“Should you really be walking on that?” I ask, jerking my chin toward the leg he is favoring.

“Use it or lose it, right?”

“No,” I laugh. “Not always. Sometimes using it is the worst thing you can do. Didn’t they take you to see someone?”

Cade shrugs, brushing off my concern. “Yeah. And it’s much better now than it was, that’s for sure.”

Me being me, I’ve brought my medical kit with me. “I’ll take a look at it for you later.” Cade just nods, as though there’s no sense in arguing with this at all. And he’s right. There really is no point. “Did they send you out to welcome me?” I ask.

“Something like that.  Carnie spotted someone approaching and was all for getting his sniper rifle out. Thought I’d better come out and see what’s what for myself before I let him go gung ho, though.”

“Well thanks for that. Being shot is very low on my to-do list today.” Being shot the one time is enough to last me a lifetime. My arm still burns at the memory of the biting pain that slammed through me all those weeks ago. I was lucky. Very lucky. My own wounds could have been so much worse.

“She’s not expecting you,” Cade tells me, ruefully rubbing at the back of his neck. “She’s gonna freak out. After you didn’t see her in Seattle, well…” He trails off, letting me imagine how she took my refusal to meet with her. Maybe she was angry. Maybe she was upset. At the end of the day, I hadn’t been able to face it, though. I wasn’t ready back then. If I’d have seen her at that point, when I was raw and overcome with everything that had happened, I might have been able to listen to her. I might have been able to forgive her. But I don’t know whether I would have been able to accept her as my sister again. She would always have been my blood, but the bond we’d always shared—we were so close before she disappeared—that might not have been something I would have been able to open up to again. And that was the whole point.

I wanted my sister back. I want Alexis back. Nerves thrill through me as I admit that to myself. “You don’t think she’s going to be pissed I’m here, do you?” I ask Cade.

He shoots me an amused glance out of the corner of his eye. “Oh, Doc, you have no idea how stupid that question is.”

I don’t know if I should be offended, worried or reassured by that response. Cade doesn’t seem to feel inclined to expand any further on his comment, so we walk very slowly together back toward the compound. I can see as we get closer there are countless motorcycles propped one after the other in a long row around the inside perimeter of the fence. So many people. I don’t know what I was expecting, but a horde of bikers wasn’t it.

“You call this inconspicuous?” I say as I exhale.

“No. I don’t call it that.” Cade smiles at me—a warm, friendly smile. “I call it home. I call it safe. I call it necessary.”

Safe. Necessary. Those concepts aren’t unfamiliar to me. Up until very recently, I was being shunted from pillar to post because it was necessary. Because I wasn’t safe. When things grew markedly safer and it wasn’t so important that we hid in the shadows all the time, we never really made it back to Zeth’s warehouse, though. We tried sleeping there one night and it just felt too weird. Too alone, even with Zeth, myself and Michael to fill the place with sound. We’d moved straight back to The Regency Rooms, and now that place feels like some strange semblance of home, in its own odd way.

I catch sight of Rebel as we arrive in front of a huge, ten-foot-high chain link gate—the only way in or out of the compound as far as I can see. My brother-in-law is leaning against a metal post, apparently waiting on us, chewing a toothpick over and over in his front teeth. “Well, hello,” he says, giving me a tight smile. There’s no quick, sharp wit to him today. Only a tense, almost anxious look I find strangely worrying. This isn’t a side of him I’ve seen before. I’m used to the annoying, over-confident version of him that drives me crazy. This quiet, reserved Rebel is new and unexpected.

He pushes off from the metal post and opens the gate in front of us. “I can’t say I’m not a little shocked, Dr. Romera. I thought I was gonna have to kidnap you to get you here.”

“You think Zeth would have let you?” I quirk an eyebrow at him, noting the flash of something that passes over his face when I mention Zee. Not irritation. Not anger. A hard emotion to place. I don’t know him well enough to decipher what it means.

“Probably not, I’m sure. I wouldn’t really be stupid enough to try and take something from your man, Sloane. I like my body the way it is. Intact.”

He slaps Cade on the back, and then the other man hobbles off, giving me a brief wave as he heads into the closest building, where loud rock music is blaring out into the courtyard.

“I’ll come see that leg before I go,” I call after him.

“He’s got eighteen pins in there. He can barely ride anymore,” Rebel informs me.

“What? He should be in physical therapy, surely?”

“Oh, don’t you worry your pretty little head, Doc. Cade’s receiving PT alright.” There’s a smirk to Rebel’s voice that I might not be able to see with his back to me, but I can hear it all too well. There’s obviously a story behind that comment, but I’m sure as hell not going to ask what it is. “Soph’s in the bar. I’ll show you where that is and then I’ll leave you two to it.”