by Kati Wilde
I wasn’t in the middle of it. I was in a booth and shoved up against a wall with Reichmann threatening me until Saxon pulled him off. But I only shrug. “I was there with Saxon but I didn’t see any altercation.”
“Word also is that Reichmann came into the ER about a week after that to have three of his fingers reattached. Says he got them caught in a mower. The doctors saved two.”
His fingers had been cut off? I don’t have to lie about this. “I don’t know anything about that.”
But I’m not sorry or shocked, either.
The sheriff lifts his shoulders in an easy shrug. “Eh, he lives on a farm. All kinds of accidents can happen, especially if you’re mowing at night as he says he was. But it occurs to me that a pattern is forming—and escalating—and that your man might have taken the latest hit tonight. Which means the next hit will be worse.”
He’s right. I can’t imagine that the Hellfire Riders won’t strike back hard and fast, and that it’ll be bloody. I’m not giving Landauer what he wants, though. “So all these words are flying around—and they’re saying I might be in danger—and this is the first time you’re talking to me? Why is that? Maybe because until someone is shot or raped, there’s not much you can do to help me? That’s a little too late, isn’t it?”
“I can help now.”
No, he can’t. Because even if I hand him the men who attacked us tonight and he makes an arrest, those Henchmen aren’t going to point their fingers at Reichmann and say he’s the one who gave the orders. They’re going to keep their mouths shut and nothing will change. I’ll still be in danger. Landauer can’t protect me. Saxon can.
The only question is how much he’ll pay for protecting me. Again.
“I might have run over one of the shooters,” I say. “Or maybe it was Saxon’s mailbox. I don’t know; I was hunched down in my seat because they’d just shot out my back window.” All of which he’ll find out by looking at my truck; I’m not telling him anything he doesn’t already know or won’t discover. “You’ve got my truck so I guess you’ll know whether it was a man that I ran over, and if you find a body with tire tracks on it, I guess you’ll know whether I killed him. So, what do you think? Is Crane going to come after me for manslaughter because I was in a rush trying to save a man after he’d been shot? Because that doesn’t seem much different than prosecuting a man who accidentally killed someone while saving a girl from being raped.”
“It doesn’t sound much different at all,” he surprises me by agreeing. “What does sound different is taking out the ‘accident.’ Say, if a man trying to protect his woman decides to retaliate instead of just defend. Maybe you think the only difference is the law drawing a line, because protection is protection…but it’s a difference that will send a man away for a long time.”
I know. And the crushing weight in my chest is suddenly heavier, colder. “I wish I could help. But I didn’t see who they were. I was turning to go into the house when he was shot and then I was ducking behind the truck.”
“And you didn’t hear anything?”
The boss wants his whore. “No. Maybe they said something, but I didn’t hear it. I was making a lot of noise, too—I started screaming after the shot went off and I realized Saxon had been hit.”
Saxon’s neighbors will confirm that.
He gives a deep sigh. “All right. If you suddenly do remember seeing or hearing something, though, you’ll let me know?”
“I will.”
“Good thing.” Landauer slaps his thighs like he’s about to get up, then pauses. “Because word is, during that altercation at the Corral, your man was in the process of retaliating…but then you asked him not to. Word is you said you couldn’t bear losing him or seeing him in prison again. Which he would be, if he murdered someone.”
My throat is a ragged burn. I can’t answer.
“I guess I’ll just hope evidence turns up that can help me get the bastards who shot at you locked away—along with anyone who might have told them to pull the trigger. Then there will be no one around to threaten you, and no one your man will need to protect you from, you see?”
I nod and he gets to his feet, hat in hand.
“Well, maybe just sleep on it, Miss Erickson. A bit of rest has a way of jogging the memory.”
And he obviously knows that being terrified of losing someone you love does, too.
4
Jenny
“I never hated hospitals the way that some people do,” my dad says.
