Lone Star (Dartmoor Book 7)

by Lauren Gilley

  A car was just pulling up to the order menu when they reached it, and the driver had to swerve and slam on the brakes to avoid them.

  “Christ, sorry,” Michelle said, as if talking to the other car.

  Behind the Dairy Queen, an open lane between two dumpsters fed into the bank next door. Thank God for interconnected parking lots. Axelle gunned for it, and swung a hard right, which aimed them at the four stalls of the bank’s drive-through teller setup.

  “Watch the stanchions,” Michelle advised. She nearly sounded excited.

  “We’re fine,” Axelle said, and threaded the needle perfectly through one lane. Then it was follow the arrow, down and out, and a big, swinging skid out onto the road again, a four-lane this time, cars swerving, braking, and honking as they blasted through.

  “Have you ever crashed doing this?” Michelle asked, definitely excited now.

  “Nope.” Axelle shifted and changed lanes twice, passing another two cars.

  “She’s a bit of a prodigy, I imagine,” Eden said.

  Jinx groaned.

  “I think this guy’s dying,” Gwen said, voice a trembling wreck. “There’s blood all over.”

  “Shit,” Axelle sighed. “My seats.”

  “He’s got a second gunshot,” Eden said. “Abdomen somewhere. He wouldn’t be losing this much blood from his calf.”

  Michelle twisted around to look into the backseat, swearing softly. “Jinx?”

  Axelle blew through a yellow light and checked the mirror again. The Mercedes was back there, still – far back, but in this kind of traffic, with stoplights every few thousand feet, there was a good chance they’d get hemmed in. And if that happened, and the cartel guys got out of their cars while they were trapped…

  She shivered and passed another car.

  The Mercedes ran the red behind them.

  Her pulse accelerated. “Guys, I can outrun them if we get out in the open, but if we get jammed up in traffic…”

  “Right,” Eden said, grimly. “Michelle, do you need another magazine?”

  “No, I’ve got one.”

  “Wait – what happens if there’s traffic?” Gwen asked.

  “You don’t want to know,” Eden said.

  But there they were ahead of them: brake lights. Cars stacked up, with no gaps, blocking the turn lanes.

  Shit, Axelle thought, and passed another car. If she could get into the oncoming lanes, she could bull her way through. But for now, she had to touch the brakes, had to slow.

  “There’s a gap in the median up there,” Michelle said.

  “I see it.” But there was a bus trundling in front of it, blocking it, and the light ahead was red, and oh, shit…

  Sunlight winked off chrome in the oncoming lane, and there were the bikes.

  Once upon a time, the sight of Lean Dogs riding in formation toward her would have elicited a flight response, part fear and part loathing. But right now, it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

  “It’s Albie,” Michelle said beside her, and let out an explosive breath.

  Axelle’s hand spasmed on the gearshift, tremors moving up her arm and hitting her core in a shockwave of spent adrenaline. She loved driving – loved out-driving others – but now that salvation was in sight, she could allow herself to feel the terror she’d been keeping at bay. Thank God, thank God.

  The gap between the bus and the median break was too narrow for a car, but the bikes swooped through it, one-by-one, earning honks and fingers from other drivers. They ignored them, riding down the center lines, turning and then falling in on either side of the GTO, flanking it like an honor guard so that by the time they’d halted at the light, they were all boxed in by rumbling Harleys.

  Albie pulled up right outside the driver window and pushed his sunglasses down his nose so he could peer through the glass at her – a move that was all about practicality, but which sent a wild thrill through her all the same.

  Axelle rolled down the window. “You have good timing.”

  “You guys okay?” His eyes were so blue in the sunlight, his jaw tight, his body more than at home on the bike.

  “Everybody but Jinx.”

  “He’s been shot,” Michelle said, leaning across the console to get closer. “In at least two places.”

  “And we’ve got the cartel on our ass,” Axelle said. “That Mercedes one light back.”

