I am,” I told him, but I was talking to the empty air, Nik was already gone.

I clattered up the back stairs in my stripper heels and kicked the door to Alan’s office closed and turned the lock. I figured it was his office and he had the key. The space was small, and a bank of windows overlooked the floor below. It was all right, though. They were mirrors on the outside and you could only see inside at very specific angles. If I sat at the desk in front of the windows and ducked down a bit behind the monitors, I would be invisible so that’s precisely what I did. I sat at Alan’s desk, heart pounding, stomach curdling, and kept bouncing my gaze back and forth between the cameras on the monitors and out the window at the floor below.

Zeke was on camera, out front, hands raised and pushing down in his classic ‘calm the fuck down, I’m trying to explain something to you’ pose. Alan stood back, beside the bar, his cell phone pressed to his ear, nodding and speaking occasionally into it.

My heart thudded painfully in my chest as someone outside the camera’s range swung on Zeke, in a flash, out of nowhere, and Zeke went crashing to the ground out like a light. Silas strode forward into the camera’s view and then, through the front door, larger than life and screaming at the top of his lungs. Dancers stopped, patrons stood up, and Alan walked calmly forward.

I couldn’t hear anything. There was nothing to hear, the office up here was so well insulated and soundproofed only the dullest thumping of the music’s bass beat made it through. I swallowed hard as Silas stopped just outside Alan’s reach and Alan waved him forward with a broad sweep of his arm.

“What are you doing?” I asked, and realized he was taking Silas on a tour, either to get him out or to buy time for whoever he had been on the phone with to get here. I knew Nik would make it. I knew he would be here, I just didn’t know when, and with how fast and how hard Silas had knocked Zeke out? I didn’t know if I wanted Nik to square off with him.

I was suddenly very afraid for my lover and biker bodyguard.

I followed Silas and Alan from camera to camera but kept glancing back to Zeke who was sitting up now and rubbing his jaw. My chest loosened with a bit of relief at that and I still couldn’t believe that Silas had gotten the drop on him like that. Zeke was good at his job and I’d seen him handle himself in more than a few fights before.

The phone in my hand buzzed and I answered it without looking, “Hello?”

Indistinct club noise came through the line and voices, hard to make out. I looked at the screen and realized Alan had dialed me.

“What’s up there?” I heard Silas demand.

“My office.”

Shit!

I got up and looked around and finally had to settle for ducking into his bathroom up here. I stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain, holding the phone to my chest as I heard the door being messed with out front.

I held my breath and ended the call, fighting with the phone to silence the ringer just in case.

---