The Handler (Noir et Bleu Motorcycle Club #2) (21 page)

I didn’t want her to worry more than she already was, but without Tim and the guys watching our backs, we were completely vulnerable. I needed to be alert. The only problem was, being alert to my impending death in an airplane crash was not in any way helping the anxiety. I exhaled and dug my fingers into the armrests with a death grip as the engines revved.

“Here, try this, you baby. It won’t make you lose all your inhibitions and vow your undying love.” Lincoln handed me a yellow pill from her purse.

“What is it?”

“A sedative. The doctor gave them to me to give to my mom in case she ever freaked out while I was with her. I took one once to see what it was like and it made me sleep.”

“For how long?”

“A couple hours.”

The plane accelerated down the runway and began to lift off. I started to sweat and felt nauseous, but I shook my head to turn down the sedative.

It was the most uncomfortable fucking three hours and forty-seven minutes of my life. I was still tense well after we cleared customs and hailed a cab to take us to a business class hotel. We chose it because we hoped people would assume she wasn’t Lincoln if she wasn’t staying at a posh hotel. We were both exhausted by the time we checked in, and we crashed as soon as we got to the room.

When I woke up the next morning, it was sunny outside the hotel room window. She was asleep next to me in the bed, and my left arm was draped over her in a protective way. The standard hotel room, with just one bed and a small living area, seemed so plain after all the suites Hal used to book for us.

I got up, careful not to wake her and went into the bathroom to shower.

I ran over the details of what went down in Miami, repeatedly trying to piece it all together. No matter what angle I looked at it from, it didn’t make sense why Dewalt would have shot his own guys and then dropped the gun and walked away without hurting us.

Lincoln knocked on the door. “Your phone is ringing. It’s Tim. Do you want me to answer it?”

“Sure. Tell him we’re in Montreal.”

After she talked to him, she opened the bathroom door. It was a glass shower, so she had a clear view if she wanted to look, but she didn’t. She sat on the counter and turned her back to me. “He doesn’t think it’s a good idea to be here in Montreal by ourselves, so he’s flying in today.”

“Okay…”

“Who are Brad Cox and Mandy Turlington?”

“The captain of the football team and the head cheerleader at my old high school.” I turned the water off, grabbed a towel from the hook, and wrapped it around my waist.

She turned to look at me. “I hope they don’t mind that the police are going to be knocking on their door wondering how they were linked to a double homicide in South Beach last night.”

I laughed. “I never liked that guy anyway.”

She washed her face, then said, “I was thinking, maybe the guys who tried to take me weren’t Fireball’s guys. He wouldn’t have killed them if they were Boomslangs members, would he?”

I frowned as I thought about it. She was right, but if it was true, it meant someone else was trying to get to her. I didn’t want to freak her out with that theory, but I wasn’t going to lie, either, so I said, “I can’t think of any reason why he’d kill his own brothers.”

“If they weren’t his guys, who were they?”

I didn’t know, but I did know where I could find out more about the original members of the Boomslangs and the Noir et Bleu, and what that had to do with my dad. “Get ready. We’re going to find out.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

The cab dropped us off in front of the Montreal apartment building my grandparents used to live in. It was a few buildings down from where my dad’s cousin Nick lived. He was never a member of the club, but he hung out with them before they went national, so I hoped he’d heard of Dewalt. I stepped out onto the sidewalk and soaked up all the familiar sights.

“Does one of your dad’s friend’s live here?” Lincoln asked and tilted her head back to take in the Brownstone building we were standing in front of.

“Yeah, close to here. I need to get my bearings. This is the building I lived in on and off until I was five years old. And the original Noir et Bleu clubhouse is one block over.” I turned and pointed at the school down the street. “That’s where I went to kindergarten. My mom went there, too.”

She smiled at the kids who played tag on the sidewalk. “That is so cute. Did you used to play on the street like that?”

I nodded and held her hand to lead her to the building Nick lived in, or had lived in. The woman who answered the door to his apartment said he had moved out in the summer and she didn’t have his contact information. Lincoln and I walked back out onto the street. I called my grandpa to see if he could think of anyone else who still lived here and would have known Dewalt, but he didn’t answer. Before I had a chance to come up with the name of another person who might still live in the neighborhood, a teenage girl across the street yelled, “Oh my God, it’s Lincoln Todd.” A bunch of kids all turned to look. It literally took only seconds for a swarm of people to gather around Lincoln asking for her autograph and taking pictures with her.

“What brings you to this part of town?” a mother with two daughters asked her. The crowd grew and I searched for the best way to get her out of the center of it.

“Cain lived here when he was young and he wanted to show me around his old neighborhood,” Lincoln answered as she signed the back of a little girl’s T-shirt. I swore under my breath and checked the time on my phone. We didn’t have long before Digger and Dewalt both heard the news that we were in Montreal.

