Page 72 of Reckless

Ghost’s left hand leaves the grip, and it finds my knee. One firm squeeze.

Not reassurance, instruction.

Hold on.

Then his hand is back on the handlebars. If I hadn’t been paying attention, I would have missed it completely.

But I don’t miss it.

Not this time.

Koa is already moving. I feel it more than I see it at first, his bike drifting out of formation until he’s running alongside Sin, both of them watching the same stretch of road in their mirrors with a focus that only comes when instinct arrives before certainty.

Ghost has seen it too. I know because the easy rhythm beneath me has disappeared completely. Every movement of the bike has sharpened beneath my hands, smoother somehow, more deliberate, like every muscle in his body has settled into a different gear.

The SUVs close the distance.

The one in the left lane edges forward until it’s level with Deek, hanging there for a heartbeat that stretches a fraction too long.

Something inside me goes cold, then it commits.

The SUV snaps hard across the lane, its front quarter panel slamming into Deek’s front wheel with a violent crack that punches straight through the roar of the motorcycles. Deek’s Harley bucks sideways. His handlebars wrench violently to the left as the bike fishtails across the lane, the rear tire hunting for grip while he wrestles eight hundred pounds of motorcycle that suddenly wants to throw him onto the asphalt.

“Deek!” I hear myself shout, though my voice disappears beneath the engines.

Bear swerves wide to avoid him, missing Deek by what looks like inches.

Mace has nowhere to go. He throws his bike onto the shoulder in an attempt to avoid the collision, but the loose gravel catches his front tire. The Harley slides out from beneath him in an explosion of dust and stone, the bike cartwheeling once before crashing onto its side while Mace tumbles hard, rolling down the embankment.

The neat, staggered formation we’d been riding in only seconds ago fractures around us as brothers scatter instinctively, every rider making split-second decisions to avoid becoming the next bike to go down.

Sin’s voice cuts through the comms, calm enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “Pack tight. Now.”

Ghost hauls me forward with one hard pull until I’m plastered against his back, my helmet bumping lightly against his as the Harley surges beneath us. Bikes close in from both sides, engines roaring as the brothers tighten the formation until there’s barely any daylight between us.

It takes me one heartbeat to understand why.

He just put himself between the people who are trying to hunt us and me.

My arms lock around his waist so tightly I can feel the hard bands of muscle beneath his cut. I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath until my lungs start to burn.

The trailing SUV suddenly lunges forward, and its rear window slides down. The man leaning out isn’t looking at the pack.

He is looking at us.

My stomach drops so violently it feels as though I have missed a step at the edge of a cliff.

“Ghost!” The word tears out of me before I even know I’m saying it.

“They’re armed!” Koa’s voice rips through the comms at the same moment.

Sin doesn’t hesitate. “Return it.”

The first gunshot cracks through the desert. For half a second, my brain refuses to understand what I have heard. Then another follows, and another, each blast punching through the roar of engines until the entire valley seems to explode around us.

Something whistles past my helmet, so close I feel the rush of air skim my cheek.

I scream as another round slams into Ghost’s Harley with a deafening metallic crack. Sparks burst from the side near the fuel tank, bright against the afternoon sun, and fragments of metal spray across the road before disappearing beneath the wheels behind us.