Owned (Grave Diggers MC Book 1)

by Michelle Woods

  “You go in there. I don’t want to get a gun in my face. He’ll kill us if we go in there,” the skinny one muttered.

  “Jesus, grow a pair. Fucker’s sleeping, he can’t shoot us when he’s sleeping,” the other one grunted. Tessa knew they were worried about Buck when they should be worried about the bitch who was sneaking up on them with a butcher knife.

  “Shut the fuck up. Asshole’s taken out like twenty of our club just this year and you damned well know it,” Skinny whined. Damn, Buck had been a busy boy. Well she’d known he wasn’t a girl scout but fuck, twenty? How had he not been arrested with that many people dying?

  “Yeah, those illegals were never great and they were just prospects,” Bushy growled, shaking his head. That explained why no one had come to their door then. Illegals weren’t big on contacting the police over their dead family any more than the clubs would be. Tessa needed to get to it but before she could do anything she heard a sound in the hallway and turned to see Buck flipping on the light.

  Fuck, she hid the knife under the couch and stood up quickly trying to move back from where she was standing right beside Skinny but she didn’t make it. He reached out, grabbing her arm and jerking her to him with a gun pressed against her side.

  “Duchess, where did you g—fuck,” Buck said entering the living room, his hand rubbing the back of his neck, looking confused as he paused taking in the room. Damn, why did he have to wake up before she’d killed these two bastards. Bushy was close to the hallway and he trained his gun on Buck.

  “Well isn’t this fortunate, Curly? We were just about to come into your room and you both come out to say hi to us instead,” Bushy muttered and Tessa almost couldn’t contain the laugh that bubbled up in her chest at the realization the skinny man was named after one of the biggest TV idiots out there. That thought died when Bushy shoved Buck, making him stumble to his knees.

  “It’s good they came out here. Now they can tell us were that bag is,” Curly muttered, his gun pushing harder into her side. If only he’d move it just for a second, she’d be able to get away and shove that gun up his skinny ass.

  “Take her in the kitchen and tie her to the chair in there. We’ll torture her till he tells us where the bag is,” Bushy ordered, and skinny or Curly pushed her towards the kitchen using his gun to prompt her to move.

  Maybe if they separated she’d get a chance while he was tying her up. She just hoped Buck didn’t do anything stupid. As she entered the kitchen with Curly pushing her forwards with his gun, he shoved her into the counter making her breath escape her in a rush.

  When she caught her breath, she glanced over her shoulder. She realized this was her chance; he was holding the gun on her but she could disarm him if she moved quickly. He wouldn’t expect her to try and disarm him and that would work in her favor. She waited until he was distracted and the gun lowered just a little. Tessa moved, twisting around, but before she could disarm him Buck burst through the door to the kitchen with his gun raised, shooting towards Skinny but missing him.

  Tessa moved, trying to get to Curly before he could shoot at Buck. She would have been able to kick the gun out of his hand if Curly wasn’t so afraid of Buck that he jerked back away from him. Curly crashed into her body as she kicked out. Her foot hit his elbow instead of his wrist and his submachine gun went off spraying the room with bullets, hitting the wall, the window and Buck.

  She watched in horror as his chest exploded with red and his shocked expression changed to a pained groan as he fell to his knees. Buck’s hand pushed against the wound in his upper chest as his body shuddered and his grimace of pain was like a knife to her heart. Curly landed on the floor and the gun skittered across the tile away from him. Tessa didn’t know how long she had to get this situation under control before Bushy entered the fray and Buck was no longer any help she realized as he fell forwards passing out.

  Tessa had managed to stay upright and she moved to the machine gun, her focus on taking out Curly for shooting Buck. Lifting the gun, she didn’t hesitate; she’d been training for this all her life and even if she’d never thought to use it she’d fucking learned it and she was going to use that knowledge to take out these two bastards. She shot Curly in the head once from the other side of the room, making sure to spray around him even as she used the first bullet as the kill shot—knowing that forensics would prove that she hadn’t shot the man point blank, allowing her some leeway to call this self-defense. Her father and uncles had taught her about that too.

