Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,38

can’t help you.”

“You can,” she said. “You just won’t.”

I just looked at her and she just looked at me over the barrel of that gun.

The moment stretched, and I let out a slow breath because she wasn’t going to do it. The impulse was over. My relief did nothing to offset my being pissed.

But she had me chained to a bed and stood just outside of my reach. So I couldn’t hurt her. I couldn’t punish her the way I would anyone that held a gun on me.

At least not with my hands.

Because this little tantrum with the gun—it wasn’t about her sister or my help. It was about me forcing her to show me something she wanted to keep hidden.

“Was it so bad?” I asked, poking at that dark, emotional bruise I’d given her. Because I had a death wish, maybe. Because I was an asshole.

“What?”

“Coming for me.”

She sucked in a deep breath, like I’d just punched her in the stomach.

“It was nothing,” she lied.

But then she lowered the gun, uncocked it and held it at her side like a pro.

“I’m not unlocking you. Not yet.”

“You’re going to have to sooner or later.”

“I choose later.”

“You can’t change my mind about this, Joan. I’m not getting involved with Lagan.”

“I’ll find a way to change it,” she said.

She walked out. Leaving me there, chained to a bed, wondering who was in control.

—

I woke up, I don’t know how much later, to find the redheaded aunt looking over me.

Fern. The name came out of the fog.

“How are you feeling?” she asked. I could see the resemblance between her and Joan. Tall, stacked, and eyes all full of “fuck you.”

I liked her.

“Like I need to take a shit. And I’d like a shower.”

“I can arrange that for you.”

I lifted the handcuffs. She lifted the key.

I laughed. The second she unlocked me, I was out of here. I’d lock her up if I had to, but I was done with this place. Done with Joan and this mind-fuck control game we had going.

I’d head back to Cherokee, find out what I could about Rabbit. I’d kill him and then…Well, at the moment, then was a blank space. I could fill it in later.

But first I had to get Aunt Fern to let me out.

Clearly, she saw something she didn’t like in my face, because she put the key back in her pocket.

“What the fuck?” I demanded.

“I took the bullet out of your leg. Mind if I look?” She gestured toward my foot.

“Have at it,” I told her, watching her carefully. I could kick her in the teeth and knock her out, but there was no guarantee she’d fall within reach so I could get that key out of her pocket.

She pressed the wound and I winced. Her eyes watched me carefully like I was telling her something with that wince.

“I was shot,” I told her. “It hurts.”

“I’ll bet. You want some painkillers?”

I shook my head. I wanted to be clear. Crystal clear when I put my hands around Joan’s neck again.

“Well,” she said, putting the blanket over my leg. “The wound is clean, there’s no infection, and the fever you had seems to be gone.”

“Great. Make with the key.”

“I’d like to look at your head.”

“It’s fine.”

She hummed in her throat.

“Joan said you were an army nurse.”

The club had a guy who took care of the big injuries that couldn’t go to a hospital. A doctor who had lost his license ‘cause he liked to fuck with the unconscious bodies of his female patients.

Having someone like Fern would have been worlds better.

“Two tours in Iraq.”

“For family, you and Joan don’t seem that close.”

“Yeah,” she laughed at me. “You’re an expert on normal family relations?”

I almost laughed, too. “If I had to put money on it, I’d say she was raised by wolves.”

Her eyes narrowed just a bit and I really had no clue why I was goading the woman with the key in her pocket. But whatever. I was pissed.

“I could say the same about you.”

Wasn’t that the truth.

“What’s her name? Her real name?”

“If she’s not telling you, I’m certainly not.”

It was strange to realize Joan had someone. She was so alone in my eyes. So surrounded by barbed wire and land mines, it was kind of crazy to find out there was family she could go to.

Family she could go to when she had a nearly-dead biker in the backseat of her car.

Weird, but I had exactly the same kind of family. Useless in