by J. P. Oliver
“Because no one’s stupid enough to build a house all the way up here,” I said aloud to myself, sniffing away the sudden urge to shout and release some of this horrible, vibrating feeling in my chest.
Along the way, I called Curtis, who was still awake and just leaving the clinic. My nerves carried over the phone. He promised he’d be there soon, but where there was, I had no idea. I texted Wyatt frantically to tell him Victor wasn’t at the house, that I was retracing his steps. He told me he would start from the Speakeasy and work his way up the hill.
I slowed on the curves, looked for signs of a wreck, for tire tracks, for smoke or fire. The dark persisted. The tree line was unbreached, the grass undisturbed.
I took a particularly precarious turn with a sick stomach, hoping that he hadn’t gone over the edge—that he wasn’t strapped into his belly-up car halfway down the mountainside.
Don’t fucking think like that. He’s fine.
“He’s fine,” I said out loud. “He’s gonna be fine…”
The hill dipped hard into a valley of sorts, where the woods were thick, but the ground was low; no ravines or cliffs or anything of the sort. Through my cracked window, I could smell the straining scent of burnt rubber in the air. I knew it well. He was close.
Slowing way down, I pulled onto the shoulder—or what little there was. Hazards on. I jumped out of the car with my phone flashlight, shining it all over the asphalt, and—there.
Dark black marks burnt into the pavement, skewing off the road and over the little bump of grass. I held my breath as I bolted across the road, wincing against the pain in my leg. None of that mattered right now, when Victor might be there on the other side.
The swell of uncut grass broke. Standing atop it, I looked down the shallow hill into the woods, where, sure enough, a car was pitted against a tree. The front of it was entirely smashed in, almost wrapped around the trunk. The front door was still shut.
“Victor!”
My voice didn’t even sound like it was coming from my body, all panicked and frantic as I scrambled down the hill, sliding down the uneven soil with my locking leg. I didn’t even remember dialing Wyatt’s number, but suddenly his voice was in my ear.
Before he even had the chance to speak, I was gasping, “I found him.”
Wyatt said something, but I could barely process it. I had one goal: get to Victor.
I had one hope: pray he isn’t dead.
In a rush, I gave Wyatt the location, told him that my truck was parked right across the street. I hung up before he could tell me not to do anything stupid; a crashed car like this one was always a dangerous place to be, but I didn’t care.
Shining my light in the shattered window, I saw a figure slumped over the deflating airbag.
“Victor.”
I pulled on the handle, once, twice, fighting it hard until it finally popped open. Glass crunched beneath my boot as I stepped up and moved Victor gingerly, looking for any signs of intense damage.
Fumbling fingers pressed to his neck, looking for a pulse.
Victor groaned softly, taking in a ragged breath, and fuck if it wasn’t the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard in my life. Not dead; just knocked out cold. That was good. I could work with that.
In the distance, I could hear the approaching sound of ambulance sirens.
“Victor,” I huffed, rubbing his shoulder, trying to rouse him. “Victor, c’mon, baby, it’s me. Victor, wake up. Wake up.”
He made another small, rough noise. Shifted.
“That’s it.” I grinned and touched his face gently. It was cut on one side, but nothing intense. That didn’t mean everything was all right, though; I knew better than anyone that accidents often caused underlying damage, the kind you couldn’t see. “That’s it. Wake up. I’m right here, I’m—”
“Adrian.”
It was soft.
His hand twitched and I grasped it; got a little wet in the eyes when he squeezed my fingers faintly in return. Slowly, his brown eyes opened, squinting up at me.
“I’m right here,” I whispered, hoarse. “Help’s on the way. I just need you to stay awake with me, all right?”
He groaned again. The sirens were loud now, piercing. Over the little hill, I could hear vehicle doors slamming and shouting on the road.
“That’s them,” I said, shaking a bit as his eyes started to flutter shut again. “Hey, no, no, no, c’mon.”
