Chapter 3 #4
It lived under my skin now, sharp in my ribs, hot in my palm, throbbing behind my eyes. Every time Doc shifted me, wrapped something, checked something, or told me to hold still, I hissed like a feral cat and immediately regretted having nerves.
“Breathe,” Regan kept whispering.
“I am breathing.”
“You’re swearing more than breathing.”
“Then I’m multitasking.”
That made her laugh, but it came out broken.
I hated that sound.
I kept drifting after that. Not asleep exactly. Not awake either. More like floating under dark water while voices moved above me, warped and distant.
JD’s voice.
“…before dawn. They need to be gone before anyone serves paper or starts asking why nobody’s answering phones.”
Edge.
“I’m going.”
“No,” JD said.
That one came clear.
A low, dangerous silence followed.
Even half out of it, I knew that silence. Edge did not like being told no. Especially not when I was the subject of the sentence.
“I’m not sending my wife and my daughter across open land without me,” he said.
River answered this time, sounding exhausted. “And what happens if the warrant comes and you’re not here?”
Another voice. Callum maybe. “Looks like you ran.”
JD again. “Exactly. The clubhouse needs to look like the clubhouse. Men present. Business as usual. Irritated but cooperative enough not to hand them obstruction in a pretty box.”
“Cooperative,” Edge repeated like the word tasted poisonous.
“Pretend,” JD said.
Nate muttered somewhere, “Outlaws doing theater. This’ll go great.”
Someone told him to shut up.
Maybe Callum.
Maybe everyone.
I faded.
Came back.
“…search warrant,” River was saying. “Not maybe. Definitely. The second those parents talk to lawyers, they’ll want the bike, the clubhouse, her room, anything that ties us to the scene. We all have to be here when it hits.”
Edge’s voice went colder. “They’re not searching her room.”
“They might try,” JD said. “And if you act like you’re hiding the girl and burying evidence, they’ll know exactly what we’re doing.”
There was a beat.
Then River said, quieter, “Which is why we don’t do what they expect us to do.”
That got through the fog.
Not because I understood all of it.
Because River sounded like a man standing in front of a train and deciding to stare it down.
“Old-school cleanup makes us look guilty,” River continued. “So we don’t give them that picture. We sit here. We answer with lawyers. We let them think we’re too obvious to be subtle.”
JD hummed approval. “Good head fake.”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” River muttered.
“Stop being right so rarely.”
Another drift.
Another fragment.
“…San Diego isn’t supposed to be here,” Callum said. “Most of my men are already back at the Airbnb. As far as anyone asks, we came in for a meet, saw fire in the distance, and kept our distance because we’re not idiots.”
Nate said, “Speak for yourself.”
“Dylan and Nate remain available,” JD said. “Not here. Not visible. They go with Regan and Destiny to Cal’s first, then Cabo.”
My heart moved before my brain did.
Dylan.
I tried to open my eyes, but they were too heavy.
Edge’s voice cut through the room.
“I don’t like the fact that you’re gluing yourself to my daughter’s side, son.”
He did not say son like affection.
He said it like a warning shot.
Dylan answered, calm as night. “Just trying to be useful.”
“She trusts me,” Dylan said.
The room went quiet.
I felt my own breath catch, even from wherever I was floating.
Because it was true.
I did.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
Edge apparently didn’t either.
Another voice came in, softer but rougher.
Tarak.
“He’s right.”
That silence hurt.
Tarak kept speaking. “She asked for him. She settled when he was near. We can hate that later.”
Regan’s voice trembled. “We can hate everything later. Right now we get her out.”
A hand brushed hair off my forehead.
Hers.
Or Edge’s.
Maybe both.
I drifted again.
When I surfaced, people were arguing about horses.
That seemed unfair.
I had already suffered enough.
“No,” Edge said.
JD sounded like he had lost patience with the entire concept of outlaw men. “You cannot ride with her.”
“I can ride.”
“No one is questioning whether you can ride, Lock.”
I blinked at that.
Lock.
JD only called Edge that when he wanted to remind him he had once been a man before he became my terrifying father.
“You’re too big,” River said.
That woke me a little more.
Edge’s silence went lethal.
River, apparently suicidal, continued. “What? You’re over two-thirty. Maybe two-fifty when you’re mad, and you’re always mad. Those horses have enough problems tonight without carrying your guilt complex across three ridges.”
A sound moved through the room.
Almost laughter.
Edge did not laugh.
“I hate all of you,” he said.
“Later,” JD replied. “Hate us later. Stay here now.”
Dylan’s voice came closer. “I know a thing or two about horses.”
My eyes opened to slits.