  He twisted to glance back over his shoulder. Then glanced back, expression thunderous – but determined. “We’ll head for the hospital. They won’t push it now that we’re here.”

  A shootout in a warehouse was one thing, but one on a main thoroughfare was another.

  “Chelle, call ahead and tell them we’re coming,” he continued.

  “Already on it.”

  “Do you know which way to go?” he asked Axelle, in a completely different voice.

  It stunned her a moment, the softness of it. The worry. It warmed her, too.

  She swallowed. “No.”

  He offered a quick, tight smile. “Just follow me.”

  And so she did.

  Thirty

  When Fox arrived at the scene of the crash, he couldn’t help but let out a low whistle. “Bit dramatic, boys, don’t you think?”

  Neither of them answered right away. They stood facing him, flat-footed, stiff, but with their shoulders dropped in that way he knew meant they could spin into action in a blink. A dozen or so paces separated them, so they framed a view of the back of an open, upside down van where three crumpled bodies lay like strewn flower petals. One was dead, the back of his head blown out. One was a bleeding, cowering man. The last an unconscious woman, her blond hair lying puddled beside her head on the dirt.

  He smirked to himself. Of course they weren’t cradling her and tending to her wounds. That would have been too human of them.

  “We apprehended the van,” Reese said.

  “I apprehended it,” Tenny corrected, mouth flattening, almost angry.

  The two very pointedly didn’t look at each other.

  “I can see that,” Fox said, walking the last bit of distance toward them. “How many dead bodies we got?”

  “The driver and two others,” Ten answered.

  “We kept one alive for questioning,” Reese said.

  “And the woman,” Ten said, glancing down, toeing at the ends of her hair like she was a dead snake he’d found on the side of the road.

  “Is she alive?” Fox asked, crouching to check.

  “Yes,” they both said, just as he verified. She was breathing, and regularly, but unconscious. A small cut at her hairline had bled down her face, but he didn’t see anything major. She could have broken bones or internal damage, though.

  “Right, well, van’s on the way.” He stood, and glanced toward the cowering man. “What’s his story?”

  “Las Chupacabras cartel,” Tenny said. “Or so he says.”

  Fox walked over to him, and the man shrank in on himself beneath Fox’s shadow. If he was honest with himself – and he usually was – he always enjoyed getting that reaction.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, nudging the man’s boot with his own.

  He was met by a pained, panicked stare; the guy breathed in quick little huffs.

  “We’ve got you, man. You might as well tell me.”

  The man swallowed and said nothing.

  “Alright. Any chance you want to tell me what you guys were up to?”

  Silence.

  “I didn’t figure. That’s fine.” He heard the crunch of gravel as the van arrived, and pulled slowly off the shoulder. He glanced over and spotted the prospect, Nickel, behind the wheel. “This part goes better with a chair and some duct tape anyway.”

  ~*~

  “I’m assuming you know what this looks like,” Cantrell said as he snapped on a pair of gloves.

  “Fuck you,” Candy said. He couldn’t even attempt a clever rejoinder, and the fact seemed to surprise Cantrell, if the way he lifted h
is brows was any indication.

  He nodded toward Pacer’s body. “Tell me what happened.”

  Candy had barely been able to look away from the man who’d been his father’s friend, his own friend. Who’d been alive only a few minutes ago.

  Fox had been the one to clear the house, and the one who’d taken the call from Reese and told him about the crash. Candy had the presence of mind to omit that, now.

  “There was still dust in the air when I pulled up,” he told Cantrell, his voice oddly toneless. “They’d just left. He was – he was still warm.”

  Cantrell stared at him a moment, his gaze palpable, then nodded and crouched down beside Pacer, flicking the end of his tie over one shoulder. He probed the wound lightly with gloved fingers, delicate even, but Candy felt the urge to snarl and slap him away.

  “Deep, but a clean cut,” Cantrell said, straightening. The gloves came off with another set of snaps. “He didn’t struggle.”

