This was an ambush, then. How had they known where to set it?
As if they’d been waiting for him to do exactly what he’d done—turn around and come their way—a shot rang out, and the windshield of the box truck spiderwebbed. The truck veered wildly, skidded, tires screeching, and ran off the road, bouncing into the field until it hit a shallow ditch and rocked to a stop.
Rad saw it in his peripheral vision, and spared a thought for Slick. But front and center was the shootout that had exploded with that first shot. All the bikes were down, riders were using them as cover, and bullets flew back and forth.
Between shooting and ducking, Rad tried to get sights on Delaney and found him and Dane both down in the median, using the slight dip of the ground to increase the coverage their bikes provided. Ox was ahead of them, providing cover fire to keep the leaders safe.
Good. Rad needed to find the Rats leader and cut the head off the goddamn snake. Rising up to a higher crouch, he scanned the area. The headlights from the dropped bikes threw light and shadow in odd ways, making aim difficult for both sides. It was too dark to make out anybody’s flash, and none of the Rats seemed to be getting extra coverage—
Out of nowhere, Rad was punched in the shoulder, and he flew off his feet, landing hard on his back. As soon as he was on the ground, a black Expedition skidded to a stop mere feet from his head, and three Russians jumped out, armed with AKs.
As Rad slammed his hand over his new bullet wound, the air filled with the sound of automatic weapons fire.
It was over in seconds after that. The Rats who managed to escape the AK fire ran like little bitches. Four Rat bodies and their bikes were sprawled across the pavement. Slick had been hit; the bullet shot into the truck windshield had skimmed off the side of his head, leaving a gouge above his ear, but doing no more damage than that and probably a concussion. The box truck had some damage but still ran. Rad had a bullet in his shoulder. Becker had a case of road rash on his arm. But that was it.
Thank God for Russian steel.
It seemed like they’d been blocking the road for hours, but from his first notice of the Rats behind them to this moment of aftermath had probably been five minutes, if that. There were no other cars on the road, not in any direction. It was conceivable that there had been no witnesses to all of this. It was a dazzlingly lucky strike, and it wouldn’t be the case for long.
Rad stood, holding his shoulder, reeling from the pain and the growing blood loss, trying to think. They had to get out of here. They had to get the truck back on the road, get the bikes into it, get—
A whole lot of Russian yelling drew his attention, and Rad turned toward the Expedition. He didn’t make sense of what he was seeing at first—the back doors were both open, a Volkov man leaned into the back seat on each side. Misha was yelling at Delaney in Russian.
As Rad’s pain and blood loss began to make the ground tilt and the air thicken, he saw a small hole in the Expedition’s windshield, and he realized that Kirill was not standing among the Russians.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Willa sat at her patio table and enjoyed the warm morning while Ollie did his last piss-and-sniff before she and Griffin headed to the hospital. Griffin was inside, chugging her coffee and raiding her fridge.
Usually it was Wally or Slick who sat all day in the waiting room while Willa was on shift, but when Rad left before dawn that morning, it was a droopy-eyed Griffin, one of the younger patches, who’d taken his place.
She wasn’t surprised; Rad had told her that the club had increased security on all the old ladies since they were going to be two states away and were still taking extra precautions against the chance that the Dirty Rats were looking to, as Rad called it, ‘beef’ with the Brazen Bulls.
It had been two weeks since she’d killed Jesse, though. Two weeks of quiet. From what she knew about the Rats, they didn’t seem like the kind of club that took their time and made a careful plan before they acted.
However, she didn’t mind her leather-clad shadows nearly as much as she’d thought she would. They were polite and careful not to get in her way or anybody else’s, and she had gotten to know the prospects pretty well. They were nice kids.
Willa chuckled to herself. Slick and Wally were twenty-six and twenty-eight, respectively. She was thirty. She hardly had the age on them to call them kids. But Rad did, and she’d picked up the habit of thinking of them in the same way. Kids.
Kids. She was going to have a kid.
Just like the month before, because she and Rad weren’t as diligent about birth control as two people old enough to know better should have been, she’d been watching and waiting for her period. When she’d been late, she’d kept her mouth shut, waiting a couple more days, with the thought that all the turmoil with Jesse might have jostled her usually clockwork cycle. She had no symptoms—no queasiness, no tender breasts, nothing. Maybe she was just late.
The thought that she wasn’t just late took up more of her head with each passing hour, and working around laboring women all day, she had been quickly going crazy, trying not to let on, and not doing so well at that. So she’d taken a test at work.
She was pregnant.
She’d calculated her due date: the end of March. She and Rad were going to be parents at the end of March. A little less than one year from the first anniversary of the day they’d met.
The most surprising thing: she wanted this. And so did Rad. Her carefully curated and guarded little life was taking wild turns almost every day, and she was okay with that. Since she’d joined Rad’s life, she’d taken her hands off the wheel—or the handlebars—and was just enjoying the thrill of the ride, hoping they wouldn’t crash headlong into disaster.