  Moving into the other room, she found Bushy getting up off the floor and shot him in the shoulder, then the heart, being sure to duck as he tried to shoot her first. He missed because she had already moved before he even pulled the trigger on his semiautomatic. Bushy fell back dead, his eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling. Tessa didn’t waste any time dropping the gun to the floor before she rushed back to Buck, falling to her knees in the blood.

  Gently she rolled him over to his back, noticing the large bruise on his head and his bluish appearance. She felt fear grip her when she saw where the wound was located. Her panic was rattling around in her head like a wrecking ball slamming into any surface it found, smashing it all to bits. She almost didn’t know what to do as she looked down at the man she loved beyond anything in this world lying there with blue lips, barely breathing. She was sitting there without a clue as to what to do when her brain suddenly started working.

  She pushed away from him, her mind already lining up the things she needed and what she had to do. She moved into the living room, unlocking the door before grabbing the bag from behind the chair, gathering her knife quickly from beneath the couch, and running into the bedroom with the heavy bag and knife. She entered the closet and quickly popped open the floor, stowing everything under it with her guns, grabbing a few other things from the bedroom and tossing them in too. She made sure to close it properly, tugging the boxes into place and exiting.

  She ran back to the kitchen grabbing both their phones and used her phone to dial 911. She talked to the emergency operator as her hand moved over Buck, using the towels she’d grabbed from the drawer to pack the wound, her mind doing a check on his vitals even while she used his phone to text Dice. She told him they’d been attacked and she’d called the paramedics and the police were on their way. Dice texted back he’d be here in ten minutes. She talked to the woman on the phone, constantly updating her on Buck’s breathing and vitals.

  She could hear the sirens in the distance when Buck took a shuddering breath in and stopped breathing. Her heart nearly stopping, she tossed the phone and began CPR. His body gushed blood from the packed wound and it bubbled from his mouth making her panic level rise but she continued the familiar motions until the paramedics were rushing inside to take over.

  Dice walked in four minutes after they arrived and the two of them waited while they loaded Buck into the back of the ambulance to transport him. Two more men showed up and they handled the cops when they walked in. They wouldn’t let Tessa leave with Buck because they had questions for her. She sat in the windowed room for hours with Choke answering questions while her mind twisted around and around about what was happening with Buck.

  “Okay, Miss Holden, let’s go over this again.” The fat hairy cop who seemed slower than a snail taking a nap had his little note pad now full of notes on her answers, which hadn’t changed since she’d answered them the first time.

  “No, she’s already told you what happened four times,” Choke, one of the men who’d arrived after Dice, muttered. He’d already sent Dice to the hospital to see what was happening with Buck.

  “This isn’t your concern. You’re interfering with an investigation,” the cop, who obviously didn’t like Choke or his MC, said. Tessa would bet good money he just wanted to piss Choke off with his repeated questions.

  A cop opened the door, sticking his head inside. “Their lawyer’s here. Cooper said to get you. They’re being released.”

  “Told you we’d be o
ut within an hour. Run along and get your marching orders, Randal,” Choke muttered, his smile satisfied. When the man left the room, Choke looked at her, nodding with a little smile. “They’ve sprung us, doll. Won’t be long now and you can check on your old man.”

  “Okay,” Tessa said, hoping it was quick because she needed to know if Buck was okay and the past hour of questioning had nearly made her insane. She wanted to know what was going on at the hospital.

  “You did good tonight. Real good, doll. Don’t ever think differently.” Choke didn’t elaborate but having realized that neither the drive nor any of the illegal weapons had made it into the hands of the cops had endeared her to Choke.

