He scrolled a screen, maybe stalling. Two security guards flanked the hallway, hands on their radios. I watched them out of the corner of my eye, but they didn’t make a move. Probably remembered the last time someone tried to throw out biker trash and ended up with a broken wrist for their trouble.
“She’s in 3C,” the nurse said. “But you need to check in—”
I was already moving. The elevator was slow, so I took the stairs, boots pounding up the concrete. The walls were a washed-out white, covered in those motivational posters about teamwork and hope, like anyone here had either to spare. I counted the floors and found her wing by instinct, not signage. The door was open. I stopped on the threshold, letting my eyes adjust to the bright, artificial light.
She was smaller than I remembered—hospital beds do that to people. Her arm was wrapped up, IV in the other, hair pulled back from her face in a way that made her look both ten years younger and older at the same time. Her lips were pale, but her eyes were alive and sharp, zeroed in on me like she was reading the inside of my skull. The room was clean and impersonal, the only personal item a cheap plastic vase of daisies. I stood just inside, not crossing the line. The air smelled of alcohol and disinfectant. My own sweat and exhaust clung to me like a warning label.
She saw me and something flickered in her face—something that almost looked like relief before it rearranged itself into wariness. “Damron,” she said, her voice hoarse but steady.
I nodded once, hands jammed in my cut’s pockets. I wasn’t going to make this easy for her.
“Didn’t think you’d show,” she said.
I glanced at her bandaged arm, the dried blood on the gauze a sharp contrast against her skin. “Didn’t think you’d want an outlaw in your fancy political life,” I said, voice ice cold.
She winced. Not from the pain; I could see her flexing her hand under the blanket, testing for weakness. No, that one landed where it was supposed to.
“Thanks for coming,” she said anyway. “I know it’s… complicated.”
I shrugged, but the gesture didn’t reach my face. “I’m not here for small talk, Carly. I want to know who did this. You remember anything?”
She took a slow breath. “Just the flash, the noise. Saw a man with a baseball cap and a phone—thought he was a protestor. Then my shoulder went numb.”
I catalogued the detail. “Security camera footage?”
She shook her head. “The feds took everything. Won’t even let my campaign manager see the footage.”
I laughed, sharp and humorless. “Maybe you should have married a cop.”
She smiled back, thin and crooked. “Didn’t want someone who’d shoot me when I wasn’t looking.”
The silence was a weight on the bed between us. I could see the old Carly in there, the one who didn’t take shit and didn’t apologize for it. But there was something new, a kind of calculation I’d never noticed before.
“They said you wanted to see me,” I said. I assumed that was why no one stopped me from entering the room, though most men, when confronted by an outlaw biker, just steps aside.
She nodded, biting the inside of her cheek. “You’re the only one I trust to find out who did this. You know this world, Damron. I need your help.”
The last word was almost a dare. I let it hang.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “But I’m not here to play bodyguard or do PR for your campaign. If I get a name, I’ll handle it my way.”
She met my eyes, no flinch. “That’s what I’m counting on.”
I stayed standing. She didn’t ask me to sit, and I wouldn’t have if she had. I looked around the room again, at the way it tried so hard to look like anywhere but a place where people came to bleed out or die. I caught my own reflection in the window—a scarecrow in black leather, hair graying at the edges, eyes cold enough to freeze water. For a moment, I saw us both: the woman she’d become, the man I’d always been, and the canyon that had opened between us. How the fuck could I still be in love with a woman who walked?
I turned to go, pausing at the door.
“You get any more memories, or they let you out of here, you call me. Not your campaign. Me.”
She smiled again, softer this time. “Still giving orders, huh?”
“Some things don’t change,” I said, and closed the door behind me.
I lasted all of twelve minutes on the curb before the needling voice in my head forced me back inside. Hospitals made me itch. The whole place was an open wound: that click of cart wheels, the distant echo of crying, the constant shuffle of people running from the things they couldn’t fix. I should have hit the road, let the pros handle their investigation, but instead I stalked the perimeter of Carly’s wing, replaying every second of our last five years in the space between heartbeats.
The second time I went in, I didn’t bother knocking. She was sitting up, punching letters into her phone with her good hand,eyes glassy but focused. The machine by her head beeped at steady intervals, like a countdown I wasn’t privy to. She looked up and set her jaw.
“You back to gloat?” she said.
