Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
“She was partying at the clubhouse the other night. I guess he figured she’d done a good job stitching him up at the prison. And that she’s probably seen a lot of nasty shank and shiv injuries over the years.”
“He’s in good hands. He’ll be up and demanding some pretty thing come and give him a sponge bath in no time.”
“Hope you’re right,” I agreed when Slash, Saint, and Detroit moved back outside with Sway in tow.
Blood stained his hands and his pants and I couldn’t help but wonder how bad the backseat was saturated.
But there was no time for that.
“Talk,” Slash demanded, looking between the two of us.
“There was a… negotiation,” Sway started. “Everything was… under control. But then some animal or something snapped a twig somewhere, and all hell broke loose.”
“They thought you brought more guys,” Slash guessed.
“Seems like it. We were all fighting. I heard Raff howl in pain. I guess when he got stabbed. Then there was a gunshot,” Sway said, turning to me.
So everyone else did too.
“And their guy was down. And everyone scrambled.”
“He dead?” Slash asked.
“I think so,” I said, thinking about how still his chest had been even before he crashed down. “But I didn’t shoot him.”
“What do you mean you didn’t shoot him?” Sway asked, stiffening.
“It wasn’t me. He was behind me. Taking aim, from the looks of things.”
“If you didn’t shoot him, who did?” Slash asked.
“There was a woman…”
CHAPTER FOUR
Dylan
“Shit, shit, shit,” I gasped, weaving through the trees as the head and taillights of the cars and bikes disappeared in opposite directions.
I’d only stood there a moment longer than everyone else, my gaze pinned on the body on the ground, watching his chest for movement.
It never came.
I’d killed him.
And my gun didn’t have a silencer.
We were in the middle of nowhere, sure.
But someone would have heard. They could have called it in.
I had to go.
My blood turned to mercury—heavy and cold.
My heart hammered against my ribcage like a caged bird.
I reached my bike, threw on my helmet, turned over the engine, and got the hell out of there.
My belly bottomed out at the breakneck speed and the sharp curves of the road.
My blood was rushing through my ears too loudly to even hear if sirens were coming, if they were after me.
I wanted to speed all the way back to my apartment building, but forced myself to slow, then pull off the road.
I walked my bike deeper off the road until it couldn’t be seen before taking off on foot.
My periphery bled into a gray smudge, leaving only the needle-point focus of what was just ahead.
The creek.
The rush of the water against the rocks sent a spray of moisture across my face.
My lungs felt like they were trying to draw breath through a narrow glass straw—shallow, sharp, and never enough.
I tried to take a few steadying breaths, to calm myself down.
My doctor’s words were in my ear.
Stress can aggravate symptoms.
And I didn’t have my testing kit on me.
No.
I had to stop.
I was fine.
There was no reason to assume my sugar was off-kilter. It was just adrenaline. Just shock and fear and uncertainty.
I popped the magazine out of my gun and tucked it into my back pocket.
I might want to get rid of the gun, but I didn’t want to take any chances that some kid or dumb teen might find it. The water wasn’t much more than three or four feet deep. And while this was a more rural spot where people didn’t frequent, it was running water and it could possibly carry the gun down toward one of the popular swimming holes.
I carefully rubbed the muzzle of the gun with my shirt, then grabbed it with the material so I could use another swatch of my shirt to scrub any other fingerprints from the metal.
Finished, I reached down, grabbing a few leaves to hold the gun with, then flung it with everything I had into the water.
Finished with that, I walked back through the woods, got on my bike, and headed back out. At a slower pace. Trying not to look like someone who’d just committed a crime.
A murder.
It wasn’t the first body on my conscience.
But it was the first body I’d created when I didn’t have another choice, when I wasn’t in serious, immediate danger.
I didn’t have to kill him.
He wasn’t aiming at me.
But he was aiming at someone else.
Someone who didn’t even know some asshole had snuck up behind him while he was fighting with someone else.
It wasn’t that I regretted it.
I had many reasons to hate those men.
In fact, my plans involved all of those assholes being dead, buried, not missed, and utterly forgotten.
I planned to be careful and strategic about it, though. To have a plan for the body, for the gun, for everything involved with it, so there was no chance anything pointed back to me.