Outlaw's Salvation (A Viper’s Bite MC Novel Book 2): A Bad Boy MC Romance (Viper's Bite MC)

by Lena Bourne

  A shot whizzes over my head in answer. I can just make out the outline of the shooter near the back of the turned over car. It’s one of the two that grabbed Sam. The driver’s arm is poking lifelessly out of his smashed car window, so he’s down for the count. That leaves one with Sam in the back seat.

  I can hear rustling in the car, a man yelling something in Spanish. The one with the gun answers him. I use the distraction to roll away from my bike, take cover behind the boulder that caused them to spin out. It’s a full moon tonight, and I can see the wreck quite clearly. I take very careful aim. I couldn’t do that so efficiently on the back of the bike, but now I’m on level ground.

  Time always slows for me when I take aim with intent to kill, sound growing fuzzy as my eyes focus on the target with the precision of a laser. Bombs can be going off all around me, and I’m still able to zero in on just my target. This situation is even more dire. A rifle would be better, but the Colt will work just fine. It’s never the gun. It’s always the man holding it. Moonlight is reflecting off the standing man’s crisp white shirt. I take aim and fire. A black flower of blood erupts in the center of his chest. He goes down with a hollow thump. I’m usually too far away from my kills to hear that sound, but tonight it’s like music to my ears.

  More dull thumps follow, these ones from someone kicking the bent and twisted rear door on the side of the car facing away from me.

  I don’t move. One chance, that’s likely all I’ll get. Sam’s in that car. She’s shrieking and screaming. Calling my name. I think of nothing but my bullet hitting the target. All else are things that must not happen.

  The rear door finally flies open, followed by more muffled talking, more of Sam’s shrieks and screams.

  “I’ll shoot her,” the man yells in heavily accented English. “I’ll shoot her dead, if you don’t let me go.”

  He’s pulling her out of the car now, and she’s fighting him, I can hear the scuffle, hear her feet beating against the sides of the car, then the dusty ground, the sound interlaced with her yells and grunts of pain. She’d do better to stay still. And I’d yell for her to do just that, but then the bastard holding her would know my hiding place. I need the element of surprise on my side.

  He finally overpowers her, and then they stand up, her face and heaving chest coming into view over the upturned car. He’s hiding behind her, and her eyes are darting this way and that across the darkness, searching for me, and the plea in her face, the stark fear, is so strong I almost stand up just so she’ll know I’m right here, and that I won’t let them hurt her.

  The cholo is hiding behind her, has a silver gun barrel pressed to her temple.

  “Do nothing,” he yells in my direction.

  But that’s not an option. Free her. That’s what I’m gonna do. Kill him. I’m gonna do that first.

  I take a deep breath and take careful aim at Sam’s heart. All I need is for him to move just a step to the left or right and he’s gone. But he’s one of those wiry Mexicans and wearing a black suit, so he’s literally blending into the darkness behind Sam’s slender body.

  The longer this takes, the sooner their reinforcements will be here. All I can hope for is that they never called it in. But I’m certain they had. And we’re in a stalemate that’s working entirely for him.

  Through the broken back windows I can just make out their legs. Sam’s slender bare thighs are practically sparkling in the moonlight against the black of his trousers. I’ve never been happier to see a woman wearing a miniskirt. I have one chance at this. A quarter inch off and I’ll hit her. But I won’t miss. I rarely do.

  I lower the gun slowly, take another deep breath and hold it. Aim two inches left and two inches up from where her skirt meets her shimmering white skin. That spot should be right around his hip, and this bullet will crush it in a split second. Then I squeeze the trigger slowly, going by the book, letting the bang surprise me as it sounds.

  He screams, shifts and sways, but doesn’t fall. Sam jerks away from him and ducks. Smart girl. My next shot goes right between his eyes, blood gushing from the wound. I never saw anything good in killing a person. Right now I relish it.

  I jump to my feet, ignoring the shooting pain in my left bicep, and run to her. My knees skid on the gravel as I kneel next to her. We’re so close our faces are almost touching.

  “You hurt?” There’s no time for it but I take her face into my palms anyway, look deep into her eyes for the answer.

