Page 24 of My Reckless Biker

She's right. That's exactly what this was.

"Can I see him?" I ask.

"He's in recovery now. Won't be conscious for several hours. But once he's moved to ICU you can sit with him. Give it maybe another thirty, forty minutes."

She stands and I stand too. "Thank you," I say, and I mean it even though gratitude feels inadequate for keeping Ray alive.

She nods and heads back through the double doors and I'm alone again with the humming lights and the silent TV and the knowledge that Ray's alive but broken, and Dutch is somewhere out there thinking he got away with it.

My phone rings. Cain.

I answer. "Yeah."

"We found Dutch," he says without preamble. "Marrow warehouse outside county line, same one we've been watching for two months. He's there with two prospects. They're moving product, probably trying to distribute before we can respond to Ray's beating. They don't know we've already confirmed it was Dutch who did it."

"How do you know it was him?"

"Witness. Woman who lives across from Ray saw two men. One matched Dutch's description—six-three, scar across his throat, massive. The other was younger, maybe early twenties. They used a bat. She called 911 but didn't want to give her name because she's afraid of retaliation."

The image forms immediately. Dutch with a bat. Ray's driveway. Blood everywhere.

The rage that I've been controlling since the hospital floods back, hotter now, more focused.

"When do we move?" I ask.

"Twenty-two hundred tonight. Gives us time to prep, makes sure Dutch is still there, lets us move in dark. Strike team is you, me, Tate, Clint, Holt, Knox. Two vehicles. Hard and fast. Dutch is primary target but we take the prospects if they don't run. Product gets burned. Building gets burned."

"I want Dutch."

"You'll get him. But you extract intel first. We need to know what else Crane's planning before you finish him."

"And after?"

"After that he's yours."

The line goes quiet for a second and then Cain says, "How's Ray?"

"Alive. Stable. But he's got head trauma and facial fractures and broken ribs and internal bleeding. Doctor says he'll survive but the damage is permanent."

"Fuck."

"Yeah."

"We're going to make this right," Cain says. "Dutch doesn't walk away from this. Neither do the prospects who were with him. This gets handled tonight."

"I'll be back by fourteen hundred for planning."

I end the call and a nurse comes through the double doors, younger than Dr. Patel, scrubs that are too big for her.

"Mr. Torres has been moved to ICU," she says. "Room 314. You can sit with him now but he's not going to wake up for a while. The anesthesia needs time to wear off and we've got him on pain management that'll keep him pretty out of it even when he does start to surface."

I follow her through a maze of corridors to ICU and room 314 is at the end, door open, lights dim. Ray's in the bed hooked up to machines that beep and hiss and show numbers I don't understand but can read as serious based on how many of them there are.

His face is destroyed.

That's the only word for it. Both eyes swollen shut, blackened, the right one worse than the left where the orbital fracture is. His nose is clearly broken, pushed to one side, taped but still misshapen. His jaw is wrong, the left side swollen and discolored where the fracture runs along the bone. Cuts and abrasions across his forehead and cheeks, some stitched, some just cleaned and bandaged. His lips are split and swollen.

This is what Dutch did to him.