Stand (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 7)

by Susan Fanetti

  “Shit! They’re Abregos!” Maverick shouted. “What the fuck!”

  Abregos were on their side. The Bulls handed off to Abrego 13 on the Galveston run. What the hell was going on?

  Alexei moved back, and the Abregos began firing. They all aimed in one direction, and Caleb understood that Alexei had manipulated the seating so the Bone Wolves MC, all seven of them, were all together, right where the Abregos expected their target to be.

  The Volkovs meant to take out the Bone Wolves MC. That was their plan. Why not tell the Bulls? And why do it this way? Why the chaos?

  And chaos it was. The Tezcat Kings and Bone Wolves were shouting and diving for cover, or trying to get to the pile of weapons they’d surrendered, or trying to run, and bullets were flying every which way. This was no tidy execution.

  Rad pulled the table onto its side for cover, and Caleb ran for it. Somebody punched him in the back as he leapt for the table and dropped behind it. Never had he been in anything like this. His heart felt like it was in his balls, and he couldn’t get a breath. Shit, his whole body was collapsing in on itself. He grabbed his Sig, but his hands were so sweaty he could barely hold it. It didn’t help to have a weapon. Who would he shoot? Who was the enemy? He didn’t understand.

  Caleb heard Slick’s shout in the din, and he came up and peered over the table. Devil Hauser had grabbed him and held him in a headlock. An Abrego advanced on the pair, changing out the mag in his AK. Russian guns every-fucking-where.

  “NO!” Caleb shouted, seeing what the Abrego meant to do. “NO!” But it was too late. The crazy bastard shot his target straight through Slick. Hauser and Slick went down.

  Then a single sharp report blasted right by Caleb’s ear, and the Abrego went down. Rad had shot him. Another Abrego turned on Rad, but the guy’s tattooed head exploded, and Caleb saw Yuri still aimed at him.

  And then it was quiet.

  “What the fuck, man! What the fuck!” Miguel Hernandez, the Kings president shouted. He rattled off a bunch of Spanish, but Caleb didn’t know what he was saying. He stood and went around the table, looking for Terry. Jesus, the prospect. His head swam, and he felt sick.

  “Caleb! Brother, you okay?” Maverick ran up to him and yanked him around. Fuck, that hurt. “You’re hit, Cay. Shit, you’re hit!”

  “What?” He looked down, but his sight was going fuzzy, and he couldn’t decide what he was looking at.

  Maverick’s hand had been on his back, now he brought it forward, and Caleb understood the bright red blood all over it. “You okay, Mav?”

  “I’m good, bro. It’s you.”

  “What? I don’t…” He looked down at his own hands. They were slick with blood, too. And his Sig, slick with it. He dropped the gun. “Shit. I don’t feel so good. Is Terry okay?”

  Then Delaney was there, and the president and Maverick had hold of him. Caleb’s legs felt funny. “Easy, son, easy. You’re okay,” his president said, like he was talking to a kid.

  “I don’t get it,” Caleb said, but he didn’t know what that meant.

  Maverick and Delaney laid him down. It hurt, and he tried to sit back up but couldn’t.

  “You double-crossing bastard!”

  As Caleb heard the words and tried to understand them, an explosion of thunder rang out. This one echoed forever. Blood rained down on his face, and Delaney fell forward across his chest.

  Pain burst through him, and then everything was gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The women stood at the glass outside the NICU and watched a shirtless Apollo, sitting in a rocking chair inside, settle his daughter on his chest, navigating around all her tubes. He set his lips on her tiny head, just at the edge of her doll-size striped beanie.

  “Jesus, Apollo,” Cecily’s mother muttered with a smile in her voice. “Give the kid a pillow or something. Lying on that chest has got to be like trying to cuddle with a cliff.”

  Jacinda laughed. “Trust me, it’s not. It’s very nice.”

  Apollo was, uh, really muscular. Like really. It wasn’t Cecily’s cup of tea, necessarily, all those lumps and bulges, but she could appreciate his body for the marvel it was.

  “She looks good, Jacinda,” Jenny said. “She’s pinked up and looks…softer.”

  “Yeah.” With her hands on the glass, Jacinda watched her husband and daughter. “She had that rough patch, with the infection, but she got through it, and she’s gaining weight again.” She stepped back and smiled at the club women that surrounded her. “I don’t know how I’d be getting through this without you. My mom…I love her like crazy, but she is not good at stuff like this. There’s nothing she can do to make things better for Athena, so she turns all that control-freak energy on me and Apollo.” Jacinda laughed a little. “I think she’s mad at me for doing this, having her, even knowing how things could go.”

  Cecily felt eyes on her, and she turned to see her mother giving her a contemplative look. Joanna Nielsen was not a control freak. Maybe too much the opposite, actually. She’d let Cecily and Clara grow up more or less the way they wanted to, follow whatever interests they had, asking only that they check in and let her know where they were. At the time, that had been cool, but sometimes, Cecily wondered whether she’d have been more stable, more able to face challenge without exploding into the need to fight, if she’d had a stronger guiding hand.