It’s the first thing either of us have spoken in a little while. The clock reads just after four. Anna’s dozing against my shoulder. In a room down the hall, Saxon’s pumped full of painkillers and he’ll be sleeping until morning, at least—and I can’t sit with him, because Pine Valley’s hospital is tiny and now he’s sharing space with a teenager who fell from a window while trying to sneak out of his house. The kid’s parents are sitting beneath the silenced TV mounted in the corner. The mom is sleeping and the dad looks about to nod off. Whatever happened, the kid must not have been hurt too bad. If he was, they’d have shuttled him to the hospital up in Bend.
I don’t like hospitals or hate them. But I would have guessed my dad hated them. Especially now, when being here must make him think of everything that’s coming for him.
Or not coming for him. Because I don’t think he’ll wait until he’s in a hospital. I don’t think he’ll make me sit in a room like this. No. He’ll take a ride down to Crater Lake, maybe. It was always one of his favorite runs. And the north road winding up around the caldera doesn’t have guardrails or a shoulder, despite the sheer drop on the other side of the white line. A sick man could just…fly.
So I can’t even ask him why he doesn’t hate them. The iceberg in my chest has become a glacier moving into my throat. I just look at him instead. He’s not looking back but watching the woman at the nurse’s station.
His voice is a little rougher now. “They remind me of your mother.”
Who’d been a nurse, too. She hadn’t worked here. Her scrubs were a different color. But I guess it doesn’t matter.
I take his hand. Years ago, when I’d first gone to college, I started on a medical track mostly because of my mom. Hoping to carry on some kind of legacy for her, because she hadn’t got much of a chance to make her own. I ended up majoring in organic chemistry, but instead of heading to medical school, I went for a master’s in business admin and started up my brewery. I’ve never regretted it until now. If I’d gone to medical school, maybe I would have known that Saxon wasn’t dying, that his artery wasn’t perforated.
Instead I brew a lot of beer. I don’t know if I could ever drink enough to make me forget the moment I thought he was dead.
“And you know what your mom would be doing right now, Jenny? She’d be sitting up at that desk and thinking that all of these assholes just need to go home.”
“Dad—”
“He’s right,” Anna mumbles next to me. My pillow of a shoulder has left a big pink splotch on her cheek. She signals to Stone, who nods. “And I need to get going, or Saxon’s going to be really pissed and fire me for falling asleep at the Den tomorrow. You want to crash at my place?”
“I’m not going.”
She looks over my head to my dad. I don’t see what passes between them but she nods and stands, stretching her arms and popping her neck. “God, I’m going to feel this crick all week. All right. Call me if you need me, okay?”
“Okay.”
“If he’s still here, I’ll come back before my shift tomorrow and bring you lunch.” She leans down to hug me. “He’s fine. You know he’s tough and way too mean to let this slow him down.”
“I know. Thanks.”
She’s only gone a minute when my dad says, “We ought to get going, too. You need to sleep.”
Maybe I do. That doesn’t mean I can. “I won’t be able to.”
“When you came in, they checked you over. Prescribed you a sedative, didn’t they?”
“I picked it up at the pharmacy when I went to get your clothes. Now you listen, all right? These guys aren’t going anywhere.” He gestures to Blowback, Stone, and Gunner—the three Riders still here. “They’re going to watch and make sure that no one gets to him while he’s sleeping. He’ll be safe.”
Safe. How can he be safe? My eyes are burning. “Daddy, you didn’t see him. There was so much blood—”
“And it’s stopped bleeding. They’ve given him more. They’re taking care of him. But you look like shit and if he sees you like this, it’s not going to help him. He’ll just worry more than he already is. And I know that, Jenny. I know it because I’m feeling the same. I’ve never seen you look so close to breaking.”
Because I’ve never felt so close. Closer now, because that ragged edge to his breath has returned, the one that comes just before he has a coughing fit and spits a little blood.
“Okay,” I whisper. “We’ll go home. I’ll try to sleep.”
