Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,105

turned off the electricity? Something was firing the spotlights that made the place look like it was cast in daylight, but it was dark in the corridor Mav was traversing. As he rolled past Rex's door, I was pretty sure the basement was his destination, then he made a sharp turn and headed inside the office.

Angry with him for being such a fucking dipshit, I made after him. One of the arson investigators grabbed my arm, and I snarled, "I'm just going to get him.” The guy tried to hold me back, and I blamed it on the fact that before the five-hour drive to West Orange, I'd been on a sixteen-hour run for my chapter. Fatigue, it had to be, that was why when he shoved me back, instead of being able to get into his face, smack the fuck outta him, I toppled onto my ass.

As I collided with the ground, sinking onto a patch that was lawn, another patch that was dirt, and another that was stone, my already aching butt hurt twice as hard.

But that was nothing to the quake it felt like my fall triggered.

A shout went down from the front, one that slipped into my ears and out again as I tried and failed to process what the team had said, but before my eyes, what was left of the clubhouse seemed to fall down like a house of cards. Snapping into a million tiny pieces as the upper floors gave way once the lower supporting walls cascaded like so much dust to the ground.

As my dazed mind registered that, I screamed, “Maverick!" Desperate, I hollered his name again, louder until my voice sounded like I’d been swallowing chalk for fun.

The fucker couldn't have survived two wars, only God knew how many battles, to die in the aftermath of a fire.

I leaped to my feet, and in the aftermath of the house settling down, the clouds of dust ceasing to boom around like noxious gas, I dove amid the rubble.

Bits of brick, snapped wood, electrical wires that sparked, pipes that spurted water, all of it bowed down to the weight of my drive.

I didn't stop until I was dashing over a cluster of particle board that snapped under my feet.

Finding stillness so that I didn't cause more wreckage, I heard the faintest of moans.

"He's over here! He's alive!" I screamed, unable to think of my brother being buried among this goddamn crap, not after the last bomb he'd been involved in had done pretty much the same thing.

Almost buried him alive.

If he stayed like this for much longer, I wasn't even sure if he'd survive mentally, never mind physically.

I could still remember the screams that escaped him as he roared out his terror in the middle of the night when he'd first come home.

It had scared the clubwhores shitless.

With dust flying, bits of ash floating and sticking to my sweaty face, and my boots slipping beneath the uneven ground that was made up of the debris of my home, I dragged shit off him. Firefighters surrounded me, working hard to free him, and even though it was barely five minutes between Maverick entering and the final crash of the clubhouse, it felt like a lifetime too long.

As we tore him out of the cocoon the drywall had buried him in, I saw the blood on his head, took note of his closed eyes, and prayed to fuck that he wasn't dead.

In the distance, I heard more sirens, and knew an ambulance was on its way.

"Why was he in a wheelchair?" someone asked as we struggled to lift him over the rubble.

"Roadside bomb in the sandbox," I answered, grating the words out from between gritted teeth. "Yeah, this dirty fucking biker was a soldier. He fought for this country—"

The sirens drowned out my voice, but I didn't care. I knew they'd only asked to make sure they didn't harm him further as we hauled him out from the wreckage, but it wasn't like we had a choice in how we got him out.

By the time we made it over the hillocks of bricks and wood, the gurney was by our side, and we lifted Mav onto it.

I wanted to go with him, but someone had to stay and monitor shit on this end.

Nyx, in that first call, had told me there was a body moldering down into soup at the Fridge. The last thing we needed was the cops or the Feds sniffing around our