Page 30 of Bruised MC Bear
14
Angel
Angel wokeup to the sensation of pins and needles all the way from her thighs down to her toes. She opened her eyes. Right. She was the one who had made the idiot move by resting Axe’s head on her lap as he dozed off on the sofa. He wasn’t resting on her anymore, but she could barely feel her legs right now. With a yawn and a stretch of her arms, she leaned forward to check whether Axe was in the bathroom. Nope. The place was way too quiet. Assuming he was outside stretching his legs or something, she pushed off the sofa and did a half-limp tiptoe duck walk on her numb legs to grab a change of clothes from her bag.
She noticed his note on the nightstand and rolled her eyes at the three rules he added to the bottom. Like she would open the door for a stranger, take a phone call, or use the handgun he left in the side drawer for anything other than self-preservation.
Shaking her head, she found a fresh pair of underwear, a t-shirt and some jeans, and got into the bathroom. After taking her sweet time to shower, get dressed and organize the room a bit, she was bored. She paced back and forth on the dingy carpet, combing her fingers through her hair to keep her hands busy. What was she supposed to do with herself now that Axe was off doing his badass biker meets tortured soul meets white knight thing? She wondered how he felt after getting that tragically horrific story from his childhood off his chest.
That reminded her to take a closer look at how much damage he had done to her neck. She headed back to the tiny bathroom mirror and popped up on her tiptoes. Okay, so there was redness and bruising. She looked like she either had a run-in with an abusive boyfriend, or had a one-night stand with someone who was really into giving hickeys. Or with someone who got off from choking the crap out of a sexual partner until said partner was within an inch of his or her life. She had been with all three types at one time or another. Got the t-shirts and wasn’t ever going back down that road.
This mark on her neck was different.
Even if she and Axe weren’t anything more than casual partners and fugitives from mutual would-be attackers, he was different. He was honest. And he gave a damn. She could actually see them becoming close friends after all this hiding out drama was over.
Friends with a heck of a lot of benefits.
While she was in the bathroom, she gave herself something to do. Looping up her hair into a nearly perfect fishtail braid, she snapped a hairband around it and returned to the bed. Time still ticked away and no Axe. She found the handgun he’d left in the drawer. This was not the first time she’d held a firearm, but she didn’t like them at all. With a quick test of the safety and examination of the clip, she put it on the counter beside Axe’s note. Boredom was a hell of a dangerous thing. She found her cell phone and cursed. No sim card. She started scheming. Although Axe had disabled it, she could still swipe it on, put in her password and see a few numbers from her contact list. She looked at the motel phone. A call to her job couldn’t hurt. And to her neighbors to see how her dogs were doing.
Before Angel could scroll through her contact list, she noticed some movement out of the corner of her eye. Her head snapped to the front door. Someone had slipped a folded sheet of paper under the door. If this were a decent hotel and they were about to check out, she would have thought nothing of it. The four and five-star hotel chains customarily slipped a paper copy of departing hotel patrons’ final bill under their door as a rule. Here at a seedy low-end dive motel, though, that document had to be something else.
For a second, she didn’t want to know. Her stomach dropped. Maybe the message was for Axe, but even if it were, the implications would affect both of them. Perhaps the panthers had figured out where they were. She tilted her head to one side in confusion. What kind of dumbass idea was her oxygen-deprived brain coming up with? No murder-loving pursuer would be so courteous and amateur as to leave a note instead of breaking down the door to finish the job. Unless this was a warning from someone on their side.
Angel didn’t dare take the chance opening the door to look around outside. Hustling over there, she secured the door chain lock, yanked up the paper and scurried back to the bed within arm’s reach of the Glock. She scanned the fancy custom letterhead centered at the top of the page. This was the motel’s letterhead? It was elegant for such a dump. She shrugged one shoulder and kept reading. The gist of the note was that their credit card didn’t go through for the room payment and the owner was demanding cash now or they would have to leave in less than an hour before he called the police.
Except Axe did not look like the type of guy who flashed plastic around to pay for seedy motels. He was sure to have paid in cash last night. None of this made any sense. Either way, this note gave her the chills. If Axe didn’t walk in that door within ten minutes, she would pack her shit and find somewhere else to go before whoever came back. She thought about phoning Axe, but she didn’t have his number. That in itself spoke volumes.
She wondered whether the note was a ploy to get them out of the hotel room. If it were, the motel owner must have been involved. Or maybe he was threatened.
Christ! This paranoid line of thinking was driving her insane.
Convincing herself it was nothing at all, she crumpled the note into a ball and threw it across the room. She waited for what felt like forever until she figured out no one was going to knock on the door—or smash it down with a battering ram. Still, every time she heard a sound outside, she went on high alert and clutched her fingers around the gun.
The doorknob rattled.
“Angel, it’s me.” Thank God it was Axe. “If you’ve got the gun out, lower it now and don’t shoot me in the face, okay?”
“Coming,” she called out, blowing out a breath as she opened the door. “I’m so glad you’re back. What took you so long?”
“Good morning.” Axe came through the door and shut it with a decisive click. He handed her a cup of coffee from the cardboard tray he was carrying and took a seat on the sofa. “Rounding up breakfast took a while,” he told her, stuffing his hand into the brown paper bag he had also brought in.
“Okay. By any chance, did you see anyone leaving the parking lot, or anything weird, or maybe even dangerous?”
He stopped dead, halfway through biting into a glazed donut. Only his eyes moved up to lock with hers.
“What happened?” he asked, with his mouth full and his lip still covered in crumbs.
“I don’t know.” Angel put down her coffee and brought over the crumpled note.
Axe read it quickly. He wiped his mouth and stood up. “Grab your stuff. We’re leaving.”
He shoved his things into his satchel as Angel picked up her already packed bag at the side of the bed. She put the safety on the Glock and passed it to him with the muzzle facing down. She followed him out the front door into the waiting minivan, which Axe promptly started and calmly drove out of the motel parking. All she could do was dart her eyes around the roads and squint to check the passenger side rear view mirror for whether anyone was following them.
They didn’t even take the coffee.
Not that she could eat or drink at a time like this.
