Ouch! I felt another sting on my side. What was he doing? Before I could get a word out of my mouth, I was tossed into the water. Confused and disoriented, I tried to calm my panic and get myself to the surface. I relaxed my muscles and waited for my body to start floating. As soon as I knew which way was up, I kicked my feet and quickly brought myself to the surface.
I felt Dash’s hand cover my mouth from behind seconds before I broke the surface. As soon as my head was above water, he whispered in my ear, “Shhh! Someone is shooting at us.” I immediately tensed. “Stay calm. Stay quiet. Phoenix and the boys should be here any second now. There’s no way they didn’t hear the shots. He knows you and I are out here. We just have to stay behind the canoe until they get here. Nod if you understand.”
I nodded once and tried to suck in air as quietly as possible. He was right. Mere moments later, even though it seemed like an eternity, we heard Phoenix and numerous other brothers barreling toward the lake, firing shot after shot into the night.
Blessedly, there was no return fire from any direction. Shouts of “Clear” were called out around the lake and then we heard Phoenix again, “Dash! Ember!”
“We’re good, Prez,” Dash shouted.
“Where the fuck are you?”
We drifted around the side of the boat and were blinded by the light Phoenix was shining in our faces. Thank goodness Dash thought to straighten my clothes while we were silently floating in the lake.
“You two okay?”
“Yeah, we’re good.”
“Thank God. Hurry up and get your asses over here. We need to get back inside,” Phoenix ordered.
We swam over to the shore, which was a lot harder than it should have been. It’d been a long time since I swam any significant distance, but I was in fairly decent shape. This should have been easy. At one point, Dash grabbed one of my hands and was pulling me through the water.
As soon as we made it to where I could touch the ground, I put my feet down and walked the rest of the way. I took two steps onto the shore and everything just stopped.
CHAPTER 15
Dash
I had just stepped onto the shore and turned to see if Ember needed a hand when she dropped. I barely managed to get my arms underneath her before she hit the ground. I lifted her and had her cradled against my chest when I felt it. Her side was wet, warm, and sticky. I looked down to my hand and even though it was dark, I could tell that my hand was covered in blood.
“Fuck! Phoenix, she’s hit!!” I yelled as adrenaline flooded my veins.
Phoenix started barking orders, “Get her inside now! Badger, find Patch and get him here yesterday! Byte, pull the feed from the security cameras and…”
His voice faded away as I got closer to the clubhouse. I crashed through the back door and damn near busted my ass tripping over my own feet in my mad dash to get Ember inside and get her some help.
“Bring her in here, brother.” Patch’s voice had never sounded so good. He was already in the small room he had set up to treat the club members when we were injured or sick. He had enough equipment and drugs in there that he could damn near perform surgery if need be.
I placed Ember’s limp body on the table and Patch jumped right to it. “Take a step back, brother, so I can get a good look at her. You can stay as long as you stay out of the way.” Any other time he would have had my fist in his face for speaking to me like that, but this was his turf and Ember needed help. I silently nodded and took a step back.
Phoenix burst into the room, breathing hard, fear in his eyes. “How is she? She okay? How bad is it?”
“If you want to stay, calm down and stand there by Dash. No disrespect, Prez, just need the room to work.”
“Got it. Talk to me,” Phoenix said.
“They got her twice. She took one to the arm, clean through and through, will just need some stitches. The other grazed her side. It’s a deep graze. I’ll clean it out and put a few stitches in it, too. She’s going to need antibiotics to prevent infection, particularly because both wounds were submerged in lake water.”
My momentary relief vanished with Phoenix’s next question, “Why isn’t she awake?”
Patch shrugged, “Probably just shock. This was likely more excitement than she’s ever had and once the adrenaline wore off, it was probably just too much for her. Happens all the time. She’ll come to soon, usually happens as soon as I start numbing the area for the stitches.”
He was right. He started with her arm. He asked Phoenix to hold down her other arm in case she woke up while he held the arm he was working on. He had just stuck her with the needle when her eyes flew open wide and she yelled, “Ow! Stop that! What are you doing?”
“Shhh! Calm down, darlin’. Patch is just numbing your arm for the stitches.” Phoenix ran his hand over her hair trying to soothe her.
She looked confused, “Stitches? Why do I need stitches?”
“Darlin’, you were shot,” he explained.