He blinked hard and looked at me. He was trying to stay awake.
“Good,” I said, kissing his hand. “Good.”
Victor whispered something, something too soft for me to make out.
“What?”
“Raptors…”
We looked at each other. Though his consciousness was fading, I could see the meaning in them. I didn’t need him to explain further. A medic took my shoulder and pulled me aside, and I let myself stumble back from Victor.
They could help him better than I could.
Slowly, my relief turned to rage.
I watched as they pulled him from the wreck, his body limp. They loaded him onto the board and carried him over the hill with me hot on their tails. When we got back to the road, Curtis was there, still dressed in his work clothes, as was Wyatt in his police car. He looked exhausted as he directed other officers to tape off chunks of the road so they could deal with the wreckage.
They let me follow Victor up until the ambulance. He was already sleeping again, so I touched his leg and promised silently that I’d be there when he woke up again. That even if I couldn’t help him with this, I could sure as hell get the bastards who’d done this.
“Hey.”
I turned as Curtis put a hand on my shoulder.
“Hey.” I swallowed and looked after the ambulance as they shut the doors.
“They’re taking him to North Creek Medical Center,” he explained. “I don’t typically work trauma, but Sarah does. I’ll follow them there and help however I can.”
I nodded, fists clenched at my sides.
“He’ll be okay,” Curtis added in an attempt to reassure.
“I know,” I said. I believed that. They were good doctors. Capable. “I know. Thanks.”
Worry flickered across Curtis’s face. “You want a lift there?”
“No.” As his hand fell away from my shoulder, I nodded towards my truck. “I told my folks I’d stop by or call or something. To let them know what happened, so I’ll be there, but first—”
Curtis waved me off. “I understand.”
“Thanks.”
“He’ll be there,” Curtis said, parting words as we both headed for our vehicles.
As I crawled into my truck, I watched Wyatt pat the back of the ambulance. With urgency, it peeled up the hill, back towards town, its white and red lights spinning, painting the tree line as it went. My eyes followed the little windows at the back as I pulled out my phone and pressed it to my ear.
“Adrian,” a voice said, confused, gruff. “What the hell you callin’ for—”
“I have a favor to ask,” I said. “I need you to get a few of the boys together.”
My boyfriend was in that ambulance, and now I knew exactly who’d put him there.
The thing about Max Cartwright was that he was reliable.
As the leader of the Falcon Grims—or the leader of any motorcycle club—I guess you had to be, but when you called in a favor, Max was always there, no matter the hour. As I drove, I explained to him exactly what was going on: that those asshole Raptors we’d seen in the Speakeasy earlier that evening were the ones responsible for running my boyfriend off the road.
Nobody fucked with me or my family, and that included Victor.
I never mentioned it to him, but when Victor confronted those assholes at the Speakeasy, I knew exactly who they were. Their presence, they said, was just a coincidence, and Victor was content to believe it wasn’t going to amount to anything.
It made sense for them to have a lawyer, and it was no real surp
rise that someone as sleazy as Winston would be representing them, but I should have known better. Those four men were notorious within the community:
There was Axel, the redheaded leader of their little squad and the one who did the most talking; Evans, a twinky new recruit who’d gained notoriety by savagely fucking up someone for accidentally spitting gum near his tires; Lot, an ex-marine; and Yale, some ex-Wall Street fucker who’d traded a life of white-collar crime in for something more real. They’d been running together for some time now.
They had an intimidation factor about them, sure, but their infamy was about to be their downfall. If you wanted to steer clear of them, you had to know where they hung out—where not to go.
Lucky for me, I knew exactly where to find them.
I told Max to meet me in an hour at Sleeper’s Point, a woodsy dive on the outskirts of the county—a mile outside the jurisdiction of North Creek law. With the hour and no traffic, he was there in forty minutes, backed by two other Falcons: Roger and Colt North. Roger, the older of the two brothers, was the guy you called when you needed to ‘take out the trash,’ and Colt, his little brother, wasn’t so little anymore. Both stood just over six feet and were more brawn than brain.