  “He was acting real out of it the last time I saw him,” Candy said. “I think he must have taken something.”

  “Sedative?”

  “I dunno. I looked through his medicine cabinet, but couldn’t find anything like that.”

  The agent glanced toward the open front door of the house; two uniformed officers waited on the porch; the crunch of gravel in the drive announced the arrival of either lab techs or the coroner. In a low voice, he said, “We got the tox reports back on the first five vics.” When he turned back to Candy, his gaze was imploring. “They’d been dosed – and heavily – with something the machines didn’t recognize straight off. It looked a little like ketamine, but it wasn’t. A sedative. A designer one. Something new, our lab guys think. Just like in Nevada.” His brows lifted for a second time, in clear question.

  Candy stared him down. He’d make him say it, the bastard.

  Cantrell sighed. “Any leads on your end?”

  Candy took one last look at the lifeless form that had been a friend. He said, “You might wanna pull some Chupacabra case files, ‘cause the cartel’s back in town.” He walked away with Cantrell spluttering in surprise behind him.

  The uniforms gave him dark looks as he passed between them and went down the porch steps. When he was swinging a leg over his bike, Cantrell called out to him.

  “How the fuck would you know that?”

  “You might wanna check down the road a couple miles,” he called back. Then Candy started his engine, and drowned out whatever else he said.

  He became aware, on the long ride to the hospital, that a creeping numbness had overtaken him. Every time he blinked, he saw Pacer’s body, but it was with the hollow refrain of he’s dead. He didn’t feel anger – not yet. Not panic, nor grief. A faint buzzing, under his skin, and in the roots of this teeth, told him he would feel them, and soon. But for now, his mind was shielding itself, ready to power him through what came next.

  There were bikes in the parking lot, when he arrived, and he took a brief moment to wonder why so many of his brothers had come to escort the van that had dropped Melanie off. Later, when he thought back on it, he would have realized the dusty GTO his eyes had raked over on his way past had been parked at his clubhouse overnight; it didn’t register in the moment.

  He walked through the automatic doors of the ER, already scanning the array of plastic chairs for Fox’s face. He found it, over leaned up against a vending machine in the alcove along the far wall.

  He halted in his tracks, though, when he recognized the slight, blonde figure talking to Fox.

  His wife.

  ~*~

  Michelle stared down at the Snickers she’d just bought, rethinking her decision. It had sounded like an absolute must-have to her post-adrenaline, low blood sugar self only moments before, but now that she was holding it, her stomach soured.

  And that was before Fox said, “Oh. Well. This should be interesting.”

  She glanced toward him, found him as she’d last seen him, with arms folded, and a boot braced negligently on the wall behind him. “What?”

  He nodded toward the doors to the ER. “Your husband’s here.”

  “Shit.” She knew about the scene at Pacer’s place – Fox had just been filling her in – but she’d thought dealing with Cantrell would occupy most of Candy’s afternoon. She hadn’t thought he’d show up here.

  She turned, and looked, and there he was, frozen just inside the doors. People were having to step around him.

  He was staring at her. Actually slack-jawed, totally gobsmacked. She felt like Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny, or some other fictional entity that no one expected to encounter in real life.

  She stood frozen, like an idiot, and then his expression firmed, and he came toward her.

  “Oh, shit.”

  “You’re not afraid of him, are you?” Fox asked, offhand, as Candy stalked toward them. “Because if you are, I could always kill him for you.”

  She shot him a fast, startled glance – quick, but enough to see that he was deadly serious. He loved his club, and his brothers, but he would cut it all away for certain people. Knowing she was one of those people left her dizzy, even if a part of her had always suspected.

  “No,” she hissed, and then Candy was in front of her, looking caught between thunderstruck and furious. “Hi, baby. I’m so sorry about Pacer.”

  At another time, she would have laughed at the complicated array of expressions he cycled through: brows going up, then down, then up again, his frown twitching. He opened his mouth to say something, and leaned forward, hand moving toward her arm–

  Fox slid neatly between them.

