CHAPTER TWENTY
Isaac charged into the dorm room. Len had Wyatt against a wall. LaVonne was curled into the corner, cowering, her mouth bleeding heavily. Isaac spared her a glance, then turned to Dan, coming up behind him.
“Dan—get her outta here. Get her some ice or something.” He advanced on Wyatt. “What the fuck did you do, Wyatt?”
“So I hit a woman—back the fuck off!” Wyatt struggled hard against Len’s grip, but Len was bigger and stronger.
Len handed Isaac a phone; must have been Wyatt’s. Isaac checked outgoing calls—none recent. He checked outgoing texts—one, to Ray. It read: get out now pilot after u cant explain go back 2 camp.
He tossed the phone on the bed behind him. Leaning down into Wyatt’s face, looming over him, Isaac snarled, “That’s the stupid shit I wanted to keep you from doing. If Lilli gets hurt because of this, I will end you slow.” He shifted his eyes to Len. “Put him in the Room. Chain the fucker down. We’ll deal with him later.”
Isaac felt panic. He didn’t think he’d ever felt panic before, but it was on him now, compelling him to move, move now, find Lilli, keep her safe. But he had to think. He’d tried to call her several more times, to no avail. Something bad had gone down, he could feel it in his very cells. The question was where.
Wyatt’s text hadn’t given Ray any information about where Lilli was. Rover had taken him back to his place. Most likely, then, that was where trouble was. But he needed to be sure. His men were at his back, waiting to know what he wanted. No one had made any suggestions, not even Show. They were waiting for him to work it through. When Len came back from the Room, Isaac knew what he wanted.
“CJ—you stay with Wyatt, make sure he’s contained. Show and Bart—you go to Lilli’s place. Don’t think she’s there, but I need to be sure. Be careful—she’ll be on alert and maybe suspicious of anybody but me right now. She doesn’t know how the vote went. The rest of us, we’re going to Ray’s. I think there’s trouble, and I think it’s there.” He met each brother’s eyes. “We clear? We good?” They nodded as one and geared up.
~oOo~
They didn’t bother with stealth; instead, they roared up to Ray’s house and ran in, full-bore. Isaac didn’t have the patience for stealth.
The door was standing open; Isaac was first in. Rover was lying at the far end of the short hallway, a thickening pool of blood making a crimson halo around his head and shoulders. Isaac went to him and squatted to check his pulse; the rest of the Horde fanned out to check the small house. Rover was dead, shot just to the side of his right eye. Isaac hoped he’d gone instantly.
Len was standing immediately behind Isaac. “We’re clear here.” Isaac looked up at him, and Len nodded at Rover’s body. “You think that was Ray or Lilli?”
Standing and turning fast, Isaac almost grabbed Len. “It was Ray, and you know it. No way Lilli would’ve shot the kid.”
“Not on purpose, but we don’t know what went on here.”
Isaac did. He could see it clearly. He’d put Rover on watch detail, and Ray had taken him down after Wyatt warned him about Lilli. Jesus Christ, this was a mess.
He needed to find Lilli. She wasn’t in the house, and Ray’s car was in the yard. He knew damn well she wouldn’t have just driven up—she’d given him enough detail about her surveillance to know that her car was probably several miles away. It all added up to bad, but Isaac was convinced she had to be close. But where? Pushing his panic and worry back so that he could fucking think, he went through the narrow back door and out into the overgrown yard.
Like any good country boy, Isaac was an experienced hunter. That made him a decent tracker. But good tracking skills weren’t required to be able to see that a major fight had gone down at the far corner of the house. The tall grass was flattened and matted and, as Isaac investigated, he saw blood staining the trampled growth—a couple of smaller but still noteworthy smears, a trail of drips and streaks, and then a much more sizable stain that had clearly been a pool before the earth had taken it in.
Squatting at the largest stain, Isaac breathed slowly, fighting for calm. It was Lilli’s blood. No earthly way he could know that, but he felt its certainty like he felt the ground under his feet. If it had been Ray’s blood, if Lilli had bled him like this, the Horde would have come upon a vastly different scene, he just knew it.
