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It had taken all his rhetorical skill to keep his parents from racing to Laughlin upon word he’d been shot. His mother in particular had been frantic, even while speaking directly to him and hearing him tell her he was fine. Jay had been shot a couple years earlier, and Zach was pretty sure she was thinking about that. But Jay had been in much worse shape—he’d been closer to death and had lost a kidney to the experience. In comparison, Zach’s wound wasn’t much more than a scratch.
Part of him wanted his mommy, no lie. But it just seemed so ...busyto have his parents here, and have his recovery be the way they met Lyra. It was tangled up weird in his head. But he’d managed to hold Mom off by telling her he was being very well cared for already, by Lyra. And that was no lie, either.
She’d been like a mama bear since he’d been released from the clinic the day before. She’d driven him to her house and installed him in her bed. Apparently, he was never going to spend a night in the Bulls’ rental. And he was totally fine with that.
Relenting now, Zach quietly watched her finish changing his bandage. He’d balked at being wrapped in gauze again, so she was taping the thick pads down—which, frankly was going to suck when the tape came up and took the hair on his belly with it. He wished he’d thought that out a little more thoroughly.
The exit wound was about the size of a dime, so it was covered with a large band-aid. Up front, though, the doc had opened him up there, checking for internal damage and sewing up his liver, so he had a long incision about two inches above his right hip, starting about two inches in from his side and taking up most of the real estate from there to his belly button. Which was where the hair was. Yeah, he hadn’t thought the tape thing out far enough.
The nicked liver accounted for most of the blood loss, which was, according to the doctor, the most serious aspect of the injury. Livers were big bleeders, apparently. Zach could attest to that; the way he’d bled had freaked him the fuck out—and everybody else, too. They’d stopped on the way for a box of maxi-pads; those fuckers could absorb a lot.
Having been out of commission for the whole of the aftermath, and in a not especially reliable state of consciousness, Zach remembered that scene at Wash Duggar’s house almost like a particularly vivid dream. Once Caleb had cobbled together his first bandage from the first-aid kits in a few of their packs, Zach had said he thought he was okay, that he very much did not want to wind up handcuffed to a bed in an Idaho hospital, and more than that, he did not want anybody leaving the scene on account of him until their mess was handled. So they’d set him up in the passenger seat of the Dragons’ van, reclined to the position that got as close to bearable as possible, and went back to work. From that point on, he had only what he heard the others talking about, the little he could see from the side mirror, and whatever anybody bothered to come over and tell him directly.
Most of what he knew, in other words, came after the fact, from Cooper, who’d talked a mile a minute almost the entire ride back to Nevada, like he was afraid Zach would die if he even took too long a breath.
Zach had always liked Cooper; he was funny and irreverent, he liked to have a good time, and he was just ... cool. He treated the club kids like people, always willing to talk to them, give them gentle shit, ask what they were into. The kind of guy a boy who wanted to be a Bull would admire. Once he was in the club, he saw that Coop’s irreverence sometimes stirred up unnecessary trouble, but never anything really shitty. He enjoyed bantering, and arguing, and he usually needed a minute to get used to new ideas—like, say, a patch who was gay—but he wasn’t an asshole.
Zach had never considered Coop a leader, however. When Coop had, immediately upon hearing that there might be a second charter, called out his desire to be its president, Zach had thought it was a joke at first. Then he’d seen how Coop was a good call to lead the setup, because he was charming and outgoing and all that.
Not until they’d arrived in Laughlin to set up the charter had he seen that Coop was really a leader, not just the guy who could hype the club but the guy who could lead it. After Idaho, Zach was all in on President Cooper.
Also, he kind of loved the guy now. He’d really been worried about Zach, and he’d let it show without any gloss of irreverence. Just full-on worry and concern.
The story Cooper had told him on the ride back south: once the scene was secure and they were sure no other old ladies would fuck up their night, Coop had called Tulsa, given Eight a situation report, let him know that Duggar was alive and could be kept that way, and asked if there was any particular way Eight wanted it handled.
Eight had told him not to take the time to press Duggar. He wanted the Dragons wiped out, and he wanted it to look like a cartel hit. Zach had been too spacey to ask on the ride, and Cooper hadn’t mentioned it, but now, clearheaded, Zach wondered if Eight was trying to invent a connection between the Dragons and the bullshit that had happened at the end of last year with Hade’s Army. If so, he thought it could be ingenious.
But that was just conjecture on his part right now.
In Idaho, they’d put bullets in the heads of Duggar and the other Dragon still breathing. Then they’d found a chainsaw—Zach had seen this part in the mirror—and cut off the head of every body, including Duggar’s woman. When they got the van out of the garage, they’d lined up each body in a row on the floor and left their heads on their bellies.
Quite the initiation into the Bulls for Ben, Reed, Lonnie, Kai, and Geno. And not one of them had balked at any of it.
Eight had called back with word from Volkov; the Russian had arranged for a one-time handoff to his customer on this side of the border, so Caleb and Geno took the Dragon’s van north to finish the job. Niko had also arranged for a ‘loaner’ van for the Bulls to get their dead and wounded home.
When they stopped at the Walmart because Zach was bleeding all over the loaner van, they’re realized he wasn’t as okay as he’d advertised, and Kai had suggested the reservation clinic. And that was how Zach ended up there, about half a tank low, and how Gargoyle’s body was still there, in their tiny basement morgue.
Gargoyle. Fuck.
He hadn’t been an easy guy to get to know; kept to himself for the most part, didn’t ever really whoop it up, even at big parties, never really had a shoot-the-shit kind of conversation, as far as Zach knew. Mostly, unless he was talking about the club and their work, his conversation consisted of weird observations and random, vaguely philosophical statements that sounded like quotations—sometimes Zach recognized one and knew it for an actual quote. He wondered if any Bull in Tulsa could say theyknewGargoyle.
Gargo and Zach’s father had worked closely together for a long time, but Zach didn’t think they’d been real friends. Honestly, after Ox passed, about twenty years ago, Pop hadn’t seemed interested in having another close friend.
What Zach did know of him made his death all the more fucked up for happening now. The guy wasfromNevada; his older brother had been brother to Ben in that now-defunct MC. He’d left home and ridden east after his brother, the last of his family, had killed himself, and he’d found a home in another outlaw MC.
He’d just been named the new charter’s SAA. A role he’d wanted for years, and he’d held it for one single day. He hadn’t even had time to wear the flash.
Fuck.
“Hey. You okay? Did I hurt you?” Lyra’s hand stroked Zach’s chest.
He set his hand over hers. “You didn’t hurt me, and I’m okay. Just thinking about Gargo.”
She sighed sadly. “I didn’t really know him that well, but my dad loved him like a brother.”
“Yeah. This is a shitty way to start the charter. I hope it’s not a bad omen.”
Slipping her hand from under his, Lyra resumed stroking his chest. “I don’t think it’s a bad omen. From what you told me last night, and what I’m able to observe from the sidelines, it seems like all this didn’t have much to do with you all. It was more about Tulsa and the Dragons—and maybe Russians.”