~oOo~
Griffin was in the way more at work than Wally or Slick ever were. He was curious and, rather than hang out and watch television in the waiting room the way the prospects did, he poked around behind the desk, alternately flirting with and badgering the staff, asking about codes and chart notations, and the function of equipment. A couple of times, he’d been caught lingering at birthing rooms, when their doors had been left ajar. Otto—who was a lot bigger than Griffin but probably not as bad—had gotten pretty aggressive with him the third time he’d been eavesdropping like that.
Otto didn’t mind Slick or Wally, but he’d decided almost instantly that he didn’t like Griffin.
Most of the other staff didn’t seem to mind working around him—probably because most of the other staff was female and straight, and Griffin was handsome, with long, dark hair, dark stubble over a square jaw, an easy, flirtatious smile and more charm than was reasonable. That kutte didn’t do him any harm, either. Pretty bad boys were the mainstay of romance novels and chick flicks for a reason.
But when Willa had to get between him and Otto, she grabbed his kutte and pulled him into the staff lounge. “Griff, you can’t perv out on women giving birth! What the hell?”
“I wasn’t perving out—shit! I was just listening.”
That didn’t make it any better, so Willa made a face that said so, and Griffin actually blushed.
“I’m interested. In what you do. I love hospitals.”
Since that was an even more bizarre statement—in her experience, not even hospital staff liked hospitals, no matter how much they loved the job they had in them—Willa made another face. “What?” Griffin opened the staff fridge and started rooting around in her colleagues’ lunches. She pushed him away, closed the door, and leaned against it. “What is your problem, Griff?”
“Hospitals are awesome. They’re full of heroes. Doctors and nurses are amazing. Every single minute, all around you, people are saving lives. Even here, with the moms and babies, I bet you’re a hero every day. At least to the women you help. There’s nothing else like a hospital, a whole place filled all the time with people saving people and making them better or just helping them not hurt so much. I wanted to be a doctor when I was a kid. I couldn’t handle the math even i
n high school, so I knew I couldn’t ever be. Plus, my folks barely had money for basics, much less college.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the counter. “I wasn’t perving. I wasn’t even looking. I was listening to the doctor and nurses.”
Charmed and moved, Willa felt guilty—but he still couldn’t do it again. “Okay. I get it. But it’s not cool. You need to leave patients their privacy. Especially in Labor & Delivery, they don’t get much of it.”
“Yeah, okay. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. You can go bother Alice if you want. She likes your ass.”
He grinned that yeah, chicks dig me grin of his and strolled out of the lounge.
~oOo~
The Bulls on the run were expected home late in the evening, so after her shift, Willa went back to her house, with Griffin, changed into jeans and a t-shirt, took Ollie for a walk, with Griffin, and then put her dog in her truck and drove to the clubhouse, with Griffin riding behind.
As soon as they turned onto Third and Ollie saw the Sinclair station, he got excited. The clubhouse was now one of his favorite places—full of new friends to love on him.
Though this was only a one-day run, which wasn’t a big deal, the Bulls were likely to arrive sore and exhausted after riding as much as twelve hours in this single day. So the women were greeting them in the way usually reserved for longer runs—waiting with open arms, a good meal, and plenty of booze.
Willa had learned that times like these, with the clubhouse comfortably full of patches and the people closest to them, weren’t really parties. The festive friendliness was just their normal way of being. All these unrelated people were a family.
According to Rad, she hadn’t experienced a Bulls party yet. Not even the night she’d gotten so drunk with them. He wasn’t enthusiastic about her having that experience—which made her both a little hesitant and a lot curious.
The kind of cooking that the Bulls expected was the kind of cooking Willa was good at—what restaurants called ‘homestyle.’ Meat and potatoes, bread and vegetables. Nothing fancy, but fresh, tasty, and hearty. On this night, they were marinating ribs, and would send Gunner to the grill in back—that was what that big metal bull was on the patio, a barbecue grill—when they had word that the men were close. With the ribs would be corn on the cob, cornbread muffins, watermelon wedges, and a huge vat of potato salad.
Willa had boasted that she made a great pie crust, so she’d been assigned dessert duty and had made six: two each of peach, strawberry, and mixed berry. The crusts had come out nice and flaky, just like her grandma had taught her.
A perfect summer supper that they’d eat out on the picnic benches on the patio, under strands of little lights. Willa couldn’t wait.
She was standing at the counter with Maddie, discussing whether the potato salad needed more pepper, when Gunner said behind them, “Look sharp, ladies.”
They turned to him together, and Willa gasped when she saw that he was holding an automatic rifle—holding it across his chest like Rambo.
“Jesus, Gun,” Maddie barked. “What the hell?”
“There’s trouble. The run was hit on the way back. We got injured, and some of the bad guys got away. We’re lockin’ down. Where’s Joanna? We need to pull Cissy and Clara in.”
“She and Mo ran to the market,” Maddie answered. They were low on the good paper plates. “Who’s hurt, Gun?”