Perfect, I thought as I hopped out of my truck to greet them in the parking lot.
Max locked hands with me, pulled me in for a mutual pat on the back.
“Got here in the nick of time,” I said.
“Hey,” he replied, grinning, primed for a fight. “Nobody fucks with a Falcon.”
Max and I crowded in the doorway while the brothers waited outside. It was all old wood, more of a shack than a cabin. The sharp smell of moonshine wafted around the cheap linoleum tables. A tastefully massive moose head was mounted on the wall above a series of dartboards. The crowd was sparse; not many folks went out of their way to grab a drink from this dump. Spotting them was easy.
“There,” I said, nodding at the bar.
Predictable.
We strode in uniform up to them. Axel regarded us with passing interest—just checking to see who’d come in through the door—but he gave us a hard double-take once my face registered; once the patches emblazoned on our leather registered.
“Well, well,” he chuckled, setting down his pint. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you Falcon Cocks were following us—”
Without pause, I grabbed his shirtfront and pulled him in to kiss my fist.
Anger pulsed through me like a whip against my spine. The other boys at his side stood, knocked over their stools in a rush to get me off of him. Max grabbed the back of my jacket and pulled, putting himself between me and Axel as he nursed his already swelling lip.
“You fucking prick,” I spat.
“The fuck’s your problem?” he shouted back.
“Hey!” The bartender, a stout woman who looked like she’d happily backhand any one of us despite being no more than five foot, barked at us. “Take your business elsewhere, fellas, or so help me God.”
Her hand was rested underneath the bar, and there was no doubt in my mind she was probably fingering the long neck of a shotgun under there. Despite all our differences, I don’t think any of us were too keen on getting blown away by some bartender.
With a nod over my shoulder, I said, “You fucked with my family. Let’s take it outside.”
A grunt. He rose and we all shuffled outside, where Roger and Colt were waiting, silent and dangerous.
Axel surveyed us in the dim light of the parking lot, coming from a single flickering outside bulb. It was sprinkling now, cold and misted. The little flecks of rain danced in the light and caught in his fiery hair as he sucked his teeth and grinned.
“Y’all ain’t shit,” he said. “C’mon, boys. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
As he turned his back on me, I couldn’t hold back. This man and his friends were responsible. They could have killed Victor. I thought of finding him, slumped over the wheel. Was he scared when it happened? Did he even know what was going on?
He didn’t deserve to be caught up in this shit.
Before Max could hold me back this time, I closed the space between me and Axel; gave him a hard shove that sent him stumbling. The Raptors stopped in their tracks.
Axel wheeled around, looking a little less entertained.
“I’m warning you,” he said. “I’m in no mood—”
“We came to collect,” Max explained. “You don’t fuck with the Falcon Grims and think you can get off scot-free.”
“The fuck is he talking about?” Yale asked, his New York accent sharp as his nose. “We didn’t mess with any of you.”
“You did,” I snapped back, insides made of fire, “when you ran my man off the road.”
“Fuck you,” Axel said. “We never did any of that—”
“Bullshit. I saw you at the Speakeasy and no Raptor comes into town just for the sake of coming,” I said. “You met with his brother, you saw us there, you followed him home. He hasn’t done shit to you.”
“He hasn’t,” Lot said, “but that doesn’t matter. It was a job.”
“A job,” Max repeated.
“Yeah. That hoity fucking brother of his,” Yale said. “Paid us to do it.”
I scoffed. “And you said yes? What kind of dumbfuck—”
“Hey,” Axel barked, pointing fingers. “Don’t think anybody asked you to question what we do with our time, what we do for our money.”
“Right,” I said; self-destructive as it was, I didn’t care. I was pissed. I let my hand linger at my zipper, the sound of it sliding slightly open deafening in the lot. “Well, since you’re so ready to suck Winston Savage’s cock, why don’t you go ahead and get on your knees, asshole, and I’ll slip you a happy fiver.”
