“You guys stay here. Make sure no one else comes in to see Dimitri. If Julia shows back up, call me. I’ve got my cell phone on me,” I told the guys at the steel door to the interrogation room in the basement.
“What are you going to do?” Juarez asked.
“I’m going to track her down,” I told him.
“By yourself?” Chase chimed in.
“Yes, guys, I’m tracking her down by myself. I certainly don’t expect either of you to know her well enough to know how to find her. I know the places where she might have gone. Now, stay here and keep an eye on your boy back there.” I turned and left.
I didn’t want them to know how worried I was. Nothing was supposed to get under my skin, least of all a girl. They had already seen too much, anyway, after they walked in on me as I took out my frustrations on Dimitri. They could only have assumed it was because Julia had left.
The fact was my reaction had as much to do with Julia as it did with Lisa. What happened with Lisa had been my fault. I had allowed my emotions to cloud my judgment. I learned my lesson with her. I had to keep my personal life separate from what I did for the MC. I had no business letting my old lady get mixed up in the business side of things.
My guilt over what happened to Lisa became a reluctance to find Julia. I hopped on the back of my bike and gunned the engine, but I didn’t drive off right away. I sat at the curb and listened to the engine as it purred beneath me. I contemplated killing the engine and going back inside. If I brought Julia back here, I risked putting her in the same position Lisa had been put in when I lost her. I didn’t want to lose Julia the same way.
“Then, don’t,” I told myself as I walked the bike back from the curb.
When I pulled up in front of Julia’s apartment building, I wasn’t sure of what I was going to say, or if she was even home for that matter. I walked up to the door and buzzed her from the intercom downstairs. I was surprised when she let me in.
That didn’t mean she was completely comfortable talking to me yet. She cracked her apartment door, and I could see the chain pulled tight. I wanted to tell her that it wouldn’t have helped. Anyone could still enter her apartment, even with that chain in place. I decided to use a little more tact and work my way in.
“Why are you here?” she asked flatly from the other side of the door. “I thought I made myself clear earlier. I don’t want any part in what you’re doing.”
“Listen, Julia, I really need your help.” I leaned into the door and added in a low tone, “If you come back, I will pay you today. He’s ready to talk.”
She closed the door, pushing me back from it, and I could hear her sliding the chain across to release it. A moment later the door opened and Julia stood there, ushering me in. She’d switched out of her jeans and tank top and into a pair of slacks with a long-sleeved blouse.
“Are you heading up to the university?” I asked her.
“Yeah, I’ve got to account for where I’ve been the last few days,” she said. “See, I’m accountable, Gage. When I tell someone I’m going to do something, I have to show them that I’m doing it or that I’ve done it. I can’t say that I’m going to do research and then go sit on the beach somewhere or torture someone in my basement.”
“I’m sorry. I should have been more up front with you about what was going on.” I followed her into her bedroom as she continued to get dressed. As sexy as she was in jeans and a loose tank top, I couldn’t deny how great her ass looked in slacks. What was wrong with me? Here I was, trying to convince her to come back with me to HQ, and all I could think about was ripping her clothes off and manhandling her on the bed. I didn’t want to listen to her scolding me. I wanted to listen to her crying out in ecstasy.
“Damn right you should have been more honest.” She turned around and started walking towards me from her dresser with a hairbrush in her hand.
I took a step back. I knew if I let her get too close, this would be just another thing that was never resolved because we fucked instead of taking the time to talk.
“And another thing,” she continued. “Wait, did you say you think he’s ready to talk?” Her ears perked up.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“How do you know? Surely, he didn’t tell you. Or, if he did, you wouldn’t have understood it anyway.” She walked back to the mirror above her dresser and brushed her hair.
“He started asking for you while we were talking to him,” I admitted.
“You mean while you were torturing him,” she stated for clarification.
“Well, I wouldn’t call it torture. Torture implies we did something creative. Juarez and Chase just beat the shit out of him until he started asking for you,” I said matter-of-factly. There was no reason to lie or hide it anymore. Hiding what was really going on would just ensure that Julia took the same path Lisa had taken.
“Dammit, Gage,” Julia said, shaking her head, “you can’t keep torturing this guy.”
“What’s he going to do? Is he going to go tell the cops?” I laughed. “Or is he going to tell Ivan? All that would do is bring Ivan to us instead of us having to look for him.”
“How do you know I didn’t tell the police?” she asked me frankly.
“You wouldn’t.” I checked to see how far I was from the front door or the nearest window. It wouldn’t have been the first time I had to escape the law at a moment’s notice. I hadn’t even considered that Julia would have gone to the cops with her story.
