MERCURY FALLING
CHAPTER 1
Kerry “Mercury” Dawson blinked.
Twilight. Dark Nevada sky. No stars out yet. No glow from the Las Vegas strip, either.
Wait… why am I looking at the sky when I should be riding the Harley?
Something sharp poked at his left shoulder blade, and he turned his head.
Pavement.
He was lying in middle of the road, the chopped-off motorcycle he’d been riding propped at an unnatural angle six feet away.
Oh yeah. Little old blue-hair making a left turn in front of me.
Even from here Kerry could see the caved-in front fender, forks grotesquely squeezing the wheel. The mini-windshield was a spider-web of fiberglass. All that glorious chrome twisted and scraped raw.
And what was left of the rear fender another six feet away.
Laz is gonna be pissed I trashed his bike.
“Yo, man, you okay?” Buck’s pock-marked face appeared above him.
Kerry lifted his arms. Yep, all his fingers were still there. And they moved. He wiggled his toes inside his boots. “Well,” he deadpanned. “I’m not dead.”
Buck smirked and offered Kerry a hand.
“Don’t!” The voice was high and shrill, jabbing into Kerry’s brain like an ice pick. “He could have a head injury. Don’t move him!”
The body belonging to the voice moved into the circle of bikers that stood over him. It was a woman with delicate features, elegantly shaped eyes and mouth, and a mess of blonde curls held back by a clip.
“We take care of our own,” one of his buddies—was it Chaff?—growled.
His buddies had to look damned intimidating in their tattoos, leather and Strikers patches, and yet this woman who was only half their size jammed her hands on her hips and said, “You’re kidding me, right?”
She pinned each biker with a stare, one at a time. “One of you is a trained doctor, then? Paramedic? Nurse?”
Damn!
Chaff’s jaw dropped. Kerry would have laughed out loud, except that his hip, his ribs, and his shoulder were suddenly on fire. And his head…
Fuck, my head hurts!
Someone groaned—shit, was that me?—and the woman’s chin jerked toward Kerry. She dropped to the pavement. “I’m Lucy. I’m an E.R. nurse. I’ve already called for an ambulance.”
Ambulance?
“No way,” he said. “I’m not getting carted out of here like an invalid.”
“We’ll see about that.” Her hands moved over his body.
He stiffened. “What the—”
“Don’t move,” she said. “You could have broken bones. And I think you hit your head.”
He wanted to argue, but… well, his head hurt too damn much.
Shit.
She got her hand into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet and flipped it open to his license. “Kerry Dawson.”
“I prefer Merc,” he grumbled.
“Did you say Mark?”
“Merc,” he said. “Like, you know… Mercury Rising.”
Her hand fluttered above his face, blurring. Was she really moving it that fast?
“Well, Merc,” she said. “We need to keep you awake until the ambulance gets here, so tell me something about your life.”
CHAPTER 2
“Kerry, wake up.”
He knew that voice. It was the same one that kept saying Stay Awake, Stay Awake, in the ambulance. The woman just would not shut up. He groaned; was he still trapped in the ambulance with her?
He slit his eyes open just enough to confirm that no, he was no longer in the ambulance. But that blurry figure next to him was definitely her. What was her name again? Oh yeah. Lucy.
“Lucy.” Damn, his voice sounded like gravel. “You’re giving me a headache.”
“Kerry.” Relief laced her voice. “You’re awake.”
“Merc,” he grunted.
“Sorry—Merc.” Was that amusement he heard in her voice? “Kerry isn’t tough-biker-ish enough for you?”
What did this pixie of a woman know about biker life? He opened his eyes just long enough to see a glimmer of mischief in hers—and just long enough for the light to lance through his eye sockets.
Sonofabitch!
He clamped his eyes shut and tried to raise his left hand so he could massage his temple.
He couldn’t lift it.
What the—?
He tried his right hand. Same thing. It was like both hands were glued in place. Were they broken? They couldn’t be; he’d wiggled them right after the crash, hadn’t he?
Panic stirred in his chest. His eyes flew open and he raised his head, pain be damned. His hands were not encased in a cast, or even bandaged. But around his wrists…
He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Restraints?” he croaked.
Nobody restrains me!
He jerked his arms and the bed shook.
So did his head.
Maybe not the best idea…
“Easy, Kerry.” Lucy laid a hand on his arm. “It’s only because you hit one of the nurses. We couldn’t risk that happening again.”