Ray had Lilli, and she was badly hurt. She was either already dead, and he was disposing of her body, or she would die soon. Despair was crowding in with the worry and panic. Isaac dropped his head to his knees and pushed it all back. Focus. Focus. If he had her, where were they be? With a deep breath he lifted his head and looked around. There—a vague trail of displaced grass and weeds. He went toward it and saw that it looked like someone was possibly dragged in that direction. Maybe it was wishful thinking, Isaac seeing a lead where there was none, but he had no better options, so he followed. He didn’t even call his brothers.
But Len saw him go; Isaac heard him hailing the rest of the Horde to follow. Now, though, now he wanted stealth. If there was a chance Lilli was alive, Isaac didn’t want to blow it because Ray saw most of the MC bearing down on him. Isaac turned and gestured for his men to fan out and stay quiet.
They followed the trail for almost ten minutes before Isaac understood where they were headed. By then, it had become much more obviously a trail, and had, in fact, begun to show signs that Ray was following what had been an actual trail trodden into the reedy grass and wildflowers of the lightly wooded field. Soon, they were in a thick stand of trees, and Isaac followed Ray’s progress easily. He came across one of Lilli’s running shoes in the path, and his heart skidded.
They were headed for an old deer blind. Isaac knew it because he’d hunted the woods all around here his whole life, as had all the men behind him. The blind was on Corin Petersen’s property—which was now a bank’s property. When they came upon it a few minutes later, Isaac ducked behind a cluster of wild growth, and gestured for everyone to stop and be still. He cocked his Glock. The rest of the Horde followed suit.
The blind was sized to accommodate four men for a day of waiting. It was elevated, its floor about four feet off the ground, and had once been painted in a camouflage pattern. Age, weather, and disuse had taken its toll, though, and its color was almost uniformly the grey of dying old wood. Most of the windows were still closed, their board shutters latched with hooks. Weeds had grown up all around it, and it was the weeds that told Isaac they’d found Ray’s destination. The growth was disturbed in a path directly to the basic set of steps leading into the blind, and tall, strong weeds had been broken sharply off at the point where they grew up in the empty spaces between each step.
At first, Isaac neither heard nor saw anything. Then, just as he was preparing to step out of cover and advance on the blind, its floor creaked, and he saw the building shimmy slightly. He stopped. He had to get in there, and he needed to surprise Ray when he did so. He had no idea what state he would find Lilli in. He needed to think.
Len sidled up to him then and whispered, “Havoc and I will divert him. When we start making a din, you get in there.” Isaac nodded. It was a good plan.
But they didn’t get a chance to put it in play, because just then Ray shouted, loud enough to be clear to the Horde’s ears, “Scream, you fucking cunt! Scream!”
All plans evaporated, and Isaac just ran.
He charged up the steps and slammed through the door; the dry-rotted wood gave way almost instantly, and Isaac nearly lost his footing. He caught himself, aimed, and shot twice before Ray could get his own gun up. Ray went down, two bullets in his chest. He didn’t move at all.
Except to kick Ray’s gun away, Isaac ignored him and went straight for Lilli. She was lying on the floor, her hands bound with Ray’s belt, her clothes badly torn, as if—Isaac stopped that thought. There was blood everywhere, pulsing slowly in a dark ooze from her neck, where a soaked bandana was tied. Except where it was doused in her blood, or bruised, her skin was waxy white, almost blue. But she was conscious and looking at him. She seemed . . . calm. He dropped to his knees, undid the binding around her wrists, and gathered her up. She was cold. Jesus.
“Baby—God, baby.” She blinked up at him. There was so much fucking blood. She smiled a little and tried to lift her arm, but it only came up a couple of inches, and then she let it drop back to the floor with a thud. Her eyes fluttered shut. “Lilli!” He shook her, and a wrinkle crossed her brow, but she didn’t open her eyes.
He checked her pulse. Thin and fast. Turning to Dan, who was standing at the door—somehow they’d pulled Ray’s body out already—Isaac said, “We have to get her help! NOW!”
Dan nodded and called out the door. “We need the van up here—close as you can get!”
Isaac was frantic; he couldn’t push it off any longer. “She’s bleeding out. It’s too much—it’s too fucking much!” Dan knelt next to him and put his hand on his shoulder. He reached out and checked Lilli’s pulse, gently holding her wrist.
