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“Pretty sure you need two eyes too, so you might want to keep 'em open, baby girl,” he grunted as a pothole sent him bouncing a little too high in his seat. “How much longer?”
“Not long.”
This was what we did. Gave each other shit. It was becoming a habit of sorts. The more uncomfortable the situation, the heavier we dished it out. And, well, right now we were fucked.Himespecially.
I needed to stay awake. It was just a few more miles before we reached the Renegades’ compound outside the city limits. It wasn’t the smartest move for me to be making at the moment, especially with a newcomer in tow. The boys loved fresh meat. And that wasn’t a good thing. But I didn’t have much of a choice, seeing as pretty boy was bleeding out from a knife wound he took for me. Not that I asked him to do it. But that was an argument for another day.
Point was we couldn’t chance a hospital, not with those fuckers having every pig and their mother on the payroll. It was bad enough that I chanced stopping by my storage unit and grabbing my “go” bag and whatever spare clothes and cash I could carry. Dropping into a clinic now would be like waving a white flag and lying down on the floor till they got there.
So this was it. My Hail Mary move.
The Surgeon owed me a favor—several if I was being petty. Though I knew better than to try. Fingers crossed the sick bastard didn’t suffer from a convenient bout of short-term memory. Because I was no Florence Nightingale.Sure, I could throw in a few stitches and do my best to stave off infection. But piecing together intestines was out of my league.
There was a real possibility he’d die. And I didn’t know how to feel about that…
“Hey, dollface...?” Connor drew my attention away from those dark thoughts and back to him.
“Yeah?”
“Where we headed?”
The real question was if I was getting him help. He didn’t want to ask it. But I could tell that’s what was going through hishead. Was I getting him help or just taking him somewhere to die…
Couldn’t blame him. Roles reversed, I’d be wondering the same thing too.
“To see a friend…”
“Didn’t think you had any.” He forced a grin on his face. He was hurting, way more than he was letting on, and for some reason that bothered me.
“Yeah, well, stop thinking so hard and you might just live long enough for me to get us there.”
Fifteen minutes and several broken speed limits later, we were pulling up to a nondescript brick building in the middle of nowhere. Anyone who didn’t know better would assume it was an abandoned prison or maybe a former looney bin—they wouldn’t be far off.
But the bars on the windows and electric fences were as much for keeping people out as it was for keeping 'em in. It all depended on the type you happened to be.
If only Connor MacCullagh knew the sort of business I really dealt in, the sort of men I calledfriends… 'Cause if he did, I was pretty certain he wouldn’t be looking at me with those tiny green hearts in his eyes.
I jumped out of the car before it came to a full stop on the gravel driveway and rushed around the hood to the passenger side, tugging the door open and grabbing Connor by the shoulder. Almost like he was afraid I might break, he leaned more on the frame than on me as he slowly pushed to his feet. His white t-shirt was now stained a deep red, his hand stillclutching the shredded meat of his abdomen tight against his body.
The longer I looked, the more I wondered how the fuck he hadn’t passed out yet.
Two tentative steps brought us to the large double doors. I didn’t bother knocking. There was no point. They already knew we were here. It was just a matter of if they would let us in or not. A quick scan of the doorframe had my glare narrowing in on the blinking light of the camera, making sure they got a clear view of my face.
When static crackled over the intercom, and a familiar voice came over, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. “Danica Lynn Rossi, what brings a pretty little thing like you to our neck of the woods?”
Casper. At least that’s what they called him. Fuck if I could tell you any of these bastards real names as readily as they could list off mine.
“Don’t really have time for your games right now, Cas. Get the Surgeon.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Thought you knew better than to come to our doorstep and make demands—no matter how great those tits are looking. Theyarelooking great by the way.”
Connor stiffened beside me, his jaw clenching in a way that told me it had nothing to do with the pain and everything to do with the guy on the other side of the microphone. Wasn’t sure what kind of delusions he was suffering from. No one had a claim on me except me. But his misplaced jealousy could be addressed at a later date. His current blood loss? Not so much.
“Fuck this. Dani, let’s go,” Connor hissed under his breath as he tried to steer me back towards the car.But in his condition, he wasn’t gonna make it far without me, so I dug a heel into the dirt and held my ground.
Then I glared up at the ass clown I now knew was watching me from his chair in a room full of military-style surveillance equipment. “Cas, open the goddamn door. We both know you owe me. Do this, and we can call it even. Maybe I’ll even let ya’ll call in a freebie at a later date. No strings attach?—”
A loud buzzer cut me off and the metal doors swung open, welcoming us in like a haunted mansion in ona those horror flicks. Even though it had been a few years, I didn’t expect any less. The Renegades were always a little over-the-top dramatic, a description that sounded a lot nicer than the men themselves. While I toed the line between right and wrong, depending on my mood, these guys jumped over the far end and landed on sick and twisted. But cash was cash, and something we had in common was our love for the green stuff.
