Free Love's Hope (The Unknowns Motorcycle Club Book 2) by Ruby Reid

lowering his head or seeming rude by not speaking with anyone. He walked to the front desk just off of the emergency room exit to ask where he might go to check on someone that had just been admitted. As was usually the case with hospitals, it took him forever to get straight answers, and he ended up having to sit in the waiting room for half an hour.
     
    In that time, he downed two cups of terrible coffee from the machine down the hall. He also found a relic of a payphone hiding in the far corner of the hallway that spanned off of the waiting room but he didn’t have a single bit of change on him—and even if he did, he didn’t know Amanda’s number by heart.
     
    He spent that half an hour trying to find out how he had managed to get in the middle of such a complex situation… a situation that went somewhere beyond the realm of coincidence and into something much stranger. He was now mortal enemies with a man that was not only being hunted down by the leader of the Unknowns, but also the man that had pulled the trigger and killed Amanda’s husband.
     
    Alex was not a religious man, nor did he give much thought or credence to things like fate, but this was too much to ignore; it seemed that he and Amanda had been destined to meet, their lives linked by a single murder and the man behind the gun. Of course, it had been Jameson that had ordered the hit, so that pinned some of the responsibility on him as well.
     
    And here he was in the middle of it all. He felt that he had to come clean with Amanda. She mourned her husband long enough, and if he could help her find closure, then he felt he owed her that much. As for Jameson… well, he was unpredictable. If he were to tell Jameson the entire story, there was no telling how he might act.
     
    These thoughts were bumping through his mind when a frazzled-looking nurse came into the waiting room and headed directly for him. She apparently noticed how exhausted he was and perhaps noticed some of the remaining dust from the broken pallet on his jacket. She stayed a good two feet away from him as she approached.
     
    “Are you Mr. Dunning?”
     
    “Yes. Alex.”
     
    “Okay. And you’re here for an update on Jameson Cane?”
     
    “I am. I was also hoping to speak with him.”
     
    “He’s actually been asking to speak with you,” she said.
     
    “Good,” Alex said. “Is he okay?”
     
    “He lost a lot of blood, but the doctors are confident that he’s going to pull through.”
     
    “Thank you.”
     
    “Now, because he was shot, we can’t let him speak to anyone else until the police have questioned him, but there is an officer upstairs right now, about to go in with him. Once that’s done and the doctors check in on him, we’ll notify you right away.”
     
    “Okay. Thanks.”
     
    The nurse gave him a final skeptical look and then turned away. Alex watched her go, disappointed. There was no way in hell he was going to stick around here if there were cops present. He knew how this worked. If a cop saw someone going in to speak with Jameson, they’d likely question him, too. It was bad enough that the nurse had known his name—but he had no choice. He’d had to give the woman at the desk his name, and he also wondered if Jameson had also been forced into a similar position.
     
    Not wanting to stick out too badly, Alex waited another two minutes before getting up and walking back outside through the sliding doors. He walked slowly around the hospital’s front parking lot and found the bus stop on the corner. He sat down and when he allowed himself to relax against the bench, the weight of his exhaustion caught up with him. There was one other person on the bench, waiting for the bus. They were asleep, their head cocked to the side and resting awkwardly on their shoulder.
     
    Not a bad idea, Alex thought. I can just shut my eyes for a few seconds and rest…
     
    When he opened them twenty minutes later, it was to the sound of the brakes on a city