  “No,” she manages, but she’s shaking so hard her teeth are chattering. I stand, hoist her to her feet, but she’s as heavy as a log in her fear and just as stiff.

  “Come on, Sam! Move! We gotta go!” She’s in shock, but my yells wake her, and then she’s stumbling along in the sand, as I drag her towards my bike.

  A shot echoes in the silence, and Sam screams. But I felt it ripping open my right side before she did that. She’s on my left, she isn’t hit, it went nowhere near her. The fucking driver. I should’ve checked he was dead. He’s hanging halfway out his window now, his gun still pointed at us. But he has no chance to get off another shot before I empty the rest of the bullets in my gun into him. Then I toss it into the dirt, and pull Sam after me faster.

  The adrenaline pumping through my body is keeping the pain away, and I don’t feel like I’m losing a lot of blood, but I am. It’s bubbling up hot, soaking into my shirt, running down my side. We don’t have a lot of time before the adrenaline wears off or I bleed out. I need to get her away from here before either of those things happen.

  I bunch up my shirt and press it into the wound as hard as I can, making sure Sam doesn’t see. Her eyes are still sparkling white in fear, her teeth still chattering from the shock, and she’s holding onto my left arm so tight its like she’s attached.

  And I hate to let go of her, but we need to get on the bike. We need to get as far away from here as my wound will let us.

  “Get on,” I urge once I’m on the bike, still hiding my right side from her.

  She does it immediately, wraps her arms around my waist and rests her head against my back like we’re just going cruising for fun. I start the bike, drive off, and then it’s just us again, melded together, the roar of my bike’s engine and the tires gliding across the pavement the only sounds renting the silence. But it can’t last tonight. We need to find a place to hide soon. The pain in my side is starting.

  Chapter Fifteen

  SAMANTHA

  You’re safe now. You’re OK. It’s over. You’re safe. Those sentences are going off on a loop inside my head as I try to convince myself they’re true. And it’s working. Though the fact that I’m leaning against Brett’s broad back, holding on tight to his strong body, is doing most of the work. I was so dumb for not going home like he told me to. I’ll never not listen to him again.

  He slows, turns onto a dark, narrow gravel road that’s barely more than a footpath and kills the lights. The tough grasses and shrubs lining the path are hitting my legs, some rough enough to sting. He navigates the descending path by the light of the full moon, the smell of the ocean growing stronger. He stops as we reach the edge of a cliff, the ocean black and glittering below us.

  We get off the bike and he turns to me, takes my face in his hands the way he did by the wrecked car. And despite the near darkness, I can see myself reflected in his eyes, and I’m beautiful, perfect, worth killing for. Worth saving.

  “Did they hurt you?” he asks and I shake my head, even though the guy punched me in the face a few times as he was dragging me out of the car, and once in the lobby. I’m gonna have bruises tomorrow, but I feel no pain.

  “I’m OK now that you’re here,” I say, since he’s still just staring at me. The right side of my face is sticky and wet under his touch. Maybe I’m bleeding from one of the punches.

  He kisses me one the forehead, his lips hot and dry. “Get the first aid kit from the saddlebags. We’re spending the night here.”

  “What if they find us?” I tur
n back toward the road we left, panic rising in my chest. But I can’t even see it from here, and the only sound is the waves hitting the shore and the wind rustling the grasses and bushes around us.

  “I think we’re safe here,” he says pointing at the path we rode down to get here. “That’s the only way in as far as I can tell, and I’m well armed. But I don’t think they’ll find us here.”

  I turn back to him, my eyes catching on the huge black stain covering the front of my green dress. My arms are bloody too, and that’s not from the guy he shot. His shirt is soaked in something dark, stuck to his side in a weird, unnatural way.

  Then something clicks in my brain, and I make the connection. And scream. Because they shot him, and that’s a lot of blood. That’s too much blood.

  He grabs my arm, placing his other hand over my mouth to silence me.

  “Get the first aid kit, it’ll be fine,” he whispers.

  I cling to the surety in his voice, the firmness. It’s the only thing that allows me to stumble to the bike, rummage through the saddlebags until I finally grasp something that feels like a tightly packed makeup bag.

