“Hey.” I put my hand on her arm. “Look at me.”
She looked. Her eyes were wide, unfocused. Then they sharpened, came back to the present, and dropped to my shoulder.
“You’re bleeding.” Her voice cracked on the second word.
I looked down. The round had opened a line across the top of my left shoulder, three inches long, shallow enough that the muscle underneath was intact. Bleeding but manageable. I’d had worse from training exercises that went sideways.
“Graze,” I said. “It’s nothing.”
“But…you’rebleeding.” She said it again, harder, like the repetition was the thing keeping her tethered. Her hand came up toward the wound and stopped, her fingers trembling so badly she curled them into her palm.
I caught her wrist. Gentle, steady. Held it until her eyes came up to mine.
“I’m fine. Tell me what’s going on here.”
She pulled her hand back. “I don’t know what...”
“Macy.” I kept my voice level. “That was a targeted drive-by. Automatic weapon, moving vehicle, a burst pattern aimed at this building. That’s not random, not a robbery, and not someone with a grudge against flower arrangements. Who’s after you?”
She stared at me. Behind the shock and the glass dust and the cut on her arm, she was deciding what to tell me. The calculation was fast, practiced, a split-second assessment.
“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she said.
“You can’t handle an automatic weapon.”
“I have a plan. I was already...” She stopped. Pressed her lips together. I saw the almost. The edge of whatever she’d been about to say before the training kicked in and shut it down.
“You were already what?” I said. “Packing? Running?”
She didn’t answer. Her jaw tightened and her eyes went bright and the fight was visible in her, the refusal to let anyone in, the discipline that had kept her alive this long telling her to shut up, move, trust no one.
“I can handle this,” she said again. Firmer now. Like she was convincing herself as much as me.
“Maybe you can.” I looked at the shop. The blown-out windows, the destroyed cooler, the petals and glass and water covering the floor. A round had punched through the wall six inches from where her head had been. “But you’re not going to handle it from here. Not alone, not today.”
“I don’t need...”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
The words came out flat and final. A fact, the same way a wall is a fact. She could argue with it. She couldn’t move it.
She looked at me for a long time. The resistance fought the exhaustion which in turn showed the terror. The woman who’d been carrying whatever this is alone was battling the reality that alone had just stopped working.
“Where,” she said quietly.
“The Angels’ compound. Every man in that building is ex-military. Rangers, Delta, Special Ops, Army intel. We’ve got walls, we’ve got gates, and we’ve got eight men who’ve been trained for exactly this kind of situation. Nobody is getting to you there.”
She closed her eyes. Opened them. Nodded once, sharp, like giving herself permission.
I let her grab her bag, got her out the back, through the hallway and down the steps to the alley. My bike was at the curb out front, so we walked around the building, staying close to the wall, and I scanned the street before I moved her to it. Main Street was in chaos. People on the sidewalk, a man on his phone calling the sheriff, Rosie standing in the doorway of the diner with her hand over her mouth. The blown-out windows of The Flower Boutique gaped like open wounds.
I swung onto the bike. Kicked the engine over.
“Get on. We’ll call the Sheriff later.”
She climbed on behind me. Her arms came around my waist and locked, her hands gripping the front of my shirt, and I felt her press her forehead between my shoulder blades. The contact was total, her whole body against my back, holding on with the desperation of a woman who’d spent all that time holding on to nothing but herself.
I pulled out of Main Street and hit the highway. The road opened up, the mountains rising on both sides, and her arms tightened around me with every mile. Her fingers dug into the fabric above my ribs. Her knees pressed against my thighs. Her breathing was fast at first, then slowing, evening out, her body finding rhythm with the bike, the surrender that happens when you stop fighting the motion and let it carry her.
