THE OUTLAW’S BRIDE

by April Lust

  Instead, he opened the door to find the barrel of a gun pointed right at his head.

  How the hell was he not expecting this? The entire reason he was here was because he and especially Victoria were in danger. If anything happened to him, he wouldn’t be able to protect her. And if anything happened to her, he deserved to be worse than dead.

  He didn’t have to think twice.

  He still had the pistol in his hand. He switched the safety off without even needing to remember how; he was used to using guns, even though he wasn’t in the habit of shooting people. He aimed the pistol at the guy’s stomach, and, without even blinking, shot him twice.

  The first time was out of necessity. The second time – the guy barely started to fall, as if he was frozen, and Darren shot him a second time out of reflex. Now the guy was falling, and he was falling quickly. Darren could already see the blood spilling out from the guy’s torso; the gun the boy had been holding was falling out of his hands. Darren could see where the guy’s wrist had gone limp, but the pistol hadn’t fallen out of his grip yet.

  Darren watched as he finally fell to the porch.

  He wasn’t sure what to think. Victoria. Victoria needed to be safe.

  At that moment he heard a scream. He was about to try to force himself to move his limbs to go to her when he felt a force barrel right into him.

  He recognized the softness of her skin and the small weight immediately upon impact. Victoria. She’d ran straight here. And why wouldn’t see? The gunshot had probably woken her up, probably terrified her.

  # # #

  Victoria

  She moved from around Darren to see what he was looking at, but the first thing she saw was his face. He looked shocked. She didn’t expect to see it, but his face was written through with shock and something else. He’d probably done this before; that didn’t mean that he was used to it. She put a hand on his arm; he was probably shell-shocked.

  But then she saw the body.

  The boy was lying there, a gun in his limp hand. It looked like his body was already getting cold. From the way he was lying, Victoria could already figure out what had happened – Darren had opened the door, the guy had tried to shoot at him. Darren had just shot first.

  Thank god he was okay. Victoria had been so worried. She didn’t want to think that she was falling in love with this man, but she couldn’t deny that there was something between them. They were clicking on some level, and she just wanted to stay in his arms as much as she could. Even if it meant that the rest of her life would be dangerous while she had his comfort.

  But he was safe. And that meant she could breathe easy. For now.

  But they also had to deal with this. Even though they were hiding in the middle of the woods, they couldn’t just leave a dead person around and pretend that nothing would happen.

  He had to get it together, and she had to help him.

  Her hand was still on his arm. She held onto him tightly, shaking him. “You can't just stand there.”

  She looked at him then, the words barely having left her mouth when she realized that his eyes were kind of distant. But then he came back to himself, and she saw the Darren she knew and thought she might even…love.

  She continued speaking, trying to get the words out quickly before she could have a chance at stumbling over them. “We need to do something about this,” she said. “We need to get rid of the body. Darren? Darren, do you hear me?”

  # # #

  Darren

  He might’ve been surprised earlier, but he was actually shocked at hearing this. As much of a bad club as he liked to think he ran, there were only a few people in the Bloody Saints club that he could go to with something like this. And Victoria had barely even seen any trauma in her life, or so he hoped. He didn’t know everything he needed to know about her just yet. And here she was, already suggesting solutions to the fact that he’d just committed murder.

  If he already liked her before, he was liking her even more now. They needed to work together. He was going to keep her safe; too bad Victoria was intent on doing the same for him.

  He still didn’t look like he was all that okay, and that was freaking Victoria out. Darren was supposed to know what was going on with everything, but here he was just standing there. He turned to her. The smirk that was on his face comforted her a little bit, but not much.

  But then he spoke, and the way he talked to her put the butterflies in her stomach at ease. “Do you have any ideas?”

  # # #

  Victoria

  Victoria noticed that he was looking at her differently, and it bothered her. She didn’t have time to complain about it, but she made a note to herself that Darren thought of her as some delicate flower. She’d always been tough. This was a little bit – okay, a lot – different, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t handle it. And it involved Darren. They were in this together, so, no matter how she felt about it, the both of them were going to have to find a way out of this.

  They couldn’t leave the body here, even if they moved into the woods. Someone had clearly sent this guy here. There was no way he’d decided to go try to kill them on his own; at least, that was Victoria's guess based on what she knew of how club dynamics worked. And his fellow club members would probably go searching for him when he didn’t get back to them. No, leaving the guy here was a bad idea.

  And they couldn’t just go further out into the woods either; someone could go looking for him there, or a hunter or some hikers could stumble upon him, putting any cabins around her under suspicion. And if they took the guy anywhere where it was likely to be traced back to either of them, they’d get thrown in prison: him as a killer, and her as an accomplice. Or even worse, a rival would find them before the law did, and…

  Thinking about this was a headache.

