“Jesus Christ,” Carnage muttered.
A brother lay stretched out across one of the benches nearest the bar, boots still on, an empty bottle dangling from his fingers. I crossed the room and kicked the leg of the bench hard enough to rattle him. He jerked awake violently, eyes wild for half a second before recognition crawled in.
“Reap?”
“Aye.” My voice came out flatter than I meant it to. “Where’s Bill?”
The brother frowned slowly, still half-cut, half-sedated. Around us the clubhouse remained sunk in smoke and stupor, while outside the war carried on without them. And suddenly I understood exactly how someone had managed to get to Brie first.
I yanked my phone from inside my pocket and punched in some numbers. The phone burred against my ear, the call connecting almost immediately.
“Reap?” Ash Calder’s voice was clear and bright on the other end.
“Where’s your VP?”
“At home.”
“You not at the clubhouse?”
“Nah, mate. But you can see that as you’re standing right inside it.”
I glanced up at the corner where a red light flashed intermittently.
“Brie’s dead.”
Silence. Just for a moment, like Ash was just working out how to breathe.
“What?”
“Barry the Blade. Brie rang an hour or two ago. Needed to see Indie. Baz went. He was dead when he got there.”
“Fuck.” The word was whispered.
“You need to get there before the police do. Sort anything that needs sorting.”
“Where the fuck was Indie?”
I swallowed, the words swelling in my throat.
“Hospital. They took out Magnet.”
“Shit. How bad?”
“Bad, mate. He’s in surgery.”
“Fuck.”
“Ash?” I paused, glancing around at the bar full of younger, patched members and prospects passed out or half-incapacitated. “You need to get these fuckers sorted out. While they’ve been fucking partying, someone took out your fucking pres.”
Chapter Thirty
The department finally began to slow sometime after three in the morning. The chaos had dulled at the edges, the waiting room thinning, the constant ringing and shouting settling into something less frantic. My body ached with exhaustion. Every muscle heavy. Every thought slower than it should have been. More than normal. Like I’d been weightlifting tension all shift.
I stood at the nurses’ station, scanning through Magnet’s post-op notes on the screen in front of me, cold coffee untouched beside the keyboard.
Emergency exploratory laparotomy. Splenic rupture. Significant internal bleeding. Bullet lodged posteriorly beneaththe scapula. Massive transfusion protocol initiated. Ventilated and sedated in intensive care. Critical but stable.
Stable.
