Chapter Two
The Medic And The Monster
Steel
Harper Quinn shouldn’t exist in my world.
That’s my first thought when I watch her ambulance vanish from County’s ambulance bay, red lights cutting through the night like warning flares.
My second thought is worse.
I want to follow her. Not because she is a loose end. Not because she saw faces or heard gunfire or got too close to club blood spilled on dirty asphalt. Because the second my hand closed around her arm and I dragged her out of a bullet’s path, something in me locked.
Not soft, I don’t have soft in me. Not sweet either, but something meaner. Older. Instinct.
‘Mine to keep alive.’ The thought pisses me off enough that I turn and punch the brick wall beside the ambulance bay. Pain blooms across my knuckles, skin splits, and blood wells.
Good, pain makes sense. A woman with sharp eyes and a sharper mouth doesn’t.
“Problem?”
I turn my head. Savage stands a few feet away, half in shadow, cut hanging open, blood dried across the side of his neck. Not his. Probably Rex’s. Maybe Jax’s. Tonight went sideways fast, which means tomorrow will be uglier.
He watches my bleeding hand, then my face. He misses nothing. Never has.
“No problem,” I say.
His mouth barely moves. “That wall would disagree.”
I flex my fist. “The wall had it coming.”
Saint steps up beside him, quiet as a blade sliding free. “Jax is in surgery. Doctor says he’s got a chance.”
“He’ll live,” I say.
Savage’s eyes sharpen slightly. “Is that confidence or information?”
“Both.”
The woman had blood on her gloves, smoke in her hair, and fear locked behind her eyes like she refused to give it air. She still kept Jax breathing. Still snapped orders at men twice her size like she’d been born in chaos and decided to organize it.
She’ll haunt me if I let her, but I don’t let people haunt me.
Savage glances toward the hospital doors. “Paramedic?”
“Harper Quinn,” Saint answers before I can. Of course, he already looked. “Thirty. EMT-P. Station Eight. No criminal record. No known affiliations. Lives alone.” I turn my head slowly, and Saint meets my stare without blinking. “You asked me to track loose ends.”
“I didn’t ask you to stalk her life.”
“No,” Savage says. “I did.”
My jaw tightens, and that earns me a long look from both of them.
Fuck.
Savage sees it first. I know he does. The adjustment behind his eyes, the cold calculation of a president watching one of his men become unpredictable.
“Steel,” he says. That’s all.
Just my road name in that voice. A warning. A question. An order waiting to be shaped.
“She saw shooters,” I say. “She treated Jax. She’s a liability.”
“Is that what she is?”
I look at him. I have followed Dominic “Savage” Kane through fire, blood, and mistakes that would have buried weaker men. I have broken bones for this club. Buried bodies. Made problems disappear so clean they became rumors. I have never lied to him when it mattered.
So, I don’t start now. “I don’t know what she is.”
Saint’s brows rise a fraction, and Savage goes still. The silence between us grows thick.
Finally, Savage nods toward the bikes. “Then find out. Quietly. No pressure unless she’s in danger.”
I almost laugh. Quiet is not what I am built for. I am built for doors kicked in, knuckles split, and men dragged into darkened back rooms until their courage leaks out with their blood.
But I nod because this is club business, and if I don’t take the order, someone else will. That idea sits wrong in my gut.
“Who hit us?” I ask.
Saint pulls out his phone and swipes through security stills. Grainy images of a black SUV and two bikes without plates. Men wearing masks, but masks don’t hide posture. Cowards move like cowards even when armed.
“They’re not cartel,” Saint says. “Too sloppy.”
“Vultures?”
“Maybe, but it might be someone who wants us thinking Vultures.”
Savage’s face hardens. “Find out which it is.”
“That shooting was staged messily,” I say, staring at the image. “They wanted bodies, but not a clean message. This is more about panic than territory.”
Saint nods. “I agree.”
“Do you think Jax was the target?” Savage asks.
“No.” I think of the bullets cutting low, wild, and spreading across the lot. “They wanted whoever was unlucky enough to bleed first.”
Savage understands before Saint does, and his eyes go black.
“They wanted emergency response,” he says.
The three of us fall silent. There are different kinds of traps. Some are built for soldiers. Some are built for cops. Some are built for the innocent people who rush in after the shooting stops because they are too good or too stubborn to let strangers die.
My hand curls into a fist again, and my split knuckles complain, but I ignore them.
“They drew medics in,” I say.
Saint’s jaw tightens. “Harper.”
The sound of her name in his mouth makes something violent move under my ribs, but I crush it down. Barely.