  “Victoria?”

  “Give me time to think about it.”

  But as she said it, she realized what they needed to do. There were parts of town where it wouldn’t be uncommon to find a dead body. They probably couldn’t go back to the bar, since some time had passed and people would’ve already seen the scene anyway. But they could find somewhere. They just needed a way to get there.

  She tried to look past the porch and out into the driveway, but the way the drive sloped kept her from seeing much. “Do you still have the car?”

  “Yeah,” Darren said, pausing after he got the word out. “Why?”

  He didn’t know where she was going with this. He didn’t know exactly what he should do. He had plenty of ideas, but none of it was anything he wanted to involve Victoria with. He was okay with doing dangerous things, so long as the danger was only to himself, or one of his friends, if they agreed to it.

  “I have an idea.”

  “And that is...?” He dragged out the “is,” wanting to know what exactly Victoria was thinking. He didn’t know if she was honestly okay, but he was fine with pretending that she was if it meant that they got through this. If she was actually okay with this, that was even better. And he wouldn’t be surprised. Victoria Parker was turning out to be the toughest woman he’d ever met in his life, with maybe the exception of his mother.

  “I can't tell you.” She looked out to the trees, wondering. Maybe that open door she’d seen earlier wasn’t a coincidence after all. They needed to leave. “You have to trust me.”

  They stood in silence for a minute, both breaking off into talking at once:

  “We should go,” said Darren.

  “Do you trust me?” Victoria asked.

  They both responded yes at the same time, turning to the other with a smile. Their happiness was short-lived, but it’d get better. They just had to deal with this.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Victoria

  There were only a few things in a girl’s life that could get her blood pumping the way Victoria’s was now. Okay, well, there were a lot of things, probably. Acing an interview for your dream job, getting engaged to the one you love, getting m
arried, having your first child. Unfortunately for Victoria, she didn’t have any of those milestones to compare this to.

  And besides, it probably felt a lot different. She wasn’t sure how to explain the feeling of trying to dispose of your first dead body, but it was something that she wasn’t sure she was going to experience again. And if she never had to deal with something like this ever again in her life, that would be great. Really great.

  They were still at the safe house. There was only so much two people could do when they were surrounded by trees and trying to figure out what to do with the body of the dude Darren had just shot.

  This had gone from a boring, forced stay in the safe house for both of their safety to really interesting real quick. And Victoria had an idea about how they were going to deal with this – she’d already told Darren a few minutes ago. His reaction hadn’t been the best, but they were going to go with it. All they needed to make the occasion more somber was the sky opening up so rain could fall on them.

  “I put the car in the garage,” Darren answered her question.

  They couldn’t stay here. They were going to need to take this man somewhere, and it would have to be somewhere remote, far away. At least an hour away, anyway. That probably meant the city. If they drove an hour in the opposite direction, Victoria wasn’t sure where they would wind up. It was better to just go to a bad area of town where this entire situation could be dumped off on someone else.

  “Okay.” She nodded. “Go get it. I'll stay here.”

  Darren paused, looking like he was having doubts about leaving her here. And he was. What kind of man would he be if he just left a woman – Victoria, especially – on her own, especially after someone had just come here looking to kill them? If not kill her, they were trying to kill him, anyway, and that spelled out bad news for Victoria too.

  “I'm not going to leave you out here by yourself.” He knew Victoria was tough, and he knew that she thought of herself as just that. But that didn’t mean that he was going to abandon her.

  “Someone has to stay here,” she said. She interrupted him, already arguing before he could even think about exactly why leaving her there was so bad. More than bad. Even though it was definitely unsafe, he didn’t think he’d want to leave her out here on her own even if there wasn’t someone out here dead, and presumably more waiting to come and slaughter the two of them.

  Or maybe not kill them, but in this case, death was probably the kinder option, and he didn’t want to consider the alternative. Maybe she would be fine on her own. He really, really didn’t want to leave her there, though, even though he knew that sticking by her side was just going to get her into more trouble in the long run. Them talking – well, yelling at each other – was the entire reason they were in this situation in the first place, but now it was even worse.

  “Just go,” she said. She rolled her eyes at him, and for a second he thought that she was going to fist one of her hands on her hip. She didn’t. “I'll be fine.”

  “Promise?”

  “That’s been coming up a lot lately,” she grinned. “Be careful or I might think you’re getting feelings for me.”

  He didn’t bother with responding. There was no way to. And that hurt Victoria, just a little bit; part of her wanted him to have feelings for her. She knew she was starting to get feelings for him, and, much as she hated it, there was nothing she could do about it.

