Page 103 of Off the Rails

“I’m Tess, okay? I’m going to be by your side all night.”

Blade slid into the front seat, leaving Cyrus to take the wheel and Nash to slide in next to me.

She was bigger than Blade, broader, which meant for a tighter squeeze. But her energy was calmed, her face less pierced. Maybe she would be more comforting than terrifying.

“Where can we take her?” I met Cyrus’ eyes in the rearview mirror.

Cyrus spoke through gritted teeth, “Lucky Strike.”

58

BLADE

The lady was practically a zombie as we shuttled her through the shadowy autobody shop. Still, Tess tried to coax her with every step. “Come on, just a few more steps. We’re going to take care of you.”

“Dom!” Cyrus shouted, charging past the late-shift mechanics and toward the glass-encased back office.

Clearly, they’d gotten the memo on who we were since our last visit — the Violence bikers who staffed this place would have pounced on any other intruder. But none of them dared try it with us.

Or maybe they just know not to fuck with the terrified woman we’re rushing in.

She was really shaking like a leaf as we marched past the Maseratis and Porsches that filled the shop. She hadn’t said an intelligible word since we stepped into the car, and if Tess wasn’t enough to calm her, I wasn’t sure that any of us would be.

But hopefully Dom knew what to do. After all, damsels-in-distress were much more their thing than ours.

Speak of the devil.

The office door swung open just as we reached the back of the shop, revealing Dom in an untucked, black dress shirt, slicking back her hair. Through the doorway behind her, I could see the Doctor and that pretty little red head of theirs.

“What’s going on?” As her stern gaze flicked from us to the woman, I could see her piecing it together.

One of these things is not like the others…

“Try asking her,” Cyrus pulled the lady forward, but her quivering only got worse as she stood under Dom’s gaze.

“Jesus Christ, you don’t need to be such a savage about it,” the doctor muttered, shouldering her way through the door. Her gaze softened as it shifted from Cyrus down to the stray we’d picked up. “Hi, ma’am. My name’s Doctor Callahan, but you can call me Leo. You look pretty bruised up. Mind telling me what happened?”

But as Leo held a hand out to shake hers, the woman flinched back, wincing as she crashed back against the wall that was Cyrus.

Tess stepped past Cy, fixing the woman with a soft smile. “Come on, they’re just here to help. You don’t have to talk, but let’s have the doctor take a look, yeah?”

Reluctantly, the woman followed Tess into the office where the redhead was already clearing off a work station for the doctor. Leo followed behind them, keeping a careful distance from the flighty woman.

As they got to work, Cy, Nash, and I were left alone with Dom outside the office. Dom closed the door slightly — probably for privacy, but it didn’t stop the lurch in my stomach. I craned my neck to peer past her, unhappy to have my Trinket out of my sight.

“Who is she?” Dom frowned.

“No clue,” Cy grumbled. “She’s calling herself Jane. We picked her up outside of Velvet Paradise after chasing off the asshole who did this to her.”

“ID on him?” Dom raised a brow.

“Too dark to make much out. He was running for the hills before we got close enough to really see him.”

“She’s not talking either,” Nash pointed past the doorway with her chin. It was kind of eerie, really. Even from outside of the office, I could still hear the murmured prayers under her breath, half-intelligible pleas to god that she was chanting like a fucking mantra.

And the way she was looking at Tess — bug-eyed and panicked. Yet she still listened to her? Maybe it was just that Tess looked less scary than me, but none of this sat right with me.

“Do you think she’s been trained?” Dom glanced back into the office.