Chapter Four
Dylan
“Shit, shit, shit,” I gasped, weaving through the trees as the head and taillights of the cars and bikes disappeared in opposite directions.
I’d only stood there a moment longer than everyone else, my gaze pinned on the body on the ground, watching his chest for movement.
It never came.
I’d killed him.
And my gun didn’t have a silencer.
We were in the middle of nowhere, sure.
But someone would have heard. They could have called it in.
I had to go.
My blood turned to mercury—heavy and cold.
My heart hammered against my ribcage like a caged bird.
I reached my bike, threw on my helmet, turned over the engine, and got the hell out of there.
My belly bottomed out at the breakneck speed and the sharp curves of the road.
My blood was rushing through my ears too loudly to even hear if sirens were coming, if they were after me.
I wanted to speed all the way back to my apartment building, but forced myself to slow, then pull off the road.
I walked my bike deeper off the road until it couldn’t be seen before taking off on foot.
My periphery bled into a gray smudge, leaving only the needle-point focus of what was just ahead.
The creek.
The rush of the water against the rocks sent a spray of moisture across my face.
My lungs felt like they were trying to draw breath through a narrow glass straw—shallow, sharp, and never enough.
I tried to take a few steadying breaths, to calm myself down.
My doctor’s words were in my ear.
Stress can aggravate symptoms.
And I didn’t have my testing kit on me.
No.
I had to stop.
I was fine.
There was no reason to assume my sugar was off-kilter. It was just adrenaline. Just shock and fear and uncertainty.
I popped the magazine out of my gun and tucked it into my back pocket.
I might want to get rid of the gun, but I didn’t want to take any chances that some kid or dumb teen might find it.
The water wasn’t much more than three or four feet deep.
And while this was a more rural spot where people didn’t frequent, it was running water and it could possibly carry the gun down toward one of the popular swimming holes.
I carefully rubbed the muzzle of the gun with my shirt, then grabbed it with the material so I could use another swatch of my shirt to scrub any other fingerprints from the metal.
Finished, I reached down, grabbing a few leaves to hold the gun with, then flung it with everything I had into the water.
Finished with that, I walked back through the woods, got on my bike, and headed back out. At a slower pace. Trying not to look like someone who’d just committed a crime.
A murder.
It wasn’t the first body on my conscience.
But it was the first body I’d created when I didn’t have another choice, when I wasn’t in serious, immediate danger.
I didn’t have to kill him.
He wasn’t aiming at me.
But he was aiming at someone else.
Someone who didn’t even know some asshole had snuck up behind him while he was fighting with someone else.
It wasn’t that I regretted it.
I had many reasons to hate those men.
In fact, my plans involved all of those assholes being dead, buried, not missed, and utterly forgotten.
I planned to be careful and strategic about it, though. To have a plan for the body, for the gun, for everything involved with it, so there was no chance anything pointed back to me.
It wasn’t supposed to happen in the heat of the moment like this. With no plan.
I didn’t really even mean to follow them out here.
I’d been hiding out behind the clubhouse when I saw several of them heading out, three on bikes, one in a car.
The car was what made me curious.
What did they need a car for?
So I hung back, then followed at a safe distance.
Luckily, they were the same morons they’d always been and didn’t even think to look for a tail.
Not even when my bike rumbled along with them as they rode off into the rural areas around the creek.
I was pretty sure I saw the other car long before they did, crawling up the street, a small bit of light coming from the passenger seat.
Which was how I’d seen him so clearly.
He was a tank of a guy, taking up the whole passenger seat, looking like his head was damn near brushing the roof.
It was hard to tell, but his hair seemed lighter. Maybe a dirty blond. His beard was thick and well-groomed, just a shade or two darker than the hair on his head.
He had that masculine bone structure that made you think of mountain men, lumberjacks, or cowboys. Handsome, but in a rugged way.
I hated to admit it, but it was him my focus was lasered in on when the men climbed out of the car to approach the club.
Aside from his height and tight, almost militarily perfect, posture, I noticed the cut first.
These were bikers.
And my vision was good enough to see the town of Shady Valley on his rocker.
The name wasn’t familiar to me. But, then again, it wasn’t like I knew every town in every county of California. All I did know was that it wasn’t from anywhere nearby.
They’d traveled to meet with that fucking loser Roach and his goons.
It went downhill fast.
