Page 21 of Shatter

"Open the fucking gate, Gorm." My hands tighten on the wheel until the leather creaks.

He opens it.

I park crooked in front of the clubhouse doors and carry her out of the back seat.

She's small against me.

Five-four, maybe, and soft, and she weighs nothing at all, and she turns her face into my bare shoulder and doesn't make a sound.

The clubhouse doors bang open under my boot.

The common room is half-lit, the TV on mute over the bar, and there are more people in here than there should be at two-forty on a Wednesday.

Rati's at the bar with a bottle of Jameson, and Emil and Oskar are at the pool table with their cues.

Ulf is sprawled on the couch with his boots up and his phone on his chest, and he sits up so fast his phone hits the floor.

Everything stops.

The pool balls stop rolling, and Rati sets his glass down on the bar without a sound.

"Hakon." His eyes go from the blood on my chest to the woman in my arms. "What the fuck, brother?"

"She's cut." I carry her to the couch and lower her down onto the cushions, and she still won't let go of my neck. "Arm and face. Maybe ribs. Where's Aesir?"

"Here." The side door slams open, and Aesir comes through it with his medical bag in one hand, gray hair sticking up on one side from his pillow. "Gunnar called. Let me see her."

He crosses the room toward the couch in four long strides.

She sees him coming.

Her body goes rigid under my hands.

A sound comes out of her I've never heard a person make, high and primall, and she shoves herself backward into the corner of the couch so hard it scrapes on the concrete.

Her good hand fists in my hair.

Pain bites across my scalp, and I cover her fist with my own and hold it there.

"No." She's shaking her head over and over. "No, no, no, no."

Aesir stops dead.

He looks at her for one long second, at the way she's pressed into the corner and the way her eyes are locked on his hands.

Then he sets his bag down on the floor, and he steps back.

Two steps, then three, until he's standing by the bar with his hands empty at his sides.

He doesn't say a word to her.

"Vail." He turns his head toward the side door.

Two women come in behind him.

Vail, Gunnar's mother, still in her navy paramedic uniform with her blonde gone gray hair pulled back in a tight braid, and Gwen right behind her in the same uniform, a trauma kit already open in her hands.

Vail's radio is still clipped to her shoulder, hissing static.