He stopped wrestling the restraints as her words sunk in. “I did what? That’s not possible. I don’t…”
Wait.
He squinted at her. “Which nurse?”
“Me.”
He groaned. Could this get any worse? Yeah, he was in a biker club, and sometimes he was required to enforce a certain… honor… but he was not some hoodlum or ruffian that went around hitting women.
“Listen, Kerry,” she said. “You’ve got a nasty bump on your head. You’ve had two seizures and it’s quite possible you’ve damaged something inside that skull of yours.”
He willed his brain to absorb what she was saying. Seizures?
“Lashing out at me wasn’t a conscious action on your part,” she continued. “I understand that, and I don’t blame you. It happens.”
It happens??
“The doctor ordered some scans of your head,” she said. “As soon as those are back the restraints can be removed and they’ll take you to your room.”
He dropped his chin. “Shit, I’m sorry, Lucy.”
“Kerry, will you look at me, please?”
He didn’t want to. Didn’t want to see the bruise he’d left on her cheek. But he owed her that much, at least.
He lifted his chin and met her gaze. Her eyes were startlingly blue. Deep blue, like the twilit sky he’d been staring up at.
“Frankly, you’re lucky to be alive,” she said. “You’ve got one seriously hard head.”
She didn’t know the half of it.
CHAPTER 3
Kerry opened his eyes. His brain no longer felt like it had outgrown his skull. That was a good sign. He glanced at his wrists. No restraints.
Relief flooded through him.
“How you feeling, man?”
Kerry jumped at the voice; Laz had been so still and quiet, Kerry hadn’t noticed him sitting in the corner chair. How long had he been there?
A strange mix of emotion stirred within Kerry: surprise, relief, worry. He tried to put his finger on what he was feeling and could only come up with… touched. Yes, he was touched that Laz had come. He looked up to Lazarus Lowenstein the way he thought other men might look up to their fathers.
Men who have fathers.
“Bruised everywhere, but I’ll live,” he said.
“I hear it’s a good thing you’ve got such a hard head,” Laz said.
Kerry swallowed. “I guess we need to talk about the motorcycle I crashed.”
Laz didn’t answer, and that made Kerry nervous. Laz was no pushover; he probably already knew everything about the crash—and his riding buddies.
“I’ll pay you back for it,” Kerry said.
Laz stroked his chin absently. “Yes, you will have to do that. The question is, how?”
Apprehension laced through Kerry’s chest. “Are you saying I’m gonna need to find a new job?”
“I was very clear that none of the Dream Machine projects were to be used in any type of club activity,” Laz said.
“That wasn’t an activity,” Kerry said. “It was just…”
Laz fixed him with a stare. “Was I or was I not clear?”
Kerry had too much respect for Laz to try to blow smoke up his ass. As if it would work anyway. “You were clear. And…” he swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
Laz stared hard at him. “I ought to fire you,” he said. “But sometimes you remind me of my younger self.”
“Yeah?” What would the forty-ish Lazarus have been like in his twenties?
Laz paced the few feet the hospital room allowed, and Kerry found himself holding his breath. He liked his job at Dream Machines. He liked the work, and the people, and… shoot, for the first time in his life, he actually cared if he got fired.
“One day, you’re going to want more out of life,” Laz said. “And you’re going to realize the club lifestyle is rather… limiting.”
More? What more is there, than riding and working on motorcycles? With a little sex and a little art thrown in…
Laz stroked his chin again, studying Kerry in a way that unnerved him. “You broke a cardinal rule when you took the motorcycle out with your friends,” he said. “If you want to stay on at Dream Machines, the job is yours under one condition.”
Well, this was better. Kerry started breathing again. “Name it.”
“You leave the club,” Laz said.
Kerry froze. Leave the Strikers? Did Laz have any idea what he was asking? He couldn’t just bow out of a biker club.
Laz picked his leather jacket up off the chair. “You think about it,” he said. “I gotta go meet with our new office manager.”
At the door, Laz stopped and dug in his jacket pocket. “I almost forgot.” He handed Kerry an envelope. “The guys at the shop got you this.”
When Laz had gone, Kerry opened the envelope. It was a get-well card that showed a cartoon man laid up in a hospital bed with his motorcycle peeking in the window. Inside, all the employees of Dream Machines had written personal notes, some offering help with groceries or anything else he may need while he was laid up.
At the bottom, someone had written “Come back soon, we miss you!”
Maybe the Strikers weren’t his only friends…