“You don’t have much to say now, do you?” she snapped. “I could have already called the police to let them know I’d been held against my will in a garage downtown. I could have buzzed you up here so that when they show up, they’ll find you. I can even tell them that you forced me to have sex with you. When they start asking questions, I can tell them all about your little motorcycle gang, about Dimitri and Ivan. I can tell them everything I know, Gage, and I’m sure they’d be more than happy to take you down.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “You didn’t call the police. In fact, you wouldn’t have let me come up if you had. Knowing you, you would have sent the police to HQ to pick me up if you had called them.”
“You’re right,” she said, suddenly sounding exhausted. She put her brush down and turned around to face me, leaning against her dresser. Her shoulders slumped as I stole her fire by calling her bluff. “I thought about it,” she added.
“Oh, I never said you didn’t think about it. I just know you didn’t actually do it.” She looked so vulnerable I couldn’t resist walking over to her and putting my arms around her.
At first, she resisted and tried to push me away, but she quickly gave up and rested her head against my chest.
“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” I told her while I stroked her hair, “but I need you to come finish the job. I really think he’s about to crack.”
“But how do you know he’s going to tell you the truth?” She tilted her head up to look at me with those beautiful green eyes.
“Well, think about how long I’ve been doing this. Guys like Dimitri don’t usually lie when they crack under pressure. It’s not like being interrogated by the law. There’s only so much they can do. We’re not bound by their rules and regulations. If we catch someone lying to us, they can be pretty sure it’s the last time they lie to anyone.” It felt odd talking to Julia about this with her body leaning against my chest. She was giving me her trust, and I was telling her about hurting people, and worse.
“What are you going to do once you get the information you need?” she asked. I couldn’t help but think she already knew some of what I was trying to get her to figure out from Dimitri. She sounded worried that I would find out he’d been talking all along.
“We’re going to take Ivan down,” I told her. “That’s the whole purpose of taking Dimitri the way we did. We need to shut Ivan down.”
“Does that include killing him?” she asked, looking back up at me again. Her eyes searched my face, and I knew she wanted me to tell her I wouldn’t kill any of them, but I couldn’t promise her that.
“If we have to, we will.” It was the best answer I could give her. There was always the possibility that he would get away from us, but I didn’t know how to explain to an outsider that our safest option was always going to be to completely eradicate threats like Ivan.
“If you have to,” she repeated, pushing herself back from me. “Why does it sound more like if you want to?”
“Because you don’t understand,” I said. “You don’t know what we’re up against, and you don’t know how this all works.”
“Yeah, because I’m this sheltered history geek who spends all her time in libraries and university lecture halls, right?” she snapped at me resentfully.
I wanted to admit that she was right, and that her academic lifestyle was exactly why I didn’t expect her to get it, but it was also one of the reasons I found her so irresistible. I couldn’t tell her she was right; it would have crushed her and ended my chances of bringing her in.
“Listen, you come from a different world,” I explained, grabbing her hands and pulling her back to me. “I want to protect you from everything outside of your conversations with Dimitri. You weren’t supposed to get involved, and you really don’t want to know what else happens after you talk to him, so please, trust me.”
“I don’t feel like I can.”
“Look, the guy who has to deal with assholes like Ivan isn’t the guy standing in front of you right now. He’s certainly not the same guy you slept with. Understand that, for some of us, work isn’t all we are. We aren’t all lucky enough to find a job where we really get to be a hundred percent all the time. History is who you are. It’s you through and through, and you get to work with Russian history and Russian culture, and I’m willing to bet there aren’t too many other things you think about during the day. Am I right?”
She stared at me, wide-eyed.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Look, I got into this because I love motorcycles. I love the way it feels to hop on my bike and hit the open road. Whether you’re an outlaw biker or one of these new school cats who keep it clean and work nine to five, you got into it because you love the way the bike feels, and you love what it means. I got into what we do for a living so that I could ride all the time and so that we could also control what comes in and out of our communities. We’re not in it just for the money, though that’s nice. We’re in it to monitor what’s going on.”
She tilted her head. “Don’t make yourself sound like a hero, Gage. You’re far from it.” She pushed herself away from me again and grabbed her jeans from the floor. She dropped her pants, and I caught a brief glimpse of her hot pink cotton panties before she pulled her jeans up over them. I wanted to bend her over the side of the bed and just slide those panties to the side. The color made her skin look so delicious and innocent.
“You coming?” she asked as she walked out of her room, zipping and buttoning her jeans as she went.
“Wait, you’re coming back?”
“Just to get some answers. Then, I’m out.”