I'm not fast enoughto get him clear but I'm fast enough to get to him.
The blast goes off six feet from where I am, and it throws me sideways and when I get up there's ringing in both ears and the yard is full of smoke and Decker is on the ground.
I get to him and I go down on my knees next to him.
His left leg is wrong. I don't look at it for more than a second. I take his face between my hands, and I make him look at me.
"Stay with me. Look at me. You hear me? Look at me."
His eyes find mine. His face is white, the absolute white of someone in shock, and he's breathing too fast.
"Sprog."
"I'm here. Stay with me. You're a Black Saint. You hear me? You're a Black Saint and you stay."
His mouth works for a second. "Is my leg still there?"
I don't answer that.
"Austin."
"The club is here. You're not alone. Every one of your brothers is right behind me and you are not alone. Look at me, not down there. Look at me."
His eyes come back to mine and stay there. Good.
"You're going to be alright," I say. "I need you to stay with me."
"Yeah," he says, very quiet. "Okay."
His eyes close. I keep my hands on his face and I say his name. He makes a sound that tells me he can still hear it, and that has to be enough for right now.
Sav is beside me before I've registered her coming.
She doesn't ask questions. She does what she does. Her hands move fast and sure and she talks to Decker the whole time, steady and calm, the voice she uses in the office when she needs someone to stay present. I watch her work and I think about the girl I knew at seventeen who wanted to be a doctor and how completely, absolutely she became one.
"Ambulance is four minutes out," Prez says behind us.
"Tell them leg injury, blast trauma, he's in shock," Sav says without looking up. "And tell them to come in hot."
Prez makes the call.
The four minutes are long. Sav keeps Decker talking and I keep my hand on his shoulder. The brothers stand around us in a ring that isn't discussed, just forms, the way things form in this club when one of us is down. Knuckles at the back with his arms folded and his jaw tight. Pops with his hand on Cash's shoulder. Shadow watching the tree line because someone has to. Brick just behind my left shoulder, the way he's always been there, since day one in that workshop at five in the morning.
When the ambulance pulls through the gate Sav is already talking to the paramedics before the doors open, running through what she knows, what she's done, what they need to do next. They listen to her the way medics listen to someone who knows what they're talking about.
She climbs in the back with Decker.
At the doors she stops and looks at me. Not panicked. Not apologizing. Just clear and certain the way she is when she's working, the way she was the first time I brought EJ to her surgery, and she took control of the room without raising her voice.
"I'll bring him home," she says.
The doors close.
I stand there until the ambulance lights disappear through the gate and then I stand there for a while after.
I’ve ash on my face from the blast, blood on my hands, both Decker's and mine, dried now and dark at the edges. The clubhouse front is destroyed, the east wall half down, smoke still rising from the window frames in the cold early air. The yard is quiet now. The High Stakes are gone, their dead left behind likethey were left behind at the hotel, and somewhere out there their Prez is running. We'll find him because we always do.
Brick is beside me. Not saying anything, just there, the way he's been there since he found me in the workshop at five in the morning when I was eighteen years old and had nowhere to put what I was feeling. Some things about a man don't change.
