TORTURE ME: The Bandits MC

by Leah Wilde

  “I tried to call the police myself, but my phone died. I don’t think they got any of the information I gave to them before it went out.”

  It was definitely Keenan, and there was no question about it—he was in trouble.

  From the looks of it, he’d been patched up pretty well with a neck brace, some raggedy bandages already bloodied up, and what looked like the woman’s coat hanging off to the side. My worry for Keenan kept my eyes from wandering back to the modelesque beauty ambling down the side of the ditch after me.

  “How long has he been like this?” I asked, kneeling down beside him. I reached for his hand to check his pulse. He looked beaten up pretty badly, and I didn’t like seeing all the blood. I worried that it was too much for him to recover from.

  This was a motorcycle accident? I found myself wondering.

  It looked more like someone had tried to gut him. The thought darkened my mood considerably, and it didn’t help any when the woman spoke again.

  “Don’t touch him!” she scolded me, slapping at my hand like I was a child reaching for the cookie jar. “Moving him could exacerbate any injuries he’s sustained, especially the ones we can’t see.”

  Jumping to my feet, I pressed into her personal space, using my height and size to intimidate her. It usually worked better with shorter women, but I still had a good five inches on her, and I used them to my advantage. “Who the fuck are you to be barking orders at me? Do you have any idea who I am?” I snarled at her angrily.

  Her pretty green eyes widened in surprise, then quickly narrowed in anger. “From what I can see, you’re some pushy man on a bike with no medical experience and a short temper, whereas I am a damn nurse!”

  Nurse?

  A flash of headlights down the road distracted me enough to stop my tirade, just enough time to allow a little niggle of appreciation that she hadn’t backed down from my anger. But not enough to tell her that.

  When the lights slowed as they got closer, I started to get nervous. This was Keenan on the side of the road, no doubt. But I wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there. Was it just an accident? Or was my sense that something more was going on correct?

  Either way, I had to get Keenan the hell out of here. Daniel would give me the time I asked for and not a second more, the bastard, which meant the next headlights coming towards us could be cops.

  Hell, with my luck, it could be another damn Good Samaritan like this fucking woman.

  I rounded on her again. “Look, lady—” I began, but she interrupted me.

  “Jasmine.”

  I blinked at her. “What?”

  “My name. It’s Jasmine,” she elaborated coolly, like she dealt with angry bikers and half-dead ones on the side of the road in the middle of the night all the damn time.

  “Okay, Nurse Jasmine,” I growled at her impatiently. “If you’re done with the fucking introductions, we need to get him the hell out of here.”

  Her features softened with worry, and I admitted to myself again that she was beautiful. I went ahead and let my eyes drop to her cleavage, though the rest of her wasn’t bad to look at either. She had hips that flared out and legs that were long. Yep, not bad to look at.

  “You’re right,” she finally admitted grudgingly. “He needs to get to a hospital. He’s lost a lot of blood, and I don’t know if he’s sustained any other—”

  “No,” I snapped at her, my eyes jerking back to her face.

  Surprise took over her features again. “But he’s—”

  “I said no,” I growled at her again. When I realized that I was being harsh with her—and that being a nurse meant she’d probably call someone once we were gone—I made a conscious effort to soften my tone. I didn’t think I did a very good job. “Look, he’s a friend of mine, okay? And he…doesn’t have insurance.”

  She frowned deeply at me, suspicion mixing in with uncertainty. “This is serious. He needs medical attention.”

  I glanced from her pretty face down to Keenan’s bloody one. Yeah, he did need medical attention. And not just pain pills either. Too bad. Those I could get in a snap, I thought grimly. When my eyes wandered back to Jasmine, an idea began to form in my head—a bad one. Nurse Jasmine, I reminded myself. “You’re right, he does.”

  “Great. Then let’s get an ambulance here—”

  I cut her off. “You think he’ll last that long? Nearest hospital is about forty minutes away.”