  Candy pulled up short.

  “Let’s keep it civil, alright?” Fox asked, tone brisk, disinterested. But Michelle could read the tension in his body. If Candy said or did anything he didn’t like, civility would be the last thing on his mind.

  It was shocking, honestly: him getting between them – thinking he needed to in the first place. Inserting himself in a husband-wife, and brother-old lady situation. It flew in the face of all sorts of MC etiquette.

  It also brought something into sharp focus for Michelle.

  As Candy stared at her uncle, absolutely dumbstruck, his expression blank, she realized she’d let things go way, way too far.

  She put a hand on Fox’s shoulder. “It’s alright, Uncle Charlie, I’ll take it from here,” she said, and sought to steer him away.

  He resisted a moment, glancing back over his shoulder at her; gazed at her a moment, reading her expression, then nodded and slid away. He didn’t go far, lingering in her periphery as she stepped into the place he’d vacated and tipped her head all the way back so she could look at Candy. Showing him her throat on purpose; she’d been showing him nothing much besides the stink-eye for a few days, now, and it had to stop, for both their sakes – for the club’s sake.

  He studied her a moment, expression darkening; she could see – in the tic of the muscle in his cheek – that he was trying to figure out how he wanted to phrase things.

  She touched his wrist. “Let’s go outside.”

  “I–” he started.

  “Mrs. Snow?” A doctor – a young intern, Michelle suspected – had appeared, scrub cap secured tightly over her hair. “If you’ll follow me, please.”

  “Okay.” In an undertone to Candy: “It’s about Jinx.”

  He hesitated a moment before falling into step behind her. “Wait, what happened to Jinx?”

  ~*~

  Axelle added an extra packet of sugar to her coffee, though she didn’t need it, or the caffeine given the way post-rush chills were cycling through her body. The break room was blessedly empty, save an older guy in scrubs eating an apple and reading a book in the corner. Her hands kept twitching, sore from the way she’d gripped the steering wheel so tight.

  She heard footsteps behind her, the heavy tread of a biker boot, but the light step of someone who knew how to move quietly despite that. She knew who it would be before she turned, and whe
n she spotted Albie, it wasn’t with the usual, nervous, schoolgirl fluttering of late that filled her stomach. It was a relief that left her weak in the joints, the same that she’d felt out on the road when she’d realized he and his club brothers were riding to the rescue.

  He walked right up to her, hurrying, face creased with worry. He’d looked more confident out on the street, and even in the waiting room, but now, the worry shone through, and it warmed her.

  “Hey.” He reached to tuck a lock of her hair back behind her ear, and touched her cheek with a gentle stroke of his thumb – gentle, but not hesitant. He didn’t hold back with his body, either; pressing into her space, and with her welcome.

  She set her coffee aside so she could grip the front of his cut in both hands. It was an automatic movement, wanting to make contact, but she realized a beat later, with a start, that it was the first time she’d willingly ever touched the thing. This piece of leather that stood for so much she’d hated for so long.

  She froze, staring at her fingers curled around the worn black leather, shocked by this small, but significant turn of events.

  Albie closed his hands over hers, and she lifted her head, gaze seeking out his.

  And his was soft, and concerned, and this was only leather she touched, only a symbol, and not a representation of him as a man, nor of his feelings about her.

  “I haven’t had a chance to ask how you are,” he said, softly.

  “Yeah, you have. You asked me on the road. And when we got here.” In those frantic moments of getting Jinx inside the ER, and onto a gurney, while other patients looked on goggle-eyed and whispering.

  His mouth curved in a half-smile. “Not for real. Not when it’s just us.”

  “Oh.” Wasn’t that devastating? “I’m okay.”

  “You sure?”

  “It’s not like that was my first car chase.”

  “Still.” He touched her face again, and his eyes were very blue, and full of caring, and it was the most natural thing in the world to lean in and kiss him.