by Lane Hart
“How bad is it?”
“Bad, worse for Fiasco, who took two bullets. But if we can find someone who knows how to remove the lead and sew them up, hopefully they’ll live.”
Hopefully? Did he just say, ‘hopefully they’ll live?’
“I’m on my way,” I tell him in a rush.
“Wait! We need a vehicle, something to haul all three in, and fast before the cops show up!” he says. “Neighbors had to have heard the gunfire and called the police by now.”
Why the fuck didn’t I hear it? Oh, right, the sounds Maeve and I made were so loud and all-consuming that I doubt I would’ve heard an atomic bomb go off next door.
“On it,” I promise him before ending the call. I learned how to hotwire a car before I could legally drive one. “We need a truck, big SUV, or a van,” I tell Maeve as I put my pants on in record time. “Know of any in the area?”
“Ah, yeah,” Maeve says. “There are usually a few of those in the apartment complex across the street.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
She nods but doesn’t say anything as I rush out the door and immediately start searching for a big vehicle. We’re definitely in luck when I spot a big, red suburban across the street, exactly where Maeve mentioned one may be.
I jog over with her following behind me. And of course, the doors are locked.
“Shit!” I whisper. “I’ve got some electronics at the shop that could have this beast opened in no time. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. Maeve, stand by the back doors and keep watch while I work.”
“What do you have to do exactly?” Maeve whispers, looking around nervously.
“I’m going to have to break the window, pop the hood, rip out the wiring to the horn to silence the alarm, then smash open the steering column and hotwire this thing.”
“How long will that take?” Maeve asks.
I reply by drawing the long knife at my hip, then using it to shatter the driver’s side window. The tinkling of glass as I clear the frame of the remnants of the window is drowned out by the honking of the horn as the alarm blares to life. I quickly reach in to unlock the door, pop the hood open, and then use my knife to sever the wiring to the horn.
“Anybody looking our way?” I ask as I slam the hood, then climb into the driver seat and begin working on the steering column.
“I don’t see anybody…” Maeve begins, her face illuminated by the lights which are still flashing on the Suburban. “Shit!” she suddenly interjects as she runs around the truck, jumping into the passenger side. “There’s an old guy with a key fob up on the top floor looking down here!” she says as she ducks down in the seat. She peeks out of the back window as I work on the wiring in the steering column, then lets out a long sigh. “He went back in, and I saw the lights flash on a car over there,” she tells me. “He must have heard the racket and just been checking on his own car.”
“Let’s hope so,” I grit out as I steel myself for the shock I know is incoming. I always give myself a jolt when doing this, and tonight is no different. I spark the starter module, and the engine roars to life. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”
It takes less than a minute to get back to the bar. I pull up to the curb, and Maeve and I both jump out, leaving it running but in park. Several people are gathered together at the entrance of the alley between the bar and some sort of restaurant that’s closed for the night. When I push my way through the bodies, I find Fiasco laid out on the pavement, several women holding shirts or dresses to his side and leg.
“Wirth!” he says when he looks up with heavy eyes and sees me. “I’m dying, man!”
Fuck!
“You’re not dying. Load him up in the SUV while I find the others,” I shout to the group who all look shell-shocked. “Move! Now!” I yell at them since I can already hear some sirens in the distance.
Rushing around to the door of the bar, I hurry inside, searching for Malcolm. The door is hanging open, littered with bullet holes. There’s shattered glass all around the bar, chairs are knocked over, and most of the tables have been overturned, probably because they tried to use the wooden furniture as shields.
I should’ve fucking been here!
“Wirth!” Nash calls me over to the area where I sat with Malcolm and Naomi just a few minutes before. He’s standing with Devlin and Silas, all three of which have their guns drawn and ready.
“You find a car?” Nash asks me.
“Yeah,” I say when I jog over and find a shirtless Malcolm. Naomi is standing beside him, tears streaming down her face while she holds his shirt to the wound on his shoulder.
