Page 84 of Lawless in Leather

Damn.

He switched to the computer in his study and pulled up the file there. Two quick clicks and it started to play.

Home video from the quality. And somewhere dark. Lots of voices. The screen was a wobbly blur but then it settled and Mal recognized what he was looking at. Madame R’s. The night of the party. He could tell from all the Saints colored balloons being bounced around the room.

What the hell, Lucas?

He stared at the screen listening to the sounds of the crowd. Laughter and chatter. And then music started pounding through the room.

His heart nearly stopped. He knew that song. And he knew what he was about to see.

On the screen, the video zoomed in, focusing on the shimmering black curtain drawn across the stage. Which suddenly flew apart and revealed Raina in all her black-and-pink-angel glory.

The sight of her had nearly stopped his heart at the party. He’d wanted to leap onto the stage and carry her off as soon as she’d appeared.

Carry her off to somewhere dark and private with a big bed where he could remove some of that leather and maybe work out how to tie her down with those wings and do the sorts of things she liked him doing to her until she came about a thousand times.

“Breathe,” Maggie had said in his ear on the night, and he’d taken that advice. Had stayed there, mesmerized, watching Raina slink across the stage and own it. Sex on legs. Glorious. Strong. The wings framed her body and somehow, despite the weight of them, she’d managed to leap and twist as though she might just take off.

Until the lights exploded and she ducked. And he saw himself leaping onto the stage and grabbing her, panic clear on his face. The video stopped when the lights died.

He hit PLAY again. Stopped when he saw his face again. Remembered the panic. The need to get to her. The certainty that he had to get to her. Remembered, with a sudden blinding flash, the first time he’d ever felt that way.

All those years ago. In Texas.

The explosion. Remembered the sound—a growling rushing roar—and then watching as, behind Alex, standing at home plate, half the stadium started to collapse.

The force of the blast had sent him rocking back but he kept his feet, half his brain registering the sight of Lucas falling to the ground while the other half tried to figure out what the hell had just happened.

It didn’t take long. His ears ringing from the blast, he’d watched Alex running across the field, toward Lucas, uniform half streaked with black. Vaguely aware that around him, everyone else was running for the north exit. He stayed put until he saw Coach Paulson bend down to help Lucas to his feet. Lucas had shaken his head but the coach pointed at the exit and Lucas had grimaced and started to jog in that direction, limping slightly. Mal watched him go. The exit. That was the smart option. That way was safety. Which explained why most of the crowd was currently streaming in that direction, trying to get out of the stadium.

No way he going anywhere without his friends. He started toward them and the three of them met about halfway across the field. Lucas came to a stop, wincing, and Alex did, too. Mal stared past them at the flames and smoke billowing from what was left of the stand behind home plate. Lucas and Alex saw his face and turned, too.

“Coach said we gotta go,” Alex had said. His face had been smeared with soot, his hair standing on end and black-smudged. One sleeve dangled from his jersey, nearly ripped off.

“There are people in there,” Lucas said. Or that was what Mal thought he’d said. His ears still rang.

The three of them stared at one another a moment. None of them moved an inch.

“Okay.” Alex nodded. “But we do this together. No one gets out of sight. No one does anything stupid.”

It was stupid by definition. It was also the only goddamned thing to do. You couldn’t run away when there were people in there. People who might be hurt or trapped. People who were smaller and weaker than he was. People who needed help. Stupid didn’t matter. Only that he could do something.

He learned things that day. Learned the way that smoke stung your eyes and lungs as it closed around you. Learned that adrenaline could make you do things that you didn’t think were possible and that you wouldn’t remember clearly. Learned that he could feel completely terrified and keep running back into the flames.

Learned that he was one of the lucky ones. When they were done he had a burn across his forearm and a cut in his side where he’d stumbled against a twisted piece of metal but that was nothing. He was alive. The three of them were alive. Alex had busted his hand in half a dozen places and Lucas had done a number on his shoulder but all three of them were alive.

There were people who weren’t.

People who’d died. Because on a perfectly sunny warm day they’d wanted to watch some damned baseball. Because they, too, loved the game. Died because some group of assholes had a gripe with the government or the university or something and thought they had the right to take it out on other people who were doing nothing more than trying to live their lives.

And he promised himself he wasn’t going to let that happen again.

He shook himself out of the memory, breathing too hard. He hadn’t remembered it like that for a long time. Not so clearly.

But he might have guessed that he’d be ripe for some sort of rebound, with the way he’d been pushing himself. He’d been half expecting one of his now rare nightmares. Combat and blood and death.

Instead there had been a girl wearing black-and-pink wings and leather in a darkened burlesque club.

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