HANNAH
“What’d he say?” Lacy asked me as soon as I stepped back in the living room.
“Which one? Your husband kept yelling things over Brandon’s shoulder.” I laughed.
She rolled her eyes, but the grin she gave me told me she didn’t mind much about her husband. “Okay, what did my Neanderthal say, then yours.”
“Yours said, You tell that woman she better be resting. No hikes in those damn woods!”
Lacy gripped her stomach and laughed hard. “You got his voice pretty good.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “Of course I'm resting.” She waved her hand over her body. With her feet propped up on a pillow, and a few more pillows behind her back, she looked like a queen riding in her boat down the Nile River. “Where am I gonna go? See, that man is just ornery to be ornery.”
“Brandon was just as bad.” I patted her shoulder and headed for the recliner. Leaning back, I popped up the footrest. “He did say they were stuck for a few more days, but wouldn’t give me any details. Just told me to sit tight and not worry. ’Cause that’s what I do best.” I looked out the window of the cottage at the tree line just outside. “Didn’t Shark leave a gun with you?”
“Yeah, it’s in the bedroom. Don’t worry, hon, no one is going to be knocking on that door.”
“No, no. I'm not worried about that. I was just thinking, since we have plenty of time to kill...you want to show me how to shoot?”
If I could have framed her face at that moment, I would have. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes nearly crossed. “What? You want to learn how to shoot a gun? Now? Here?”
“Sure. Why not? No time like the present, right? Besides, if something does happen, I'm not gonna feel all that great hiding behind a pregnant woman.”
She seemed to think about it for a minute, then mentally talked herself right out of it. “No. Shark would have my ass, Brandon, too.”
“Brandon would want me to be safe, and learning how to take care of myself is how I’ll be safe,” I pointed out. “What would be the harm? You show me, I shoot a few trees, we come back in for your afternoon nap.”
She chewed on her lower lip for another minute, then the determination sprung into her eyes. “Look what that man has done to me, making me sit here thinking about what he’s gonna think about it. Fuck that. Let’s go. You have pants? You can’t be walking around the woods in that dress.”
I looked down at my summer dress. Brandon preferred them, so I wore them. Odd how quickly his preferences became second nature to me. “Yeah. I’m sure I have a pair of jeans in my bag.”
Thirty minutes later we stood shoulder to shoulder, staring down a pine tree. “Don’t go stiff, if you go stiff your shoulder’s gonna hurt from the recoil.”
“This little thing has a recoil?” I held up the gun. It looked too small to offer much of a bite, but she nodded.
“Hell yeah, and if you don’t hold it right you’ll mess up your elbow, too. Don’t hold it sideways like those idiots in the movies. You have to hold it straight, like this.” She moved to stand behind me, wrapping her arms around my body and getting my positioning straight. “Now, don’t put your finger on the trigger until you’re ready to pull it, understand? If you put it there right away, you’ll end up pulling it on accident. So just keep it here, on the outside. Line up your sight and when you’re ready, just pull the trigger.” She let go and stepped back. “Go ahead.” She covered her ears and nodded again.
My arms tensed and took a long breath, trying to relax my body. I lined up my shot with a large knot in the tree. Seemed a big enough target. A snap of a twig crackled in the air just as I pulled the trigger back. The gun fired, a hot pain shot up my arm and through my shoulder, and a scream echoed through the woods.
But I hadn’t screamed. I looked over at Lacy, panicked that I managed to hit her behind me. She stared back at me with as much confusion as me. We both took a few steps toward the tree I had been aiming out and found where the noise came from.
Hunter lay on the ground, holding his stomach, blood oozed from between his fingers. I must have looked pale, because Lacy grabbed my arm and told me to breathe. “I’m fine.” I pushed her hands off me. It may have been the first time I’d seen a man dying before, and it sure as hell was the first time I’d shot someone, but I could handle anything. I didn’t need my hand held every step of the way.
“What the fuck is he doing here?” she whispered, even though his pained expression was fixed right on us as we made our way over to him. I looked around, making sure there wasn’t anyone else hiding behind the trees. I didn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean shit. I hadn’t seen Hunter there until he screamed like a little bitch.
“You bitch! You fucking shot me!” He tried to yell at me, but it all came out garbled and strained. More blood poured out from between his fingers, joining the large pool already collecting on the forest bed.
“I didn’t see you.” I knelt down next to him, pulling off my sweatshirt. “Here. We need to put pressure on it, try to get the bleeding to stop.”
“How’d you get here? How’d you know where we were?” Lacy demanded, pointing the gun at him again. I’d dropped it when I heard the pained scream; she must have picked it back up.
“Carter had me tail you.” He coughed, spraying blood over himself. ‘
“We’ve been here almost two days. You’ve been sitting out here for that long?” She cocked the gun.
“No...Shit. Okay…okay.” He put a bloodied hand up. It didn’t matter if she shot him again or not, I couldn’t get the bleeding to stop. And abdominal gunshot wound needed medical care I couldn't provide in the middle of the woods, or in the middle of a hospital. He needed a doctor, a team of nurses, and an OR. I shot him. I shot a person. I pulled the trigger and the bullet went inside another human being. If he died, that made me a murderer.