It was the final straw.
Lucky for me, Axel was a big guy, which meant anticipating his movements was easy. I saw him prepare to punch before he could connect with me, and easily dodged backwards. One swing, nothing; another swing, nothing. He was just hitting air as I dipped away from his fist.
His frustration grew tenfold in the time it took me to zip myself back up.
Good, I thought. Make him clumsy.
“Stay still, prick,” he grunted, swinging and missing again.
I licked my teeth and smirked. “Wanna call for backup, big guy?”
I heard the little fwip of a switchblade.
Chaos exploded around me. Suddenly, bodies were tumbling, hands were grabbing, an all-out brawl erupting in the wet dirt and rain. Four against four, fists flying in every direction, all sweat and leather and kinetic rage.
We all latched onto someone, picked out our perfect match.
Max jumped at Yale, taking his shirt and swinging him to the ground. He knelt on top of him, pushed his shoulders into the dirt with his knees and started wailing, the two rolling in the mud.
Roger took Lot, an even match. They muscled at each other, trading shots in the chest and face with their fists like baseball cards on the first day of summer, and Colt took Evans. It would have been an unfair match, but Evans knew his size, knew his weakness and compensated for them. I saw the orange light glint off his switchblade as he swung it shallowly at Colt’s waist, keeping him at bay with the sharp end of it.
Which meant I had Axel all to myself.
His fist collided with my jaw as I went in for the kill. I swayed under its pressure, and he fisted his hand in my shirt to bring me down.
I shot my leg out, catching him hard in the waist, the heel of my boot making a pretty print on his stomach. My injured knee throbbed with the weight of balancing on it, but I shook it away and attacked, lunging for him.
He’d been drinking. As I slammed him down hard, I could smell the moonshine on his breath, which meant he was sluggish; easier to take down. I liked him like this, clumsy and easy to beat.
“Don’t you ever,” I shouted, swinging hard, “fuck with me or my family again.”
Colt growled as Evan’s knife cut th
rough his shirt.
Roger toppled Lot over, knocking him back long enough to help his brother. Two-to-one, Evans struggled to keep both at bay. On the backswing, Colt grabbed a handful of his sweeping blond hair and whipped him about three feet backward until he was stumbling over himself.
Axel caught my fist as I punched down.
My muscles ripped, bracing against an incoming punch.
But I was scrappy. I knew how to fight, how to get away, how to throw a man off his game. Years in the club and years taking hard hits from boyfriends with bad attitudes made fighting a fucking breeze. I could take it as well as I dished it out.
I spat in Axel’s face, obscuring his vision.
He called out, blinking against saliva, and it was enough of a shock that I wrangled free of his hold and dug in. My fist connected with his cheek, then the other, and back again. His nose turned bloody, seeping into the red of his beard.
“Adrian.”
I swung again, panting.
“Adrian.”
Max’s hand was at my shoulder, pulling me up with a steadfast grip.
I stumbled up to my feet, stepping back from Axel, who was groaning in the dirt.
“That’s enough,” Max said quietly.
I nodded at him, feeling myself come back in pieces. I’d almost gotten carried away. My lungs were burning with the exertion of the fight, the pain setting into my knee now that the adrenaline was fading out. Around us, the Raptors were retreating, or making attempts to. Colt pushed Lot between the shoulder blades towards the bar.
Evans’ switchblade disappeared into his back pocket.
“Fuck this,” he said, gripping Lot’s jacket and tugging him back.
Yale followed, lingering by the door as Axel rolled onto his hands and knees in a slow attempt at standing.
The four of us stood before him as he spat blood into the mud.
“Don’t ever fuck with us again,” I warned. “Not me, not the Grims, not the Savages.”
Axel glared up at me.
“And if I ever catch you and your boys around North Creek,” I said, squinting through the rain, “I’ll make sure it’s the last small town you ever see.”