Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(62)

She didn’t know if that was Jesse. She didn’t know if that man had been watching her at all.

But she watched him. Standing at the end of the hedges, on a narrow strip of concrete that was not intended to be a sidewalk, she saw him walk down the center lane of the public lot and stop at a brown van—an old one, with a round window at the back like a porthole. She didn’t recognize it.

She stood where she was while he got in and backed the van out of the space. She stood there while he pulled down the parking lane, turned, turned again, and stopped at the lot exit, waiting to turn into the lane before her.

Now he was facing her. The afternoon sun glinted sidelong off the windshield, but she could see that he had a full beard, wild and bushy like his hair. Jesse had never had a beard. He wore sunglasses, aviator style. The glasses and beard, and the reflected sunlight, obscured his face almost completely. She didn’t know if he was familiar or not.

He turned onto the lane and drove by her without giving her any notice.

Willa felt ridiculous standing there gaping at a stranger. He was a stranger, right?

He stopped at the end of the line waiting for the light to change. Shaking off her foreboding, Willa was ready to go back to her bike and go home. She’d walk her dog, make some dinner, open a bottle of wine, and take a hot bath. She’d get control of herself.

As she turned, she noticed the back of the brown van.

It had Texas plates.



oOo



She had to know.

She couldn’t let him come up on her unawares. Not again.

She couldn’t call Rad—he was hundreds of miles away. She could call the clubhouse, but most of them were on the road, too. She didn’t know the prospects well enough to trust them, not with this, not with her story.

She was alone. On her own.

She had to know.

At the light, she turned left, exiting the hospital campus in the opposite direction of her house. The brown van had turned this way—probably two light cycles ago, but she was on her bike, and she could catch up, if he’d stayed on this street.

No—she didn’t want to catch up. She didn’t want the driver of that van to know she was following him. Whether it was Jesse or a stranger, she didn’t want him to see her. Surveillance was new to her, but that much seemed obvious: don’t get seen.

For three lights, it didn’t seem like it was going to matter. Then a box truck moved over to a left-turn lane, and Willa saw the brown van half a mile or so—she wasn’t good estimating distances—up ahead. She moved out between the lanes and closed about half that distance, so that she was between the same lights as the van, but a few cars separated them.

They were coming up on a highway overpass, and if the van got onto the highway, Willa decided she’d give up this…whatever it was she was doing. The van was going in the opposite direction of her home. If it got onto the highway, in either direction, it would go even farther from her home. That should be a good indication that its driver had no interest in her.

But the van pulled in at the Osage Motor Inn, just before the turn for the westbound onramp. When she arrived at the same spot, she pulled her bike off and stopped in the bus lane, shielded from the motel lot by a chain-link fence wound with limp, skimpy vines.

Through the face shield of her helmet, she watched the guy get out of the van.

He pulled a leather coat from the van with him. Not a coat. A kutte. He didn’t put it on, and she couldn’t see the patch on the back, but she knew it for what it was.

Then Willa saw his right hand as he swung the door closed. A swastika inked on the back.

That was Jesse. He’d found her.

He went to a door, opened it, entered, and closed it. Willa tightened her vision and memorized the numerals on the dented door.

Room 105.

She didn’t think he’d seen her. He hadn’t looked around as if he’d felt watched. The hairs on the back of his neck must have been relaxed.

He’d seen her, he must have seen her see him when he turned out of the parking lot, but he hadn’t expected her to follow him.

Why would he? As far as Jesse knew, she was a weak, frightened girl. He probably thought she’d gone straight home to hide under her bed.

She knew this pattern, the way it started. He wanted her to see him. He would show up outside work, or standing by the shopping carts at the market. Near the box office at the movie theater. At a bus stop across the street on the route she took on her run. Just there. Standing and staring. Coming a bit closer every time.

Why wouldn’t he do the same things he’d done before? He’d gotten to her both times, in her own home both times, because she’d been too weak, and the law too ineffectual, to stop him.

Restraining orders were a f*cking joke. If she called the police now, she knew what they’d say, what they’d do. They’d take a statement. They’d look up Jesse Smithers’ record. They’d send a squad car out to do a lap around her block for a few nights. And then they’d tell her to contact them if he turned up again.

Round and round like that, until he got to her.

But she wasn’t the same girl. Now she was strong, and she’d made herself ready.

She had Rad, too. But he was too far away to help now. If the pattern held, then Rad would be back in Tulsa before Jesse got much closer; he liked to play his games first. She could wait a few days and let Rad take care of it.