Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,5

what was going on. There’d been rumblings of dissent in the Skulls for weeks. These boys liked to bitch worse than the strippers.

I reached for the phone at my feet, but I was dizzy and shaky and fell to my knees.

“You can’t be trusted, brother,” Rabbit said.

“Yeah?” Max held out his arms. “Funny, I’m not the one holding a gun on anyone.”

“You left,” Rabbit said. “And we all know you weren’t going to come back.”

“But I’m here.”

“Because I made you!” Rabbit screamed, spittle flying. He looked like a madman. “I made you come back because you’re a coward. And there’s no room in the club for cowards, especially at the head of the table.”

“You want the president patch? It’s yours. You want my cut?” He started to shrug out of the beat-up leather vest. “It’s all yours.”

“Not good enough,” another one of the guys standing in the semicircle around Rabbit said.

“So what’s it going to be?” Max asked, his arms held out.

“Only blood will do.”

“Then what are you waiting for, asshole—”

Rabbit fired and Max went down. His leg kicked out behind him and his whole body followed like he was doing a gruesome pirouette.

I screamed, but it didn’t even register in the noise. The sirens were getting closer. The bikers closed ranks around Max kicking him, stomping him.

Jesus. God.

When things went to shit, they really went to shit.

They were going to kill him and he was my only link to Lagan. The only person in this shit show that Lagan talked to, and after that scene in the office, Lagan would trust Max.

If I wanted my sister alive, I needed Max alive.

Lo and behold, Plan B.

With shaking fingers I pulled out the cellphone and hit the code for the second bomb, strapped under one of the chairs in that back room.

Another explosion. Small. But there was more smoke. More chaos.

Rabbit and the rest of the thugs looked up and looked at each other.

“What do we do?” one of them asked. Clearly the brainiac in the group.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Rabbit said and pointed the gun at Max’s head and pulled the trigger.

I was working on being very small and very unnoticeable so I clapped my hand to my mouth so no one could hear me scream.

The Skulls scattered like flies and I ran, crouched low, across the parking lot to my car and then drove it closer to Max with the headlights off.

I crept out of the car, left it running, and ran the few feet between me and Max.

He was facedown in the dirt and not moving.

A pool of black blood, reflecting the fire and smoke from the building, was spreading around his leg.

Panic filled my throat like bile.

I had two semesters of LPN training from another lifetime under my belt, but it came flooding back, screamed at me in my aunt Fern’s voice.

Which was only fitting.

Aunt Fern was my go-to in all medical emergencies.

Pulse. Check for a pulse.

I reached for Max’s neck and found his heartbeat. Good and strong. A miracle.

Airway. His chest was moving. We were in luck.

Spinal injury. Aunt Fern and all my textbooks told me not to move him, but we didn’t have that luxury.

As carefully as I could, I rolled him onto his back. He groaned and cried out, and I figured he was dealing with at least a few bruised ribs. His legs and arms all shifted and jerked in pain, so I let go of my worry about a spinal injury.

There was a lot of blood on his face, rivers of it, and I swept some of it away with my hand, trying to see what had happened.

What I was dealing with.

Minutes ago I was ready to burn this whole place to the ground and this man with it.

Now I was risking everything to perform first aid. I couldn’t get Jennifer back from inside a jail cell. But I couldn’t get Jennifer back without Max.

Work faster, I told myself.

Oh Lord, his face was a mess. They really tuned him up. But the second bullet must have missed him.

“A graze,” he murmured. “Bullet.”

“Yeah,” I said, touching the bleeding raw edges of the bullet’s path across the side of his head. The furrow was buried in the edges of his black hair.

He hissed, closing his eyes. A bullet graze and maybe a concussion based on how he couldn’t keep his eyes open.

He was bleeding from his calf; I found the entrance wound, but there was no exit wound. I could feel