  Tessa nodded, her mind far away as they waited to be let go. It took another three hours before they were walking out of the police station and heading for the hospital. Only the messages from Dice to Choke had kept her sane while she waited. Buck was alive and that was all that mattered to her at the moment.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tessa leaned forward in the chair, her head resting on Buck’s bed, hearing the beep-beep swish of the various monitors and machines helping to keep him alive. It had been two weeks since the night she’d almost lost the only man she would ever love. She wasn’t afraid to admit that without him she didn’t have a life anymore. She’d known the moment when she’d knelt beside him and realized that he’d stopped breathing. She thanked every god and deity she’d ever heard of that her family was insane because the field medicine and CPR they’d taught her had saved his life. If she hadn’t had that knowledge so well ingrained that it had pushed through the panic that night, he might have died.

  She didn’t allow the tears that threatened to pour from her eyes fall with sheer force of will—she’d cried enough. It was a miracle he’d survived after he’d coded. The doctors had said he’d been lucky she was there because her fast reaction to stop the bleeding and get air into him while attempting to restart his heart had saved him. She would never forget the blood pooling beneath him or the way it had poured out of his mouth—the images in her head were harsh and burned her memory every time she thought about them.

  “You have to fight for us, Buck. Please, I need you,” she whispered into the almost silent room, still wishing she’d been able to take those two assholes out before they’d shot him in the chest collapsing his lung and nearly killing him. She was only grateful they’d missed his heart— the bullet had torn through his lung and slammed into a bone and thankfully hadn’t ricocheted or shattered. It had lodged in the rib and stayed. It was another reason he’d lived, they’d said, because that rib had stopped the bullet from doing more damage.

  She felt more than heard someone enter the room and looked up to see Dice and Joker standing in the doorway with Choke and Chaos coming in behind them. The four large men weren’t strangers to Buck’s hospital room and they’d bullied her into leaving to get some better rest the other night, going so far as to drug her to get her home and in the bed she’d shared with Buck less than two weeks ago.

  She’d woken up to find herself in their bed and for about a minute she’d thought she might have dreamed it—that it was just a horrible nightmare—but walking into the kitchen had proven that wrong. The wall was still sporting bullet holes and the window was boarded up but still smashed out. If that wasn’t enough, the fact that Dice had been the one sitting at the table playing cards with two prospects, not Buck, would have cleared up any lingering doubt.

  “Hey, doll. How’s it going today?” Choke asked as he came over and gave her a one-armed hug, his kiss on the top of her head reassuring. He’d taken care of most of the police issues with the help of the club’s three lawyers—yes, three. It seemed like overkill to her but she supposed it wasn’t because of the highly illegal jobs they did. She didn’t want to know how and she sure as hell wasn’t going to complain when they’d managed to get her out of any legal trouble within hours with only a statement and a slight detainment.

  “The nurses said they’re going to take him off the ventilator today because they think his lung might be ready. They said it hours ago but haven’t come in to take care of it yet,” Tessa told them, knowing they’d handle it and she didn’t really care about how. She wasn’t above using whatever clout they had to get Buck taken care of. She wouldn’t be waiting around silently while they did nothing to help her man.

  “Take care of that Joker,” Choke said, looking up at him.

  “Sure thing.”

  Tessa watched Joker push off the wall he’d been leaning on and move towards the door headed to the nurse’s station to tell them to get off their asses. She should feel bad that she was likely going to be the cause of some nurse’s panic attack but she didn’t give a fuck.

  “They have any idea when he might wake up yet?” Chaos asked softly, almost hesitantly.

  “No, they said maybe once he’s off the ventilator but they’re not sure. He’s healing and they think that and the knock on his head is the cause of the coma. Hopefully once he’s off it we will see improvement.” Tessa brushed her hair back noting that it was oily and unkempt. Maybe she needed to have one of them stay while she took a shower because she likely smelled bad too. None of them had said anything to her—not even Patty or the girls who’d been by several times. Likely they all thought she’d break if they did.

