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“It always ends this way,” I say. He nods and drops his gun to the asphalt. “But it doesn’t have to,” I say. “Call off your men and go home. Give me your word you’ll reach out and set a time for a meet. You do that, and I put my gun back in my pocket.”
A few shots ring out down below and I say, “You better decide quickly.”
“You’d trust me?”
“We’re enemies, Adderall,” I say, “but that just puts us on opposite sides. You give me your word and I’ll take you at it.”
He nods. “Done.”
Then, he turns around and starts shouting down at the men below. Just in case, I walk to the edge to make it clear I have a gun in my hand and Adderall does not.
It takes a surprisingly short time for people to stop fighting. Shotgun looks up at Adderall and says, “You take your men to Hunt Memorial. We’ll be at Presbyterian.”
And that’s that. Soon, the Coyotes head to one hospital with their wounded and we head to another with ours. The only exception is that we send a member away with guns our members fired to get rid of them. When Shotgun takes mine, he gives me a nod.
That’s the Ridge Devils’ equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor.
CHAPTER NINE
Megan
“Jonah!” I cry as I see him smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk outside of the hospital emergency room. He turns as I run to him and soon my arms are around him. He holds me tightly as I cling to him and then pull back and beat at his chest. “What the hell are you thinking? What the hell are you thinking?” I guess repeating the same thing twice doesn’t have the effect I would like for it to have but all I knew was there were Ridge Devils in the emergency room. I guess because it represents the sum of all my fears, I just assume one of them is Jonah.
“Where’s Gilly?” he asks.
I slap him across the face. “Oh, now you give a shit about your daughter? Now, for Christ’s sake?”
I go to slap him again and he catches my wrist in a vise-like grip. “You get the punches and you get that one slap,” he says, “but that’s it. Your words, Megan. You use your words but don’t raise a hand to me again.”
His voice is dark and as freaked out as I am, I can’t deny it’s sexy as hell. Still, the darkness demands immediate compliance and I say, “Yes, Daddy.”
“Where’s Gilly?”
“She’s with Cayla at Shotgun’s house,” I reply. He nods and something occurs to me. “Oh God, is Shotgun okay?”
“He’s fine,” Jonah says, “two prospects are down. One might lose his leg. The other one is going to be fine but he’ll have a pretty damned impressive scar on his cheek.”
I stare at him defiantly for a moment but then the anger breaks and I throw my arms around him again, weeping like an idiot. “I was so scared,” I say, “I was so scared. I was…”
He holds me and gently strokes my hair. Finally, he speaks. “Tell me something Megan. What would you have done if I’d been killed?”
I pull back and fight away the tears. It’s kind of strange that this is about the hundredth time today I’ve been asked that question. This is the first time, though, that I’m not the one doing the asking. It is also the first time I have had the answer. “I would raise Gilly as my own and teach her that her father died doing what he thought was right.” He looks at me and I can see the wonder on his face. “That doesn’t mean you’re not an asshole for almost getting yourself killed.”
“Oh, I’m an asshole,” he says with a smile, “and you don’t know the half of it.”
I can’t help but smile but I say, “You might charm me with that smile, Jonah, but don’t think for a second you’re not going to be paying for this for a very long time.”
“What if they tried to keep you from raising Gilly?” he asks.
I feel my eyes narrow and I can hear the anger in my voice as I say, “I’ll stand against every God damned Ridge Devil in the world before I’ll let them take her away.”
He chuckles and says, “I didn’t mean them. All my brothers would stand in front of you so you and take all the bullets before they got to you. What I mean is, what if social services or something wanted to take her away.”
“Nobody will ever take Gilly away from me,” I say. I think my voice is just as dark as his sometimes gets.
“What if we make sure?”
“What do you mean? How?”