“So, does that mean you and Cain are officially dating?” the mother asked.

Lincoln raised her left eyebrow a little before she shot a sexy smile at me. “Cain and I are very dear friends.”

“Is that a yes or a no?” a guy in his twenties asked.

“No comment.” She beamed as she hugged two little girls in for a picture. Then she glanced at me and winked.

“We have to go,” I said to her.

“It will only take a minute.” She pressed her lips together and pinched her cheeks. “Do I look like a total mess?”

My gaze stalled on her lips, and I had to snap myself out the daze to answer, “You look great, but they’re going to show up here. We need to leave.”

“Two minutes.” She stepped in for more photos, and since she spoke French, she interacted with the fans in both languages. She told them we were taking time off as she grieved for Hal.

“Can we get a picture of you and Cain together?” a teenage girl asked.

Lincoln stepped down from the stairs and stood beside me on the sidewalk. I slid my arm across her shoulder, and she hugged me around the waist to lean in for the pictures.

After apologizing to her fans on her behalf, I clutched Lincoln’s hand tightly and led her through the crowd. We crossed the street and rushed down the sidewalk with a mob following us. An elderly woman was ahead of us carrying a bag of groceries. I knew she would get mowed over if we passed her, so I slowed down. That was when I heard Harleys down the street. There was no time, so I escorted the woman into an alcove. Initially, she was startled that I had moved her off the sidewalk, but then her expression changed. She looked almost perplexed as she examined my face. “
Vous êtes ici pour trouver Martin
?”

“Uh—” I shook my head, confused.

Lincoln stepped closer and asked the woman, “
Qui est Martin
?”

The woman reached up and gently placed her palm on my cheek. “
Je ne l’ai pas vu
ça dupuis des années. Vous me rappelez tellement de lui.
”

“She says you remind her of someone she hasn’t seen in a long time,” Lincoln translated for me. “
Comment vous appelez-vous
?” she asked the woman her name.

“
Marie Josie Dewalt
.”

I recognized the last name and when I realized who she was, I jerked back so she wasn’t touching my face. The Harleys got closer, and the crowd thickened around us again. She kept staring at me and asked me my name.

Although I wanted to stay and ask her about whoever Martin was, I didn’t know if I could trust her. I needed to get Lincoln out of there. Without answering the woman’s question, I said to Lincoln, “Let’s go,” and pulled her hand.

I made her hurry away, then I hailed a cab from the street corner. Before we got in the car, I watched which building Marie Josie went into so I could go back later without Lincoln. The bikers rode by without stopping. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or concerned that they were N et B.

I searched my phone to check which events were going on around the city. I knew if someone was tailing us, we wouldn’t be safe at the hotel unless we had the security team with us. Alone, our safest option was to be in a public place with tons of witnesses. “
Centre Bell, s’il vous plait
,” I said to the driver.

Lincoln frowned and checked my expression. “Why are we going to the arena?”

“To watch a hockey game. You can’t come to Montreal and not go see the Canadiens play.” I searched again to see if there were any news articles on the shooting in Miami Beach.

“I don’t understand. I thought we were going to find out about,” she leaned in and whispered so the driver wouldn’t hear, “Fireball.”

“I did.” I made eye contact with her. “His real last name is Dewalt.”

Her forehead wrinkled as she processed what I meant. It only took a few seconds for it to click. “You think that woman is related to him?”

“It’s possible.” I read the text that had just come through on my phone. It was from Mug:

Get your ass back to the hotel and lay low.

Lincoln sorted the pieces of the puzzle in her mind, then she said, “Shouldn’t we have asked her if she knows him?”

“I couldn’t with all those people around. I’ll go back later without you.”

“Even if she does know who he is, how would that help?” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “The Noir et Bleu already know where he is, right? They aren’t taking care of it for a reason. Maybe you need to talk to Digger. Make him tell you.”

“I’ve tried. He’s keeping me in the dark on purpose.” I loaded a news reel of the police scene from Miami and pressed play. It didn’t identify the victims. “I don’t know if I can trust him.”

Her eyes widened in apprehension. “If you can’t trust him, who can we trust?”

I exhaled the tension in my chest and glanced at her. “We’re on our own until I can figure everything out.” The third article I found identified the victims as members of the Boomslangs. I had to read it twice to make sure I saw it right. It didn’t make any sense why a Boomslangs member would take out two of his own brothers and walk away without even touching either one of us.

Lincoln peeked at the article, then took my phone from my hand and read the entire thing before giving it back. “Maybe he’s not one of them,” she hypothesized.

“He has a club tattoo. I’ve seen it.”