Without answering her question, Gunner slammed his hand on the wall. “They left without sayin’? Shit! Fuck! Okay. I’m goin’ for ‘em. They down the street?”
Maddie nodded. “It’s just a quick errand. They’re probably on their way back already. Who’s hurt?”
Willa wanted to know, too. Rad was on that run. All the old ladies’ men were on that run. Gunner, Griffin, and Simon were the only patches who’d stayed back to hold the fort.
Much to her dismay, Gunner turned to her and showed her pity. There didn’t seem to be a drop of snark or sass in him now. “It’s Rad, Will. Slick and Becker are banged up, too. But Rad took a bullet. He’s gonna need your sweet talk and soft hands, so we need you on your game. Maddie, I’m goin’ for the women, and then I’ll go for the girls. You know what to do.” He turned and headed toward the front room.
Willa’s heartbeat had doubled, and she felt woozy. “I don’t understand. What’s happening?”
Maddie put her hand on Willa’s arm. She obviously meant it as a gesture of comfort, but she wasn’t really the hugging and comforting type. She was a get-shit-done type. So after that quick pat, she wiped her own anxiety off her face and said, “Like he said, a lockdown. Don’t get lost in worry, Will. Rad’s gonna need you sharp. They all will. Right now, we need to pull everybody inside, check all the doors and windows, get somebody…Wally, it should be Wally on the gate, and get a gun to everybody who can shoot.”
Her eyes did a quick survey of Willa, head to toe. “You’re country bred, right? West Texas? You can shoot?”
Willa forced herself to be a nurse in this moment and not Rad’s frightened old lady. “Yeah, I can shoot. I can fight, too.”
Maddie laughed. “Baby girl, if you have to fight, we’ll already be so deeply fucked it won’t matter. But good to know. C’mon. Let’s move.”
“What should we do with the food?” What a stupid question to ask at a time like this.
Performing her impatience with a brisk sigh and a hand on her hip, Maddie said, “Once we’re locked up tight and Mo and Jo are back, we’ll boil the corn and broil the ribs, and put on supper. People still need to eat. Let’s go.”
~oOo~
Once the women and girls were in and the lockdown was in effect, Willa occupied herself by preparing medical supplies and converting the pool table into an operating table.
Rad had been shot—that was all Gunner knew, and no one from the run had called in again to say more. She didn’t know if the bullet had gone through, or if she was going to have to dig it out, or if she even could. She didn’t know where the wound was, or how much blood he’d lost, or if he was conscious.
She didn’t know how to extract a bullet. She’d observed it done, but she’d been there to hand tools to the person who knew how to do it. These guys kept forgetting that she was a nurse. A nurse, not a doctor. In her actual job, she wasn’t even allowed to suture wounds. In her actual life of the past three months, she was becoming an expert at it.
At least now, they had a better quality and variety of supplies. Griffin had a contact for black market medical supplies and drugs, and Willa had sat down with him and made a list of things they should have on hand. Thankfully, no one had ever asked her to steal from her job.
While they waited for the men to return, after the initial flurry of preparation, the mood among the locked-down people reverted almost to that same friendly, casual atmosphere. People ate. They watched television. They drank. They talked. There were guns all around, and men on guard, and the pool table looked like something out of a Hammer film, a mad scientist’s workspace, but nobody was panicking. Mo, Joanna, and Maddie were more serious, but they knew their men hadn’t been hurt, so they managed the food and people like usual. Ollie had been tensely curious when everyone had been running around, but as the people settled, so did he. He’d spent most of the evening curled up on one of the sofas with Cecily and Clara.
Willa, on the other hand, was befogged with fear.
More than two hours later, the roar of Harleys on the street outside drew everybody in the clubhouse to their feet. Simon grabbed Willa and pushed her back before she could run to the door.
“No, Will. We don’t know it’s our guys yet. Stay back.” Getting her nod, he went with Gunner, Griffin, and Wally to the door, guns at the ready.
Then there was nothing but the roar of motorcycles, until that died out and there was silence. Nobody inside moved.
A sudden burst of commotion coming from the side door—yelling and hurrying and slamming—overwhelmed Willa’s sense of self-preservation, and she
charged in that direction, nearly running straight into Eight Ball’s broad back. He and Ox were carrying Rad in, Eight at his feet and Ox at his shoulders. Dane was with them, at Rad’s side, holding pressure on the wound.
A chest wound. Oh God.
Rad was unconscious, and far, far too pale. Willa didn’t know how to be a nurse right now. Right now, she was a frightened woman seeing the man she loved hurt and in pain.
“The pool table!” Mo shouted and then grabbed Willa with harsh, clawing hands. “Pull yourself together, love.” Her fierce tone belied the endearment.
“I can’t…I don’t have the skill for this. He needs a hospital.”
“Take a look, honey.” Delaney had come up and pulled his wife back. “Take a look. You know what’ll happen if we take a gunshot wound to the hospital. We will if he needs it, of course we will, but see if you really can’t do it. Okay?”
Crash (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 1) Page 29