6. Preacher
PREACHER
Iknew something was wrong before Smoke answered his phone.
Holly should have called me the second she reached Curtis Freight, but she hadn’t, and Smoke wasn’t picking up either. The knot in my gut went from irritation to something colder by the time I turned off Main Street and saw Gage’s bike coming hard from the opposite direction.
He pulled alongside me at the stop sign and shouted over the engines, “Smoke’s down by the old fuel lot. Somebody clipped his bike on the way to Holly.”
That was all I needed to understand how badly the plan had gone wrong.
I swung around so hard the rear tire kicked dust. Nobody had to explain it.
Vega had been bait, Smoke getting knocked off his bike part of the plan, and somebody had learned enough to split our attention and leave Holly alone.
The thought of somebody putting hands on her again left room for nothing except getting to her. I pushed the bike harder.
The warehouse lights were visible long before we reached the gate. One sedan sat crooked beside Holly’s car, and a black SUV waited behind the warehouse with its engine running.
Gage saw the running SUV at the same moment I did. “Back exit.”
“Take it.”
He peeled off toward the service road while I rode straight through the open gate.
A man stepped from beside the office and reached for his waistband.
I didn’t give him time. The bike was still moving when I drew, and one shot hit the dirt inches from his boot, close enough to make him jerk backward instead of firing.
I dumped the bike, crossed the distance and hit him before he recovered.
He went down hard enough to lose the gun, and I took it from his hand before driving my boot into his ribs and leaving him coughing in the dust.
“Holly!”
No one answered me, but a crash came from inside the warehouse and I ran.
Luis lay near the side office with blood dried along one temple, conscious enough to move his hand when I passed.
Then I saw Holly, and everything else stopped mattering.
She was backed against a stack of pallets.
Her hair was loose around her face, and one sleeve torn.
Relief hit hard until the man nearest her raised a gun and everything inside me went quiet.
“Holly.”
Her eyes found mine just as the gunman turned, making the mistake of moving the barrel toward her first, I reacted before I knew it and shot him in the chest. The shot cracked through the warehouse. He staggered, stared at the blood spreading across his shirt and collapsed beside the pallets.
The second man lunged for Holly, but she swung a clipboard that had been on the bench next to her before I reached them.
The metal edge caught him across the nose, and he swore as he reeled backward with both hands coming up automatically.
Holly drove her knee into him, broke sideways and ran toward me.
The man grabbed for the back of her shirt. I caught his wrist before he got a proper hold, and when he looked at me, I broke it. The snap was clean enough that Holly heard it. The man screamed as I twisted his ruined arm behind him and drove him face-first against the concrete wall.
“You were told,” I said.
“I don’t know what the fuck—”
“You were told not to touch her.”
He tried to turn his head, so I drove him harder into the wall. Somewhere outside, bike tires tore across gravel and Gage shouted. A gunshot followed from behind the warehouse, but I didn’t look away from the man in front of me.
“Preacher.”
Holly’s voice was close now. I glanced toward her and found her standing a few feet away, breathing hard, her face pale beneath the dirt. She was still holding the bent clipboard.
“Are you hurt?”
“No. I’m bruised and pissed off, but I’m standing.”
Only then did I let myself believe she was okay. The man against the wall moved suddenly, his good hand diving toward his ankle. I saw the knife before he cleared the sheath and already had my pistol in my hand, the barrel pressed against the side of his head before he got another inch.
“You get one chance. Drop it.”
The knife hit the floor with a sharp metal clatter.
For half a second I considered killing him anyway for even thinking about it.
But Holly stepped closer, not touching me and not asking me to stop.
She was simply there, and that brought me back far enough to think.
Dead men didn’t talk, and I needed to know who’d ordered this.
I hit him hard behind the ear with the pistol instead, and he folded at my feet.
“Holly.” This time when I turned to her, I put the gun away first. She dropped the clipboard, and I crossed the space between us and pulled her against me.
Her arms locked around my waist, and that nearly finished me. I buried my face in her hair while the part of me that’d spent the ride imagining blood and silence finally accepted she was alive.
“I’m okay,” she said against my chest.
“You don’t get to say that like you didn’t just scare ten years off my life.”
Her laugh came out shaky. I pulled back enough to look at her and saw a bruise forming near her jaw, another dark mark around one wrist and a tear in her shirt. My anger came back fast.
