Gunfire exploded inside the van, so close it left my ears ringing. The next thing I knew, the back tire blew out and the van did a three-sixty before tipping like a beached whale, crunching onto its side. My head slammed into the wall. The bitter pill finally shot down my throat, but it didn’t matter because I was already choking on blood and adrenaline.
The last thing I saw before the lights went out was a biker’s helmet, painted with a crude halo and the words REBEL ANGEL, staring through the splintered rear window like some fucked-up Christmas miracle.
I passed out, but I did it smiling.
***
The sound that woke me was gunfire—a short, percussive rattle that vibrated through the van’s crumpled skeleton and into my ribs. For a second, I thought I was dead, and this was the soundtrack of Hell. If so, Hell smelled like brake fluid, piss, and the coppery tang of my own blood.
My right eye was swollen. My wrists were now a solid, raw circle of white-hot pain. I was twisted sideways, bent over a wheel well, and when I inhaled, it came out as a wheeze, like someone had deflated my lungs for sport. The van rested on its side, nose buried in a drainage ditch. Every few seconds, a shadow crossed the cracked window, and I heard more gunshots—some distant, some so close the glass shivered.
I tried to move and screamed. Not out loud; I was way past wasting my voice. But inside, everything shrieked: my arms, my ribs, my scalp where a patch of hair had gotten yanked free. I kicked at the cargo doors with both feet. Once. Twice. My left shoe slipped off and clanged to the metal floor.
Outside, the night howled with the chaos of men killing each other.
A face appeared at the window, upside-down and ghost-white in the moonlight. I thought it was the angel of death, but then the head ducked, and I recognized the chain-link tattoo curling around Vin’s throat. Royal Bastards, President in the flesh. He shouted something I couldn’t hear, then ducked away as another round of bullets spattered the panel near my knees.
Through the side window, I caught the flicker of fire. Not a literal flame, but the orange glare of motorcycle headlights, wheeling in a tight circle around the ditch. A black-helmeted rider crouched behind the trunk of a downed tree, firing methodical shots toward the ruined nose of the van. A second biker—Moab, by the silhouette—sprinted in a crouch, shotgun raised like he was going duck hunting instead of facing down two armed psychopaths.
Bart and Sarge hadn’t gone down easy. Even through the ringing in my ears, I could hear Sarge’s voice. “Come on, cowards! This is God’s work!” It was followed by a volley that left a neat row of bullet holes in the side of the van, each one shivering closer to my face.
I kicked again, this time with everything left in my system. The pain was mind-erasing. I think I pissed myself, but I couldn’t be sure—the whole world was liquid now, red and brown and streaming down my thighs. My heel caught the edge of the cargo latch and, with a crunch and a metallic shriek, the door buckled open a few inches.
Light flooded in, blinding after so much darkness. The smell changed: hot asphalt, oil, gunpowder, the clean sweat of hard men in motion. A gloved hand reached through the gap and wrenched the door wide.
Axel.
He looked like he’d crawled out of a meat grinder. Blood painted his left cheek and dripped from his jawline, soaking the collar of his cut. His eyes were a wild, icy blue that missed nothing. He looked at me—really looked—and something in his face cracked. He jammed a switchblade between my wrists, sliced the zip-ties in a single motion, then caught me before I collapsed. His hands were callused, but they held me like I was breakable.
“Darla,” he said, and his voice was both a curse and a prayer. “Can you walk?”
“No,” I croaked. “But I can crawl.”
He actually grinned, just for a nanosecond. Then he shifted me against his chest and half-dragged, half-carried me out into the night.
The ditch was littered with glass and spent shells. Moab and Shivs had flanked the van, using it for cover as they laid down fire on the two men holed up behind a splintered billboard. Bart was already down, face-first in the grass, a red bloom soaking the back of his skull. Sarge was alive, but not for long. I watched as Shivs popped up from behind the Harley’s seat and squeezed off a round, catching Sarge right under the jaw. His head snapped back and he toppled with the jerky, puppet-limp grace of the newly dead.
Vin barked a command. “Clear!” It echoed down the embankment. The gunshots stopped. For a second, everything was wind and the ticking of cooling engines.
I tried to stand. My knees were pudding. Axel caught me again, holding me against his side like a busted-up doll.
“You’re okay. We got you,” he whispered, brushing the blood from my temple with his thumb. “You good to ride?”
“No,” I said. “But I’ll do it anyway.”
He laughed, short and wild, then swept me onto the back of his bike. It wasn’t gentle, but it was careful—like he’d learned the hard way that sometimes kindness was just doing the thing that needed done. He mounted in front of me, twisted the throttle, and the Harley came to life with a roar.
Vin and Moab rolled their bikes over the bodies. No hesitation. No memorial. Just the cold, necessary logic of men who’d run out of time for funerals. They fanned out on the blacktop, forming a wedge around Axel and me as we peeled away from the wreck. The night screamed past us, cold and pure.
For the first mile, I clung to his waist because I thought I would fall. For the second, I held on because I never wanted to let go.
By the third, I was laughing and crying into his jacket at the same time. I could taste blood and wind, and underneath, something that might have been hope.
***
Detective Carter’s office was about as cozy as a mortuary slab. Bare walls, one dusty clock, and a half-dead spider plant drooping over the edge of a chipped mug that said “I [heart] Mondays.” There was a coffee pot in the corner, the glass stained brown so deep it looked more like blood than caffeine. The air was heavy with cold tobacco and the kind of desperation only a lifetime of other people’s secrets can ferment.
I sat in the metal visitor’s chair, still wrapped in Axel’s cut. It was too big and smelled like sweat, leather, and gun oil, but I wasn’t about to give it up. My left arm was bandaged where the zip-ties had cut through skin. My jaw was starting to bruise, turning the world a little blue at the corners. But I held my head high, because no one in this place wanted to see me fold.
