Lead Me Not Read Online Free Page A

me back and scowled. “I said”—he leaned down until he was an inch from my face—“get the fuck out of here.” He literally growled when he said it, and it took everything I had not to be cowed under the weight of his glare.
    “Come on, man, we’ll pay the cover. Double, if you want. We’re only gonna be a minute. We just need to find our friend. She called us and she needs a ride,” Brooks tried to reason with the guy.
    But the bouncer clearly couldn’t give a shit whether we were there to get the Queen of England. We weren’t getting inside.
    The people behind us were becoming antsy and more than a little tired of the holdup. “You heard him, get the hell out of here,” a scrawny man said. He was decked out in black leather, looking like an escapee from an S&M club gone bad.
    My lips thinned, and my temper started to rise. I was gearing myself up to do battle, if necessary, because there was no way I was leaving without Renee.
    Brooks must have recognized the ferocity in my eyes, because he put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing hard, trying to get my attention. I shook him off and leveled scary bouncer dude with my hardest stare.
    “Look, buddy, I’m walking inside this door, and you’re not going to stop me,” I bristled, sounding way more confident than I was actually feeling. In actuality, I was shaking in my Converse sneakers. Bouncer guy didn’t seem to mind if I was a girl or not; he was going to physically remove me.
    “Let her in, Randy,” a voice said from the shadows just inside the door. Randy’s face turned a flustered shade of red as he looked over his shoulder at the speaker.
    I squinted into the darkness, trying to see who my savior was. All I could make out was the dim outline of a man.
    I gripped Brooks’s hand and waited to see whether this anonymous man had enough sway to get us in. After a few seconds, the doorman, Randy, turned back to me and took my money. He stamped my hand and waved me inside without another word.
    I turned around to wait for Brooks. The bouncer put his beefy arm across Brooks’s chest. “Uh-uh. She can come in. You wait outhere,” he said firmly.
    “She’s not going in there by herself,” Brooks argued, pushing against the bouncer’s arm, but it might as well have been made of stone. Randy, bouncer made of steel, didn’t move an inch.
    “If you don’t get the fuck out of the line, I’m gonna make you move. You hear me?” Randy asked, his voice dipping low, his words dripping with a barely restrained violence.
    “I’ll be okay, Brooks. Just wait out here for me, all right?” I urged, hoping he wouldn’t push the issue. I sort of liked the look of Brooks’s teeth in his mouth.
    Brooks frowned. He wasn’t happy. In fact, he was as upset as I had ever seen him. I looked over my shoulder at the dark entrance to the club. The pulsating bass of the music hummed in my head.
    I didn’t particularly like the thought of going in there by myself, but it wasn’t worth Brooks losing a limb to come with me.
    “I’ll be fine. Renee said she’d be waiting inside,” I reasoned.
    Brooks started to shake his head when Randy the bouncer, who had clearly had enough, shoved him roughly to the side. Obviously, the decision had been made for me.
    “I’ll be over there. I’m giving you fifteen minutes, Aubrey, and then I’m coming in after you,” Brooks threatened, shooting me a less-than-pleased look.
    I pulled the sleeves of my jacket down over my hands nervously and slowly made my way inside. I looked around for the guy who had gotten me inside, but my eyes were barely able to focus in the horrible lighting.
    Whoever it was who had saved me from being booted on my ass was nowhere in sight.
    I pulled off my hat and shoved it in my pocket, hesitant to move forward. And then, as though I was being pulled forward by an invisible cord, my feet started to move, one in front of the other, until I was standing in the middle of hell.
    At least that seemed to be