He nods and wraps a strong arm around my shoulders, squeezing. “You’ll be all right, baby girl.”
Maybe. I just don’t see how.
Saxon
“So they’re letting you walk out of here?” Gunner asks, and his careful tone tells me that he really wants to say I’m batshit crazy, but he knows better than to speak those words to me.
“I didn’t give them much choice.” Besides, they only wanted to keep me to watch for infection. There’s nothing more they can do to patch me up. But I’m not stupid. I’ll take my antibiotics like a good boy and come back if I start running a fever. What I don’t want is to hang around here, doped on morphine when Landauer can walk in and start questioning me again. I need a clear head. The pain of moving around will give me that. “How’s Jenny?”
“She’s holding up. Red pretty much dragged her home around four.”
It’s only seven-thirty now. I’d have been ready to go earlier but I had to wait on paperwork and the doctor giving me a final look-over. I pull on my jeans and grab the shirt lying folded on the chair. This is going to hurt like a motherfucker. Luckily I’m still floating on the shit they gave me last night.
Carefully I wind the sleeve up my arm. A big padded bandage covers the front of my shoulder. I’m told it looks like ground beef underneath. The chunk out of my neck is the one I’ll have to be most careful about, making sure not to rip open the stitches. The one that hurts most, though, is on the side of my jaw, in a spot covered by a measly square inch of gauze. One little pellet hit bone, and opening my mouth makes me want to slam my fist through a wall.
But I keep jawing, because what I have to say is more important than a little pain. “I want either Hashtag or Scarecrow with Jenny every second. And find a way to get the phones working out there. Or get them a sat phone for now.”
“We’ll do it.”
“I’ve got a list of prescriptions.”
“We’ll send a prospect to pick them up,” Gunner says and looks over as Stone and Blowback come in.
Stone’s gaze shoots to the other bed. “The kid’s asleep?”
“He’s pretending,” I say. “And he’s going to keep his fucking mouth shut. Aren’t you, boy?”
He doesn’t open his eyes but just nods. I’d grin if my jaw wasn’t aching so bad. There’s nothing we’ve said I care about getting out, anyway.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Thomas James Clark,” Blowback answers me before the boy can. By now, he probably knows how much the kid weighed when he was born and which girl in town he’s sneaking out to stick his dick in.
Stone adds, “But we’re calling him the Defenestrator, because it’s much more badass to be thrown out a window than to fall out, right? So you should use that at school, kid. Put it on the back of your jacket.”
The boy finally speaks. “I don’t even know how to spell it.”
“Jesus. I’m gonna look you up in month and kick your ass if you can’t spell it for me then.”
“Listen to him, kid. He gets real serious about defenestration.” Shoving my feet into my boots, I pick up the sling the nurse left for me. “Let’s roll. Get Widowmaker on the horn and have him start contacting the brothers. I want everyone who can get there out at the lodge in two hours. My kutte’s at the house. So is my phone and my bike. Someone needs to ride it out to the ranch.”
It won’t be me. Not for a few days, at least.
“I’ll do it,” Stone says. “Gunner has his rig. You can drop me off and ride out to the lodge with him.”
Good. We’ll see if the cops are still around my place, too. I won’t be.
I haven’t earned my place in Jenny’s home yet. But I don’t fucking care. We didn’t expect this move from Reichmann. And we always assumed she’d be safe out at the ranch. I’m not assuming she’ll be safe anywhere anymore. Not until Reichmann’s a dead man.
But that death will be upon him real soon, because I’m coming for him. And nothing’s going to stop me.
Jenny
I didn’t take the sedative but I did try to sleep. I did a little, I think. When the alarm I set for eight rang, I must have been dozing, because it startled me awake. I called the hospital to check on Saxon and found out he’d already been released, but he didn’t answer his phone when I tried to discover where he’d gone. Then my dad got the message that they’re having an emergency meeting out at the clubhouse. So they’re all going to make plans to take out the Eighty-Eight and there’s a good chance that even though he survived a shotgun blast, I’m going to lose him anyway. If not in this war with Reichmann, then because Landauer knows too much and he’ll know exactly who to look at. So Saxon will go to prison and he won’t be sorry, because he’ll have done it protecting me.
