This woman is connected to Adamson, a guy who had gunmen fleeing his mansion, and that fucking chick looks way too nervous. She’s hiding something.
I return to Rat as he’s asking her something.
“I don’t know anything about what she charges,” the girl says in the same shaking, small rasp. She shuffles her feet. “I’m just a housekeeper.”
She looks as if she’s on the verge of telling us to go away, but she’s too damned afraid to say it. She also won’t look either of us in the eyes, her gaze on the floor.
Rat looks over his shoulder at me. His brows are knitted with worry before he mouths two words clearly.
“She’s terrified.”
I step closer to the door.
Her behavior screams submission. She reminds me so much of Emma, it’s unsettling. What the fuck is going on here?
I look behind her, but the hallway is too dark to tell if there’s anyone there. Then I close the space between us. She flinches, her hand grabbing the door in a white-knuckled grip, but I notice she doesn’t close it. I put my hand on the doorframe, giving the impression of secrecy.
“Everything okay?” I ask, lowering my voice.
Her eyes shoot to mine at last, and they go wide, as if seeing something in my face that scares her.
“Fine. I just have chores to get back to.” She takes a fraction of a step backward. “Everything’s fine,” she says, almost firmly. “Rosie will be back tomorrow. Please leave.”
With that, she shuts the door and the lock clicks.
Rat glances at me, looking like he wants to say something, but I give a small shake of my head, and gesture for him to follow me. We walk down the path, neither of us saying anything until we get to the street.
“She was fucking terrified out of her gob,” Rat mutters softly.
“Fuck. Yeah.” I resist the urge to look back at the house and tip her off if she’s watching us.
“Maybe she’s just afraid of us,” Rat says, gesturing to our cuts.
Most people in Nevada know what we are. Hell, Emma has to be the only woman I’ve met who didn’t recognize what our patches mean. But I can tell Rat doesn’t believe that chick was only reacting to having two bikers on her doorstep any more than I do.
Rat and I make our way down the street toward the house with the For Sale sign where Reaper and Striker are waiting.
It hits me why that girl’s behavior bothered me. It’s more than just the fear I saw in her eyes when I’d moved toward her. As scared as Emma sometimes is of me, it doesn’t hold a candle to her. I’ve seen that kind of behavior before. I saw it every day, growing up.
Whenever strangers came to the door or someone new came to visit, she’d gotten the same look on her face. My mother had taken on that fearful look of someone terrified her secret would be discovered, and of the repercussions that would follow. She’d looked shattered, broken down, as if the fight had gone out of her, so much that she no longer even knew how to assert herself. Like she’d given up.
My mother was a bitch, a woman who cared more for herself and getting high than her own fucking kid, but even I’m not beyond seeing that she was a victim, a woman trapped in a marriage with a monster.
As perfect and inviting as that house had seemed on the outside, that girl had looked as if the house itself was slowly sucking the life out of her. Exactly like my mother had looked when she was sober enough to care.
I have a sudden overwhelming urge to get a look at this dear sweet Rosie for myself. Somehow, we need to get inside that fucking house.
We walk up the driveway, finding Striker and Reaper sitting astride their bikes, chatting it up. They’ve pulled their bikes up at the side of the house, parking them beside some bushes, out of sight of the street. We update them on what we found.
At the mention of the girl’s fear, Reaper picks up his helmet, about to put it back on. “Well, what the hell are we standing here for?”
“Yeah,” Striker adds, “why the fuck didn’t you two go in? She sounds like she needs help.”
“We’re not going in there without knowing what we’re walking into,” I say. “There could be guys lying in wait with guns, ready to blow