  She opened her mouth to answer, then snapped it shut. She glanced down at Keenan. “I was worried about that myself,” she admitted. “He really shouldn’t be moved, though. If he has a neck or spine injury, moving him could cause paralysis or something equally bad.”

  I cocked my head at her. “And if we wait for the hospital, he’ll die. That’s equally bad, isn’t it?”

  She gave me a dirty look for using her own words. “This isn’t a game.”

  “No, this is my friend’s life.”

  Her full lips pulled into a frown. “Fine. I have a car. If you can help me lift him, I can drive him to the hospital.”

  I shook my head quickly. “No. I said no hospital.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized my mistake. Saying he had no insurance was one thing. Arguing that he wouldn’t survive a trip to the hospital if we waited was one thing. Insisting that we couldn’t drive to the hospital ourselves was another.

  She’ll be suspicious, I realized belatedly. What was worse, I didn’t have any idea how much she knew about what was going on.

  Her eyebrows shot up again. Not so subtly, she took a step back, like she was a little wary of me all of a sudden. “What’s going on? Why don’t you want to go to the hospital?”

  Clearing my throat, I tried to recover. “Look, if it wasn’t fifteen minutes shy of an hour, I’d say let’s go. But it is. And he doesn’t have that kind of time. But just up the road down Pike is a house that belonged to my parents. If we take him there, he might even survive the damn car ride.”

  “Which won’t do us any good if he dies there instead!” she countered. She was still arguing, which was a pain in the ass, but at least she didn’t seem suspicious anymore. Forgotten was my adamant insistence to not go to the hospital.

  Kicking up a corner of my mouth, I said, “It’s a good thing I’ve got Nurse Jasmine then, isn’t it?”

  She frowned, and I worried that she wouldn’t come with me. I was afraid that she’d call the police and I would have some serious explaining to do. Keenan could die because of it all. But then she said, “Fine. Let’s go. We’ve already wasted too much time standing around arguing.”

  My mouth stretched into a full smile. “Yes, we fucking have.”

  Chapter Three

  Jasmine

  I was driving down a dark road with a bleeding man in the backseat and an ornery motorcycle rider ahead of me. It seemed utterly stupid, yet I’d agreed to it. Squinting, I followed the fuzzy blimp of red light in front of me—his taillight.

  The man hadn’t introduced himself to me, but he had a presence that was part not-so-gentle green giant and part Chippendale dancer. As a result, I called him Chip in my head.

  I cracked a small smile at that, not an easy task given the circumstances, but I was tired. The idea of calling him Chip because he reminded me of a male stripper was pretty damn hysterical at the moment, especially since he could actually be a stripper. He was taller than I was, which wasn’t necessarily rare for a man, but I had encountered my fair share of the shorter men out there. Dating in high school was a bitch. But the Chippendale was several inches taller than me, had silky black hair, and eyes that burned with passion.

  Or anger. A lot of anger. But anger was passion, too, right?

  And those muscles…I had the crazy urge to reach out and squeeze his bicep. I didn’t, of course, and then I wrote that thought off as me being way too tired after everything tonight. Still, he was a sexy, ripped man.

  Not that I’d ever tell him any of this.

  No, definitely not. He was also rude
and arrogant, and he’d been rubbing me the wrong way since he’d gotten off his damn bike. He was bossy and stubborn, and dammit, we should just be going to the hospital!

  Except he’s right, I thought grudgingly. The shallow breaths coming from the backseat confirmed that.

  The man who was bleeding all over my poor car wouldn’t have managed the forty plus minutes to the hospital. I wasn’t sure that he’d make it wherever we were going right now, but at least time would be on our side.

  The light up ahead turned onto a gravel driveway that looked well-worn but maintained. As we continued down the drive, I saw an older, three story house with brown wooden siding come into view. It looked like it probably had a basement too.

  The place was huge. And beautiful. It was clearly well built, and if Chip was the one maintaining it, he was doing a hell of a job. The front yard looked basic but tended. Even the damn windows looked clean.