  He finally agreed to go. He was going to rush, though. He didn’t say as much, but she could tell. Everything about his body language screamed rushed.

  She stood on the porch, looking out into the driveway while he ran off. It shouldn’t have been that big of a deal for him to leave her here. In most houses, the garage was right in front of the driveway. Usually.

  But the safe house was not usual. Its layout was confusing, and the garage was all the way around the side of the house, a long walk, given the circumstances.

  She watched Darren make his way over to the side of the house. She tried to follow him with her eyes as best as she could, but he disappeared out of sight quickly. She didn’t want to turn into some kind of paranoid woman, but she started to wonder exactly what she was choosing to do.

  The trees all around her were blocking her line of vision. She wasn’t sure where she was supposed to expect Darren from, but she kept looking around anyway. She felt some anxiety rise in her chest, and struggled to push it back down.

  She couldn’t freak out right now.

  She just couldn’t.

  Even still, her eyes kept going to the dead body at her feet. She raised both of her arms to each other, holding them in an attempt for warmth. She heard the sound of an engine. Her glances around became more worried, more fervent.

  Where could she hide if she needed to?

  There was nowhere for her to go. She felt the anxious feeling that was in her chest bubble up even more now, big and dangerous and something she had no way of escaping from.

  But just as soon as that feeling came, it disappeared. She looked up to the car just in time to see Darren through the windshield; he was behind the wheel, making his way over to her. But he was having a hard time driving. The driveway was narrow. There was barely any room for any type of vehicle there, and she wondered if he was going to screw up and hit a tree or something.

  That didn’t happen, though, and she breathed out a sigh of relief. Darren stopped the car just a few feet from where she stood at the front of the house. In the few seconds she was wondering exactly how this was going to work out, he hopped out of the car and came to her side.

  “Okay, so.” He rubbed his hands together in the imitation of some kind of talk show host. He thought maybe the dark humor would make this whole situation better for her; it did. “I'll get the arms, you get the legs?”

  Victoria had to acknowledge that she hadn’t really thought about how they were going to get the guy in the car. And the thought of moving him was starting to make her feel sick. But it had to be done. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to do it this way.

  “How about you get the legs and I get the arms?”

  It made more sense that way. His legs had to weigh way more than his arms did, and there was no way she was going to be able to pick that much of a man up, even with help. Hell, she argued that she might have a hard time picking up someone even smaller.

  He agreed. “Okay. Lift at the same time,” he said.

  Both of them made their way to the guy, getting on either side of him while Victoria struggled not to be sick. Darren looked disgusted, too, but neither of them said anything. And when they both finally got a grip on him, they kept up the silence. Victoria was holding onto his arms, and Darren was holding onto his legs, with Darren walking backwards, his vision blocked.

  “Be careful,” Victoria said. She felt like his mother. Crap. That wasn’t the best thing to be feeling right now, but whatever.

  He knew what to do. He had more experience with this than she did, in any case. “Just make sure you tell me what to avoid,” he replied.

  And she did. There was a thick silence between them, save for the occasional “be careful” or the order to move to the left or the right. He was trying to avoid the trees. He’d parked the car as close to her as he could, but he was still some feet off, and he wasn’t really thinking about what he’d have to walk past when he parked it. She yelped when he almost hit his leg on a patch of stone, but he avoided it. Narrowly. Great.

  This was not a good start. There were only a few more steps for them to go before they reached the car, though, and it wasn’t that difficult any longer. Even still, Victoria’s arms were starting to feel heavy.

  Luckily, they were able to make their way to the car, as difficult as it was for them to keep going. She wasn’t sure that it was actually difficult for Darren, though. Still, her eyes were focused on him, making sure that there was nothing Darren was at risk of crashing into.

  “So are we taking him to the trunk, or...?” Her voice came out too loud in
the quiet morning air. Their feet crunched along the gravel, especially when they stopped, the heels of their feet catching on the ground.

  Darren didn’t reply for a few moments, and all that did was make Victoria feel weird about everything. They continued on in silence for a couple of seconds before Darren turned his neck at a weird angle. Victoria had no idea what he was doing, but then she realized: he was looking behind him to check…something, and then he was looking to her because he had something to say to her about it.

  His hands adjusted their hold on the guy’s arms, and that was when Victoria realized that they were both having a hard time holding onto him. Victoria’s issues with it were almost definitely related to strength; Victoria didn’t think that that was the case with Darren. It wasn’t. He was trying to hold onto the guy with one arm, his other hand going to touch the car as he tried to wrench open the trunk.