We both sat silently thinking for three blocks. A Boomslang who killed other Boomslangs to protect Lincoln, and an entire club of Noir et Bleu who’ve had that Boomslang in their sights, but won’t kill him to protect me. Whatever the complication was, it must have been major.

The cab pulled up in front of the arena. “Are we really here to watch a hockey game?” Lincoln asked me when we stepped onto the sidewalk and noticed all the Canadiens fans.

“It’s the safest place for us to be. Nobody will try anything here and risk getting identified.”

“I don’t know anything about hockey,” she said.

“I’ll teach you. It’ll be fun. I promise.”

Her eyes had a cunning sparkle as she schemed. “I’ll only go to a hockey game with you if you take me out for a nice dinner afterwards.”

I stretched my arm across her shoulder. “Like, you want this to be a date?”

She turned her head and mockingly sneered at me. “No. If you were going to take me on a date, we would not be going to a hockey game. We’d be going to the ballet.”

I chuckled. “If you were taking me on a date, I’d want to go see the Canadiens play.”

She rolled her eyes and smiled.

My phone rang again before we reached the ticket booth. It was Cisco, and I knew he would keep calling or send someone to hunt me down, so I decided to just get it over with. “Yeah.”

“Digger’s pissed that you’re not waiting for his orders.”

“Yeah, well, I’m pissed that while I was following orders and waiting around for you guys to take care of things, we almost got killed.”

“Wait for instructions. Keep your fucking phone on. And don’t leave town.” He hung up.

“Who was that?” Lincoln asked.

“Cisco. Let’s go. If we hurry, we’ll see a bit of the warm up.”

“What did he say?” she asked as I slid my credit card through the silver tray at the ticket kiosk.

“He just wanted to let me know that Digger wasn’t impressed with my publicity stunt. It might not be good for me.” We walked over and lined up outside the gate.

“Like, he’s going to punish you or something?”

“Or something.”

She checked my expression, and although she seemed concerned, she didn’t say anything. We entered the arena and made our way to the seats—row one on the corner. As soon as we sat down, the people around us started to whisper. Eventually, one girl asked for an autograph and a line formed. Lincoln signed a few, but fortunately a security guard made everyone clear the aisle and go back to their seats.

When we sat back down after the national anthem, Lincoln whispered, “Are you afraid?”

I rested my arm across her shoulder. “Let’s not worry about that right now.”

She sighed and bit her pinkie nail.

The puck dropped, and I was almost able to forget about everything while I watched the game. Lincoln actually got into the action. She screeched when they body checked each other into the glass in front of us, she jumped up each time the wave came around, and she stuck her fingers in her mouth to produce a very respectable whistle when they scored. I laughed when she yelled at the Boston Bruins player, then high-fived the guy sitting behind us. After the whistle blew to end the second period, she sat down and rested her elbow on my shoulder. “I like hockey.”

“I can see that. I told you it would be fun.”

She rubbed her hands together expectantly. “Do you think there will be another fight? That was kind of exciting.”

“Well, if there isn’t one on the ice, there will likely be a couple in the stands.”

“What’s that?” She pointed at the Jumbotron. “A game?” The camera panned in on a couple, and the crowd cheered until they kissed. Then it moved and focused in on two more victims.

“It’s the Kiss Cam. The people who get the biggest response from the crowd win something.”

“Like a car?” she asked, stoked.

“More like coupons to a sandwich shop.”

She turned in her seat and jabbed my rib with her knuckle. “Will you kiss me for a sandwich?”

“Nope. If the cameras pan in on us, I’ll be that one asshole who won’t kiss the girl.”

She laughed and shoved my shoulder. “You’re mean.”

I looked up and saw us on the big screen. We both looked stunned. The crowd egged us on. I didn’t want to be the asshole, so I smiled, leaned in, and kissed her. She seemed startled at first, but she recovered quickly and shifted in her seat to get closer to me. I slid my hand up toward her neck and curled my fingers to hold onto sections of her hair. When she parted her lips to kiss me back, my tongue touched hers, and I tasted the sweetness of the lemonade she’d been drinking. She ran her hand along my thigh and my heartbeat sped up to the point where my pulse twitched in my neck. I forgot we were in public until the crowd went wild. People around us cheered and whistled, so I opened my eyes. We were still on the Jumbotron with firework graphics exploding. Evidently, we won the Kiss Cam contest. Lincoln pulled away shyly. “I thought you were going to be the asshole.”

I shrugged innocently as a promotions person showed up and gave us two-for-one coupons for a restaurant. I handed them to Lincoln. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes were watery. Two seconds later, she started to cry and bolted out of her chair. She ran up the concrete stairs weaving through people who were returning to their seats for the third period.

I swore under my breath, then chased after her.