“She’s in shock, Isaac. Nobody’s got cell service out here, so we need to take her in the van.” He pulled his kutte off and shrugged out of his grey cotton button-down, leaving him in nothing but a wife-beater t-shirt. He put his kutte back on and fashioned a bandage with his shirt, wrapping it around her neck. “We need to get her in the van and get her legs up, keep the blood to her organs. You carry her, I’ll apply pressure, boss. She’s already lost too much blood. She’s got to keep what she still has.”
Isaac heard the van coming fast through the brush. He stood, Lilli’s limp body in his arms. Dan walked backwards down the steps, his hand pressing into Lilli’s neck. They climbed into the back of the van, leaving Len and Havoc to clean up and rid the world of Ray Hobson’s remains.
The hospital was 20 miles away. Sitting on the floor of the van, Dan sitting in front of him, keeping pressure on her wound, Isaac bent over the still body of his old lady and, for the first time since his sister left him alone with their father, he prayed.
~oOo~
He told the people at the hospital she was his wife. He didn’t hesitate at all. He knew they wouldn’t question him, and he needed to make sure they gave him access to her. But they’d whisked her away from him almost immediately, and now he and Dan were in the waiting room. Waiting. Isaac was losing his fucking mind.
He had been wearing a rut in the waiting room floor for almost three hours, with no word whatsoever, when Show and Len turned up. Show caught him in the middle of his circuit and pulled him aside.
“Ray’s handled, the site is clean, and your bike is at the clubhouse. I know this is a shitty time, but we need to talk about Wyatt.”
Isaac had only one thing to say about Wyatt. “That motherfucker is dead. Leave him for me.”
Show shook his head. “Not without a vote, boss. You need to think clearly.”
The taut wire of control holding Isaac together snapped, and he grabbed Show by his kutte and slammed him against the nearest wall. “Do you see the blood? There was so much blood! She could die—she could be dead already!—and Wyatt did it. I will tear him apart with my bare fucking hands. I will gut him.”
Dan was at his back, pulling him away. He released Show and stormed to the far end of the room. He couldn’t think about this shit now. He could only think of Lilli. What was happening? Why wouldn’t they tell him anything? He dropped to a chair and put his head in his hands.
Steady as ever, Show came back up to him and sat down. “Focus on her for now, boss. I’ll make sure Wyatt’s held until you’re ready. I got the rest. You focus on your old lady.”
Isaac nodded and went back to waiting.
~oOo~
When a doctor finally came out and called, “Lilli’s family?” Isaac was so tightly wrapped in his own hell of worry and guilt that Dan had to nudge him. He stood, and the doctor, a woman who looked too fucking young to be entrusted with his old lady, gestured to a small grouping of chairs in a corner.
When he brought her in, he’d said only that he’d found her bleeding out, which was true. Now, the doctor, whose name, R. Ingleton, was embroidered on the right side of her coat, asked him, “Is there nothing else you can tell us about what happened?”
Isaac shook his head. “Sorry, Doc. She was lying on the floor, bleeding. She was conscious, but barely. She was cold.”
Dr. Ingleton nodded. “She’d gone into shock.” She sighed. “Let me tell you where she stands now, since I imagine that’s of most critical importance to you, and then I’ll explain to you what her injuries tell me—my best guess, at least.”
Isaac nodded, but said nothing. He didn’t want to distract her from telling him what the fuck was going on.
“She lost a great deal of blood—as much as 40%. This is an extremely dangerous situation, which could result in serious organ damage. She’s very fit—really in quite good shape, with a strong cardiovascular system—so that will help her. But now, she’s in a coma. She’s breathing on her own, and her vitals have shown signs of improvement, which indicates that her organ function is recovering. But we can’t know whether there’s been lasting impact on her brain function until she wakes—if she wakes.”
“Could she die?” Isaac had to force the words to leave his throat.
The doctor was direct. “Yes. I’m sorry to say that her condition is very critical right now. But she is, again, showing some signs of rebounding. That she’s breathing on her own is a good sign.”
“When can I be with her?”
“She’ll be in the ICU for a couple of days at a minimum. Visiting hours there are very restricted. I’m sorry.”
