Chapter 18
Eighteen
Danae
The house holds its breath. Or like the clocks have stopped.
That’s what it feels like, like the walls are listening, like the air itself is waiting to see who breaks first. The men move around me in short, impatient bursts, boots on old floorboards, voices low and edged.
Someone curses in the hallway. Someone laughs too loud and too mean.
The injured man—Duke—makes a sound that turns my stomach, half groan, half gasp.
I keep my hands busy. If my hands are busy, my mind can’t fully collapse.
I press gauze to the wound and count his breaths under my own.
I keep checking his pulse at the wrist, fast and thin, and my nursing brain keeps spitting out words like shock and infection and internal bleed while the rest of me wants to curl up and vanish.
I got the bullet out by some miracle it wasn’t deep.
I only had to expand the entry wound a little.
They did provide a small surgical kit that had a scalpel at least. I have a weapon, it gives me a little comfort.
“Peaches,” the president says from the doorway, voice calm like we’re discussing the weather. “You done yet?”
“I’m working,” I answer, too tight.
He steps closer, his shadow falling across my hands. “You’re stalling.”
“I’m trying not to kill him,” I snap.
A couple of the men laugh.
The president’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t hit me. Not yet. He seems to enjoy the control too much to waste it on anger.
I force my voice back into clinical territory. “I need him to hold still. I need light. And if you have anything stronger than whiskey, now would be a good time to share it.”
“Whiskey’s what we got,” someone says.
Of course it is. Duke’s head lolls. Sweat beads on his upper lip. His eyes keep slipping shut.
“Duke,” I say, leaning close. “Stay with me.”
He blinks slowly, like it costs him everything.
The president drifts nearer, watching my hands like he’s waiting for me to make one wrong move so he can punish me for it.
I don’t look at him. I don’t give him that.
I reach for the suture kit on the bed, tearing it open with fingers that want to tremble. I lay out what I can, needle driver, forceps, thread, curved needle, sterile packets that aren’t as sterile as I want them to be.
My heart hammers with the unfairness of it. I should be in a hospital. I should have a tray.
A surgeon who I hand tools to not me being the one to use them on flesh.
Imaging.
Consent forms and sterile drapes and a crash cart right outside the door.
Instead, I have a tarp on a bedroom floor and guns behind me. I swallow hard.
Think smart. I keep silently repeating it like a prayer. I can’t save him if I’m dead.
I can’t get to Grandpa if I’m dead. I can’t get back to Miles—God, Miles—if I’m dead.
The president’s words from earlier come back like a slap, if you want to live to fuck your Hellion again.
The vulgarity of it makes my eyes sting with rage. Miles isn’t a toy. I’m not a toy. Our bodies aren’t a joke they can use to remind me I have something to lose.
Something to love. The thought of Miles worrying—of him riding highways with panic in his chest—tightens my throat until I can barely breathe.
I look down at my hands.
Blood.
Not a lot, but enough.
Duke groans again and my stomach flips.
I press my lips together and start prepping the wound the way I would if the world made sense—cleaning the surrounding skin, applying pressure, assessing what I can assess.
“Peaches,” the president says again, sharper now.
“I said I’m working,” I reply, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel.
He takes a step closer. Then another. I get the last knot in the stitches when I pulled from behind away from the patient.
I watch another man step in to apply dressing before the President slides the blindfold back over my eyes, yanking me further back away from the scalpel and needles before I feel my arms pulled behind me, then the cinch of the zip ties on my wrists and ankles again.
Dammit. I missed my window. I resign myself to defeat but fight back the tears. Even if these are my last moments breathing I refuse to let these bastards see me cry.
And then. A sound.
Not from inside the room. From outside the house. A low rumble. Like engines. My whole body freezes. The air around me feels tense. For one beat, no one breathes.
Then a voice somewhere down the hall, “You hear that?”
Boots shift on the floor around me. I want to slide the blindfold off but I don’t dare.
Engines again. Closer this time. Multiple. The hairs on my arms lift.
Hope is dangerous.
Hope gets you killed.
But it blooms anyway, bright and desperate, because I know that sound. I don’t even have to see him.
I know the road carries like cells in Miles’ blood the way nursing runs in mine.
Another rumble. Then the sharp crack of something hitting the front door. A shout. Men moving fast in the hallway, boots pounding. A chair scraping. A curse.
My pulse spikes so hard my vision blurs as I use the wall to slide the blindfold off my eyes.
Duke’s eyes open wider, fear or pain or both. The president’s hand drops to his belt.
