Page 12 of Torn In Two

“It’s me, baby. I got you.” I stepped toward the woods, the van abandoned somewhere beyond.

Hawk whistled sharply. “This way, asshole.”

I didn’t argue with him. Hawk might have been lacking in a lot of areas, his personality in particular, but this was his territory.

So I shut up and followed him, clutching Kara close and keeping pace with Hawk, who slow jogged through the trees.

It was easier than the trip in, despite the addition of Kara’s weight. Anything was easier than blindly running through the woods in the darkness.

Hawk opened the sliding door on the van and closed it after me when I got in. There were no seats, the back designed for deliveries, so I sank to the cold metal and put Kara on my lap. She curled in on herself, resting her head on my shoulder and closing her eyes.

I didn’t like the sound of her breathing. It seemed too shallow and wheezy, and she winced with each inhale.

“Hawk,” I said, a low warning in my tone.

He glanced back at us in the rearview mirror. “Yeah, I know. I can hear it too. I’m driving.”

All I could do was hold Kara close and pray she’d be okay until we got to the hospital.

Hawk pulled up outside the ER with a screech of brakes and the blaring of his horn. “Can we get some help out here!” He got out of the van and slid the back door open.

Kara’s breathing was barely a rasp. I wasn’t even sure if she was just exhausted or unconscious.

I got us out and met the attendant running out with a gurney.

He took one glimpse of Kara’s dirt-covered, vaguely gray skin and put his fingers to her neck, checking for a pulse.

That’s how fucking dead she looked, even though her chest did rise and fall with shallow breaths.

“She has a pulse and she’s breathing,” Hawk barked out, gripping the side of the gurney and pushing it toward the hospital doors. “Now move!”

I grabbed the other side, helping it along.

“She was unresponsive for an unknown period of time,” Hawk continued. “And she might have inhaled dirt. A lot of it. So make sure you do whatever the hell checks you do for that.”

The attendant nodded, repeating the information to the medical professionals as we entered the hospital.

One of the male doctors looked at her and then at us. “What happened to her?”

Hawk, who had been full of confidence, barking out orders a second ago, froze.

I knew what he was thinking. He’d ditched his MC jacket while he’d been driving, but if we told these people the truth, that she’d been buried alive, the police were inevitably going to ask us where.

Hawk and I were both known to the cops. It wouldn’t take them long to get a search warrant for my house. The restaurant. The Slayers’ compound. Wouldn’t be long until someone found a trace of what had happened out there.

Or the dead body of a biker. There had been a couple to choose from.

I could dump Hawk in it pretty bad right now. Luca, too, which he would deserve after he’d tried to use me as his pawn, once again. The cops would surely find some sort of evidence at both the restaurant and the Slayers’ compound, but my house was squeaky clean since I’d been out of the game so long.

I could walk away into the sunset with Kara and Hayley Jade. Maybe we’d send Hawk and Luca a postcard from wherever we ended up, addressed to the Saint View jail where they’d both be seeing out their days.

My gaze met Hawk’s. His expression was full of anger and indignation, and maybe even some resignation.

But then he ran his hand over Kara’s forehead so tenderly, and I remembered the way he’d brought her back to life. My stupid fucking tongue wouldn’t form the words to dump him in it. “We were at a party,” I told the doctor. “She got too close to the edge of a small cliff and ground gave way. She didn’t fall that far but brought some dirt and soil down on top of her.”

The doctor swore beneath his breath and barked out a lot of medical talk to his team around him.

I didn’t understand a word of it but I looked at Hawk, who nodded at the doctor’s commands. He didn’t argue. If what the doctors were doing was good enough for Hawk, when he clearly loved Kara so much it had changed his whole personality from abrasive, rude jackass, to tender, attentive boyfriend, then it was good enough for me.

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