Page 4 of Phantom
“Good. Follow me. My place is not far.”
Colin turned around and made his way back to his bike, and I noticed that he had a limp. Whatever had happened to him was definitely meant to kill him. It honestly didn’t make much sense to me. Colin wasn’t a bad guy and never had been. Despite that his mom was a raging drunk and drug user, and despite that she kept a rotating door for men, Colin spent his days with me and taking care of his sick brother. He and Colin were twins as far as I was told, but I’d never met Caid. He didn’t leave the house. Colin was just a simple kid who wanted to take care of the people he loved. It was one of the things I adored about him. How he got caught up with someone trying to kill him was a huge mystery. I couldn’t see him angering anyone that much.
I cut the engine on my bike for a brief moment so that I could pull out my phone and call one of the doctors I had on call. I was the vice president of my dad’s motorcycle club, the Steel Knights. The club had been in my family for generations, and both my brother and I were officers and part of my dad’s inner court. If the thrill of the danger and excitement of the club wasn’t enough, I also had certain advantages, like paid-under-the-table doctors who would drop everything and come running the second I called to deal with any ailments or injuries any of the brotherhood had without asking any questions. There were a couple of doctors in the Steel Knights’ pocket, but Dr. Xavier Marteau was skilled in the kind of down-to-the-bone injuries that it seemed Colin may have obtained.
“Good evening, Val,” he answered, using the shortened version of my club moniker, Valkyrie.
It was a name I’d earned from my dad after taking his bike and riding into our rival gang’s territory to steal Lockjaw when he was still a puppy. My dad walked outside in the middle of the night to see me perched against his bike, holding Lockjaw. My story impressed him so much that he didn’t kill me for stealing his bike. He said that my story reminded him of a Norse Valkyrie riding into battle. That was the first time he considered me strong enough to one day prospect for the Steel Knights. It was one of the best days of my life. When I became a member, my dad presented me with a Steel Knights jacket with the name on the back. Most of the brotherhood shortened the name to Val when they weren’t usingBitchorSlut.
Most of them didn’t like me very much.
“Hey, doc. Can you meet me at my place? I’ve got a bad case. Burns, possibly broken bones, and a shit ton of other stuff.”
“Of course. Give me ten minutes.”
“Cool, thank you. Oh, and doc?”
“Yes?”
Colin’s bike roared to life behind me, and I knew he was ready to get going. I held up my pointer finger to tell him to wait. “Discretion is key, so please come alone, and don’t tell Squared.”
Squared was my dad’s official nickname because his legal name was Nicholas Nicholas.
“You got it, Val. See you soon.”
“Bye.”
I slid my phone into my jacket pocket and zipped it up, then pulled on my helmet and started my bike back up. My tires screeched as I spun in place, and I whizzed past Colin and out onto the street. The low rumble of Colin’s bike let me know he was behind me, so I started to navigate the streets of Hoppa toward my house, which was more toward the edge of the small town. I never liked that my parents were right in the heart of everything. Hoppa wasn’t insanely small—it had about sixty thousand people—but it was small enough that everyone liked to be in everyone’s business. With my dad at the head of Hoppa’s famous Steel Knights, more people looked at us.
I hated it. The second I was old enough to get my own place, I found a house as close to the edge of Hoppa as possible. I preferred the call of a coyote over the perilous whispers of nosy neighbors.
My place was a small, shotgun-style home made of rustic red bricks and topped with a dark brown terracotta roof. I had the mountains in my backyard and the stunning, expansive Arizona desert as my front view. It wasn’t a mansion, but it was enough for Lockjaw and me. It didn’t occur to me until we were approaching it that Colin was the first non-familial guest I’d had in a while. Poetic justice or dumb luck? I didn’t know, and I didn’t care.
Field rats scattered as I turned my bike into the driveway, and Colin pulled in next to me. The twin calls of our engines went silent as we powered down, leaving only a chorus of crickets, coyotes, and the distant hoot of owls.
I unfastened Lockjaw just as Colin was climbing off his bike, and Lockjaw quickly hopped off his seat and went to stand at the beginning of the L-shaped walkway that went up to my door. His pointed ears stood straight up, and he kept his golden eyes deadlocked on Colin as he moved.
I crouched in front of Lockjaw and petted his face with a loving scratch. “Who’s Mommy’s good boy? It’s okay. He’s a friend.”
I stood up and stepped past Lockjaw, snapping my fingers as I did so, and Lockjaw stood up, allowing Colin to approach the door more comfortably. We followed the path, and I unlocked it before standing aside so that Colin could pass by me to enter.
Lockjaw stepped in, and I followed him, reaching to the left of the doorway to switch the light on as I went. I shut the door and tossed my keys down the kitchen island that divided my small, open kitchen from the living room and started down the hallway. Lockjaw plopped down into his living room dog bed and almost immediately fell asleep. It was well past his bedtime.
“Follow me,” I called out, and I heard Colin’s footsteps behind me in response. A long hallway led from the front of my house to the back. I stopped at the first door on the right but pointed a little forward to the first door on the left. “Bathroom’s up there.” I tapped the door I stopped in front of. “This is the guest bedroom. The door at the end is my bedroom.”
I turned the doorknob to the guest bedroom and led the way in. It was a modest room, housing only my old queen-sized bed from before I upgraded to my king, and a small, totally bare desk. I didn’t put too much effort into decorating the guest room. I rarely had guests, and the room usually served as a sleepover place for the odd friend too drunk to drive home.
“I imagine the doctor will need to take a closer look,” I told Colin. “This will have to do.”
I’d wandered further into the room than I planned, and when I turned around to flip on the light, I ran right into Colin. He winced in pain but still let out a light chuckle. With us standing so close, our size difference was more apparent. He had at least four inches on me, all of which I felt as his green eyes peered through the darkness to slowly paint my form. I abandoned going for the light and just allowed him to drink me in. It wasn’t as if I was some idealist, thinking my middle school boyfriend was just gonna waltz back into my life and that we were going to live happily ever after, but if he wanted to make a move to give us a few hot nights together before he blew out of town, I’d be more than happy to oblige.
“Take your time,” I said snidely.
Colin smirked. “You look good.”
It was going to be hard to keep up my Tough Tess act when my gut reaction to Colin’s presence was to swoon like a schoolgirl. “I know,” I snipped back with a grin, and his smile got a little larger.
He walked further into the room, and I finally cut on the light.