“Stay,” he snaps at me like I’m a dog. “Don’t move.”
As if I could. As if my entire body isn’t a spring wound tight.
A gunshot cracks somewhere in the house. I flinch violently, hands jerking toward my face.
Duke’s body makes a thud as the President who was so determined to keep him alive puts a bullet in his head.
Another shout—different voice, deeper, furious.
Not one of them. No I know this voice. My heart slams against my ribs.
Miles.
It has to be. The world becomes sound and motion.
Men yelling. Feet running. A door slamming. Something crashing into the hallway wall hard enough to shake the picture frames.
The president steps into the hall, barking orders I can’t fully make out.
One of the men in the room with me lifts his gun toward the doorway, hands shaking now, not so confident anymore.
“Get her,” someone shouts from down the hall. “She’s in the back!”
The man with the gun turns his head toward me like I’m suddenly worth more alive than dead.
My breath catches.
He takes one step forward—And then the bedroom door explodes inward.
Not literally—no fire, no blast—but it slams open so hard it bangs against the wall, and a body fills the frame.
Leather.
A cut.
A man built from anger and miles.
Dixon “Miles” Hardison stands before me a man with fury in his face.
For half a second, time stops. His eyes find mine like a lock clicking into place.
The look on his face is a storm.
Fear.
Relief.
Pure, murderous rage.
And love so fierce it makes my chest ache.
He doesn’t speak.
He moves.
Fast.
The man with the gun raises it—Miles is already on him, knocking the gun hand up and away with one brutal motion, driving his shoulder into the man’s chest.
They slam into the dresser.
The gun skitters across the floor.
A second later Smoke is there—Smoke, like a shadow made of violence—kicking the gun farther away, pulling the man off balance, pinning him.
Everything is loud.
Everything is fast.
My hands fly to my mouth, but I force myself not to scream. Miles turns toward me, chest heaving, eyes wild.
“Danae.”
My name in his mouth sounds like a prayer and a threat. I nod frantically, tears blurring my vision. “I’m here,” I whisper. “I’m here.”
He crosses the room in three strides, grabbing my shoulders, his hands shaking as they sweep over me like he’s checking for injuries without thinking.
“Are you hurt?” he demands.
My voice comes out broken. “No. My wrists—just—”
His eyes drop to the marks, and something in him snaps even further.
I can feel it.
The leash on his rage comes undone.
Smoke says something behind him—low, urgent. “We gotta move. Cops enroute.”
Miles doesn’t look away from me as he takes a knife to my restraints, releasing me. “Can you walk?” he asks.
“Yes,” I breathe.
He reaches for my hands, then stops like he’s afraid he’ll hurt me.
“Okay,” he says, voice rough. “Okay. We’re going home.”
Home.
The word hits me so hard my knees wobble.
I grab his cut like it’s the only solid thing in the universe. “Miles,” I whisper, because I need him to be real.
His eyes soften for the first time since he came through that door. He leans down pressing a soft kiss to my lips.
“I’ve got you,” he says. “I’ve got you, baby. Never letting go.”
Outside the room, the house is chaos.
Men shouting. Furniture knocked over. A lamp shattered on the floor. The smell of gunpowder sharp in the air.
Smoke grips my elbow, guiding me, protective in a way I don’t expect.
“Head down,” he mutters. “Don’t look.”
I don’t want to look. I don’t want to see blood. I don’t want to see any faces that will live in my nightmares. So I keep my eyes on Miles’ back, on the shape of him moving through the hallway like a force of nature.
We pass a man slumped against the wall, groaning.
We pass another on the floor, hands zip-tied behind his back. I can’t tell who belongs to which club.
A man with the patch saying Wrath’s voice booms from somewhere near the living room. “Clear!”
Someone answers. “Clear!”
It’s like a wave.
Control returning.
The front door is open, cold air pouring in, and outside the clearing is lit by headlights and the glow of a dozen bikes.
Men in cuts—Hellions and Saint’s Outlaws—spread out like a net, weapons low but ready, faces grim and focused.
The sight of them makes my stomach twist and my chest loosen at the same time.
I’m not alone.
Not anymore.
Miles moves me down the front steps, one hand steadying my back, the other keeping me close like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he lets go.
The cold air hits my face like a slap and I gasp.
The sky is pale now, night stretching across the tree line.
I blink hard, trying to convince myself this is real.
Wrath steps forward, eyes scanning me quickly.
“You Danae?” he asks. I nod, voice stuck.