The man who’d cut Dereck’s ropes peeled back his shirt and grunted, “He needs medical, stat. And we need to find out how many others we have down and need attention.”
The man looked at me. “We have a doctor and my wife Charleigh in an ambulance a mile away. Prepared to do surgery. He’ll be fine. I promise you.”
He and another man rolled Dereck over and picked him up, one holding him under the shoulders and another by the ankles.
While tremors rocked through me.
Shame and relief and a love so distinct.
My body juddered. Shaking uncontrollably.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” Silas’s promise wrapped me in a dream.
“She’s in shock.” An unknown voice curled through the disorder, words warbled as they touched my ears.
Silas was suddenly on his knees in front of me. Big hands framing my jaw and forcing me to look at him. I could only see him through one eye, my entire face throbbing.
All of me was throbbing really.
My body and my heart and my soul.
“You’re going to be fine, Brinley. I’m right here. Right here.”
A sob finally cracked. Violent in its horror.
And I was being swept up, cradled in his arms, his stride firm and strong as he carried me from the room and down a long hall.
Stepping over bodies, muttering the whole time, “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
He didn’t stop as he edged through a rambling, darkened room before we were outside.
Surrounded by the deepest, darkest night.
Shouts echoed around us. Organized mayhem as Crows ran through the carnage, piling fallen bodies, liquids being spilled and dumped, no question erasing all traces of their involvement.
All evidence eradicated.
Once again, they had become soldiers the way I’d thought of them the day that man had come in the office to drag me to Kent as an offering.
Precise and efficient.
This motorcycle club so different than I imagined. Its importance hung on the horizon, tickling at the edge of my awareness and scored on my conscience.
I wanted to beg for Silas’s forgiveness, but I couldn’t do anything but cling to his neck as he strode with me across a vast lawn. My eyes were wide with shock as I peered over his shoulder.
At the fire that suddenly leapt high, quick to consume that massive building.
Silas didn’t stop. He carried me into the thick of the woods and dipped us through a hole that had been cut in the fence, his feet sure and his hold strong as he angled us down an embankment and up the other side.
A second or an hour passed as I clung to him, I couldn’t discern, before I was back on his bike, planted in front of him the way he’d had me before.
Fierce, unrelenting arms surrounded me as he gripped onto the handlebars and rode us out of the labyrinth of the twisting, twining forest.
No words were said except for the whispers of his breath that he released into my temple as we rode.
He took the roads like a puzzle. Riding further south into California before he wound around and headed north again.
He didn’t slow until we crossed the border, then he pulled off onto a rugged, worn path and weaved us back into the sanctuary of the woods.