  “I met the only Chippendale dancer who lives in a mansion,” I muttered under my breath.

  The man pulled to a stop just outside of the house and motioned for me to do the same. Putting the car into park and then popping open my door, I was surprised when I saw two men—not as tall as Chip, but as muscular—come out of the house, heading straight for my car.

  “What are you—?” I began to ask, but the two men were already opening the door and pulling the poor man out from the back of my car. He groaned in pain, but I took that as a good sign. At least it meant he’d survived this far.

  The men carried him into the house. I hurried after them, meeting Chip at the steps. “Who are these guys?”

  Distractedly, he answered, “Friends. They crash here sometimes. C’mon, they’ll move him to the mudroom.”

  I raised my eyebrows but said nothing. I just followed him through the house and found myself as amazed at the interior as I was with the exterior. Antique rose wood furniture. Paintings that looked as though they were somehow originals. A kitchen that looked like it belonged on one of those cooking shows. “Jeez, you live here?” I questioned as we briskly walked through the house.

  He didn’t even spare me a backward glance, and when he spoke, it wasn’t to answer my question. Instead, he asked one of his own. “What do you need?”

  “What?”

  He made an irritated sound. “For Keenan. What do you need to patch him up?”

  Keenan, the injured man, I thought.

  Frowning, I remembered why I was here and what was going on. Normally, I was a little sharper than this. I tended to be so organized that a few of my friends and coworkers accused me of being OCD, but I wasn’t. I was just organized and focused. But right now, I was exhausted. The night had been long and brutal. Now I was trying to save a man’s life with no hospital and no doctor—just me.

  “Plasma. Painkillers. Suture tools or, at the very least, super glue if the damage isn’t too extensive,” I rattled off. These were the things I needed, but I doubted he could get them. I was trying to find alternatives, but what alternative could you find for plasma? Blood? Great, I had no idea what blood type he was, and the chances of finding a universal donor at this time of night were slim to negative one thousand.

  “Fine. I get you these things, you save Keenan?”

  I stopped abruptly and stared at him. Chip kept walking several more paces, then stopped outside of a half open door. He made another frustrated sound when he realized I’d stopped. “Well?” he demanded.

  “I can’t guarantee—”

  He waved me off. “I don’t care. Do whatever it is you’re going to do, and it’ll be what it’ll be. But standing there isn’t going to fucking save him.”

  “I’m not a doctor,” I blurted.

  I saw his jaw clench, like he was trying to keep from exploding. He sucked in a quick breath, then said, “So you might kill him?”

  I winced. That wasn’t a thought I wanted to have, but yeah, that was more or less what I was suggesting.

  “Which is nothing more than will happen if you just stand there running your mouth. So get in there. I’ll get you your shit.”

  The urge to be defiant welled up inside me, but the need to save a man’s life tempered it. Despite his rudeness, I did as he said. He had me write down a list with the specific items I needed, then he shoved it into the hands of one of his friends—whom he treated more like servants or employees—and sent him scurrying off into the night.

  I moved into the mudroom and found that it was set up like an impromptu triage center. There was a cot where Keenan was currently lying, a sink with antiseptic soap, alcohol, and latex gloves. On a table to the side were bandages still in their packages, meaning they were sterile, and beside them sat an unusually thorough array of tools for the home of a motorcycle rider.

  Frowning, I examined the tools.

  A pair of nice scissors, like the kind you might get for hair cutting. Two pairs of forceps, which was a little stranger to find in a residential home. Three different sized scalpels. They looked just like the kind the doctors used in the emergency room where I worked. I skeptically admitted that there was a very slim possibility that maybe these things could be found in any home, though I doubted it. I had half a dozen pairs of forceps, though they were all used and no longer for surgery. But I was also a nurse, and I used them for mundane things like holding screws in awkward home repair situations or making homemade candles.

  It was a hobby. I wasn’t very good at it.

