If Ink and his partner were around, they would’ve fired again. At her, if not him. But she wasn’t sure it would’ve stopped her. She had to get to Myles right away, before it was too late. That was all she cared about. So she lowered her gun and ran hell-bent for her porch.
She found him lying, alone, on her welcome mat. “Have you been shot?”
“Just…in the leg. I’m…okay.”
He was okay if the bullet hadn’t struck a major artery. She stepped over him to turn on the porch light and saw that he’d actually been shot twice. Once in the leg and once in the neck.
“Turn that off!” he growled, but she didn’t. She could hear a siren now. The deputy was on his way. Ink and his partner were gone. She had to stop the bleeding.
Tears streamed down her face as she ran inside to get a clean sheet she could cut up and tie around his leg. This was exactly what she’d been afraid of. She’d brought The Crew to town, and now they were hurting the people who meant the most to her.
She returned as a parade of cop cars drove down their street. The neighbors closest to the corner had been roused from sleep. They stumbled out of their house and stood in front, rubbing their eyes and yawning as they watched to see what was going on. A few began to walk over. But she ignored them. In situations like this, seconds mattered.
Using a pair of scissors, she cut the sheet and tied a strip above Myles’s thigh, where he’d been shot. The leg injury looked worse than the wound in his neck, which appeared to be a simple grazing. She was wiping the blood away when she felt his hand slip beneath her underwear and cup her ass.
“What are you doing?” She sniffled, surprised. The porch railing blocked any view of her from the oncoming cop and the neighbors, but that would change within seconds.
His teeth flashed as he gave her a lopsided grin. “Hey, stop crying. I don’t think I’d want to touch you so badly if I was about to die.”
Laughing, she pushed his hand away and laid her head on his chest. The bulletproof vest wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, but nothing had ever felt better than the tenderness he showed her by running his fingers through her hair. “It’s going to be okay,” he murmured. “I’m fine.”
And that was when she knew. He might be fighting it—might be as scared of falling in love again as she was—but he cared about her every bit as much as she cared about him.
“What the hell’s wrong with you? Run!” L.J. whispered harshly. They didn’t have time for Ink to limp along. They were dead if they didn’t get out of Pineview fast. It seemed as if the police were coming from every direction. The flashing lights on top of their cruisers made L.J. dizzy with their strobe effect.
He moved deeper into the forest, into the welcoming shelter of the trees, but the red of those lights seemed to reflect all around him, and the sirens were deafening. The cops were too close…?.
“I’m…coming,” Ink gasped, but he wasn’t making great progress, and L.J. didn’t want to wait. Why should he? Ink was nothing but a crazy old gimp. The heartless son of a bitch had dragged him into some deep shit, and now it was all going wrong, just as he’d known it would.
Ink could go down for it alone. No way would L.J. be caught with him, not if he could help it.
Once he’d made that decision, L.J.’s path seemed so ridiculously obvious he almost couldn’t believe he hadn’t broken away from Ink sooner. He’d leave his old cellie; Ink would never know where he’d gone. Then he wouldn’t be tied to this nightmare, this…this violent nut job. After the gunfight that had just occurred, Ink wouldn’t make it till morning before they dragged his ass off to jail.
Picking up speed, L.J. put more distance between them. But it wasn’t that much easier for him to run. He’d been shot in the left shoulder. He had no idea how bad his injury was, but he knew it hurt more than anything he’d ever experienced before. Pain radiated through his whole chest, and blood flowed down the front of his shirt, causing the fabric to stick to him. With his luck, he’d lose too much blood and be unable to continue moving at all. Then Ink would catch up and kill him for trying to get away. He was already making guttural threats as loudly as he dared.
“You leave me behind, you little prick, and I’ll kill you. I swear to God I will. If I have to hunt you across the entire country, I’ll be there someday when you least expect it.”
Those words terrified L.J., which only made him run faster. He’d seen what Ink could do, how casually and carelessly he killed whoever stood in his way. Ink was so twisted he made L.J., who’d always been the badass of his neighborhood, feel like a choirboy.
