Page 72 of Wild Night

“I feel like someone is watching me.” The words just spill out of me, even though I have nothing to justify the feeling.

She hums, then clears her throat. “We’re going to the clubhouse. Whoever it is, they won’t dare come there. They would be signing a death wish if they did.”

And with one eye on the rearview mirror and the other on the road in front of us, Dakota drives straight for the clubhouse. We stay in silence the entire time, me bouncing my knee, feeling nervous as shit for no reason other than just a gut feeling.

Nobody follows us as we get farther away from town and closer to the clubhouse. My knee slows down its movements, and I start to breathe easier. I also notice that Dakota’s white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel loosens.

“I’m sorry. I feel stupid,” I mutter.

Dakota snorts. “After the shit you’ve been through, not ever do you get to say you feel stupid about your safety. Also, who knows? Someone could have been watching us. It’s always better to be on the lookout when it comes to that stuff. Now let’s go to the clubhouse and have a glass of water to relax.”

“A glass of water?” I say with a laugh.

“Well, we can’t drink.”

“You can,” I point out.

She shakes her head. “Not alone. Plus, I’ll have to drive us home.”

Fair enough. A glass of water it is. A calming glass of water that I plan on pretending is wine.

IVY

“What do you mean the cameras went offline?” I demand.

Viking jerks his chin, his eyes lifting to meet mine. “Exactly what I just said,” he states. “They went offline for five minutes.”

“How do you know?” Bullet asks.

He is asking because he’s genuinely curious about the process. I want to know because I need to know who the fuck could have that kind of access and actually turn my shit off, come in here, and leave me a note all within five fucking minutes. How is this shit fucking possible? That’s what I want to know.

Viking’s gaze flicks back to the computer screen as he answers the question. “I can tell when I check the system, deeper than just surface level, that there was a disturbance. Not fucking sure how it was hacked, but that’s what happened.”

“What do we do now?” I demand.

There is a moment of silence. The room is bathed in it, and I don’t fucking like it, not in the goddamn slightest. I want to know how the fuck this person did that. Who the fuck this person is. Why the fuck they did what they did, and how to prevent it from ever happening again.

Viking shakes his head once, then his eyes shift back up to meet my own. “Got no goddamn clue. I’m decent with this shit, but I am not a professional. I know the cameras were turned off, what time, and the duration, but that’s all I fucking got on the situation.”

I don’t know how to fucking respond to that shit. He’s doing all he can, and I don’t feel like he’s lying or anything, but at the same time, there has to be more information.

“Any client of yours ready to kill you over their court case?” Razor asks.

Shrugging a shoulder, I let them know that there was one I recently lost, he’s in prison, where he deserves to be, and the one before that was settled out of court. A white-collar embezzlement that ended up with him having to pay everything back, plus a few million in restitution. But he doesn’t have to spend a day in prison because they want him to be able to actually pay that money back.

“Before those?” Bullet asks.

“Nothing really to note. I don’t have a fucking clue, and I don’t really see any of my clients doing this shit. I just don’t see it.”

I can’t imagine anyone I’ve represented in the past year who would do something like this. I win most of my cases, or at the very least, I’m able to avoid jail time for them. Only in rare cases, like this most recent one, I couldn’t. But he was guilty as fuck, and I urged him more than once to fucking settle. He was too egotistical to do that, which was on him.

“Now I gotta watch my back? What the actual fuck?” I ask.

“Until we know more, that’s about all you can do,” Bullet says, though his words come out more like a growl.

“I don’t like that fucking arrangement at all, especially after everything that’s happened with Posey.”

“Could it have been Posey’s ex, and maybe you just noticed it?” Razor asks, as if he can read my fucking mind on the matter.

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