  “Well once it’s out I’m sure he will wake. Buck’s a fighter and he’s not leaving you,” Dice grunted from his position by the door.

  Tessa nodded and stared back at Buck’s still form wondering if she’d ever hear his voice again or feel him touch her—she was starting to worry she wouldn’t ever have those pleasures again and it was ripping her heart to shreds.

  “You hungry? I can have Chaos run get something for you from the cafeteria or anywhere else you want to eat,” Choke asked, sitting down beside her.

  “No, I’m fine. They started bringing me food like you told them to the first time you came to visit over a week and a half ago,” Tessa reminded him. They’d bullied her into eating after three days by his bedside, telling her if she didn’t eat they’d have them force-feed her with a tube. She’d known they would do it too because they were now her family because of Buck. Choke had told her the night they’d spent in the police station waiting on the lawyers that she would be family for nothing more than her hiding the drive and saving Buck’s life. Apparently those two things meant that even had she not been patched by Buck, she’d still be family to them. She’d done it to protect Buck but in doing so she’d protected the club.

  “Just making sure. You might want something they aren’t bringing you.”

  “I’m okay. Just worried he still isn’t out of the woods even though they moved him out of intensive care last week.” Tessa reached out holding onto Buck’s almost lifeless hand, trying not to allow the tears to fall from her eyes.

  Choke’s scarred hand covered hers on the bed and his gruff voice muttered, “He’s going to be okay. You’ll get him back. We all will.”

  Tessa glanced at him seeing the hard determined look in his eyes and nodded. She really hoped all their resolve was enough to wake Buck up and make him whole again. She loved him too much to ever accept any other outcome.

  Choke left his hand on hers offering the support she needed to make it through the day while they all waited on Buck to recover. Tessa was glad she had been raised by men who weren’t fully sane and could appreciate these large gruff men who stayed with her day after day—waiting.

  Buck felt frustration burn through him. Damn it, when would all this weakness leave him. He’d only been out for a little over an hour and he was already feeling like he’d been out all damned week. Fuck, he knew he’d been through hell over the past ten weeks after escaping the dark blackness of his coma but it had to get better soon or he’d be a fucking liability to his club and his old lady. Hell, he was already a liability to Tessa. He was the reason she’d had to kill two men. Why had he brought that drive home with him when he knew he should hav
e taken it to the damned clubhouse?

  He knew his need to be with her after missing her so much while he was on the road was the reason he’d brought it home with him. If he had taken it to the clubhouse that night, it would have been another hour and a half before he’d seen her and that had seemed like forever after three days without her in his arms. That was why he’d been thinking about his relationship with Tessa. She was his world and he loved her more than he could ever love anyone—more than his club, his family or his life for that matter. It was why he needed to let her go and soon, before he convinced himself that he could keep her safe. He couldn’t and he needed to face that fact before it ended up getting her hurt or worse, killed.

  The thought sent a cold spike of dread spearing through him. He never wanted her to be the one lying in a puddle of her own blood on the kitchen floor like Choke had told him he was. That knowledge more than any other proved his life wasn’t meant for a woman like her. It wasn’t what he wanted for her—she deserved better.

  He drove back to the house needing to make love to her for one more night. To hold her in his arms and know she was his one last time before he pushed her away. She’d told him never to mess around on her and he knew that was the only way he’d ever convince her he was done with her but it tore at his insides to think about hurting her that way. Not that he’d actually sleep with another woman, he’d just make her think he had. Even knowing it was best for her, he couldn’t bring himself to betray her that way—especially after the way she’d nursed him back to health through angry outbursts and painfully weak moments when he’d been unable to walk and all the other shit she’d had to do for him.

  Shaking his head in resolve, he knew he had to leave her for her sake. It was the only way to make sure she was safe and his world wasn’t fucking up her life. Tessa could stay at Hambone’s and he would watch her from afar keeping her safe while still being able to see her. He couldn’t let her go completely, it just wasn’t something he could do and stay sane.