“Who hit you?”
“The one with the broken wrist.”
I looked down at him, and Holly caught my cut before I could move. “He’s unconscious.”
“Won’t stop me.”
“I know.”
The fact she did know should probably have bothered me more than it did. Instead, I cupped the side of her face, careful of the bruise. “What happened?”
“They called from Luis’s phone. I got here before Smoke. Luis was on the ground, so I called 911 and got out of the car.”
“You got out after I told you to stay in the car.”
“Luis was bleeding on the ground, Preacher.” Her eyes flashed with anger because she knew I was being unreasonable. “He was lying on the ground.”
I closed my mouth because she was right, and arguing about it now would make me exactly the kind of controlling bastard she’d already accused me of being.
“What then?”
“They came out from behind the trucks. They wanted me to sign transfer papers and unlock the office files, so I stalled. I knew you would get here.”
Despite everything happening around us, pride moved through me.
“They were going to put me in the SUV,” she continued. “I pulled the fire alarm and hit the emergency shutter switch. It jammed halfway down, so they had to come back through the warehouse instead of using the rear loading door.”
That explained why they were still here when I arrived. “You bought enough time for me to get here.”
Gage came through the warehouse door dragging a man by the back of his jacket. “One got away.”
My head snapped toward him as the words registered.
“Black SUV took the service road before I could block it. Driver had somebody with him.”
“Vega?”
“Couldn’t see.”
Smoke stumbled in behind Gage, limping and furious, blood streaked along one forearm. Holly immediately pulled away from me. “You got hit? Are you okay?”
“Bike’s worse. Technically the car only nudged me.”
Gage snorted as Smoke limped farther inside. “At forty miles an hour.”
Smoke looked at the dead man beside the pallets, then at the unconscious one at my feet. “I miss anything?”
His eyes moved to Holly’s bruises, and the humor disappeared.
“Luis?”
“Alive,” Holly said. “He needs an ambulance. Already coming I guess.”
Sirens reached us less than a minute later. Only one was close enough to matter, and when I looked toward the open warehouse door, I already knew who it would be.
White’s cruiser came through the gate fast and stopped sideways beside the office. He got out with his weapon already drawn, eyes taking in my bike, the man in the dirt and the open warehouse.
“Holly?” he shouted.
“She’s safe,” I called back, and that was what mattered. Whatever happened next, Holly was beside me, alive and no longer in anybody’s hands.
White moved toward the warehouse while speaking into his radio. “County says backup’s twenty minutes out.”
“Useful,” Gage muttered.
White heard him. “I didn’t ask for commentary.” He reached the doorway, saw Holly and lowered the gun slightly. Then headlights flared behind him as the black SUV came back through the gate. The passenger window dropped before anyone could question why it had returned.
“Down!” I shouted.
I grabbed Holly and drove her behind the concrete base of a support column as gunfire ripped across the yard. White turned toward the SUV and fired twice while the vehicle swerved. Glass shattered somewhere behind us, and White jerked backward before hitting the dirt beside his cruiser.
Smoke moved before I did, firing toward the SUV while Gage dragged Holly farther behind cover. I crossed to White, staying low as another shot punched into the warehouse wall. Blood spread fast across the sheriff’s shirt.
His eyes were still open when I reached for him. “Don’t,” he ground out.
I dragged him behind the cruiser by the shoulders as Smoke kept the SUV moving.
Gage fired once from the warehouse entrance and the rear window blew out, but the driver accelerated through the gate and disappeared into the dark.
For several seconds the yard was silent.
The Sheriff tried to sit up, and I shoved him back down.
“Stay put.”
“Fuck you.”
“Good. Means you’re not dead yet.”
His hand pressed against his side while the ambulance siren grew louder, joined by another in the distance.
Smoke came over breathing hard, his weapon still in his hand. “They’re gone.”
“Let them go.” I told him.
I didn’t need to explain. Holly was safe, Luis was alive and Sheriff White was down. Chasing an SUV blind into the desert would turn one bad scene into three. We’d find the men later.
The first ambulance came through the gate, and paramedics took one look at White and moved straight to him while another crew arrived moments later for Luis. I stepped away, and Holly reached me before I reached her.
Her hands went to my face. “You’re bleeding.”