“Get in the fucking truck!” I yelled, running around the vehicle to where Jess and Skins were loading the groceries in. While Jess looked at me in shock, Skins being the levelheaded man I liked, hooked his hand through all the grocery bags and tossed them all into the back seat. Loaves of bread, milk, cheese, beer, went scattering all over the seats and the floor, but there was no time to fuck around.

Once Jess found her head, she just shoved the shopping cart across the lot in the general direction of the cart return and dived in the backseat with the explosion of shopping items, just as I started the engine.

My foot was flat on the accelerator, and we were roaring for the exit within seconds.

The call from Hadley wasn’t good, and I already felt the angry haze settling over me. Some bastard was going to pay. Today, tomorrow, preferably fucking yesterday. Hell was going to rain down around them. Fucking ironic, given that these people are so scared of ending up in that place. I’ll happily bring it to them.

“What’s the situation?” Skins asked, looking at me with complete seriousness. We all braced ourselves as we bounced out and onto the street, Jess cursing when her head smacked the window.

I gripped the steering wheel, pushing Op’s truck as fast as fucking possible without getting us killed. I quickly informed them about what was waiting for us when we got back. The club had the clubhouse in lockdown basically, and there was a little girl, another of Sky’s sisters, standing in the street crying.

Jess paled instantly. “They aren’t going to…” she couldn’t say it, and I didn’t know what else to tell her, so I just let the words hang in the thick air of the cab. “What do we do?”

My phone started to vibrate, and I pulled it from my pocket, passing it to Skins. “Read,” I ordered, sharply.

“They want us to try and snatch her off the street as we drive past,” Skins relayed, his eyes scanning the message. “Leo plus two are out trying to hunt down whoever is out there, but so far they haven’t made a move to do anything.”

“Snatch her off the street?” Jess exclaimed, her eyes meeting mine in the rear vision mirror. “We pull up, I drag her in on top of the Wheaties, and then we run to the clubhouse before Sky’s brother and his friends can fill the car full of bullets.”

“Basically,” I responded, only really half listening to what she was rambling on about, but even then realizing that it sounded fucking ridiculous.

Then things changed.

“They shot her,” Skins whispered.

“What?” I asked in shock.

Jess wasn’t moving, sitting in the backseat staring straight ahead, her chest rising and falling steadily. My eyes flicked from the road, to Skins, to her, trying to figure out if what I was hearing was real.

“They shot her in the leg,” he finally corrected, not making my heart slow down any, but at least giving us something. She wasn’t dead, but we had to try and get to her before they decided that she was worthless to them and did the unthinkable.

“These people need to be put down,” Jess said with absolute rage in her voice. “They need to be removed from this world.”

“How are we gonna get the girl?” Skins asked as he reached over and took Jess’s hand, giving it a squeeze. “I’ve got all my medical shit back at the clubhouse, there’s a chance she can come out of this if I can get to her quickly enough.”

My foot pressed harder against the accelerator, and we jolted forward.

I was running through all the scenarios in my head—what we knew, what we didn’t know, what the risks were and how we could avoid them.

“You think these guys are that stupid that they assumed we would let Skylar or Emerald run out the door to her sister without thinking… oh hey, this is kinda weir—” I stopped mid-sentence and Skins eyes widened.

“What?” he prompted as I went through things once more, trying to convince myself that I must have been wrong. “Eagle, man, we’re just about there, we need to—”

“It’s a distraction.”

Skins mouth dropped open for a brief second, but soon he was fumbling with the phone, pressing call at least ten times in his rush.

“I don’t like what you just said,” Jess pointed out, sitting forward and placing her hand on my shoulder. “Please tell me you don’t mean what you mean.”

Skins voice cut her off before I could tell her that I meant exactly what I meant.

“Op, Eagle said it’s a distraction, you need to watch your back,” Skins relayed into the phone.

I could hear my president curse and start screaming orders at my brothers.

“Jess, you better dig the gun out from underneath your seat and hope like hell those lessons you’ve been having with Hadley have paid off,” I told her. I was trying to keep my cool even though, in that moment, I wanted to be a selfish bastard and drive straight through the compound gates and find Skylar. On the other hand, I had Jess sitting behind me, her hand still on my shoulder and her body shaking as we drove foot flat to the floor, toward danger and guns and bullets. “Jess…now’s the time where I could really appreciate that smart mouth and cocky attitude.”

“I’m s-scared, Eagle,” she whispered, her voice cracking.