The room was blurry. Shadows. Lamps. Faces. Regan near my shoulder. Edge at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, looking like he wanted to argue the existence of physics and win.
Dylan stood near the door.
He had changed his shirt.
That registered for some reason.
No blood now.
Or less blood.
His cut was gone too, probably because nobody needed a San Diego rocker glowing under moonlight while smuggling a damaged biker princess through ranch land.
Dylan looked at me when he realized my eyes were open.
Not smiled.
Not exactly.
But something in his face eased.
“There she is,” he said quietly.
I tried to answer.
Nothing came out but a dry rasp.
Regan lifted a cup with a straw to my mouth. “Tiny sip.”
I obeyed because I was too weak to be difficult and too sore to enjoy disappointing her.
Edge moved closer. “I should be with you.”
I looked at him.
His face blurred, and for a second I saw him not as Edge Rourke, not as the man the whole clubhouse feared, but as my father. Just my father. Too big for the room. Too scared for his body. Too full of love he did not know how to make gentle.
“I know,” I whispered.
That destroyed him.
Only for a second.
Then he locked it down.
“You listen to Regan,” he said. “You listen to Doc. You listen to Cal. You do not decide this is the moment to prove something else.”
“I’m out of vehicles to steal.”
Regan made a strangled sound. “Too soon.”
Edge’s mouth twitched like pain.
I loved him so much in that moment it hurt worse than my ribs.
Dylan stepped in. “We’ll move slow. Keep her supported. Nate will ride flank. Regan stays with her until we clear the lower wash, then we adjust if needed.”
Edge looked at him.
A long look.
“I don’t like it,” he said.
Dylan shrugged. “You don’t have to.”
Wrong answer.
Maybe right answer.
Edge’s eyes narrowed.
Dylan added, “You just have to let the thing that works work.”
The room held still.
Then JD, blessed man with no survival instinct around my father, said, “He’s right.”
Edge turned his glare on him instead.
Good.
Spread the danger around.
River stood near the doorway, head bowed, both hands braced on the back of his neck like the weight of Santa Fe had dropped between his shoulders. Tank was beside him, quieter than usual, which meant even he understood this was bad.
Tarak moved to River and placed one hand on his shoulder.
“This is why I backed you as prez,” Tarak said.
River looked up.
Tarak’s face was haunted, but his voice was steady. “This might be the biggest test you ever face keeping our club alive in our hometown.”
Nobody said Mandy.
Nobody said curse.
Nobody said my name like it was a prophecy.
But they all thought it.
I felt it move around the room, old and ugly.
Mandy’s blood.
Mandy’s fire.
Mandy’s wreck.
Destiny’s disaster.
I closed my eyes before I could see anyone’s face and know for sure.
The next stretch blurred into movement.
Blanket.
Cold air.
Regan’s arms around me.
Doc cursing because someone jostled the IV line.
Nate whispering, “This is very dramatic,” and someone smacking him in the back of the head.
Me hissing when my ribs screamed.
Edge saying my name like he could hold me together with the sound of it.
Then the outside.
Stars.
So many stars.
The world before dawn had a different kind of quiet. Not peaceful. Waiting. The compound lights were mostly off now, hidden behind buildings and shadows. No bikes roared. No headlights cut across the yard. Everything moved soft, low, secret.
Men became ghosts when they had to.
Royal Bastards knew how to vanish.
I felt that in the way they handed me from family to strategy, from bed to blanket, from clubhouse to dark. No loud voices. No wasted motion. No one saying goodbye like goodbye was allowed to become permanent.
The IV bag came with me.
Of course it did.
Because apparently we were doing outlaw medicine on horseback now.
“Hold it higher,” Doc snapped.
Nate lifted the bag. “I feel like a very underpaid nurse.”
“You are a very overtalkative idiot,” Doc said.
“I contain multitudes.”
“Contain them silently.”
Then horse smell.
Warm, earthy, alive.
I opened my eyes enough to see a dark horse standing near the back fence, ears flicking, breath steaming faintly in the cool hour before sunrise. Another stood behind it. Then another. Cal’s men must have brought them through the wash trail. No trucks. No trailers. No proof.
Just horses and darkness.
I hated horses.
Horses knew things.
They looked at you with those huge eyes like they were judging your entire bloodline.
This one looked at me and snorted.
“Same,” I whispered.
Dylan appeared beside me.
“You good?”
“No.”
His mouth twitched. “Honest.”
“Horse hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
The horse flicked an ear back.
“Liar.”
Dylan’s hand settled near my elbow, not gripping, just there. “I’ll ride with you.”
My brain caught up late.
“With me?”
“Yes.”
I looked at Edge.
Bad idea.
His face was impossible.