Chapter 20 Cracked
Nell
As my body screamed in pain and the sun continued to fry me, there were only two things on my mind, well three.
The first was that I kept hoping Johnny wouldn’t get up and come for me.
I couldn’t even crawl away with my leg the way it was.
The second was that I didn’t want to die lying in the dirt where I could see a scorpion crawling not too far away.
This area had Arizona Bark Scorpions and their venom was no joke.
It would be just my luck to survive being run over by a rapist’s motorcycle only to end up dying at the fangs of a fucking tiny asshole of a scorpion.
Then again, the sun might actually fry me first. The third thing on my mind was how betrayed I felt.
Rationally, I knew that Baffle, the VP of the Kings of Anarchy’s New Mexico chapter, had a job to do outside of being my husband, Rick.
Despite it having been Roxy who asked for help, I knew what his text meant when he said there were devils.
The other side of my brain, the one obviously attached to my stupid heart, felt an entirely different way about it. That was the part who felt betrayed.
I was lying in the dirt with a broken leg, staring down a scorpion who plotted my demise, and baking under the sun that kept getting closer instead of setting like it was supposed to.
I was the woman in his life in need of help, and my husband had run off to save some bitch who had tricked him into sex years ago and pretended to be his ol’ lady with everyone who stood still long enough to hear her tell her lies.
Because of her connections to the club and the fact that she cried, “mean bikers are here to get me,” he couldn’t ignore it.
Why did he have to be the one to go?
Fuck him.
“Fuck you, too!” I yelled at the scorpion who took a few steps closer. Honestly, I was in no shape to pick a fight with a bug, especially since I couldn’t see if he had backup coming in hot behind me. I shivered at the thought of what I couldn’t see. My eyes bounced back to Johnny.
Was his hand in the same place or had it moved?
Fucking hell, I was going crazy. I didn’t think the asshole was still breathing.
Yay me and my perfect aim, I supposed. Still, my fight or flight response kept kicking me into adrenaline overload signaling that I needed to get the hell out of there, but my busted leg said, no. And I laid there yelling at a fucking scorpion.
“Don’t you fucking do it! Don’t you… You motherfucker! You took another step. I promise you, I will flatten your ass just like I did Johnny ‘Slicer’ Culver over there. Do you really want to be that loser?”
The scorpion paused and shuffled back a step. I was pretty sure I was getting through to it when I heard a motor.
“Help!” I screamed, then realized the motor was loud as fuck and whoever was riding in or on whatever made that fucking noise probably couldn’t hear me.
As a bonus, the scorpion scrambled forward again.
“HELP! I screamed louder in the hopes that it would run away to bother someone else. Maybe it could go attack Johnny just to be sure he wasn’t playing possum over there.
Either way, I was glad it took my warning about ending up like Johnny seriously.
A UTV came into sight just behind my shoulder, though I didn’t want to turn too far away from the scorpion now that I had it on the run.
“NELL!” I heard Angel yell.
“Oh, thank fuck. Someone found me before…”
“Nell, are you okay?”
“Careful!” I managed to call out when I remembered Johnny was an evil man and now Angel and Brady were headed toward me with their backs to him. Brady branched off in that direction and Angel headed in mine.
“Oh, Nell! What happened? Why did you leave, and without your phone?” She held my missing cell phone up in her hands. Damn. That must have been what fell and slid across the floor earlier. If only I hadn’t been so mad that I refused to look for whatever had made the noise.
“Slipped out of my bag, I think.” I turned away from my sister-in-law to get eyes back on the damn scorpion. “Help me up. Scorpion keeps trying to come eat me for dinner, the bastard.”
Angel started to giggle but then shook her head. “I don’t think I should move you. Did you fall from the motorcycle?”
“God, no!” I twisted my head enough to look at her.
“I was walking home and that bastard was lying in wait. He tried to run me over, but I threw a rock at his head and he fell to the ground, but his demon Harley kept coming for me. I dove to get out of the way but…” I stupidly tried to sit myself upright and realized too late that it made everything hurt too damn much.
“Stop moving!” Brady called out. I wasn’t sure when he made his way back over to us, but before I had time to process, he turned to Angel and held out his cell phone. “Call Sammy. I can’t get ahold of Baffle.”
Angel went to work making the call as he asked while he took my phone from her, probably to try Baffle again, only to quickly realize the damn thing was dead.
“Sammy is coming with a man named Jester and a murder van.”
“A what?” I screeched.
Angel shrugged her shoulders as her eyes widened. She was clearly just as terrified of that description as I was.
“She means the van Jester uses when a cleanup on the side of the road is needed.” Brady tipped his head back toward Johnny.
“Is he dead?” I asked.
“Yeah, you nailed him good, Nell.”
I smiled at that and then I lost the fight against the pain, or maybe dehydration, and passed the fuck out. Hopefully, the scorpion didn’t take advantage before they got me out of there.