He wanted to turn around and scream, “You can eat shit and die, sucker!” and continue charging through the forest. But as they left the highway behind, with all those headlights zipping past, it was getting too dark to see. There was no telling what he might run or fall into; his legs were already wobbling.
Besides all that, Ink had the keys to the truck, and the truck was an absolute necessity. They couldn’t escape on foot. Even if the cops didn’t find them, they couldn’t travel fast enough, wouldn’t have enough food and water to reach a safe place, especially with him bleeding all over. It wasn’t as if they could stumble into a gas station and ask to use the bathroom so he could clean up, or go to a hospital. Their future well-being hung on getting to the truck before the police discovered it, and driving to their cabin where they’d have the privacy to recuperate and live until everything went back to normal.
Ink had him again. If he kept running, he’d probably die in the forest. Or the police would find him and send him back to prison. His only real hope was to head to the truck with Ink and try to reach the cabin.
Slowing to a stop, he bent over to catch his breath. The air rattled painfully in his lungs, and his heart pounded. It seemed to vibrate through his entire body, which shook uncontrollably.
“What the…hell were…you thinking?” Ink said as he came scraping up from behind. “You thought…you could…leave…my ass?”
He’d been thinking he’d risk almost anything to do just that. But this was not the time. “I wanted—” he dragged some air into his lungs “—to get farther…from the…the cops.” He felt for the hole in his shoulder, found a small circle below his collarbone. “I’ve been…shot. Don’t know how long…I’ll be able to…keep running.”
Ink was gasping, too, but this seemed to pacify him. “You were…hit? Where?”
“Shoulder.”
Ink gave no indication whether that mattered to him or not. He grabbed L.J. by the back of the shirt and shoved him forward. “We have…to keep moving.”
Dizziness threatened to overwhelm L.J. Even worse, the darkness of the surrounding forest suddenly seemed too forbidding, too impenetrable. He felt as if his feet were five times their normal size. He could hardly move. He wanted to lie down, to somehow rid himself of the anvil crushing his chest.
“Do you…know where…we’re at?” Because he didn’t. He couldn’t remember. He could only feel the pain.
“Yeah. Truck’s not…far,” Ink said, “Get going,” and gave him another push.
It was a nine millimeter, not the most powerful gun around, but that was the best Rex’s friend could do on such short notice. And it could certainly be lethal, especially at close range. A nine millimeter wasn’t going to stop someone as big as Horse, not unless Virgil hit him in just the right place. And it wouldn’t be worth much if he wound up facing an army.
As he drove the car he’d rented at the airport past Horse’s illegal club on sixtieth and Vermont, Virgil hoped he wouldn’t have to confront The Crew en masse, but it didn’t look promising. Although he’d hoped to arrive early, before the nightly activities really got under way, he’d spent too long getting here. He’d had to pick up the car, rendezvous with Rex’s friend, who’d taken him to meet another friend, and buy the gun. Then he’d messed around trying to get a silencer, to no avail. And after that, he’d had an hour’s drive on freeways that were almost as congested at night as they were during the day.
Already the club was packed. Cars, trucks and motorcycles lined both sides of the street; groups, mostly men with a few hookers thrown in, congregated on the sidewalks, some smoking weed, some buying harder drugs. Inside, he knew he’d find rooms where these men could take the girls for just about any activity they chose, including a gang bang. There’d be slot machines and other types of gambling, gun sales, whatever a guy could want.
He’d called Rex a few minutes ago, reaching him as he was going into the hospital, and gotten Mona’s number. She was still cliqued up with The Crew, still one of them. But she liked Rex, and Rex trusted her. Virgil hoped to God he could trust her, too, because she’d agreed to be his eyes and ears tonight. According to her last text, he’d beaten her to the club, but when she eventually showed up she was supposed to scope out the place, report on who was inside, who else they were expecting, what they were doing, where Horse was and when Virgil