Of course it did.
Roach was not someone any sane person wanted to do business with.
My gaze had tracked the whole fight, delighting in each blow one of these other bikers got in and rooting for them to rally each time one of Roach’s guys got a lick in.
Did my eyes keep tracking one particular biker more than the others? Yep.
And good thing.
Because his head would have busted open right there in front of his friends if I hadn’t been watching so closely.
My hand went for my gun without even thinking about it. And I guess I could thank my father for all the weekends he’d dragged me—often kicking and screaming—to his homemade range and forced me to practice.
My aim was true.
The bullet ripped through his heart.
He was dead before he even wobbled.
It was my gunshot that had everyone scrambling.
But not before the hulking biker looked straight at me.
I didn’t want to think he could see me.
I saw them so clearly because they were standing in an opening, no trees to cast shadows over them, so the moon illuminated their faces.
I was right next to an ancient tree trunk, completely in shadow.
Still, I felt his gaze with impact, knocking what little was left of my breath out of my lungs.
I was so focused on him looking at me that I had no idea if anyone else saw me.
I stopped halfway home, finding a neighborhood with their bins at the curb for trash day, and quickly dropped the magazine in one of them before continuing on.
I expected to start feeling better as I got further away from the crime scene—both literally and figuratively. But the shakiness seemed to only get worse the further I went.
By the time I pushed my bike into the storage unit again back at my apartment, my insides felt shaky too. My legs felt weak and wobbly.
“Okay. Almost there,” I told myself as I climbed the steps toward my apartment. “You’re okay.”
I unlocked my doors with a jangling of my keys and beelined right for my counter, wiping my finger, pricking it, and testing my sugar.
Only to stare at the readout with a sinking feeling.
My sugar was fine.
That wasn’t why I was shaking, why I was dizzy.
I slid down the side of the island, my knees pinned to my chest as Sugar came up beside me to lick my face and dance around, happy to see me even if I was a mess.
If my sugar was fine, then what?
Was I having a panic attack?
Me?
I didn’t have panic attacks.
Except…
Well, except that I wasn’t who I’d been just a year ago. I wasn’t cool and calm and unflappable.
This whole health thing had made me really anxious and antsy and, well, flapped.
I was used to a body that just… did what it was supposed to do, that regulated itself, that didn’t need oversight.
Learning that mine now not only needed monitoring but a careful diet but—no matter how perfectly I ate—two different kinds of medication had made me suddenly very paranoid, very untrusting of myself.
I guess all of that paranoia and distrust created something else new for me: anxiety.
Lovely.
Just what I needed.
“I’m a mess,” I told Sugar.
I reached up toward the island to grab my phone to check in on my app so it didn’t text my neighbor.
“We should probably try to get some sleep, huh?” I asked when Sugar rested her head on my legs and let out a long-suffering sigh.
Her ears perked up at that.
“Come on, baby,” I said, peeling myself off the floor, making sure the door was locked, then walking into my bedroom, kicking off my shoes and peeling off clothes as I went.
We both fell into bed.
Sugar was out cold within minutes.
I lay there, staring at the ceiling, my heartbeat hammering in my chest hard enough for me to place a hand there, trying to assure myself that I was fine, that it was just anxiety, that it was no big deal.
Sugar let out a whimpering sound, making me turn. But she was just chasing something in her sleep, her little feet jerking and her jowls twitching.
I curled into her, making her the little spoon, trying to take some comfort in her warm, familiar body.
Tell me why it was right then that my mind flashed back to the meeting spot.
To a big, hulking biker.
To thighs that knew where they stood.
To shoulders wide enough to lean on.
To arms strong enough to keep you from falling apart.
God.
What the hell was that about?
I was not someone who romanticized men.
Did I enjoy them on occasion?
Sure.
But even then, kind of rarely. And it had been so long that it was borderline embarrassing.
I damn sure never did something monumentally stupid. Like trust a man. Like rely on one. Like seek comfort in one.
So why the hell was I thinking like that about a complete stranger, making him star in some absurd, knight-in-shining-armor fantasy of mine?
He wasn’t the hero.
I’d been the one to save the day.
I was my own damn knight in shining armor.
I didn’t need to be saved.
But as I finally drifted off to sleep, it was that wide chest I imagined resting on, and those massive arms wrapping tightly around me.
And I slept like a damn baby.