Page 41 of Raiden

Only dust.

Whatever’s on my clothes came off Gunner, but I’m dirty. I’m so unclean. I need to wash this away so badly that I’m almost frantic with it.

“Whoa there.” Bullet’s strong, burly arms close in around me. He pulls me tight against him. “Seen this more than once inmy years. It’s just the adrenaline high you’re coming off of. You’ll be okay. I’m not going to let you go.”

“P…” I want to sayplease don’t, please, please, don’t,but I can’t get anything out. I clutch at his bare arms, his t-shirt, anything I can reach, clawing to get closer, raking him with my nails as if somehow that will force air into my lungs and get my heart to stop feeling like it’s going to burst inside my chest.

He holds me tighter, the weight of him like a calm, steadying blanket. He smells like guns and oil, not like blood. Like he’s been cleaning and shooting weapons, but that’s it. Like cigarettes and leather. It reminds me of my dad. Raiden. I know I’m safe.

“Widow!” Lark’s tiny frame slams up against my side. She closes her arms around my back, covering anything that Bullet can’t reach.

I’m sandwiched between them, one massive and one tiny. She smells like flowers, like summer, like sweet innocence. I drink it in, focus on it, anything to get the metallic stench of death and blood out of my nose and mouth. It’s so bitter. Not blood, but bile. I remember now that I threw up.

“It’s okay, girl. You’re going to be okay. Look at me.”

I try. I want to. Bullet will calm me down. He’ll know what to do.

I get my head up a few inches, just enough to see his long beard and focus on it, and then everything goes black so fast that I can’t fight it.

Chapter 14

Raiden

I’ve never driven anywhere so fast in my life. I pushed my old fifties Ford to the point of it exploding. Gray tore off on his bike when Gunner’s call came in. He wasn’t going to wait for reason or a guard. All I could do was hand Penny off to Seer, who I’d trust through anything, and tail after Gray. Axe and Crow got their shit together fast, organizing guards at the club. As I was literally running out the back door, I heard them barking orders.

They rumble up to the Bullet’s range behind me. Gray’s bike is already parked, his huge body thrusting through the chain link fence.

My sister, in her floral jean jacket, throws herself at Gray. He picks her up and she wraps her legs around his waist. He kisses her hard and desperate and her hands rake his hair, grasp at his shoulders.

I look away, but not because I can’t handle my best friend loving my little sister. They’re assuring each other that they’re alive, that they’re okay, that nothing on this earth can tear them from each other.

I feel the same burning desperation clawing at my own gut. Where the fuck is she?

There’s a black sedan in the far side of the gravel parking lot, parked under a few huge trees. I can tell where shit went down. There’s fresh gravel lumped up in spots where the bloodpooled and the thirsty ground drank it in. Steel and Vigil have been busy covering up the crime scene.

We’re lucky that the shots were fired at the range. Exactly where shots are always fired. No one called the cops. We get to deal with this our way for now.

Although, what way that is I have no idea.

I just know that whatever game is being played went from arson to attempted murder and kidnapping. This isn’t just Zale and his twisted revenge. I’m sure now that it’s more. He would never try and have his daughter killed. He fucked with Gray, but he didn’t take his life. Widow has never done one thing to wrong him. I told her he might be using her, but even I can’t see him putting a bullet in her brain.

I slam my truck door shut and eat up the freshly raked gravel.

This is everything I feared. I couldn’t live if something happened to Lark, but I didn’t know what losing Widow would do to me. I still don’t know. I don’t understand the pain chewing my insides like a fox with its leg in a trap.

I reach the chain link. Gray and Lark are still holding each other. He hasn’t even set her down yet. I doubt he’ll let her out of his sight or let her feet so much as touch the ground ever again.

I’m about to bark out Widow’s name, probably deranged and rough and not at all myself, when I see her.

She’s leaning against the office. She’s got her back to the metal building, her arms crossed over her chest. She’s trying to feign the same casual toughness, but I immediately see through it. She’s more like a statue with shadows carved in deep. She’swhite, her black eyeliner and dark lipstick standing out in stark contrast.

I run to her, uncaring what it looks like or who sees it.

She’s trembling. She doesn’t look at me. She stares through me, like she’s not here. Like none of this is real.

My ghosts aren’t the same as men returning home from battle. What I saw was entirely different than going out and fighting a war. She looks like a soldier. She killed men.Three,Gunner said. She watched him slash the last guy’s throat.

I know why he did it. Men like Gunner enjoy killing. They crave blood.

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