Chapter 17 #2
We’re out clean, minus one unconscious security guard, who will hopefully wake with a concussion.
Maybe he’ll be able to remember the van and bikes, but it was dark with lights in his eyes.
Best he’ll be able to say is there were bikes, but that’s not news, not after Palm Springs and the other jobs Kurt’s pulled over the years.
Not just us, either—there was a spate of copycats a few months back, using bikes too. In LA, it only makes sense.
My thoughts are nonsense, I’m just trying not to think about Declan, riding ahead of me. Bleeding from his side and his fucking thigh, a bullet still in it. What if he loses consciousness and comes off at these speeds?
We’re racing up Coldwater, the road’s mostly straight, and Declan’s not holding back.
“Slow down,” I tell him.
He jerks in his seat, checking his mirrors, clocking me. “You’re supposed to be heading west.”
“We’re clear, dammit, and I’m not leaving you.” That was more than I needed to say. “Slow down. If you come off…”
“Is that concern in your voice, my little hellcat? I didn’t think you cared.”
I care. It’s him that’s not supposed to.
It’s a shock to realize I do care, when I’ve been telling myself otherwise. Turns out I was lying.
We’re already at Mulholland, and the plan was to turn east, staying on the back roads that spider through this part of LA. “Go north.”
His brake light comes on. “What?”
“Stay on Coldwater. Pick up the 101.”
“That’s not the plan.”
“Yeah? Well the plan’s gone to shit, and you’ve been shot.” Stubborn bastard. “The 101 is the fastest way to Tujunga.”
He makes no reply but rides past the turn, heading north like I asked. “Are you inviting me back?”
“I’m getting you somewhere safe,” I say, gritting my teeth. How does he make this about us, when he’s fucking bleeding on his bike?
We pick up Coldwater Canyon Avenue, and now we’re descending.
That puts our weight forward, onto his leg and side, and I can only imagine how much that hurts.
Worse still, the road isn’t straight. There’s a sharp succession of bends, some hairpins, and he has no choice but to use his left hand, leaning the bike in.
I hear him grunt over the comms, every gear change requiring his injured leg.
“Not long,” I tell him. “Opens up soon.”
“Yeah, I know.”
He rides around another sharp bend, hissing in pain loud enough for the mic to pick it up.
“How are you doing?” I ask. Stupid question. “Are you bleeding?” Even worse.
“Yeah, still bleeding. Leg more than my side, I think.” He sucks in a breath, loud enough for his mic to pick it up. “Side hurts worse though.”
“Should we stop?”
“Absolutely not. Need this bullet out, and can’t do that at the side of the road.” A pause. “Would be easier if I had something to distract me.”
“Shall I sing a song?”
He chuckles, but it’s forced. “No. I want you to tell me the real reason you didn’t meet me for dinner.”
Fuck.
I’m staying close to support him, and he’s making this about us.
He’s riding away from a goddamn robbery, a bullet in his leg, probably trailing blood, and he’s choosing now to have a relationship discussion?
“Focus on your riding.”
“I always do,” he replies, voice carrying his strain. “But not as much as I focus on you. Why weren’t you there, Raven?”
What can I say? That I lost my appetite when I found out he was fucking married?
For a second, I’m tempted to give him that exact line. But if he finds out I know, what would he do?
Run, probably. Then Kurt would hunt him down—he won’t get far in his state.
I have to lie.
But I’ve been quiet too long, and he fills the silence. “Did I make you nervous?” he asks. “Did you pull back because we’re getting close?”
It’s a convenient excuse. Even sounds like the kind of thing I might do.
It’s quite perceptive of him, save that he’s absolutely wrong.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Good,” he says firmly.
Good?
“What do you mean, ‘good’?”
“I like that we’re getting close.”
“We’re not getting close,” I say before I can stop myself.
He chuckles. “You just admitted we are, little hellcat.”
I scowl, clenching my jaw. He’s toying with me, and worse, I’m making it easy for him.
He’s so damn annoying.
We reach the lowest part of Coldwater Canyon, and the road runs straight all the way to the 101. There’s no one around. Declan edges up toward a hundred.
“Aren’t you bleeding out yet?” I call over the wind.
“A few pints left.” He says it lightly, but I can’t help the spike of worry.
“We should slow down.”
“No.” The word comes fast and terse. “If we slow, I’ll still be bleeding. I need to get… back.”
We both know where ‘back’ is: my apartment.
He’s pushing with the kind of desperation that takes over when the body just wants somewhere safe to be, to get off the bike, to be home.
Before the night’s out, Declan Hale is going to be in my bed, bleeding on my sheets. Worry for him mingles with the arousal as I think of him there, naked and hurt, my own guilt topping off that emotional cocktail. He wouldn’t be injured if he hadn’t protected me.
