“Battle! Stop, motherfucker!” Fighter bellowed in my face, shoving me backwards as hard as he could.
I stumbled backwards, falling on my ass, my chest heaving as I glared at him.
“Fucking stop, brother, it’s done!” he yelled again. “We need to go. Quinn needs you.”
Quinn.
Quinn.
Quinn.
I nodded and shook my head, trying to scrub the daze away.
Behind Fighter lay Ripped. Or what was left of him. Lincoln and Cap and some of the other Burning Eights stepped forward, their expressions full of shock and disbelief. They looked down at Ripped and then over to me, and I wondered if they would follow through with the agreement, or if me losing the plot like that would end that deal.
Lincoln stepped to Fighter’s side, his hard stare on me. “Get out of here,” he growled. “’Fore I change my mind.”
Fighter came to me and dragged me back up to my feet before pulling me away. Thunder rolled in my ears, my lungs burning with the exertion of what I had just done, but it was Fighter’s words that brought me around properly.
“Quinn?” I asked. “She okay?”
“No, brother, we need to get to her, now.”
We stumbled across the clubhouse grounds toward our bikes, blood still dripping from my hands. “Where is she?”
“At the safehouse. Only it turns out it wasn’t so fucking safe.”
We reached our bikes and got on, starting the engines up immediately. I had a million things I needed to ask Fighter, but I clamped my mouth shut and spun my bike round, taking off into the night in search of Quinn. My woman. My old lady. Mine, and not Ripped’s anymore, or ever again.
*
I pulled up to the safehouse twenty minutes later, my body trembling and my muscles burning with unspent energy. I’d killed for her and I would have no problem in doing it again. I pulled my bike to a screeching stop and climbed off it before grabbing my gun from the saddlebag and taking off toward the house as I heard Fighter’s bike coming down the road behind me.
The lights were on inside, but it was the blood on the ground outside that I noticed first.
“Quinn!” I bellowed, taking the small stairs two at a time. I threw open the door and ran inside, my gun pointed in front of me, ready to blow every motherfucker away, but the house was silent. “Quinn!” I yelled again.
A noise from upstairs made me spin on my heel and charge toward the stairs, my boots slamming against each step as I ran up them and onto the small landing.
“Quinn!”
“Here, Battle, we’re in here!” she cried.
I ran toward the bathroom, pushing the door open wide. I blinked a couple of times to make sure I was certain of what I was seeing.
“Help him!” she cried.
I nodded and tucked my gun into my waistband before bending down to Skinny. He’d been shot, and blood covered his torso and drained down the plughole of the bath he lay in. Quinn had a needle and thread in her hand and I recognized the small suture kit that Skinny carried with him. He’d been training to be a doctor before he’d joined the Highwaymen, and he always carried the kit around with him. But now it was Quinn that was trying to stitch him back together.
Her hands were trembling and tears poured down her face. Her face, fuck! There was a huge bruise around one of her eyes and her lip was split open, dried blood caked across it.
“What the fuck happened?” Fighter asked, coming into the bathroom.
“Jumped,” Skinny said, with a gasp. “Don’t know who it was. Fucking shot me before I got a look. Got him back though, didn’t ya?” he said with a laugh as he looked at Quinn. “Your woman’s a badass.”
“The bullet’s still in this one,” she said, ignoring Skinny’s compliment. “I can’t get it out. The other went straight through.”
I nodded and took the needle and thread from her. “Fighter!” I placed them on the countertop next to me and pulled out my small knife from my boot.
