Read Lock and Key for Free Online Page B

tips.
    Life was good; life rolled on. I enjoyed my extremely busy routine. Ruby, however, became utterly unpredictable. She would be gone for longer stretches at a time. When she would be back, it would be with a crew of people, mostly bikers and their “bitches” who would park their phenomenal shiny, massive Harleys in the driveway and crash all over our house.
    Many of them I knew from Pete’s. However, I took to locking my bedroom door. Too often I would find a trio of them screwing wildly on my bed, another couple on my floor. On those occasions I would take off and spend the night at Tania’s house to try to get some sleep. Luckily, my quilt fit into the washing machine.
    Then stuff around the house started disappearing. I ignored it at first, but it got harder and harder. It started with the stereo, the small television in my parents’ room, my dad’s tools in the garage, my mother’s gold cross and then my grandmother’s pearl bracelet. That infuriated me. That was all we had of grandma, other than the house. Ruby wouldn’t listen. She’d see the look on my face and either laugh, give me a hug, or start a conversation about nothing at all. Or if she was in one of her deeply sullen moods, she’d act like she couldn’t see me anymore. It broke my heart.
    Early one morning I had found used syringes in the bathtub as I was getting in the shower, and it knocked the air right out of me. Suddenly Ruby dabbing makeup on the inside of her left arm the other day made sense to me. The small plastic baggies I kept finding stuck in the sofa and the garbage, and the coffee grinder that seemed to be a new permanent fixture on the coffee table, also made horrible sense.
    The numbness I used to feel when my mother would have her drunken tirades seeped through me once again. When I had pulled up alongside the curb after work at four that morning, Ruby was getting on the back of Jump’s bike. She had shot me a quick grin, and they had roared off into the dark. That was the last I would see of her for over three weeks.
     

     
    “She’s having another round of tests again. Could be a while.” Alex frowned. “Have a seat here Grace, and we’ll wait.”
    I slumped down on the hard plastic chair in the brightly lit hallway in front of Ruby’s hospital room and dumped my bag in between my legs. I had resuscitated myself as best as I could in the bathroom with splashes of cold water followed by a bit of eye pencil, mascara and coverup. My head fell back against the wall, my eyelids sank, and memories flooded my brain again.
     

     
    His hand burned into my wrist.
    “You’re the little sister, right?”
    I let go of the glass I had just set down on the table in front of the One-Eyed Jacks biker. Pearl Jam pounded over Pete’s sound system, and I had to bend down close to the attractive guy who sported a hint of a goatee and caramel-colored hair which just grazed his shoulders.
    “Excuse me?”
    “You’re Grace, right?” he asked in a hypnotic, gravelly voice.
    I wrenched my hand away from his, propped my tray up on my hip and scowled at him. “Who wants to know?” I asked.
    He grinned at me, a wicked, sexy grin that sent butterflies fluttering in my belly. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hand along his handsome face, big brown eyes smiled up at me. The angles of his jaw seemed to widen as his lips curled at the edges.
    Holy crap.
    It was Brown Eyes from the keg party drama four years ago.
    I hadn’t seen him much since that night. A few times here at the bar, but never at the house with Jump and his buddies. A Sergeant at Arms patch was sewn on his leather cut along with a number of other colorful patches marking his warrior victories and wild sex-capades no doubt. Pete had once explained the patch thing to me. He had said they were like medals of the life, their colors and symbols only translatable by other brothers.
    “Oooh, an officer?” I asked. “Are you a gentleman, too?”
    I liked sassing. It