Page 12 of Ruin

I jumped away from the wall at the thought, terrified, and let my gaze rake across the empty expanse that surrounded me, looking for anything out of place. Anyone that looked like they might be there for nefarious purposes.

I didn’t see any hooded and masked figures lurking in the shadows, though. The place was completely empty, like it had been deserted for some time, and I breathed a quick sigh of relief. Then I got to work.

Gemini hadn’t told me anything about this place other than that he had another bike in the garage, and that the garage sat behind the house, for some reason. That meant I had to get past the house to get to the garage, and then get the bike out and rolled back to the street before I started it. I wasn’t sure who lived here, but I was betting that hearing a motorcycle start up in their garage in the middle of the night would rouse them, and after the night I’d already had, I wasn’t in the mood to have a run-in with some angry guy who wasn’t expecting me. Hell, even if he was a friend of Gemini’s, it didn’t make him a friend of mine. He’d almost definitely make trouble for me, and I didn’t have time for that.

Not with Gem out there on his own.

I ducked down and slid along the wall, my eyes on the garage at the back of the driveway. The good news: This house didn’t have much in the way of windows. The bad news: This was a very, very long house and I had quite a ways to go before I got to the garage. I held my breath and kept walking, pausing at the few windows to make sure I was under the lower sill before passing them and doing my best to keep my footsteps quiet on the gravel of the driveway.

This was incredibly difficult to do while trying to hurry, half of my mind still on Gemini and his safety, and by the time I got to the end of the house, I felt even more exhausted than I had before, the stress draining me almost completely. Who the hell did this sort of thing for fun? How did they survive the tension?

I promised myself that I’d never get into a life of crime, as I obviously wasn’t good at the stress, and then stood up and darted across the last expanse of pavement, throwing open the door to the garage and taking my phone out of my pocket for the flashlight.

The beam of light showed me a well-stocked garage, complete with a workbench and lots of cabinets, along with some expensive-looking machinery, but I skipped past all of that, searching desperately for the bike Gemini had promised would be here. I breathed out sharply when I finally found it, but then I paused and looked harder.

This bike was nothing like anything I’d ever ridden before. Sure, it was a motorcycle, but it was at least fifteen years old and very simple. Nothing fancy. Not even a Harley. Something a casual rider might have. More for show than anything else, and definitely not fast. What the hell was it doing here, and why did Gem have something like that? What was he doing, restoring it?

Why?

Not that it mattered, I told myself firmly. A bike was a bike was a bike, and right now, all I cared about was whether or not it would start. I dashed toward it and threw my leg over, sending a prayer up into the heavens that it would at least run for long enough to get back to Gem and then get us the hell out of there. If we were gone when Devil’s guys came by, we wouldn’t have to worry about outrunning them.

With luck, we’d already be wherever we were going.

I fished the key out of my pocket and slipped it into the ignition. Closing my eyes, I muttered, “Please, please, please,” and turned.

The bike roared to life, and too late, I remembered that I’d meant to wheel it out onto the road before I stared it to keep from waking up whoever was in the house.

“Dammit, Saraya!” I hissed, furious with myself. I was definitely not good at this sneaking-around shit. Life of crime, off the list for good.

But it was too late to second-guess myself now. The bike was on and roaring, and if someone had been asleep in that house, they were probably awake now and wondering who the hell was in their garage.

In for a penny, in for a pound, I guessed.

I twisted the accelerator, let up on the brake, and busted through the doors of the garage on my way out, the tires squealing on the pavement of the garage and the handlebars jerking in my hand when I hit the gravel of the driveway. Within five seconds, I’d got the hang of the bike, though, and by the time I hit the road in front of the house, I was ducking down lower and pushing the bike harder, on my way back to where I’d left Gemini.

I WAS SEVERAL MILES from the house—about half of the way back to the clubhouse—when I saw something lying on the side of the road. A bundle of rags, I told myself. Maybe an animal that had been hit.

But that was way too big to be an animal, no matter how much I wanted it to be, and I knew the moment I saw it what it actually was. It just took me several minutes more to admit it to myself.

Gemini. He was lying in a circle of light like someone had placed him there on purpose, just to showcase him, and it didn’t take a genius to realize that he wasn’t moving.

I pulled over and threw myself to the ground next to him, my hands running over his body while I tried to figure out whether he was even still alive. He’d been beaten up, I could see that much, his face bruised and his nose definitely broken. Scrapes down the side of his face told me he’d been dragged for a bit, and scrapes on his knuckles told me he’d fought back.

He’d also been shot in the shoulder. Again.

“Gemini?” I gasped, horrified. What had they done, found him, beat him, shot him, and then left him for dead?

Why?

I pressed my fingers to his neck, searching for a pulse, while my eyes scanned his face, trying to figure out whether he was breathing or not. “Gem? Can you hear me?”

He grabbed my shirt and pulled me toward him, scaring the hell out of me and nearly yanking me off my feet.

“You’re alive,” I gasped, shocked at how quickly he’d evidently come back from the dead—just to grab me and try to pull me down on top of him.

“Barely,” he groaned. “Get to Brock’s. Now.” He gave me an address, his voice wheezing and his breath labored.

“No,” I said firmly. “I’m not leaving you again. Come on. I’ve got the bike. We’ve just got to get you onto it.”