The more time I’d spent with Sky, the closer I got to look at who Jess really was. She could be a total bitch and overly abrasive, but when it came to the things that counted, she stepped up to help the people she cared about, showing her true colors, even if she didn’t like people to know. It was almost as if she was afraid people would try and get close to her if they thought she wasn’t as much of an asshole as she made out to be.

“Get the gun,” I told her calmly. Skins had already found his weapon and was loading the chamber. “Jess, trust me, you’ll feel a lot better when you have something in your hands to protect yourself.”

I looked at her out the corner of my eye. She blinked a couple of times before she took in a deep, all-encompassing breath and like a light switch she was diving for the rifle and tearing open the ammunition that was attached to it with her teeth.

“Fucking cunts, shoot a fucking little girl, gonna shove my gun up their ass,” she mumbled to herself, the fear being taken over by adrenaline. “How are we gonna get the girl in the car and then into the clubhouse?”

“I’m going to assume the fire is coming from the abandoned multi-story factory down the left side.” This was a huge assumption, but we were going in totally blind, so it was one that had to be made. “So I’m going to use that side to shelter you as you throw the door open and drag her inside.” I tried to explain the plan, it was messy, but it was all I had right now. We hadn’t heard back from Op, so I just knew it was likely he was dealing with his own problems and I hoped like fucking hell that Skylar was okay.

Sky was strong and stubborn as hell, if someone came at her, she would fight back. At least that much I knew.

I turned the corner, pulling into the club road and I could already see the shape of the little girl sitting at the end of the street, almost directly outside the clubhouse gates. “You ready?” I asked seriously as I lined up the car straight and screamed down the street.

Jess placed her gun on the seat beside her and scooted closer to the doorway, her hand resting on the handle as she caught my eye. “Ready.”

I drove down the left side of the road so she would be on the right side to open her door and drag the kid inside. I was the one left vulnerable like this, well, assuming that the shooter was coming from one of the factories on this side of the road. The driver’s seat was leaned back just enough so that the pillar in between the front and back seat was protecting my head.

Just as I hit the brakes with pressure, a loud bang resonated above the truck’s roaring engine as it fought to slow down. I felt it hit the car, right in my fucking tire. “Shit!” I yelled, trying to control this monster of a fucking vehicle with a blown out tire while trying not to hit this kid in the center of the road.

My control was horrible. With the front left tire now flat, I was fighting to keep it from pulling us to that side and off the road.

The ping of a bullet hitting metal had us all leaping out of our seats. Thankfully for us, after what happened with Hadley and Ham being shot at while Macy was in the car, and the fact that a lot of the boys had kids now or were wanting kids, they all got armoring placed inside the doors of their vehicles through the International Armoring Corp.

The truth was, cars were not fucking bulletproof, no matter how many Hollywood movies tried to tell you they were. Hadley was lucky in her instance because they had shot at Leo’s truck mostly from the rear, so the tailgate formed an extra layer of protection.

“Here she is!” I yelled as I slammed my foot down as hard as possible on the break, throwing us all forward. Jess managed to recover from the momentum and flung the door open, the girl just three or four feet from the rear tire.

“Get back in!” Skins yelled and raised his gun to the narrow gap in his window. Jess managed to get the door shut just as a flurry of bullets skimmed at leg height across the vehicle. The young girl outside was screaming, lying flat on the ground, covering her head. Skins returned fire with three rounds, enough to force the gunman back behind the tall metal fence across the street from the clubhouse.

There went my assumption and the whole plan.

They were coming at us from both sides.

Suddenly, my window shattered, throwing glass all over my lap, the bullet just skimming my jeans before burying itself into the center console. “Motherfucker!”

We were gonna have to leave the kid where she was, or in a few seconds, when they finally got a good shot, we would be fucking dead.

Jess was lying flat on the back seat, just as another bullet shot through the car, smashing her window on entry and the other side on exit. I heard her growl, turning my head just enough to see her gripping the rifle in her hands. “Stupid bastards,” she cursed, rearranging her body so she was on her knees on the floor and the rifle was propped in the now open window.

“There’s three on my side at least,” Skins blurted as he tried to keep his head below the window line. “We need to make a decisi—”

Bang!

My body buzzed as the sound of the rifle being fired from inside the fucking vehicle vibrated through me and made my ears ring. I scratched at them, trying to make the ringing stop and not let it set me off in the middle of a fucking war zone. I could feel my body tingling already but I was fighting it, I wouldn’t let the haze beat me this time.

Fuck no, not when my family was at risk.

Inhale.

I wouldn’t lose the people I love again. No one was going to take them from me this time.