  He offers me his arm to help me descend the twenty feet of rocks and boulders down to the sand. But it’s him that needs my help now, not the other way around. And he chuckles when I tell him so, but does lean against me as we descend.

  He lets me go by the cliff face, and sits down with a groan, leans against the rock face.

  Don’t let him die. Don’t let him die. Don’t let him die. The thoughts are firing off in my brain, they’re the only thing I can focus on, though I don’t even know who I’m asking this of. God, maybe. But I don’t believe in him. And I haven’t been a good Catholic girl. So why would he listen to me? Or answer my prayers?

  “Can you start a fire?” he asks, and I shake my head.

  He’s already dug a pit in the sand with the heel of his boot, is pulling dried twigs off the rock face and tossing them inside the hole.

  He takes the kit from my hands. “Go gather some wood, there’s should be some along the cliff. Get some kindling too, the soft fuzzy dried grass like this.” He shows me a fistful of the grass he’s pulled from the rocks.

  He’s still speaking very calmly, and I’m glad for the clear directions he’s giving me and for something to do, because my mind is a screaming, jumbled mess right now. So I nod, undo the strap of my remaining sandal, which is basically just hanging off my ankle at this point and hurry to perform the errand. My hands are shaking fiercely and uncontrollably, so I drop more than I collect. I keep glancing back to see if he’s still alive. I caused this. This is all my fault.

  I return when I gather as much as I can carry, my arms all scratched up from the pointy ends of the sticks.

  He takes the kindling from me, and starts arranging it just so in the hole. He’s doing it slowly, meticulously. But there’s no time. His shirt is still sticking to his body and the bloodstain is getting bigger by the second. It’s already twice as large as when I first noticed it, but that could be just my imagination.

  He finally unzips the kit and rummages inside it, bringing out a slim pack of matches. He strikes the first, but the flame fizzles out immediately. The same happens with the second one. My heart is thumping so fast I can feel it everywhere in my body.

  I reach out, cup my hands around the third match as he lights it, and this time the flame takes. He holds it up to the dry twigs, my hands still sheltering the tiny flame. Then suddenly it’s not so tiny anymore, as the twigs seem to catch fire all at once. He adds more kindling, then finally a few slender pieces of wood.

  “Alright, let’s look at this shit now,” he says, tugging at the end of his t-shirt to pull it up. He’s not wincing, or flinching, or showing any signs of being in horrible pain, but I feel it anyway. I can do this for him. My hands start shaking horribly again as I reach out and peal the shirt up so he doesn’t have to.

  I gasp as the gaping black gash in his side comes into view. Blood is still spilling out of it in huge oozing tears, and the flesh inside it is dark but dotted with white. I look up at him with my mouth gaping open, my eyes so wide I can feel them bulging out.

  He looks down at the wound, twisting so the light from the fire hits it better. His face is very serious and very hard, and my heart is skipping beats as I wait for him to say something.

  “That was one lucky shot,” he finally says, and I fail to suppress a whimper. “It’s not that serious. It hasn’t hit anything vital, I don’t think. It’s mostly just guts in this area, and if any of that was hit, I’d have bled out by now.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I don’t think he is. He’s just saying all this so I’ll stop panicking.

  “I do know a thing or two about gunshot wounds.” He actually grins as he says it. “We just need to close this so I don’t lose any more blood.”

  “How do we close it?”

  He pulls out that huge knife I saw in his apartment from his boot and sticks it in the fire. “The old-fashioned way. You know, like the Conquistadores did it in medieval times.”

  He grins at me again, but I don’t find his reference to my general obsession with anything Middle Ages so very amusing right now. Though I’m all soft inside that he actually listened to my ramblings about how the Spanish conquered these lands all those years ago, while we were on our road trip. And my panic is starting to subside.

  “Will that work?” I ask.

  “I’ve seen it done by a medic in the field. It’s gonna work just fine, trust me. But it’s also gonna hurt like a motherfucker. He rummages through the first aid kit, and brings out a bottle of clear liquid, handing it to me.

  “Spill some of this on it,” he instructs. “We need to disinfect it first.”

  His voice is still firm, but shakier than it was before. So I just do it, spill about half the bottle of disinfectant over the wound, because if I think too much I’ll go mad.

