“This ends now,” I said.
He smiled. “It ended a long time ago.”
He fired first. The bullet grazed my cheek, hot and sharp. I put two in his shoulder, but he didn’t drop. He lunged, swinging the knife. I blocked with my left arm, felt the blade cut to the bone, but kept my gun hand steady. I grabbed his wrist, twisted, and we went down together in a pile.
He was strong, but I was meaner. I headbutted him, shattering my own nose in the process, and rolled him onto his back. Hekneed me in the ribs, hard enough to crack something, but I locked my arm around his throat and squeezed. The world went red, then black, then red again.
He fought. Of course he did. Old men like Ghost never quit. He slammed his head back into my teeth, spat blood in my eye, and clawed at my bandaged arm until I thought I’d lose it. But I didn’t let go. Not until his eyes rolled back and his limbs started to twitch. Not until I heard Carly, somewhere behind me, scream my name like it was the last word on earth. I staggered upright, swaying. Ghost was still. I checked his pulse, found none, and stood over him for a second, breathing like I’d run a marathon through hell.
Carly ran to me, hands shaking, blood on her face and shirt. “You’re bleeding,” she said, voice barely a whisper.
I looked down. She was right—I was shot, stabbed, and probably concussed. I wiped my mouth and tasted copper.
“Get Nitro,” I said. “Tell him it’s done.”
She nodded, and for a second I saw the woman I used to love. No—that I still loved. The one who never ran from anything, even when she should have. We moved back through the alley, arm in arm. The house was a bonfire, smoke curling into the sky. Nitro and Augustine were pulling the wounded out, piling them into a neighbor’s minivan. The sirens were coming now—police, fire, maybe even the Feds if we were lucky. I collapsed on the grass, staring up at the moon. Carly hovered over me, hands pressed to my wounds, voice insistent and desperate.
“Stay with me, Damron,” she kept saying. “Don’t you dare leave me.”
I wanted to laugh, but it hurt too much. Instead, I closed my eyes and let the world spin, content in the knowledge that, for once, I’d finished the job. The rest would have to wait.
They loaded me into the back of the ambulance. My vision kept cutting out, jagged and strobing, but every time I openedmy eyes, I saw Carly. She followed at a run, one arm clutching a towel to her bicep, the other waving off any attempt to slow her down. A woman in a suit tried to stop her—maybe a detective, maybe a news anchor, I couldn’t tell. Carly barked something at her, pure senator, and kept moving.
Inside the ambulance, the paramedic was already up to his elbows in my blood. “Gunshot, left upper quadrant. Laceration right forearm. Pulse 82 and thready,” he recited, not even glancing at me. His partner squeezed a bag over my face and told me to “keep it together, big guy.” I tried, but it was like breathing through a wet wool sock. The last thing I saw before the doors slammed shut was Nitro, standing in the neighbor’s front yard. He gave me a look that meant “don’t die yet, asshole,” then faded into the shadows as the first press van rounded the corner.
The ambulance ride was short. I faded in and out. Each time, Carly’s voice was there, cutting through the drugs and the noise. “He’s not allergic to anything,” she told the medics, “unless you count authority.” She squeezed my hand so hard I thought she’d break it. The pain kept me awake.
The ER was chaos. Gurneys lined the hall, nurses shouting for orders. The blood on my shirt matched the red paint on the floor, and for a second, I thought maybe it was a pattern, a design. I wanted to tell Carly, but my jaw wouldn’t cooperate. They cut off my vest, then my shirt, and the cold bit down hard. Somebody jammed an IV into the back of my hand. A surgeon showed up, said something about “luck” and “a few millimeters from the aorta,” then shoved a gloved finger into the wound. I screamed, but only inside.
Carly fought her way into the trauma bay. A nurse tried to push her back; she stared him down, then knelt by the gurney, her hand on my forehead. “You stay the fuck alive, Damron St. James,” she said, voice calm and wild at the same time. “That’s a direct order.”
The surgeon looked up. “We have to take him now.”
“Do it,” she said, and I think the whole room heard her.
They wheeled me away. The lights above went blurry, like someone had wiped them with a greasy rag. The last thing I saw was Carly, face splattered with my blood, tears cutting clean tracks through the mess.
###
When I came to, it was to the gentle beep of a heart monitor and the reek of antiseptic. My left arm was in a sling, my gut wrapped in enough gauze to mummify a small horse. I tried to sit up, and the pain slapped me down so hard I nearly passed out again. This was part of being an outlaw biker: pussy, bikes, guns, hospital beds.
“Easy, cowboy. You’re not immortal.”
I turned my head and there was Carly, in a plastic chair, hair pulled back in a hasty ponytail, eyes rimmed in pink. She wore a hospital blanket like a cape and looked like she hadn’t moved in hours. “How long?” I croaked.
“Seven,” she said. “But I lost track whether it was hours or years.” She poured water into a cup and held it for me. I sipped, then coughed.
“You okay?” I managed.
She smiled, more with her eyes than her mouth. “A few stitches. Some burns. Nothing that’ll keep me off the campaign trail.” She hesitated, then reached out and took my hand, her thumb tracing circles on the back of it. “You stopped him,” she said. “You stopped them all.”
“I just wanted you safe,” I said, meaning it and hating how soft it sounded.
She squeezed my hand. “They’re gone. Ghost is dead, the Dire Straits are scattering, and every news station in the country is calling it a botched assassination attempt.”
“Sounds about right,” I said.
We sat in silence, the monitor ticking out my heartbeats, the florescent buzzing overhead. Eventually, she leaned in, her voice low. “Police are waiting to talk to you. But they’re not pushing. Someone called in a lot of favors.”