“Why did you do it?” I ask. “Why did you get in the way?”
“He shot at you twice.” Declan’s voice becomes a growl. “Next one could’ve killed you. Fucking jumped-up security guard with no goddamn training. A goddamn liability.”
I don’t disagree. My arm still burns where the bullet skimmed me. “He could’ve killed you just as easily.”
“But he didn’t.”
Bullet in the kidney and not his side? Maybe. That thigh bullet two inches farther in? Definitely. How long to bleed out from a femoral gunshot? Five minutes, max? I shudder at how close Declan came to dying.
I don’t want him to die.
Go away? Leave me alone? Yes. Die? No.
“You’re annoying, do you know that?”
“Why, because I stopped you taking a bullet?”
No, because I can’t stop thinking about him. Fantasizing about him. Worrying about him.
Like he worried about you, my inside voice reminds me.
“No,” I mutter. “Because you’re you.” Most aggravating man alive.
He chuckles. “I’ll take it.”
We swing onto the 101, riding east down the freeway, the traffic light.
He doesn’t slow, and I don’t make him talk over the wind.
It’s twelve miles to the turn for Tujunga, but at our speed, we do it in under eight minutes.
He doesn’t slow for the long, curving interchange, and that tells me he’s getting worse, his risk proportional to his need to be back.
“Declan, are you hanging in there?”
“Doing fine.” I can barely hear him over the wind.
“Would you please slow down?”
In answer, he goes faster, zipping past the few cars on the road.
Stubborn bastard.
“For fuck’s sake, Declan. We’re carrying bags of stolen jewelry on our backs, and you want to risk getting stopped? For what, two minutes longer?”
That works where my pleading hadn’t. He drops down to a sedate eighty. Still illegal, but not worth a cop’s time, not at ten thirty at night.
It doesn’t take long to make the interchange with the 210, but this time Declan swerves on the bend, the bike sliding out. I stop breathing as he fights to recover, his hand clutching at the handlebars, his grunts of pain sounding in my ears.
“We’ll be there in ten minutes,” I tell him, unable to think of anything else to say. “Hold on, okay?”
He’s quiet, his breathing heavy over the mic. Then, “I’m sorry about this.”
He sounds fatalistic, like he’s not sure he’ll make it, and that scares me more than anything. “Don’t be sorry. Nothing to be sorry for.” He took the bullets for me. It’s me that should be apologizing. “We’ll be back soon.”
He doesn’t respond, his bike wobbling across his lane. Awfully close to the median before he gets control.
I blurt the first thing I can think of, to distract him. “So when did you last sixty-nine?”
Jesus, Raven. Really?
He barks a laugh, pained and short. “It’s been a while.” Yeah, not since yesterday, when he was back home with his wife. “Too long, if I’m honest. A few years. There was this girl in San Bernardino…” He trails off. “You didn’t want to hear that, did you?”
I frown at his back. He’s busy letting his mouth run, through his pain, telling me things I shouldn’t know, yet still lying? That doesn’t make any sense. Does it?
Aren’t people more likely to tell the truth when they’re lightheaded?
Maybe it was too specific. Maybe his blond wife prefers missionary… though I can’t imagine him ever settling for that.
“And before me?” I press. “How long since you had sex?”
“A while,” he admits. “Been busy, you know?”
‘A while’ for him could be hours. I want numbers. “What does that mean? A month? Two?” I give a little laugh, needling him. “I know what you’re like.”
He’s quiet for so long I think he’s not going to respond. “Two years, four months. I think.”
What?
He’s lying. He has to be lying.
He speaks again. “Anything else you want to know, Hellcat? I like talking with you. It helps. Ask me what you want.”
We’re almost back home; I don’t have long. Now I wish I’d been interrogating him the whole damn way.
What to ask?
A question leaps to my mind. “Blonds, or brunettes?”
He doesn’t even hesitate. “Brunettes, definitely. Darker is so much more fun, don’t you agree?”
That wasn’t a lie. It came too fast.
My chest constricts, and it takes me a moment to draw another breath.
Blood loss is making him chatty. “…Though the girl in San Bernardino was a redhead, come to that.”
I hate her. Never met her; still hate her.
“Next exit,” I tell him, because he’s still in the outside lane and I don’t want him pulling one of his late maneuvers. Not in the state he’s in. “Be there in two minutes.”
Declan peels off toward my apartment, and I follow him, my emotions in disarray, my thoughts spiraling.
He calls me his. He put himself in harm’s way for me. He thinks we’re getting close, and likes that. Before me, he hadn’t had sex in over two years.
And my gut instinct tells me he’s not lying.
God help me, I want him to be telling the truth. All of it.
But who the hell are the woman and child in Thousand Oaks?