Page 11 of Torn In Two

“Animals though,” Whip continued. “They don’t know any better. They don’t do bad shit.” He glared at Ace. “Killing them is messed up.”

Ace huffed out an irritated sigh. “The little fucker got into my yard and chased me! What was I supposed to do?” He reached into his duffel bag and pulled out a clear plastic bag.

His neighbor’s dead pet was inside.

“You see the claws on that thing? He was gonna rip my eyes out!” He tossed the bag in my direction. “Here. Thought you could eat it. You’re on that Keto diet thing, aren’t you?”

I stared down at the dead bird on my lap and then around at the group of men all watching me.

Clearly, we still had some work to do.

5

HAYDEN

Iwas going to die.

At least the clearing, awash with pink and gold as the sun rose, was a pretty place for it all to end.

“Does somebody want to tell me why the fuck we have two dead members and a Sinner in our compound?” War roared from the middle of the crowd, his gaze centering on me. He pulled his gun. “What kind of fucking death wish do you have, Chaos?”

“Don’t shoot him,” Hawk said with reluctance from the bottom of the hole where he was monitoring Kara’s breathing. His tone was anything but convincing, as if he did kind of wish War would put a bullet through my head. “At least, not until Kara’s out of the woods.”

War dragged his gaze away from me and onto his VP. And then to Kara, lying in the hip-deep hole on her side, so deathly quiet in the midst of the drama surrounding her.

War dropped his gun and knelt at the edge of the hole. “What the fuck happened?”

He’d been late to the party, but somebody else was going to have to fill him in.

I focused on Hawk, hating it was him down there and not me. It had taken everything inside me to not shove him out of the way and take his spot.

But I knew exactly how good Hawk was with anything medical. He might not have had a degree in anything, but he knew what he was doing. I was alive as walking, talking proof of that. I didn’t know the first thing about checking pulses or doing CPR.

I was completely useless to Kara right now, and as much as I hated to admit it, she needed him in this moment more than she needed me.

That hurt like fucking hell.

“Can we move her yet?” I asked him. “She needs a hospital.”

War glared at me. “Hawk knows what he’s doing. She doesn’t need—”

“She does,” he interrupted. “She does need a hospital. She needs X-rays or something to check her lungs and make sure she hasn’t inhaled dirt. I can’t do that here.”

War nodded. “Shit. Okay, yeah. I’ll get the club van.”

Hawk went to nod, then screwed up his face and shook his head. “Chaos has a van. We’ll take her in that.”

Surprise punched through me.

Clearly, it caught War off guard too.

Both of us were plain shocked when Hawk gathered Kara up in his arms, lifted her, and then held her out to me.

He glared at me when I didn’t move. “Fucking take her, Chaos. I can’t get out of this damn hole carrying her.”

Shit. I crouched at the edge of the grave she’d nearly died in and took her from his arms. The breath whooshed from my lungs. Just hours earlier she’d stood right in front of me, eyes bright, skin pink with health. Now she was barely conscious, her body a dead weight in desperate need of medical attention.

“Hayden,” she mumbled, her voice raspy, like she’d been screaming.

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