“Fuck that, Doc. I’m not leaving her. I’m not. Drag me out if you can.”
She sighed and considered. “I’ll make some arrangements for tonight and tomorrow. Then we’ll have to talk.” Looking suddenly awkward, with a glance at his kutte, she cleared her throat. “There are some other issues I need to discuss with you. I’ve had to call the Sheriff’s office.”
He’d expected as much. Lilli’s injuries were obviously violent. The Sheriff would not be a problem. “It’s fine. Why?”
“The laceration to her neck is most likely from a bullet. She has other injuries, though—broken bones in her hand, a badly sprained ankle, serious bruising, and other, smaller lacerations. She looks as if she’s been bound and beaten. Some of the wounds cause me to believe that she’s been . . . tortured.”
Isaac put his hands over his eyes. He had seen her, lying on the rotting wood floor of the deer blind, her clothes torn open, covered in blood. He shouldn’t have been surprised. And he wasn’t, not really. But he was sickened. He needed to dig Ray back up and kill him again. He needed to make Wyatt pay.
But he was the one who’d exposed her plan. It was him. Maybe, if he’d let her handle it the way she’d originally intended, she would simply have made Ray disappear, and the Horde would never have been the wiser. In the end, this was on him.
“We did a rape kit.”
He dropped his hands and looked at the doctor. She shook her head. “It was negative. But I need you to understand that her injuries are extensive. The next half-day or so will be crucial. She’ll be getting transfusions at least through tomorrow. If we can get her stable, then it will be a matter of waiting for her to regain consciousness. If that happens, we’ll know more whether there has been lasting brain damage from the blood loss.”
If. If she wakes up.
Isaac sat and let all that sink in. He tried to, anyway. All that really stuck was that Lilli could die. “I need to be with her, Doc.”
Dr. Ingleton nodded. “She’ll be brought to the ICU shortly. I’ll have someone bring you to her once we get her set up.”
~oOo~
It was another half hour before someone came and led Isaac to a small room with glass walls. He stopped in the doorway, cut down by the sight of her, small and frail, connected by wires and tubes to all kinds of apparatuses.
She was so pale. As if she were already gone.
There was a single chair in the room. Isaac pulled it as close to the bed as he could get and sat down. Taking her cool, unresponsive hand in both of his, he laid his head on the knot their hands made.
“Stay with me, Sport. You stay with me.”
He got no answer but the whir and beep of the machines surrounding her.
~oOo~
The next morning, Show came to the door of Lilli’s room. Isaac was sitting, watching her chest move, taking what reassurance he could from that. Show knocked on the door jamb, and Isaac turned.
“Any change?”
Isaac shook his head. “What’s up?”
“Got everybody here, boss, waiting in the chapel. We brought the meeting to you. Can’t leave Wyatt in the Room indefinitely.”
“Everybody? Who’s watching him now, then?”
“I got Victor’s proxy. He’s babysitting.”
Isaac didn’t want to leave Lilli even for the time it would take to go down to the chapel and have this meeting, but he knew Show was right. Feeling a pull of conflicting loyalties, he stood, kissed Lilli’s still too-cold forehead, and followed Show out.
The men were arrayed on pews in the small chapel, roughly in the same order in which they sat around their table. Isaac and Show went to the front. Show sat, and Isaac turned and faced his men.
“I need to get back, so I’m gonna get to it. We need to vote on Wyatt. Two votes: his patch and his life. He went against a club vote. That action got Rover killed, and it got my old lady badly hurt. She might die.” His voice cracked, and he paused and collected himself. “Fuck, she might be dying right the hell now, so let’s get on this. All those in favor of taking Wyatt’s patch.”
The vote was unanimous. No one even hesitated.
“Carries. Next vote. Does he meet his maker? Betrayed the club, got a 24-year-old kid killed, got Lilli shot and tortured. All those in favor of sending Wyatt to his maker. Gotta be unanimous.”
It was, though CJ dropped his head as if in prayer before he looked up, steely-eyed, and said, “Aye.”
Despite the anxiety wrapped around his spine like iron bands, Isaac felt relief. He hadn’t known what he would do if the vote had gone the other way. “Carries. I want him. Hold him until I can get to him.”