Savage looks at me like he hears the thought crashing through my mind. “Go to the clubhouse. Get stitched up and then find out who knows her name.”
“I’m fine.”
“It wasn’t a suggestion.”
I hold his stare, but he holds mine longer. As usual, the President wins. He always does.
I turn toward my bike, but my gaze catches on the hospital entrance one more time. Harper is long gone. It’s better to keep a safe distance between us. But I already know safe distance is a thing of the past. It died when I touched her.
****
Mama M stitches my hand at the kitchen table without asking why my knuckles look like they lost an argument with concrete. She has a cigarette tucked behind one ear and murder in her eyes, which is how she looks most nights.
“You boys ever think of using words?”
“No.”
She pushes the needle through the skin harder than necessary, but I don’t flinch.
She snorts. “Figures.”
The clubhouse is too loud around us. Men drinking off adrenaline, club women keeping close to the walls, and prospects cleaning blood out of the van because no one trusts them with anything sharper than a mop right now.
Jax’s chair sits empty near the far table, and that kind of emptiness gets noticed.
Fury leans against the bar, arms crossed, watching me with a grin that says he values his teeth less than he should. “Heard the paramedic called Jax road rash.”
A couple of men laugh, but I don’t, and the laughter dies fast.
Fury’s grin fades into something smarter. “Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“Was she a pretty thing?” I look at him, and he lifts both hands. “Question withdrawn.”
Mama M ties off the stitch and slaps my hand. “There. Try not to redecorate any more walls.”
I stand. “Thank you.”
She eyes me. “That girl shook you.”
I stop. Mama M has been around the Sons long enough to know when men are bleeding in places she can’t stitch. It makes her dangerous.
“She did her job,” I say.
“And you’re doing that thing where you make your voice flat because the words got feelings in them.”
I stare down at her. Most people look away from me eventually. Mama M never has.
“She doesn’t belong near this,” I say.
“No woman does ... until she does.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“It means men like you are always really sure what women can survive. Right up until one of us survives you.”
I hate that. Mostly because it’s true. I leave before she can say anything else that cuts too clean.
The war room is full when I step in. Savage at the head of the table. Saint beside him. Crimson stands near the far wall, his arms crossed, suspicion sitting ugly on his face. A few officers and two road captains, men who have earned the right to speak and the sense to know when not to.
Savage points to the screen—hospital security, street cameras, and grainy footage from three angles. Saint has already started building the map.
“Shooters came in from the west,” Saint says. “Left towards the east. They swapped vehicles six blocks out.”
“Are there any witnesses?” Crimson asks.
“Too many,” Saint says. “But they’re all too scared to say a fucking thing.”
Crimson looks at me. “What about the medic?”
I go still.
“Careful,” Savage says softly.
Crimson glances at him, then back at me. “She saw faces. That makes her club business.”
“No,” I say. One word. Flat and final.
The room shifts and Crimson’s eyes narrow. “No?”
“She’s a civilian.”
“She was at a club shooting,” he counters.
“She was at work.”
“She saw us armed.” I know what he's saying is true, but I’m not happy to hear it.
I take one step toward him, and Saint says my name under his breath. I stop because I am loyal, not because I am calm.
Crimson smiles like he thinks restraint is weakness. “You got something to say, enforcer?”
“Yeah.” I hold his gaze. “Talk about bringing her in like a fucking problem again, and I’ll make you one.”
The room goes silent, and Savage doesn’t correct me. That says more than words.
Crimson’s smile disappears, and Savage leans forward, palms flat on the table. “Harper Quinn stays untouched. She’ll be watched from a distance, and protected if needed. But nobody fucking approaches unless Steel clears it.”
Saint’s gaze flicks to mine.
Crimson laughs once. “Since when does Steel clear civilian contact?”
“Since I said it,” Savage replies.
No one argues after that. They aren’t stupid. Mostly.
The meeting moves on. Routes. Retaliation. Names. Pressure points. I hear all of it. File it. Measure it. But part of me stays in that ambulance bay with Harper’s chin lifted, blood on her vest, and her mouth sharp enough to draw its own kind of wound.
I have known pretty women. I have fucked pretty women. I have had soft hands on my skin, red nails down my back, mouths begging for more because they liked the danger as long as it stayed fantasy.
Harper didn’t look at me like a fantasy. She looked at me like a disease she refused to catch. That should make this easier. It doesn’t.
****
I find Milo Carver at 3:00 in the morning outside a gas station two blocks from Station Eight. Not because I’m stalking him, but because I am collecting information. There’s a difference ... probably.