The blood goes out of my hands.
I'm already running back to my bike before the rest of the brothers turn their heads.
* * *
The ride from the south gate to the bunkhouse is about sixty seconds.
The longest sixty seconds of my fucking life.
My hand is wide open on the throttle. The engine is screaming. The gravel under my tires is going by in a streak that the corner of my eye can't track.
The radio is silent. Then Phantom yelling, then nothing, then silence.
My teeth are locked. My knuckles on the throttle are white. The wind is in my eyes and I'm not blinking.
I left her there.
I left her in a building with women and kids and one man on the porch, and now Banshee said three operators at the back fence.
That means they're already through. Motherfucker!
The bunkhouse comes up around the bend.
The front door is off its hinges.
Phantom is off his bike before I get mine stopped. Up the porch steps in three strides. Through the doorframe.
I'm one step behind him.
Phantom's voice from inside. "Roan. Get on Banshee. Now."
Roan's voice from outside on the porch, already with Banshee. "Already on him, Prez. He's breathin'."
I come through the broken doorway.
The kitchen.
I've seen kitchens like this. Not in this country.
The smell hits first.
Gunpowder, hot copper, the sour edge of fear. A plastic horse is broken on the floor by the table.
Marlena on the floor with Dakota over her, both hands pressed into her step-mother's chest.
Dakota's face is wet. Marlena's sundress is red under her cardigan.
Thunder on the kitchen floor against the table. Bex on her knees over him with her pregnant belly pressed against the side of his thigh and her hands buried in his lower abdomen. The blood is coming up through her fingers.
Diesel under Grace's hands by the rug.
Grace has Cal and Waylon on the rug next to her and she's working the dog one-handed while Cal cries into Waylon's shoulder.
And Hadley.
Hadley on the floor next to Marlena.
Blood in her hair on the left side. Blood across the front of my t-shirt where she's been pressing into Marlena. Her hands red to the wrists.