“Boss, wait.” Show stood, and Isaac turned on him, ready to fight. Show put his hands up. “I know you want the kill. I understand. I’m gonna ask you to take a breath. We got girls and hangarounds in and out of the clubhouse. There’s only so long we can keep Wyatt on ice. Longer we go, bigger the risk. Do you want to deal with him and leave Lilli? Or do you want to stay with her and let us deal with him? Your call.”
Show’s job was to pull Isaac back. That’s why he wanted him as VP, to temper his temper. And he was right. But right now, Isaac just wanted to bloody his face. He turned and picked up a vase of flowers, hurling it across the chapel, where it hit the wall and exploded. Leaning on the small altar, Isaac strove for control. He needed to kill him. He needed to feel that fucker’s life draining out of his traitorous body. He wanted that life force for Lilli.
He couldn’t leave her. He wouldn’t.
Isaac turned back to his men. His eyes on Len instead of Showdown, he said, “You and Victor—bleed him. I want him to die slow, and I want it to hurt. I want him to watch while his ink is sliced off. I don’t want him ending up anywhere near his brother. And burn his goddamn kutte.”
Len nodded, and Isaac walked out of the chapel and back to Lilli’s bedside. He would not leave her again.
~oOo~
The days clicked past, and Lilli didn’t wake. He didn’t go farther from her than the waiting room at the end of the hall. His brothers brought him food, but most of it he left untouched. The nurses—a formidable bunch—forced him to drink and occasionally coerced him to eat, but he tasted none of it.
Twice, the Horde held a brief meeting in the waiting room, and daily, Show came in to give him an update. Victor and Len had taken care of Wyatt. The guns from Tulsa had arrived. The Horde was elevating three hangarounds to Prospect status. They’d never had three Prospects at once before—they’d rarely had more than one—but a Prospect could be called upon to do things they couldn’t trust a hangaround to do, and, frankly, they needed the manpower. They weren’t a big club, and they were facing a powerful enemy.
Mac Evans, currently playing for the home team now, had gotten a pointed phone call from one of Ellis’s associates and had called Show immediately. The next day, Will Keller’s children had been followed home from the school bus stop by a blacked-out SUV no one recognized. Will was standing firm, but the Horde had paid to send his wife and kids to Florida to stay with her parents. Things were heating up.
And Isaac could barely find space in his head to care. Show updated him, and Isaac nodded. Show suggested next moves, and Isaac nodded. He watched Lilli breathe and he nodded. Then Show would squeeze his shoulder and leave him be.
They’d moved her out of the ICU as soon as she was stable. For almost three days, she’d been in a private room, and they’d brought in a sleeping chair for him. He didn’t bother with it. He sat as close as he could get to her and waited, willing her to wake. When he slept, he dozed at her bedside, holding her hand.
The first day or two, Dr. Ingleton would stop and talk to him after she’d checked Lilli. She’d explained what she was seeing, what it meant, what she thought Lilli’s prognosis was. The last couple of days, she’d only smiled grimly and left, as if there was nothing more to say.
And there wasn’t. No change. She just wasn’t waking up.
He kept his mind busy and his heart strong by imagining a future with her. He was going to marry her, mark her, bring her into his home. He imagined coming home to her, curling up on the sofa with her to read or watch movies, taking her into his bed, their bed, and filling her with his child. He thought of her sitting on the tall stool in his woodshop and watching him turn and carve. He thought of traveling with her in that shitty old camper that he loved so much more now, watching her glare at people wanting to dicker down the price of a burled wood vase. He thought of her holding their child in her arms.
That was the only life he wanted. He needed her to wake so he could make it happen.
Late on the fourth day, not long before Isaac would update the count in his head to five, Lilli’s hand twitched in his. He’d been drifting on the plane between waking and sleep, and he jerked to alertness when it happened. Then he doubted it had happened. He sat up and waited for her to do it again. For long, tense moments during which he tried to see every part of her body so that he wouldn’t miss any change, he waited fruitlessly.
And then she took a deep breath.
“Lilli?”
She was still.
Jesus Christ, Sport. Wake up. Wake up, wake up.