8. Saint
SAINT
The SUV hit us at fifty miles an hour.
Metal screamed against metal. Avery’s side of the truck lifted, slammed down, and skidded toward a concrete barrier.
I corrected into the impact, steering with it instead of fighting. The rear spun. Tires smoked. The world narrowed to keeping Avery’s door away from the barrier. We stopped sideways across an abandoned service road.
“You hurt?”
“No.”
“Stay down.”
The dark SUV blocked the road behind us.
A pickup rolled from an alley ahead. It was the trap I suspected was coming.
The abandoned mills rose on both sides, brick walls punched through with black windows.
No workers. No traffic. Nothing between us and the river except rusted fencing and acres of broken concrete.
Whoever chose the road knew our territory.
That bothered me almost as much as the men coming out of the vehicles.
Three from the SUV. Two from the pickup. Pike wasn’t visible. I handed Avery the spare magazine from my belt.
“Hold this.”
She closed her fingers around it. “I know how to load.”
“You know how to shoot?”
“Rook taught me.”
Of course he had. I drew the backup pistol from my ankle and put it in her hand. “Safety’s off. Finger straight until you choose a target. If anybody gets past me?—”
“I shoot.”
“Center mass. Keep firing until he stops.”
Her face paled. Her grip stayed steady.
“You won’t get a second chance to be sure,” I said.
“Neither will they.”
Pride and terror hit at the same time. I kissed her once, hard. “Behind me.” I drew my pistol and called the brothers shadowing us. “Old mill service road. Two vehicles. Move.”
“Two minutes,” Mace answered.
Too fucking long.
The first shot struck our windshield. Safety glass starred but held.
I unbuckled Avery. “Back floor. Now.” She moved without argument.
I fired twice through a partially opened window, forcing the shooter behind his door. The pickup accelerated from the front.
We had armor in the panels, not enough to sit and wait while they boxed us in.
“When I open my door, get out behind me,” I said. “Concrete drainage wall on the left. Stay low and move. I’ll cover you.”
“I understand.”
“Say it.”
“Behind you. Wall. Low.”
I opened the door and fired. Avery came with me. One hand gripped the back of my cut until we reached the drainage channel.
Rounds struck concrete overhead. I pushed her into the angle where the wall met a rusted machinery base.
“Do not move.”
“Saint—”
“They want you alive. That makes me the target.”
“That isn’t comforting.”
“Wasn’t meant to be.”
I fired toward the pickup. A man dropped behind the front wheel. Somebody moved near the SUV.
I recognized Slate’s red wrist tattoo.
He ran toward the far end of the channel, drawing my line of fire away from Avery.
Too obvious. My body turned before my mind finished the thought.
Pike came over the wall behind her.
“Avery!”
She ducked as his hand grabbed for her hair. Her elbow drove into his ribs. Pike cursed and caught her shirt instead.
I fired. He dragged her against him, using her body as cover. My round cut stone near his foot.
Avery stamped on his instep, twisted and bit the hand at her shoulder. Pike hit her across the side of the head.
My world went red. I ran. Slate stepped into my path with a knife. I caught his wrist, drove the pistol into his face and heard cartilage collapse. He slashed my side as he fell. I didn’t feel a thing.
Pike hauled Avery upright. A blade flashed against her throat. One thin red line appeared beneath the steel.
“Drop it,” Pike shouted.
I stopped six feet away, but my pistol remained level.
“Gun down or she bleeds.”
Avery’s eyes held mine. She was afraid. She was also thinking, and her heel shifted between Pike’s feet.
“Gravewater’s paying extra if I deliver her breathing,” he said. “Don’t mean she has to be pretty.”
“You hurt her again—you don’t leave this road.”
Pike laughed. “That your big fucking speech?”
Avery drove her heel backward into his knee. The blade lifted a fraction.
I fired once. Pike’s body jerked. The knife fell. Avery tore free before he hit the ground.
I reached her in two strides and put myself between her and every moving thing on that road.
Slate crawled toward his weapon.
I shot the ground beside his hand. “Try it.” He froze.
Motorcycles thundered closer and only then did I turn to Avery. Blood marked her throat. My hands wanted to shake. I locked them still and checked the cut on her throat with my fingertips.
“Look at me. Did he cut you anywhere else?”
“No.”
“Head?”
“He hit me. I’m not dizzy.”
“Nauseous?”
“No.”
I checked her pupils anyway. My thumb followed the line of her jaw.
“Saint.” She caught my wrist. “I’m here.”
The control went out of my hands and she felt it. I pulled her against my chest and turned so my body still shielded hers. Mace and Riot arrived first. They secured Slate and the second shooter. Havoc came in behind them, engine roaring until he killed it beside the wreck.
“Rook’s coming,” Mace said.
“Clear the vehicles. Pike’s dead.”
Mace looked at the body. “Figured.”
Avery stepped back enough to see the blood soaking my shirt.
“You’re hurt.”
“Scratch.”
She lifted the hem before I could stop her. Slate’s knife had opened a shallow line along my ribs.
“That needs stitches.”
“Later.”
“No, now.”
The command sounded enough like Rook that Riot turned away to hide a grin.
“You heard her,” Mace said.
“Both of you shut the fuck up.”
Rook’s bike came in hard, rear tire sliding as he stopped. He was off before the engine died. He took in Pike’s body, the wrecked truck, and the red mark at Avery’s throat.
Then he saw my arms around her. Understanding entered his face slowly. Not all of it, but enough.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Pike tried to use her as a shield,” I said. “She gave me the opening.”