“I can’t believe this happened!” she sobs.
“I’m fine, honey,” Malcolm grumbles. To me, he looks up and says, “It’s just a scratch. Bullet went right through clean.”
“A bullet! You took a bullet to the shoulder!” Naomi exclaims.
“He’s going to be fine,” Jetta assures her, taking over pressing down on the wound when Naomi breaks down, burying her face in her hands.
“We need to move,” Nash says. “Can you walk?” he asks Malcolm.
“If you all would get the hell out the way, I would’ve been gone by now,” our president says when he takes over holding the shirt to his shoulder. He gets to his feet and tries to push past Silas and Devlin.
“Go easy there, prez,” Dev warns him before he and Silas take the lead to the door, guns still out and at the ready.
“Cops are on their way,” I point out. “We need to get out of here, and fast.”
Malcolm does seem fine, but there’s a lot of blood soaking the shirt pressed to his bullet wound.
“We’re coming too!” one of the former Knights — Preston I think is his name — calls out as he and the big boy, Titus, carry a limp Hunt to the door as he tries and fails to keep a towel up to his head. It slips down and reveals a bloody, gushing ear. Or what used to be an ear, I suppose.
“Damn,” I mutter under my breath at the grizzly sight.
“Would’ve been fine…if someone…hadn’t slammed my head…into the ground,” Hunt murmurs.
“You didn’t get shot again, did you?” Titus remarks.
“I want to come with him,” Naomi says, but Malcolm shoots her down.
“You all need to get out of here and go home, check on the baby.”
“I’ll call them an Uber,” Maeve says when she reappears, already on her phone.
“Thanks,” I tell her, meaning for everything tonight.
We get all three of the men loaded up, Malcolm and Hunt in the back with Hunt’s guy, Preston, next to him to help keep him upright. Fiasco went into the cargo hold so he could have more room to stretch out. The fact that we needed Devlin and Silas to squeeze in there with him to apply pressure is concerning as I hop in the driver seat and Nash climbs into the passenger seat after saying a quick goodbye to the women, despite Naomi’s continued protest. At least she has the other women to stay with her.
“Where to?” I ask Nash. “We can’t go to a hospital. Bullet wounds are reported to the police.”
“Fuck. I don’t know,” Nash says. “Except, well, there is one possibility…”
“What is it?” I ask as I pull off down the road. “Which direction?”
“Back toward Carolina Beach,” Nash replies. “Lucy found my sister.”
“Okay. That’s fucking great,” I tell him as I take the exit ramp on the right so fast the SUV’s left tires come off the ground. “But what the hell does your sister have to do with anything right now, man?”
“She’s a nurse.”
“Oh. And you think she’ll help these guys?”
“I don’t know,” he says softly. “Haven’t met her yet.”
“Jesus Christ,” I grumble.
“Now is as good a time as any, I guess. Let me see if Lucy has her number and can at least warn her that we’re coming,” Nash says as he fumbles for his phone and finally gets it up to his ear. He relays
the message to his girl of what we need and then ends the call a second later.
“Well?” I ask.
“Lucy’s texting me her address and will call her up to let her know we’re coming,” he responds.
Glancing over at him now that I’m on the straight shot highway going a hundred miles an hour, I whisper, “And what if she turns us away?”
“Fuck! I don’t know,” he exclaims, stabbing his fingers through his brown hair and giving it a tug before my eyes go back to the dark, empty road in front of me. “She’ll just have to help us!”
“Right,” I huff. “Because that’s how you get the best medical care – hold someone at gunpoint and demand it.”
“We’re not going to hold her at gunpoint,” Nash snaps.
“We’re not? Even if she’s our only option for saving Fiasco?”
“Dammit. I don’t know, okay? Let’s just pray she’ll do it without it coming to that.”
“Yeah, let’s hope.”