  That being said, I had a sense that there was something just a little off about all of this. It wasn’t that these things were hard to find or that they were set out like this. I could come up with explanations for that, but it was everything. Insisting I come here instead of the hospital. Sending a man out for materials that I wasn’t sure he could find with no questions. How everything in this room was set up like it had been used before as an impromptu ER.

  You’re being paranoid, I told myself silently. And you’re wasting precious time.

  I determined quickly that I would save Keenan first, then wonder about that niggling sense of something being not quite right later. Hurrying to the sink, I washed my hands thoroughly and then snapped on a pair of the latex gloves. They were a little too big. For a man’s hands maybe? I wished I had a face mask, too, but I decided that it wasn’t that important. This room wasn’t sterile to begin with and neither were my clothes or anything else. I would have to just make sure that I was clean and careful. It was the best I could do.

  What I really need is to get him a damn IV before he bleeds out.

  But since there was no plasma, I decided I’d just have to start without it. After all, he was going to bleed regardless of what I did.

  Undoing what I’d done before, I cut away the bandages so that I could clean the wound again. I wanted to get more of the debris out now that I could see better. I was going to have to make sure I didn’t leave any of it inside if I was seriously going to try and sew him up.

  Oh, God, I can’t believe I’m going to do this. Although I prided myself on being calm in these types of situations, there was no denying how nervous I was. Yes, I was an RN, but that didn’t make me a doctor. The doctors and other nurses at the hospital would be the first to tell me that. But I was all Keenan had just then. Once again, I had the sense that it shouldn’t be that way.

  I grabbed several clean towels and a bowl. Filling the bowl with water, I soaked the towels and began the cleaning process all over again. This time I could see better thanks to the overhead light. I poured clean water over the wound, watching as it ran red to the floor. I saw pieces of metal now and winced.

  I’d pressed them in deeper when I’d patched him up earlier, I was sure of it.

  Grabbing the forceps, I used them like tweezers. I began to pull out the smaller pieces of metal as quickly as I could. I let them clink in the now empty bowl that I’d used for water. Most of the smaller pieces came out quickly. Maybe there were still some embedded in that I couldn’t see, but I wasn’t comfortable digging aroun
d in Keenan for them. There was one big piece of shrapnel left, but it was deeper than the rest, and I didn’t want to tug it free until I had that plasma.

  Assuming they can even find any, I thought gravely. I had little confidence in the endeavor.

  When I’d gotten as much of the shrapnel as I could see, I cleaned the wound again, then dared to rinse it with alcohol. I used it sparingly, diluting it slightly with water first. I was again at the point where I couldn’t do more without proper tools, and it made me frown deeply. He’s going to die, I thought, my stomach twisting into guilty knots.

  Just when I was about to patch him up again, knowing it wasn’t enough, the door burst open, and one of the men from earlier bounded in.

  “Surgical needles, sutures, painkillers…” the man started rattling off as he unloaded his haul on my little table next to the patient.

  My eyes widened as he not only pulled out the sutures and the meds—which I had the sinking suspicion were bought illegally—but also three bags of clear liquid. Plasma. My mouth dropped open as he continued to list off every item I’d put on his list.

  Finally, when he was done, I turned to him and asked, “Where did you find all of this? And on such short notice?”

  His dark eyes flickered towards the door. I realized that my Chippendale dancer was standing there with a sour expression. He gave a quick nod, and when the other man, the errand boy, turned to me to offer his answer, he said only, “A friend.” Then he disappeared before I could ask any more questions.

  “Hey!” I said when he disappeared out the door.

  “I got you what you asked for, now save Keenan’s life,” Chip said in a dark, commanding voice that sent tendrils of both anger and need through me. He turned and left me there alone with my patient, wondering just who the hell these guys were.

  Not wasting any more time, I grabbed the painkiller, which was in liquid form, and filled a syringe with it. I pushed aside the questions I had about where they possibly could have gotten it. I cleared Keenan’s inner elbow, then found a vein. I injected it slowly. He was still unconscious, but at least he wouldn’t wake up in the middle of this screaming in pain.