Rook touched the cut at her throat. Avery let him, then moved back against my side. My hand settled at her hip without thought.
Rook saw that too, but he didn’t say anything.
Riot hauled Slate upright. The man spat blood onto the road.
“Who hired you?” Rook asked.
Slate laughed through broken teeth.
Mace twisted his injured arm. The laugh ended.
“Broker,” Slate gasped.
“Name?”
“Never got one. Claimed new Gravewater leadership. Said the old president wasn’t relevant anymore.”
Rook went still.
“Your job?”
“Take the girl. Leave their colors. Make you strike first.”
“Why Avery?”
“Knew she’d make the president crazy.”
He wasn’t wrong. He’d missed what she would do to me—the VP, too.
Rook ordered Mace to take Slate somewhere private. Riot and Havoc cleared the road before local sirens could become a problem. I stayed with Avery. Even when the club medic arrived, I didn’t release her. Even when she was confirmed only bruised with a shallow cut, my hand remained at her back.
The immediate threat was finished. Pike would never touch her again.
Slate would tell us everything he knew before morning.
The second shooter had surrendered when Havoc put a shotgun against the back of his neck.
Riot secured him beside Slate while Mace stripped phones, weapons and anything else that could identify whoever paid them.
Nobody called the police. The Serpents Wraith handled threats to their own.
Havoc inspected the pickup and returned with a small magnetic tracker in his palm.
“They tagged the SUV at her house,” he said.
I remembered the minutes we’d spent packing while I searched rooms and watched windows. They hadn’t needed to follow closely. They had known every turn.
“Vehicle stays here,” Rook ordered. “Wipe ours. Move Pike before daylight.”
Avery listened without flinching. I touched her shoulder. “You don’t need to hear this.”
She looked at me. “Don’t start.”
Rook noticed us. His gaze moved from my hand to Avery’s face.
“Pike won’t be found,” he told her.
“I assumed.”
“You okay with that?”
She looked at Pike’s body. “He put a knife to my throat and planned to sell me to start a war. I’m not losing sleep over his funeral arrangements.”
Rook gave a slow nod. His sister knew exactly what club life meant, and the rest of us were beginning to understand she always had.
None of that answered the question Avery had asked in the truck.
Could I love her without deciding what it cost on her behalf?
I had spent years calling denial honor. Then I’d prepared to throw away my patch as if destruction were proof. Both choices made me the one in control. Avery deserved better than being protected out of her own life.
Rook approached while the others loaded stuff into a replacement vehicle.
“You ride with me,” he told Avery.
She looked at him. “No.”
His mouth hardened.
“I’m going with Saint.”
“He’s bleeding.”
“And I’m keeping an eye on him.”
Rook’s gaze moved between us.
“We’ll talk when we’re inside the gates.”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “Tonight she rests.”
He stared at me for a long second. Then he nodded. It wasn’t permission. I didn’t need it. I helped Avery into the back seat and climbed beside her.
The backup pistol still rested in her lap.
Her trigger finger lay straight along the frame exactly as I’d shown her. The muzzle pointed toward the floor. Everything was correct except the fine shaking in her hands.
“Give it to me.”
“I didn’t fire it,” she said quietly.
I eased the weapon from her fingers, dropped the magazine and checked the chamber. Still loaded. Safety on.
“You made the right call.”
“He got close enough to cut you, though.”
“And you didn’t put a round through both of us.”
She stared through the windshield at the brothers riding ahead of us.
“Then he put the blade on me.”
“But you watched me instead of him.”
Her gaze returned to mine. “I knew you wouldn’t miss.”
The trust in that statement hurt more than the stitches I was about to need. I took her hand and placed it against my chest. My heartbeat was still too fast.
“Feel that?”
She nodded.
“You being afraid doesn’t make you weak. Neither does this.”
“You’re shaking too.”
“Yeah.”
“Does that make you weak?”
“Ask me tomorrow.”
She leaned forward until her forehead touched mine.
“No,” she said. “It makes you the man who got me home.”
Not yet. We still had miles and locked gates between us and safety. But I understood what she meant.
She leaned against me on the drive home. My blood dried beneath the temporary bandage at my side. Her fingers rested over my heart. I had almost lost her because another man wanted power. I wouldn’t make the same mistake in a more respectable form.
At the compound, Rook tried to send me to the infirmary while he took Avery to his office. She refused both arrangements.
“Saint gets stitched first,” she said. “I’m staying.”
“Avery.”
“You can yell after somebody stops the bleeding.”
The medic cut my shirt away from the wound. The knife had opened skin but missed muscle. Avery stood close while he worked. Rook remained near the door. He watched us too carefully.
“Pike had a blade on her,” I said.
“I saw the mark.”
“She fought him.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. I know my sister.”
“Do you?”
The medic paused with the needle.
Rook’s face changed. Avery squeezed my shoulder. Not now.
I shut my mouth.
After the stitches, Rook took her into the office for a debrief.
When he told me to wait outside, Avery took the chair closest to mine and said we could all speak in one room.
She described the ambush without making herself smaller or me larger.
She told Rook how she’d recognized Pike’s attempt to draw my aim, how she’d created the opening, how I had fired only when the blade moved.
“You trusted him to fire?” Rook asked.
“Yes.”
“With a knife at your throat?”
“I knew he’d make the shot.”
Her certainty left the room quiet.
Rook looked at me. I had carried his trust like a weight for years. Avery offered hers as a choice.
That was the difference I should have understood sooner.