“Ah, guys,” Malcolm says from behind Nash’s seat, so I quickly glance over my shoulder and find Hunt slumped against his side. “I don’t know where we’re going but make it fast. Hunt’s out cold.”
“Shit, I’m going as fast as this big tank will go, prez,” I say when I press the pedal down to the floorboard. “We needed a car to haul people; and unfortunately, big ones can’t go zero to sixty in three seconds.”
“Take the next exit,” Nash tells me as he stares down at his phone. “We’re only about five minutes away.”
“Where is five minutes away?” Malcolm grumbles, which tells me all I need to know about his health. If he is his normal grouchy self, barking orders, then he is going to be fine.
“My sister’s place,” Nash swivels around in his seat to inform him.
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” Malcolm replies.
“I, ah, haven’t actually met her yet.”
“Well, fuck,” Malcolm huffs, echoing my sentiments.
If we’re wrong about Nash’s long-lost sister, then we could be signing Fiasco’s death warrant and possibly Hunt’s.
“How’s he doing back there, guys?” I call out to Silas and Devlin who have been quiet.
“Fiasco’s taking a little nap,” Silas says. “Sure, he’ll be just fine.”
“His pulse is weak,” Devlin admits. “He’s losing a shit ton of blood.”
“Hold pressure,” Malcolm tells them. “Tighter!”
“We’re almost there. Hopefully,” I call back to them.
“Who the fuck did this?” Malcolm asks Hunt’s guy, Preston.
“They had on masks, so I can’t be certain,” he starts. “But we have heard that the Irish aren’t happy about us coming to town.”
“The Irish?” Nash repeats. “Bikers, gang, or mafia?”
“Mafia.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell us that before tonight?” Malcolm yells at him.
“We just heard some gossip around town, nothing concrete! It’s not like they sent us a note telling us they were going to shoot up the place!”
“From now on, I need to know everything, even whispers. You hear me?” Malcolm growls.
“Yes, sir.” After several quiet moments as I take more directions from Nash, putting the SUV on two wheels a few more times, Preston goes on to say, “If we lose Hunt, we won’t have enough for a fucking chapter.”
“You’re not going to lose Hunt,” Malcolm grunts.
“You’ve got a prospect, don’t you?” I ask him.
“How the fuck did you know that?” Preston mutters.
“Why the fuck didn’t I?” Malcolm shouts at him.
“Yeah, we’ve got a prospect, but he’s too green. It hasn’t even been three months yet!”
The rest of the way the SUV is quiet following that comment – too quiet as we all retreat into our own heads.
Finally, after what feels like a lifetime, we pull up outside of a small white, one-story cottage. It’s in the cul-de-sac of a regular, lower-middle class neighborhood in a good part of town.
“We’re here,” I announce to the other guys as if it wasn’t obvious. “How we gonna do this?”
“You and I will go to the door with Malcolm if he thinks he can walk,” Nash says.
“I can fucking walk!” our president declares before he’s pushing open his door and jumping out with Nash and I right behind him. The two of them are halfway up the paved sidewalk by the time I walk around the front hood of the SUV, so I have to jog to catch up to them when they’re already ringing the doorbell.
A few long seconds later, the main door opens and a woman in a blue robe stands on the other side of a glass storm door, the entry way behind her lit up. Just a glimpse, and it’s easy to see the resemblance to Nash in her lean face, her long, chocolate brown hair frizzy from the pillow and her golden eyes confused and…scared.
“Ah, hi,” Nash says to her calmly through the glass, realizing the same thing I have. “Sorry to bother you so late, but we’re desperate here. I think my girlfriend Lucy called you…”
“How did you find me? H-how did you know I’m a nurse and where I live?” she asks, her voice shaky and words muffled by the glass.
“That’s a long story for another time. Can you please help my friends? All he needs is a few stiches,” he tells her, pointing to Malcolm. “But um, two of our other friends are in bad shape in the SUV.”
Her gaze goes around us to the vehicle sitting at the curb.