  Their father had been the more hands-on parent, by far, even though he’d been far less present. When he’d been killed, their mother had indulged in her own grief and left her daughters to fend for themselves.

  They’d been grown, of course; Cecily had been twenty-one and Clara nineteen when they’d buried their father. Maybe they hadn’t been their mother’s responsibility any longer. But it had been a lonely way to grieve.

  Feeling that lonely emptiness again, she sighed and turned her attention back to Jacinda, finding a smile for the women. They were all here: Mo, Cecily’s mother, Willa, Jenny, Leah, Deb, Jacinda, and Cecily. Apollo’s mother had happily offered to babysit the club kids so the women could take Jacinda out for a day of rest and comfort. Mo had booked a whole salon for mani-pedis and facials, and they had a reservation for a late lunch after. Apollo had Athena, and most of their men were off on a run.

  Their men. Cecily sighed again, and cleared her throat when it threatened to get tight. She’d had a man, too, for almost six months. He was on the same run. He was still her man, she thought, if she wanted him to be; she had a phone full of voice mails assuring her that he was still hers if she wanted him.

  And God, she wanted him.

  But every time she thought of him now, since his birthday, she felt the rending pain of violation again. What had happened to her in that crack house wasn’t nearly as horrible as finding out Caleb had not only read her poem—that was bad but forgivable—but had changed it. Her poem. Her words. Her feelings. Her mind. The deepest, most sensitive part of her, and he’d stolen it, marked it down with his hands, and then scrawled all over it.

  What had happened between them in the clubhouse two years earlier, the thing he was so sorry about, she remembered little of and blamed herself equally for. What had happened at the crack house, the thing he’d saved her from, she remembered not at all. It was terrible, maybe more terrible for not knowing, but she’d been saved. It was violence done to her body, and she’d healed.

  Caleb—who’d saved her, who said he loved her, whom she loved, whom she’d trusted—had stolen something more precious. He’d done violence to her soul.

  “Come, ladies. We’ve reservations to keep.” Aunt Mo hooked her arm with Jacinda’s. “She’ll be fine, love. Who better to keep her safe than her father?”

  Jacinda smiled and knocked lightly on the glass. Apollo looked up and beamed at her.

  Who better indeed.

  ~oOo~

  They were still in the hospital parking lot, working out who would drive and who would go with which driver, when their cell phones began to ring, almost all at once. The w
omen, these old ladies of the Brazen Bulls, went immediately silent and stared at each other as all their hearts stopped beating simultaneously.

  Mo, Willa, Jenny, Leah—all their phones, all at once. Cecily’s phone, too. All the women who had men on the run. A run that was nothing but a meeting. Just a meeting.

  The stasis of shock broke as their phones kept going, and they all, at once, dug into purses and pockets for their phones.

  Cecily didn’t recognize the number, but the Bulls often switched their phones around. “Caleb?” she answered.

  “No, ma’am. This is Terry. Terry Capewell.” The club’s prospect. What was the prospect doing calling her?

  At her side, her mother lunged, and Cecily saw her Aunt Mo collapse against the side of her Cadillac and her mother wrap her arms around her and hold her up.

  “Terry? What’s wrong? Where’s Caleb?”

  “He got shot, ma’am. Him and Delaney and Slick. They’re taking ‘em to the hospital out here. Cimarron County Medical Center.” He sounded like he was reading the name from notes. “We got a lot of trouble. Mav thinks you should get out here.”

  “Is he okay? Terry!”

  “He’s alive, ma’am. But he’s hurt pretty bad. Shot in the back.”

  “We’re coming. We’re coming.” Cecily ended the call. “Oh my God! Aunt Mo!”

  Mo was in her mother’s arms. It was Leah who came to Cecily. “We’re going to get you and Mo out there. Willa’s already calling the hospital to get more information.”

  “Uncle Brian?”

  “It sounds pretty bad. I don’t know.”

  “What about Mav? And Gun?”

  “They’re okay. Not hurt. Delaney, Caleb, and Slick are down, so you and Mo need to get there.”

  “It’s four hundred miles. Can we fly?”

  “They’re out in the middle of nowhere, no airport close. I think Simon is going to drive you. We’re working it out.”

  Cecily nodded. Far back in the dead reaches of her mind, a thought fluttered, an hour old and ancient, that she hadn’t been sure if she was still Caleb’s woman. She hadn’t known how to forgive him.

  She was sure now. If he would live, he was forgiven.

  ~oOo~

  In Mo’s big Escalade, Simon and Apollo drove Mo, Cecily, and Cecily’s mother, who demanded to come along for support. Gargoyle and Fitz rode along. The only Bull who wouldn’t be at the Cimarron County Medical Center was Eight Ball, doing his time in the state penitentiary.

  They made the trip in about six hours, and during all those hours rolling west in a straight line over flat land, maybe fifty words were spoken altogether by the five people in that SUV—and most of those were on the phone, with people at the hospital giving updates.

  Caleb had taken a bullet in the back. Delaney had taken two in the back as well. Slick had taken a burst of automatic fire in the chest.

