Page 18 of Torn In Two

I scrubbed a hand over the back of my neck. “What the hell happened out there last night?” I asked again. It had been a madhouse of bodies and clubs and Josiah’s fucking voice playing down a speaker.

War let out a long sigh. “I don’t know. Two dead. Ratchet from our crew, Thunder from theirs. Riot says he saw Ratchet put a bullet in Thunder. Riot was the one who put Ratchet down for breaking club code and killing another member. He was within his rights to do so.”

“That’s bullshit! Ratchet wouldn’t have shot the guy for no reason if they were working together. Something else had to have happened.”

War shrugged. “They’re both dead, so all we can do is guess.”

I forced myself to say the words I didn’t even want to think about. “Which of them put Kara in that hole?”

War shook his head. “Thunder was their contact with the Ethereal Eden group. He was working directly with Josiah, so it makes the most sense that it was him. All that shit about her having to be buried to be reborn…” He shuddered. “Creepy fucking cult.”

“Thunder was a piece of shit,” I mused. “Never liked that prick, and Riot has piss-poor judgement when it comes to prospects. He never should have patched that guy in, let alone let him handle a job like that.” I shook my head. “Ratchet was a good guy. He didn’t fucking deserve this.”

“Didn’t deserve it if he was innocent,” War said quietly. “There’s every chance it was him who took Kara out there. For all we know, Josiah’s people got to him and paid him off to get to Kara.” He shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “Or they were working together. This reeks of a two-person job. That grave was deep, and they had to have carried Kara and the coffin out there. That’s too much for one person unless it was planned really damn well.”

Anger rose inside me at the reminder of someone putting Kara in a box, closing her in, and burying her beneath the ground. I suddenly didn’t give a shit which one of them it was. “They can both go to Hell.”

War didn’t look like he agreed, but what else was he supposed to do? The only other person who’d been there when shots had been fired was Riot. He was the Louisianna club president. He’d been all over Kara earlier in the night. Maybe that had been part of his plan to lure her away.

But unless we wanted to start a war within our own club, we couldn’t accuse Riot of something like that. Not without a hell of a lot more proof than just my best guesses, which were likely tainted by the jealousy that still threatened to destroy me every time I remembered Riot giving Kara drinks, and the dirty way his gaze had undressed her without her permission.

“The security system was down last night when Chaos and I came in.”

War ran a hand over his face. “We were in church, and everyone else was in the clubhouse to keep Riot and his boys in check. Their chapter is so much bigger than ours, and the vibe was so off, with them just turning up out of the blue. I don’t even know if there was anyone on the gate. I’m sorry, man. That’s on me. My head isn’t in the game right now.” His gaze slid to Bliss again.

A sharp whistle cut through the room, and Rebel glared at me and then at Chaos. “The nurse here says Kara’s husbands can go see her.”

Chaos shot up off the chair like a rocket, then nodded at War, as if handing back custody of Bliss’s protection.

Fucking brown-noser.

I used the moment to push ahead and get to the nurses’ station first.

Rebel was like a tiny little bottle of soda that had been shaken up and was ready to burst. “Husbands, my ass,” she mumbled. “I just want to see my sister.”

The tiniest twinge of guilt plucked at heartstrings I didn’t know I had. I slung my arm around Fang’s girl and drew her in so I could talk in her ear. “Just let me have this one, pipsqueak. You want to see her. I need to. She was damn near fucking dead when I pulled her out of that hole, and I’ve never been so scared in my entire life as I was trying to get her to breathe again. Let me have this.” I swallowed hard. “Please.”

She glanced up at me in surprise, like perhaps she, too, hadn’t realized I had a heart that had apparently only started beating for Kara.

She nodded once. “But don’t be too long!”

I kissed the top of her head, and she shoved me away.

“Ew, God, Hawk. Get away. You smell like a sewer.”

I sniggered as I followed the nurse down the hallway, Chaos so close behind me I was aware of his every move. He smelled no better than me at least. Both of us in dire need of a shower.

That I refused to think about, because if I thought about us both needing to get clean, then I was going to get hard, and that was fucking messed up when the only place I actually wanted to be was at Kara’s bedside.

The nurse stopped at the doorway to the room and gestured for us to go inside. “The doctors are just finishing up with her. You can go in.”

I froze two steps in the room.

Kara was swallowed up by the large white hospital bed and walls. She had oxygen tubes in her nose and more lines plugged into cannulas in her hand.

But she was alive. “Hey, Little Mouse,” I managed to choke out.

Kara’s eyes met mine, moved to Chaos, and then eventually came back.

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