“Your girlfriend warned me there were three patients,” she says as she thankfully unlocks the glass door to open it for us. “That’s more than I can handle on my own, so I called a friend. She’s on the way. Until then, I’m going to need your help.”
“Okay, I’ll do whatever you need. Thank you, Joanna,” Nash says with an exhale of relief.
Chapter Seven
Maeve
The bar is a mess.
Several of the Knights are arguing with the officers out front like they’re trying to keep them out of the building, so I sneak into the back. Inside, several other girls are sweeping up and wiping up blood stains while crying. I get to work helping them, feeling awful and worried about the three injured men. While I’m praying for them, especially Hunt and what his loss would mean to the club, all I can think about is murder.
I’m going to fucking kill Cormac.
That asshole and my brother told me that it was just going to be a quick drive-by to try and scare the MC out of town.
Instead of just messing up the building or the bikes, they nearly killed three men and could’ve easily hurt one of the innocent women during their stupid ass shootout.
But then later on in the night, when the police finally force their way inside to inventory evidence and make everyone sit down until they have a chance to interview us, I overhear two of the former Knights talking about the shooting and how they hoped they hit one of the masked bastards that came into the bar.
I jump up out of my chair so fast it falls over backward, hitting the floor and setting off a loud BOOM that startles everyone, especially the cops.
“Sorry,” I say as I pick the chair back up again while everyone is staring at me. “It’s been an awful night. Can I please leave? I told you I wasn’t even here when the shooting happened.”
The nearest cop gives a nod of approval.
“You need someone to walk you back to your apartment?” Bernard, the bartender, asks.
I inwardly cringe at his consideration since he has no idea I’m to blame for the club’s president getting shot and nearly killed. Hopefully Hunt makes it. He’s wild and a little unhinged when it comes to fucking, but he’s a good man deep down. “Thank you for the sweet offer, but I’m sure I’ll be fine,” I tell him.
As soon as I step out of the bar, I spot a police cruiser riding slowly down the street, keeping an eye out on the area to make sure no other violence goes down.
I let myself into my apartment and hear the television, telling me I’m not al
one. It’s a huge relief to know he’s okay since he was going to be the first person I called when I got home, but that doesn’t mean I’m not angry at him.
“How could you?” I yell at my brother with tears filling my eyes before I even find him lounging on my sofa like he lives here and wasn’t just involved in a horrifying shooting.
“Your intel was spot on, sis,” Rian says with a grin when he turns his attention from the television to me fuming with my arms crossed over my chest. “We had no idea that the Dirty Aces were coming to town to patch the Knights over before your tip. Hopefully we got to them before that went down. The last thing we need are the Knights growing bigger, having more protection.”
“You almost killed three people! There were innocent women in there!” I say as I stomp over and slap the shit out of his face, leaving my palm stinging. What I really want to do is punch him hard enough to knock the smugness out of his body, but I know from experience that my brother throws the “no hitting a girl” rule out the window if I attack first.
I hate to see him like this, turning into our father a little more each day.
Instead of getting up to hit me back, Rian simply rubs at his cheek and says, “Almost killed them? Shit, the leaders aren’t dead?”
“I-I don’t know,” I admit as I drop onto the opposite side of the sofa, as far away from him as I can get and bury my face in my hands. “No one at the bar has heard from them yet…” I murmur into my palms.
“So, there’s still hope,” Rian cheerfully responds. “Cormac said that if we take out the leaders, the leftover members may try to plan some sort of retaliation. We’ll be ready for them if they do. All they’ll accomplish is killing enough of their own guys that they’ll be forced to fold up the Wilmington chapter and go back to where they came from.”
Lifting my face from my hands, I yell, “Cormac is a fucking fool! He’s going to get you killed!”
“No, he’s not. I can take care of myself.”
“That’s what you think,” I mutter. “Were you there tonight? Were you one of the shooters?”