  A sharp intake of breath is all the indication that he felt anything at all. But it’s enough for me to stop, pull my hand back.

  “It’s fine, Sam. Keep doing it,” he says and I hear laughter in his voice like my reaction amuses him.

  “It’s not fine,” I mutter. “There’s a huge wound in your side. You need a doctor.”

  He shakes his head. “Not an option. We go to a hospital and we’re both dead.”

  “But you’ll die if we don’t,” I say in the most pitiful voice I’ve ever heard myself use.

  “Not true,” he says. “This is gonna work, at least long enough for us to get out of cartel territory. And then we’ll figure something out. But I’ll need your help. You’ll have to guide my hand when I press the knife against the wound, because I can’t see all of it that well. And it’s gonna hurt, so I need you to stop me from pussying out.”

  My whole mind is screaming, “No!” and it must be all over my face too, because he grins again.

  “You’ll do fine, Sam.”

  I swallow hard and nod, willing my panic to subside. I got us into this mess, this is the least I can do.

  The blade of the knife is turning red, he takes it out of the fire and studies it for a second, then pushes it back into the flames. “Let’s give it a few more minutes. Might as well do this right the first time.”

  Time stops moving, and I can’t even hear the ocean anymore, can only smell the blood. But I can also see his eyes, and they still hold all the promises of forever, which is just on the other side of this little snag. He’s staying with me, he said so, he’s never sending me away again. And all that starts as soon as he stops bleeding.

  “OK, it’s time,” he says, grabbing the hilt of the knife. “Let’s make this quick.”

  He explains what he’s gonna do, and what he needs me to do. And I steel myself inside, make myself hard like I used to be before I met him. Become the girl that feels nothing, because she has nothing inside her to feel with. I’ll be that girl once more, but it’s for the last time.

  “I’m ready,
” I mutter, and even my voice is ice cold.

  He lays down on his side, and my hands aren’t shaking anymore, as I guide his so that the red glowing blade covers the still bleeding gash.

  “Now?” he asks once I stop moving his hand by grasping his thick wrist with both of mine.

  “Yes.”

  His sharp inhale matches the sizzling of flesh as the blade connects with his skin. He’s pushing down hard, but his whole arm is shaking from the effort, so I grip it tighter, help him hold it in place. No other sound escapes him, and somehow I manage not to scream either.

  But we didn’t get the whole thing and have to repeat the process two more times. By then his whole body is shaking, and I can literally feel his pain in my side, so I don’t understand how he’s not screaming. But he didn’t even whimper once. That’s how tough he is.

  And then it’s done, the gash gone, replaced by an angry burn. But at least the blood’s not flowing anymore.

  “Cover it with a bandage,” he says hoarsely.

  I cover his burn with a clean bandage from the kit, careful not to get any sand on it. I also wrap up the graze on his left bicep, which has thankfully already scabbed over.

  He’s lying down in the sand and shivering worse than I was before. I know what that is. It’s shock from the blood loss and the pain. I need to keep him warm. He’s already shirtless, and I rip my dress off, press up against him, covering as much of his girth with my body as I can.

  I feel him try to hold me tighter, but there’s no real strength left in his arms. It’s OK, because I’m holding him tight enough for the both of us.

  Slowly, very slowly his shivers finally start to subside. Then his breathing slows, becomes more even. His heartbeat is steady and even too, but it seems slow. Yet the pace holds and after awhile of listening to it, I dare hope he’ll be alright. That I haven’t killed him with my stupidity.

  But he needs a doctor, and he needs one soon.

  BRETT

  This complicates shit, my blood loss notwithstanding. At least I’m not dying in her arms right now, and that’s a pretty good outcome for now. But how the fuck am I gonna get Sam away from here, when the entire cartel is probably out looking for us? I should get up and go mask the trail leading from the road to this beach. The bike is well hidden behind that bush where I parked it, but they might spot the tire tracks in the dirt. Though it’s such a narrow dirt road, barely wide enough for a bike to pass. Thank God I even noticed it when I did. They probably won’t. At least not at night. Hopefully they’re looking for us on the highway. But in the morning they might pass back this way, rechecking everything. We need to be gone by then.