Page 61 of Devil to Pay: Cutter

“Aja?” I ask again, more insistently.

“She’s safe,” one of the older men says. “Back at the bar with Nubs.”

Nubs? I start to laugh like a lunatic and no lie, it hurts like hell. “Nubs?”

“Lost the tips of two fingers in a saw accident,” another man says. “Thank Christ it’s not his shooting hand.”

“No shit,” I reply, then I fall back on my ass. One of the men pulls a phone from his pocket to make a call. Then, as if they’d done this before—which makes me reconsider how safe Aja is back at that bar—all the men start loading the dead bodies into the beds of two pickups.

In no time, a tow shows up. He and a few of the other men load a bike in the back of the mangled truck, then he hooks the truck and backs up to a clear spot off the road that I hadn’t noticed before, making me think that this spot gets a lot of action.

The truck holding the dead men takes off back in the direction of town, too.

The last truck is for me.

“We’ll have this road clear in no time,” another older guy says as they load me into the bed and take off back toward the town, but we turn off onto a dirt drive before making it there. An old man with a beard that would make the members of ZZ Top jealous stands outside a cabin waving us in. The man driving the truck parks and hops out, rounding the bed to help me out along with ZZ Top.

“Stitches,” he offers.

“Probably,” I say back, struggling to speak through my pain, and wince.

He chuckles. “No. That’s me. They call meStitches. C’mon, Gene. Help me get him inside.”

Gene? The guy in the truck’s name is Gene? I never would’ve called it. Funny the things a man thinks about to distract himself from pain.

So Gene and Stitches help me inside his cabin, past the living room through double glass doors into a room set up as a doctor’s office. Strike that, as I take in the space, I realize it’s more of a mini hospital ER.

I look at Stitches and he shrugs. “Got no hospital nearby. Got no MedExpress either. I opened up shop after I retired.”

Works for me.

The men help heave me onto the exam bed then Gene steps back while Stitches slips on a pair of latex gloves and assesses my condition. I gasp like a fucking pussy as he manipulates the gunshot.

“Through and through,” he mumbles about the shoulder. “That’s good. But your face. Cuts and some glass shards embedded in the cuts. Get you something for the pain.”

“You’re a retired doctor?” I ask.

He swipes his hand in the air. “Nah. Medic.” Then he starts cleaning the bullet wound before stitching it up. After the shoulder, he starts to clean my face and take care of those cuts.

“Nubs is bringing your lady here,” Gene says.

“Got no way to get her back home now,” I tell him. “She was injured. Can’t ride on a bike.”

“Neither can you,” Stitches says. “Not till this heals some.”

“No worries. We’ll get you home,” Gene says. “You’ll have a truck and an escort all the way.”

“He ain’t driving,” Stitches says.

“’Course not. Shoulder wound like that and pain meds? Do you even know me?” Gene asks his friend.

“You all have already done so much for us,” I say. “Involved yourself in some nasty shit.”

“Your gal, she told us you’re with the Horde men who helped those women.”

“I am.”

“Means you involved yourself in some nasty shit as well. Get paid?”

---