But she needs medicine more than she needs me sitting beside her doing nothing.
The town is small with one main street and half the buildings boarded up. A pharmacy sits between a liquor store and a laundromat.
I park and go inside. The pharmacist looks up from behind the counter—old guy, gray beard, suspicious eyes that land on my Ruthless Devils cut.
He doesn’t say anything.
I grab anti-nausea medication. Ginger supplements. Electrolyte powder. Bland crackers and bread that might stay down.
The whole thing takes fifteen minutes.
I load everything into the truck and start the drive back. The road stretches empty ahead of me. Nothing but heat waves and desert.
My phone buzzes. One bar of signal.
I try calling Bonnie. No answer. The call drops before it even rings.
Fuck.
I press harder on the gas.
That’s when I see them in the rearview mirror.
Three bikes. Far back but closing fast.
My jaw tightens.
The Savage Legion cuts are visible even from this distance.
I accelerate. They accelerate. They’re not backing off.
My mind races through options. I have to lead them away from the safe house. Can’t let them follow me back to Bonnie.
I take a side road, and the bikes follow.
The road dead-ends at an abandoned warehouse. Rusted metal siding peels away from the frame. Shattered windows gape like broken teeth. Desert stretches in every direction—nothing but sand and scrub brush for miles.
I kill the engine and step out into the heat. Dust kicks up around my boots as I move to the hood, using it as cover while I pull my Glock and eject the magazine to check the rounds. Fifteen bullets catch the sunlight before I slide the magazine back in with a metallic click.
The rumble of engines grows louder behind me, and I turn to see three bikes crest the rise, chrome flashing in the afternoon sun. They circle once like vultures before cutting their motors in near unison.
Three riders dismount and spread out in a formation, clearly trying to box me in. All three wear Savage Legion patches on their cuts, and all three have guns tucked into their waistbands. The one in the middle is tall and rail-thin, his grin revealing gaps where teeth should be.
“Wrong place, Devils.” He hawks and spits into the dirt between us. “You’re on our turf now.”
“Funny. I don’t see your name anywhere.”
His grin widens, showing more of those missing teeth. “Mouthy fucker. Marcus is gonna pay real good for your head.”
“He’s welcome to try collecting.”
The moment their hands move toward their weapons, everything slows down. I’ve done this a thousand times—on ranges, in combat zones, in situations just like this where hesitation means death. My hand brings the Glock up smooth and steady, muscle memory guiding every movement.
The first shot cracks across the desert. The guy on the left jerks backward as the bullet punches through his chest, and a second round follows before he can even register the hit. Red blooms across his shirt as he goes down hard, his body hitting the ground with a thud that raises a cloud of dust.
I’m already pivoting to the right before the first one falls. The second target has his gun halfway out when my bullet catches him just above the ear. The impact snaps his head sideways, and brain matter sprays across the rusted warehouse wall behind him in a wet streak before he crumples to the dirt.
The skinny one in the middle gets his shot off. The bullet screams past my head close enough that I feel the heat of it, smell the sharp bite of cordite in the air.
