Page 49 of Snake

“Hey!” he said again, more loudly.

Tommy’s eyes stuttered open. “Hey. I might be fucked here, man,” he mumbled. A bubble of red formed at the corner of his mouth, swelled, and popped. Fuck. Then he closed his eyes and sagged back into limbo. Double fuck.

Cox slapped him on the side of the head. “Don’t be a fuckin’ pussy. You’re fine. Hold your shit together, asshole.”

Tommy met that challenge with half of a grin and a weary, wet chuckle. “Don’t get all mushy on me now.”

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~oOo~

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“YOU KILLED HIM! YOU FUCKIN’ KILLED HIM!” Leigh Prentiss wailed.

She was now bound more securely, with zip ties at her wrists and ankles, in the back of the van. Gary, who was not dead but would be eventually without medical attention, lay unconscious and bound (Cox was taking no chances) beside her. Cox’s shot had found its target so low on Gary’s torso there was a solid chance he’d never use his dick again, even if he lived long enough to want to.

“Can we please gag the bitch?” Tommy gasped. He leaned against the front passenger door, looking like every ounce of his strength was devoted to remaining conscious. He was snow-white and pouring sweat. His breathing was labored and had a rumble Cox did not like at all—like dice in a cup—and he kept licking fresh blood from his lips. The bullet had hit him almost dead center in his chest, slightly to the right; it had gone clear through, which was likely why Tommy was still breathing any kind of way, but it looked like it had taken a bite out of his lung on the way through.

“Yeah, hold on,” Cox said, climbing back to shove his bandana in Leigh’s mouth. She fought him, tried to bite him, so he punched her in the side of the head and got the gag in before she could shake off the stun.

He jumped into the driver’s seat and tore hell back to town. He needed to get Tommy to the clinic.

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~oOo~

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Badger raked a hand through his greying hair. “Fuck me sideways. God DAMN it!” He slammed his fist onto the bar.

The patches standing with him, half the club, said nothing.

A few hours had passed since Cox sped through the Prentisses’ gate with Tommy bleeding in the passenger seat and two people trussed up in the back. Now, Tommy was in surgery at Phelps County Memorial, in Rolla, to repair his deflated lung, and Leigh was still trussed up, but now she was tied to a chair in the warehouse.

Gary was dead. He’d bled out in the van and was dead by the time Cox parked behind the clinic.

And Leigh swore up, down, and sideways that they’d had nothing to do with the trouble at Abigail’s. Sobbing hysterically, begging not to be hurt, she’d insisted that the fucking Bronco in their garage hadn’t run for years. Gary had been scrounging parts out of it to keep other shit running.

Isaac and Zaxx had just returned from that bedraggled old farm to confirm that yes, the Bronco was missing about half its engine, and there was an actual rat’s nest in a wheel well that had obviously not been recently disturbed.

They’d been wrong. Weaselly as Gary Prentiss had been, he had not ransacked Abigail Freeman’s property.

Now Tommy was hurt, Gary was dead, and Leigh was a fucking mess they had to sort out before they could even consider letting her go.

Missouri was a stand-your-ground state. Gary had shot first, but he was on his own property, so it was, by definition, justifiable that he’d shot Tommy.

Cox had killed the man in his own home.

If law got wind, he’d likely do life or get death, and the investigation could dredge up the deaths from last year—which had been self-defense, and Gia Lunden, not a patch, had shot them, but that didn’t matter. The club had handled things on their own, so there would never be any proof of the truth, only decomposing, waterlogged bodies for cops to write their own story on.

They could not let Leigh out of this compound until and unless they were extremely sure she would never speak a word of the truth about her husband’s death. Leigh knew that, and had been robustly insisting she never would—however, once she was loose, they had no leverage to keep her in check. Gary was the last thing she’d had to lose.

So the patches who’d hadn’t followed the ambulance to Rolla, those who’d stayed back to deal with the mess—Badger, Double A, Isaac, Len, Nolan, Zaxx, Mel, Thumper, and Cox—now stood in the Hall and tried to come to grips with the possibility that they had to kill a grieving woman who’d done nothing to them.

“We can’t do it,” Mel said. “It ain’t who we are. Hell, was it who we ever were?”

“No,” Nolan said with conviction.

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