“Nathan?” I looked up from his wound to his eyes. “Nathan sent you?”
“No, not that Rider shit. Carter’s looking for you everywhere. He wants your ass back in camp.” He took a shaky breath. “He’s losing ground with the rest of the club and Martin is trying to make a move for president. He figures...if he had you...Brandon would have to help him keep his seat...Fight back against Martin and the cartel.”
“How’d you know we were here?” Lacy asked again, louder, and moved closer to him.
“Nathan reached out. Said you two were visiting Lacy’s family down south.”
Lacy’s eyes were trained on him, not reacting to that bit of news. “My family isn’t south,” she said.
“No, and Nathan knew that. He figured it was your granny’s cottage. Sent me to check it out.”
“He’s bleeding too fast. I can’t stop it.” I wiped the hair from my face and put more pressure on the wound. He flinched and swore at me when I did it, but didn’t fight me.
“Then don’t.” He wrapped his fingers around my wrist and pulled my hands away. “It hurts like hell when you do that.”
“If I don’t—”
“I’m dead anyway.” He nodded.
“Did Nathan or Carter send anyone else?” Lacy lowered the gun to her side, no sense in threatening death to a dead man.
“I don’t know.” He coughed again, hard, then sucked in a large gulp of air. “I told my brother…you were a pain in the ass…should have killed you with Lisa.” His mouth upturned, a cruel and bloody smile forming on his lips.
The life slipped from his eyes, leaving him lying on the ground, staring off into the open air. A drop of blood ran down his cheek. There was no sound. One minute there was life, the next nothing. I looked up at Lacy from where I knelt beside him, wiping my hands on my jeans. “I killed him.” My confession, a bare whisper, I got to my feet. “I killed him.”
“He needed killing.” She pulled my arm, turning me to face her. “Hannah. You didn’t do it on purpose, but it’s a damn good thing you did. He wouldn’t have just called Carter.” She gave me a little shake. “He would have raped us first. Over and over again. That sick fuck might have taken you back to Carter, but me...he would have killed me.”
“You don't know that.” I shook my head. Tears built in my eyes, not for his life, but for what changed in mine from the moment I pulled that trigger.
“I’ve known these clubs my whole life,” she said quietly. “I promise you that’s what he would have done.”
“What do we do now?” I looked back over at his lifeless body.
“First we check his phone, see if he made any calls yet. Odds are he was creeping up the hill toward the cottage to see if we were there. He probably didn’t make it all the way up before he heard us over here. If that’s the case, we might be okay to stay put.”
“If that’s not the case?” I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer to that.
“His bike is probably down the road. He wouldn’t have chanced coming up close with it and us hearing it. We take it, head back toward home on the back roads.”
“Should we call the guys?” I asked, following her back toward the cottage. “What about him? We can’t just leave him there.”
She stopped, looking back at the corpse of our enemy. “Just grab his phone. Shark will know what to do with the body.” She covered her mouth with her hand and jogged the rest of the way to the cottage. Morning sickness in the middle of the afternoon.
I walked back over to Hunter’s body, taking cautious steps. Too many horror movies muddied up my mind as I knelt next to him, digging in his jean pocket. I took one look at his face, then decided it better to keep my eyes where my hands were. Finally finding his phone in his back pocket, I yanked it free of his jeans. Fuck, he was heavy. His hand moved from the jostling and I squealed. Cursing myself a fool, I scrambled away from him before I swiped his phone open to get a look at his messages.
When I made it back to the cottage Lacy was in the bedroom. Her head tucked between her legs she took in deep breaths. I ran over to her. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” She waved a hand in the air. “Just a little woozy from puking.” Tilting her head back, I could make out red lines crossing her cheeks and eyes. She’d thrown up so hard she popped blood vessels.
“His phone was clear. I mean he didn’t make any calls or send any texts within the last hour or so. Nothing to Nathan or Carter about us, but I didn't understand what he was up to. Why is Nathan giving Carter any information about me? I thought they hated each other.”
“They do, but better the enemy you know.” She sat up straight and let out a slow breath. “I think Nathan just wants to use you as bait to get Brandon to stick around the club long enough to help Martin take out Carter. He gives you to Carter, distracts him, then helps Martin sweep in and take over.”
“What about those Mexican people?” My decision to stay the hell away from club business had been a good one, too much drama.
“Eduardo’s dead. I heard Shark and Brandon talking the other morning. His brother took over down there, and is coming up here to get the Soldiers and Riders to merge, or kill one off, doesn’t matter to him. He just wants one club to deal with, Shark said. Whoever survives the next few days wins.” She rolled her eyes. “When Shark told me about leaving the club, getting away from all the MC shit, at first I wasn’t sure. It’s the only life I’ve ever known. They are like my family. But you know, settling down in a normal house, in a normal town, with a normal husband, sounds fucking great right now.”