And I can’t even breathe, imagining it. Everything hurts. It hurts so much that I’m finally numb, making my way like a zombie through a shower and getting dressed, then eating a few bites of breakfast and taking my dad’s truck out to the old barn where my brewery is.
No matter what happens, there will always be work. I’ll lose my dad, I’ll lose Saxon, but work will always be waiting for me.
I wonder how long it will be before the work isn’t enough to keep me going.
I’m only there a few minutes when I hear a bike coming up the drive. Not Saxon’s. I know the sound of his Harley by now. Not my dad’s either. I grab the shotgun I stashed in my office last year when Reichmann’s threats started circulating and check the window.
Hashtag. One of the Hellfire Riders’ prospects, but just because he isn’t patched in doesn’t mean he’s a newbie. I don’t know much about him except that Stone was the one who sponsored him. He’s a few years younger than me, maybe twenty-six or -seven, and the way he walks, I’m pretty sure he was military once upon a time. Probably pretty recently.
He sees my gun and his hands shoot up. “The prez sent me to look after you!”
Of course Saxon did. I wave him in.
Scarecrow shows up about a half hour later and he looks like his name. He starts making rounds, Hashtag sticks close to me, and he’s asking me so many questions about the brewhouse that I don’t hear Gunner’s truck coming. I just turn and Saxon’s there, his arm in a sling and his beard gone. My heart thumps hard and I think the iceberg’s cracking, because he’s here and so alive, looking mean and hard and just the way I like him.
My hand shakes, making the hydrometer I’m holding clatter against the side of its tray before it slips into place. “Hey.”
He looks to Hashtag. “Get gone.”
The prospect makes himself scarce. I’m not really sure where he heads. Saxon’s coming toward me, his dark blue eyes locked on my face. I can’t see anything else, and the iceberg’s cracking but it’s just bringing all the pain back. Because I don’t know where to touch him. I don’t know what’s going to hurt him.
But I know he’l
l never tell me what does.
I need to touch him, though. My throat a solid knot, I skim my fingertips down the right side of his jaw. “You shaved.”
“The nurse did this morning. They had to scrape off a patch to get the shot out, so she finished it up.” His voice is low and rough. His gaze is all over my face. “You’re all right?”
God. “Are you?”
“I am if you are.”
“Then I’m fine.” My breath shudders when his big hand cups my face and his thumb caresses my cheek. “Landauer knows it was the Eighty-Eight. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to say anything.”
“I know.”
“He’s going to be watching you. Making sure you don’t do anything to retaliate.”
“I know. But you know I’m going to take care of this.”
Because I can’t trust myself to speak, because my chest feels like it’s being crushed, I just nod.
“You’ll be safe, princess.” Every word seems cast in iron. “I’m heading out to the lodge now but if you need anything, you just ask. You need me here and I’ll come.”
“Okay,” I manage.
“You gonna work here most the day?”
“I think so. I’ve got a lot to catch up on after a week away. And I just…I need to keep busy.”
He nods and his thumb brushes over my lips. “I’ll be staying with you at your house tonight. That all right?”
It’s the only thing that is. “Yes.”
Something dark moves across his expression then he’s bending his head. His mouth catches mine in a kiss that’s too sweet and too brief. “I’ll see if I can keep you busy tonight—and hope your dad doesn’t have a shotgun.”
I laugh and for a second, everything inside me lightens. “He has one. So just hope he doesn’t have better aim than a Henchman.”
His grin comes—then it goes so fast I realize that even smiling hurts him and pain crushes my chest. I hide it, hide it hard, and I must do a good job because instead of asking me if I’m all right he kisses me again. Then he’s gone, heading toward the meeting that might take him from me forever.