Page 64 of Property of Thrasher
“They’ll do what they feel is right,” I replied. “We want the same thing you do.”
He studied me like he knew that wasn’t entirely true. I didn’t blink. After a beat, he pasted on that polite professional look again and left.
Melody’s fingers found mine again and squeezed. “I’m scared,” she whispered.
“Me too,” I admitted. It cost me nothing to say it and bought me the thing I actually needed—her trust. “But I’m fueled by revenge. This won’t go untouched.”
The clock over the nurse’s station ticked. A TV on mute flashed images of a cooking show that felt obscene in the face of what was happening behind those doors. Melody’s head slid down again, this time not to cry or shock, but from sheer depletion. I moved us to a loveseat time of set up and let her sag against my side.
While she slept against me, I let my head hit the wall and, for the first time since the truck, I let myself think about what I’d do when we had the all-clear. I didn’t let it get bloody in my mind. I didn’t need gore. What I needed was precision.
We’d figure the motive beyond the obvious. The obvious was Melody. But Tiny in front with Lyric? That made the truck hit the first bike it could reach. Were they aiming at us and took the shot they got, or did they plan to hit any of our patch? If they meant to terrorize, they’d succeeded. If they meant to take Melody off the board, they’d failed. That fucked with men like that. They got sloppy after a miss.
I pictured Logan’s face the way she’d described it—scar on the cheek, a boy who grew into a man who thought a mark made him special. I pictured BJ laughing with his mouth open like a fool when the world lit up with sirens and blood. I pictured their hands shaking when the adrenaline ran out and their brains caught up with the fact that the people they’d hit weren’t the paper targets they were used to; we were flesh and bone and family and the kind of men who bury our dead with honor and go hunting after.
I didn’t make plans for what came after we found them. Not yet. For now, I held Melody, and I waited.
She jolted awake thirty minutes later, breath catching like she’d been falling in a dream. “Is she?—”
“No update.” I rubbed up and down her arm, careful around the road rash. “You slept.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“You needed to.” I tilted my head. “Water?”
She nodded. I got up, stretched the knots out of my back, and grabbed two from a vending machine that wanted to rob me. Pinky leaned a hip on it and gave the machine a look that changed its mind. He cracked a grin when I snorted.
I brought the water back to Melody and sat. She twisted the cap with hands that still shook and drank in small sips, like even water needed permission right now to enter her.
“I keep seeing it,” she said after a moment. “Not the impact. The time before it. When Tiny was smiling and Lyric was leaning into him and I thought, ‘this is what safe looks like,’ and then—” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Like the world played a joke.”
“Safe didn’t vanish because two cowards decided to aim their truck wrong,” I said. “Safe is a net with a lot of ropes. You fell. We caught you. We’ll keep catching you.”
She looked at me like she wanted to believe it and was afraid to. Then she squeezed my fingers hard enough to hurt, like testing the rope herself. “We might not have caught Lyric. And they’re not done, they will come again,” She couldn’t finish.
“They won’t get this far,” I explained. “But if they do?” I held her gaze steady. “They’d learn what fucking with an ‘old lady’ means carved in bone.”
Color touched her cheeks despite everything. She took another drink and leaned against me, the top of her head fitting under my chin like a thing designed.
The doors finally opened and a surgeon stepped out. He was older than the last doc, hair gone to steel, eyes red at the rims like he’d been in the fight with her. He scanned the room, found our cluster by the wall, and came our direction.
We stood as one without even talking about it. Enzo appeared at my shoulder like he’d been conjured. The surgeon stopped in front of us and slid his mask down.
“Family for Lyric Truman?” he asked.
“Yes,” DK said, and the word came out like a truth, not a legal technicality. “How is she?”
“She’s alive,” he said, and a sound went through us like a pressure valve letting off. “She lost a lot of blood. We removed a ruptured spleen, repaired lacerations to her liver, and addressed some internal bleeding. She’s critical, but stable for the moment. The next twelve to twenty-four will tell us more. She’s headed to ICU.”
Melody’s knees gave and I got an arm around her waist quick. Relief is mean like that—it knocks harder than dread.
“And Tiny?” I asked, throat tight. “Braxton Davis.”
“Neurosurgery is continuing to monitor,” the surgeon said. “The bleed’s not expanding at the rate we feared. That’s a good sign, but I’m not going to lie to you—head injuries are unpredictable. We’ll know more by morning.”
“Can we see her?” Melody asked, voice small but sure. “Just for a second?”
“Once she’s settled in ICU,” he said. “One at a time, limited time, and you keep voices low. She’ll know you’re there even if she doesn’t respond.”
