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I moved out into the road, holding up my good arm, waiting for the bike to slow and stop before lowering it.
It wasn't until the rider reached up to pull off their helmet and shake out their long blonde hair that I realized it wasn't one of my men. It wasn't a man at all.
It was fucking Danny.
"For chrissakes," I snapped.
"Always such a charmer," Danny grumbled, looking at me, then the bike, then back at me. "You probably shouldn't ride it unless you know how to," she suggested, shaking her head. "Maybe daddy can put some training wheels on it for you," she added.
"Just got run off the fucking road, Danny, I don't need your shit right now."
"Someone ran you off the road?" she asked, straightening, then climbing off her bike, glancing up and down the road.
"From the woods," I explained. "He came running out in front of my bike."
"Where'd they go?" she asked, moving closer.
"The woods. Took a bullet to the shoulder and ran."
"Well, at least you hit them," she said, coming to stop in front of me. "That road burn looks nasty," she told me, looking down at my hands. "It's going to burn like a motherfucker as it heals. This your first crash?" she asked, voice going a little softer, a little sweeter. But no. That didn't make sense. Danny wasn't sweet.
"Yeah." I mean, I'd taken a couple small tumbles at barely-there speeds when my father and uncles had been showing me how to ride. But this was my first time going over the handlebars, and crashing onto the ground with enough force to actually hurt myself.
I wouldn't admit this aloud, but I was freaked about the whole thing. My insides felt like they were shaking. And once the adrenaline wore off, I was pretty sure everything was going to hurt ten times worse than it did right that moment.
"This is a good helmet," she said, reaching up toward it, unfastening it, then pulling it off my head. I was too shocked to do anything but stand still as she removed it, then watch as she turned it to face me, showing the spot where I'd landed on it. There was one large dent and a shitton of scratches from where, it seemed, I'd rolled. "You'd be in intensive care right now if not for this," she added. "How's your neck?"
"Not great," I admitted. "It's my shoulder and knee I jacked up though," I admitted.
"Bad?"
"Not good."
"Hospital trip bad, or just bandages, ice, and a couple pain pills bad?" she asked, dropping my helmet, then reaching up again, her fingers teasing over the hot, sweaty skin of my neck to pull the material of my tee wide enough for her to look at the shoulder.
"I don't know," I admitted.
Her gaze lifted from my shoulder to my face. Close. So close. Close enough for me to notice little starbursts of gold in the center of her blue eyes.
There was that strange heavy sensation in my chest again, only this time I wasn't sure I could blame the accident.
"It's the adrenaline. Once it wears off, you will be able to feel how shitty it is. Or isn't." It didn't escape me that her hand was still on me, rested gently on the space between my neck and shoulder, a soft, almost reassuring pressure. "What do you—" she started, then stiffened.
If I'd blinked, I would have missed it.
One second, she was looking at me, something resembling concern in her too-pretty eyes.
The next, her gaze was on the woods, her arm was lifted, her hand was holding a gun, and she was squeezing four shots out of it before I could even grasp what was happening.
But sure enough, there was the hooded figure, coming back out of the woods a little further down than they'd been when they'd gone in.
"Jesus Christ," I hissed as I watched the bullets land, the person's body jolting with each shot before toppling, and falling backward.
"No need to rush," she said when I pulled back to move across the road. "He's dead."
"You can't know that," I insisted.
"If the two shots to the chest didn't do it, the two to the head sure as hell did," she told me, following me across the street, keeping her pace as slow as my own. "Told you," she said when we got to the body. The chest was not rising or falling.
"I can't bend down," I told her, shrugging my good shoulder, but waving toward the figure's head, needing to see who it was.
Danny squatted down next to the body, reaching for the hood, yanking it backward off their head. "Christ. He's a child," she said, looking down at the wide-eyed face of someone who couldn't have been older than twenty. "Does he look familiar?"
"No."
"Yeah, I don't recognize him either. Why the fuck would he come back? After he saw someone else pull up?" she added, shaking her head as she searched his pockets.