“Now there’s only two!” Jess said, her voice suddenly calm and deadly. “Hang in there, honey, we’re gonna get you out of here,” she called out the window.

“It hurts!” she called back, her voice painful and distraught. “I feel dizzy,” she cried, followed by an emotional sob.

Skins looked at me, his eyes a melting pot of anger and hatred, mixed with the pain of trying to understand how someone could do this to a little girl who was so innocent. “We’re getting her out of here,” he clipped, his lips barely moving because of how tight his jaw was clenched.

He was right.

We weren’t cowards, we wouldn’t run, and I refused to leave this earth without knowing that I did my fucking best. I’d lived with guilt for too long now, wondering why the fuck I’m here. Why the hell did I get to stay to live with the flashbacks, the nightmares, the memories that paralyzed me?

What if this moment was it?

This was why.

I couldn’t fuck it up.

The screeching of tires coming up the street behind us drew everyone’s attention. I recognized the car instantly, it was Deacon. Without thinking, I sat up and threw my body out the window, hoping that the shooter was watching him and not me.

Using my arms, I pointed to the other side of the car, hoping that if he had any sense, he would pull up on the other side of the kid to shield her from the fuckers hiding on the side that Jess was still determined to take down one by one.

His car swerved in the direction I was pointing just as a spray of shots pelted his SUV from both sides. He skidded to a stop right in place, and Jess didn’t waste another second, bounding from the backseat and scampering across the ground to pull Sky’s little sister into her arms.

“What the fuck is going on!” Deacon called. “Op rang and said shit was getting ugly, but holy crap!” He covered his head and ducked, disappearing below the window as a barrage of bullets slammed one after another into the side of his car.

Jess appeared at the door, leaping inside with the little girl still clinging to her body, landing right on a bottle of milk which exploded all through the fucking truck, splattering us, the roof, the windscreen. “Go!” She screamed like nothing had fucking happened, slamming the door shut behind her.

Relief flooded through me.

It was short lived.

I lifted my foot to move it from the break to the gas.

I think I heard the sound first, kind of like a warning, before I felt it move through my body. The smash and crunching as something hit us at full force from behind, throwing my head into the steering wheel and tossing Skins like a fucking rag doll against the dashboard. The girls screamed in the backseat as they were thrown, hitting the front seats before tumbling to the floor in a mixture of limbs and painful cries.

My heart felt as though it might not survive as it was pounding so hard against my chest, threatening to break free. I tried to sit up, but my whole body felt like it was full of concrete. A wave of nausea crashed over me, and I fought back the vomit that was rising in my throat.

A painful groan left my mouth as I finally managed to push my head back against the headrest. Something dripped down over my face and I blinked, a vibrant red taking over my vision and stinging my eyes. The things that were going on around me seemed to turn to liquid. It was like I was inside a swimming pool.

Breath after breath, I sucked in the air after having it forced so suddenly from my lungs, yet I still felt like I was struggling.

 

“Knight! Calm down!” Jamison snapped as he lay on the ground next to me, looking at me through the window. “I’m gonna cut you out, but you need to just breathe.”

Couldn’t he tell, that’s what I was trying to do, but every breath seemed too shallow and felt like someone was stabbing me in the ribs with a sharp knife. “I think,” I murmured, my mouth dry and filled with dirt and blood. “I think my rib might have punctured my lung.”

“Shit!” he cursed, scrambling in the tight window frame and laying under me as I hung upside down. He flipped out his knife and started cutting at the belt. He froze for a minute, and I was about to yell at him to get me the fuck out of there when I heard it, a helicopter. It was here, for us. “Yes!” he crowed as he got back to work. “This is gonna hurt man, but it’s okay, ‘cause we are getting out of here.”

I heard the seatbelt tear, and Leo took the brunt of my body as I went head first into the roof of the vehicle. “Motherfucker!” I screamed, my whole body feeling like it had just been set alight. I instantly knew what we’d done was a big mistake. The little air that I was getting was now completely gone.

I started to wheeze as Leo wiggled his body out and then grabbed my legs, pulling me behind him. I clutched at my throat.

I couldn’t breathe.

Holy shit! I couldn’t breathe.

 

Footsteps were coming up beside the car. I turned my head, seeing a person slowly hobbling up the side of the truck, gripping it with one hand to keep them on their feet while a gun hung by their side.

Step.

You’re not back there, you are not in that Humvee.

Step.

Your lung is not punctured this time, you just need to take a real breath.

Step.

You’re having an episode, an anxiety attack! If you don’t hurry up and get your wits, he’s going to shoot you.

Click. The safety flicked off.