Page 16 of Smoke

"Your father stops digging. He stops making calls. He stops asking about things that don't concern him, and this ends. The law has no place in our business."

Beth answered, her voice rough but steady. "If you knew my father at all, you'd know kidnapping me isn't going to make him more cooperative."

Relief hit hard enough to hurt. She was conscious, angry and still herself.

A metallic crash echoed through the building. Someone cursed, and I used the noise to close the distance.

When I cleared the end of the shelving, I saw her tied by one wrist to a metal chair. Blood had dried along her temple, a bruise was forming high on one cheek, and one man stood close enough to reach for her while a second turned toward whatever she'd knocked over. A third waited near the loading door with a handgun at his waist.

The man beside Beth put his hand on her arm.

I crossed the space before he understood I was there and drove him away from her hard enough to put him on the floor with blunt force. The second man reached for his waistband, and I fired before he finished drawing. The shot hit his shoulder and spun him into the shelving while the third man ran for the loading door.

Preacher appeared outside it at almost the same moment and put him down before he made it through. I turned back to Beth as the first man was getting up. He reached for her again, and seeing his hand close around her stripped away the restraint I'd kept from the second her call connected. I caught him by the shirt, drove him into the wall and hit him again when his head bounced off the concrete. All I could see was the bruising on Beth's face and the red marks another asshole had left on her wrist the day before.

I pulled him forward to hit him again, already seeing the next blow in my head.

"Smoke. Knife." Beth's voice cut through the rage.

The man I'd shot had forced himself upright against the shelving with a blade in his good hand. He pushed away from the rack, and I fired once before he took another step.

The knife hit the floor before his body did.

I let go of the man against the wall and went straight to Beth. Up close, the blood at her temple looked worse even though most of it had dried. There were marks on her arms and dust across her clothes, but her eyes were clear.

I crouched and cut the tie around her wrist. "Anything broken?"

"I don't think so. My head hurts, and my shoulder's pissed off."

"Dizzy?"

"A little."

Her fingers shook when she closed them around mine, and that nearly hit harder than seeing her tied to the chair. I helped her stand slowly, caught her when her knees buckled and held her against me while she wrapped her arms around my neck.

Everything I'd kept contained since the call pressed against my ribs. I had been fucking terrified I would get there too late.

I put one hand against the back of her head, careful of the injury, and held on until she pulled back.

Preacher had the surviving man on the floor near the loading door, asking questions.

"He was supposed to stop," the man said. "Stop the calls, stop digging into the properties. He kept going."

Beth turned toward him. "So you thought taking me would make him trade whatever he knows?"

The man looked away, which was answer enough, and I stepped toward him, and Beth caught my wrist. Her grip wasn't strong and didn't need to be. I stopped because she was standing beside me alive, and keeping her beside me alive mattered more than finishing the man on the floor.

I made sure he saw my face before I spoke. "I'm going to let you live. And you're going to take this back to whatever lowlifes sent you here. Sheriff Warren White isn't the only problem you've got in Salvation. You come after his daughter again, you don't get another fucking conversation."

Outsiders had come into town expecting an exhausted sheriff and nobody else with the power to answer them. They'd mistaken empty properties and the last lawman standing for weakness. Sheriff White was one kind of power in Salvation. The Unholy Few MC were another, and the cartel was starting to understand the difference.

We had stopped this move. We hadn't stopped Tomas Rivas or the larger operation, and nobody in the building was stupid enough to pretend otherwise.

Beth refused an ambulance, which surprised nobody. I told her she was going to the hospital anyway, and dizziness ended the argument faster than I could.

Gage brought her car once the road was handled, and I drove while Beth sat beside me with an ice pack a prospect had been told to bring to the scene before we left. Somewhere before we reached town, she put one hand on my thigh and left it there.

The doctors kept her for a few hours, checked the head injury and called it a mild concussion with bruising that looked worse than the actual damage. Beth listened to the discharge instructions with the expression of somebody already planning which ones she could ignore.