  That much, they’d known before they’d left Tulsa. Three hours into the ride, they’d gotten word that both Delaney and Caleb were still in surgery.

  And that Slick was dead.

  Cecily sat alone in the third seat. In the seat before her, Aunt Mo rested listlessly on her mother’s shoulder, and her mother stroked Mo’s hair in a soothing, steady rhythm Cecily remembered from her childhood. At the front of the car, Simon drove and Apollo sat shotgun. This was his first time away from his wife and child since Athena’s birth just four weeks ago.

  She leaned on the window glass and watched the Oklahoma flatland roll past. Her head was entirely quiet. No echo and whine, and the silence scared her more. She couldn’t think. Every thought slammed up against the truth of the day. Caleb had been shot. Uncle Brian had been shot. Slick was dead. Yet again, blood and death had claimed the Bulls. Yet again, they’d brought it on themselves. Yet again, she might lose what she loved.

  Yet again, yet again, yet again.

  She used to flirt with Slick, when he was a prospect. He was cute, in an insubstantial kind of way. Shorter than she and skinny, but with a sweet baby face and pretty blue eyes. And blond hair so light it was almost invisible in the summer, when he buzzed it short and the sun faded it. When he blushed, it went all the way to his scalp. She’d liked making him blush. He was older than she but acted younger and tongue-tied when she and Clara were around. She’d enjoyed flirting with him, making him interested, and then watching him get flustered at the thought of what her father would do to him for looking at his little girl that way.

  Back in the good old days. Before college. Before her father’s murder. Before bullets fell around the Bulls like rain. Before her mostly happy life had stopped being happy at all.

  She’d been happy again, though, this summer and fall. With Caleb. With him, she’d felt grounded and safe and loved. Which was why finding her poem in his possession, in his handwriting, wadded up in his gig bag like a fast-food receipt, had hurt so fucking much.

  But it hurt so much more to think of losing him forever.

  Cecily didn’t really believe in God. Her parents hadn’t been churchgoers; her father had been an atheist, and her mother only vaguely expressed any kind of religious belief. Little more than saying ‘bless you’ when somebody sneezed or complaining that ‘I don’t know what God was thinking when…’—not much belief at all. When her father was killed, she hadn’t prayed, and she’d stared furiously at his casket while the preacher said words over it, thinking only that if there was a God, she wanted to kick him in his holy balls.

  But right now, speeding toward nowhere in the Oklahoma panhandle, Cecily stared out at the harvested fields and dying grasses along the side of the highway, and she prayed.

  Please, God. Please, God. Please.

  ~oOo~

  They really were in the middle of nowhere. The Cimarron County Medical Center was a one-story building that looked more like an office building than a hospital. But the word EMERGENCY rose in large red letters over one set of wide glass doors, and HOSPITAL rose in silver letters above another set. The long line of motorcycles eliminated any doubt they were in the right place.

  They found the surgical waiting room quickly in such a small hospital. All the waiting Bulls stood when Simon and Apollo led the women in. They were filthy and still covered in blood, and nausea punched Cecily in the stomach. She withstood the blow as Maverick and Gunner came right to them. Gunner pulled Mo into a tight embrace, and Maverick grabbed onto Cecily.

  “Hey, Cissy. I’m glad you came. He’s gonna be okay.”

  She held onto his big, strong body and felt a weakness, which had crept around at her edges since Terry had called her, try now to soak into her limbs. But Maverick didn’t let her lean. He pushed her back onto her own legs and brushed her hair back from her face. “He’s out of surgery and he’s gonna be okay. The bullet took a hunk of his liver, but they sewed him up inside and out. They’re getting some blood in him, and he’s gonna be okay.”

  “Thank God. Can I see him?”

  “Yeah. I was in there ten minutes ago, and he’s sleeping.”

  Knowing Caleb was out of danger, Cecily was able to ask, “And Uncle Brian?”

  Maverick’s smile faltered. “He’s still in surgery.” He moved, drawing her to move with him and become part of the group around Mo. Gunner was holding her hands, and Simon had his arms around her.

  The women had gotten word of the trouble seven hours earlier, so the shooting had happened probably eight hours ago, maybe more. And Uncle Brian was still in surgery?

  “You should explain, Mav,” Wally said. “You understand it better.”

  Maverick rested his eyes on Mo. “He took two bullets in the back. One went through a lung and the other almost passed clean through, but it brushed his aorta. The hole was so small they missed it at first. They fixed his lung and sewed him up, but he crashed, and they found the bleed when they went back in. A surgeon came out and told us that much about an hour ago. We haven’t heard more.

  “He needs to be somewhere better than this hole of a place!” Mo ha
dn’t cried yet; she’d been quiet and subdued, focused on getting to her man, but now emotion reeled through her words.

  “They’re talking about airlifting him to Amarillo, but they got to get him stable first, Mo,” Gunner soothed.

  “I don’t want Brian in Texas. Can they send him to Oklahoma City? Or home? Can they get him home?”

  “Amarillo’s a whole lot closer. Let’s see what the surgeon says.”

  Mo nodded. She looked around at her boys. “Where’s Rad? And Becker?”