Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,6
the lump of the bullet in the meat of his muscle.
Shit.
I grabbed the faded, red-and-white bandana from my hoodie pocket and wrapped it around his calf, which woke him up enough to scream at me.
“Fuck you!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said quickly, like it made a difference. “I’m sorry. Just…pass out if it hurts too much.”
“Get out of here,” he groaned. “Cops will arrest you.”
“Cops will arrest you, too.” The story would be drug deal gone bad. And Max was a big part of that equation. “And if you go to jail, you know those brothers of yours will finish the job.”
“Crazy bitch, what do you care?”
I didn’t have time to explain how he was my link to Lagan. A faulty link I couldn’t actually trust. But the only link I had.
“I don’t,” I said. “I don’t care about you at all.”
But I think I knew, even then. Before all the shit that happened next, the way I hurt him over and over again. The way he hurt me.
Days from now, with a gun to my head and my life flashing before my eyes, I would see the truth in a bright-crystal vision and it would break my heart.
I needed Max Daniels. Not for Lagan. Not for my sister.
For me.
I saved his life so he could save mine.
Chapter 3
Let me tell you, it was not easy getting that man into my car.
I wrapped my hands in the arm holes of his leather cut and pulled with all the fight-or-flight adrenaline I had coursing through my body. He helped a little, using his good leg to kind of scooch himself along. The seams in the leather creaked and tore in my hands, but I kept pulling and he kept pushing until we got to my car.
I opened the door and stepped over him, straddling his body so I could get my arms under his armpits. He braced himself on the door and the foot well of the car.
“Count of three?” I said and he nodded; I could feel his head against my stomach.
I counted it out and on a heave, we got him in. He was barely holding on, his face white beneath the blood. But he pushed himself all the way back so he was leaning against the other door.
When I shut the door, with his body stretched across the backseat I was shaking. Every muscle worked to its limit. The lights of the fire trucks coming down the highway told me we didn’t have much time.
“I’m going to pass out soon,” he said.
“I figured.” I put the car in gear and left the headlights off. The poor Buick was far from an off-roading kind of car, but I headed into the grass on the other side of the parking lot all the same.
“You gotta keep me away from my brother,” he said.
“No shit, they tried to kill you.”
“No. My…keep me away from Dylan. From Pops.”
I skirted the kudzu forest, bouncing through ditches, making Max groan and scream and swear at me.
“Just pass out already!”
“Promise me,” he said. Looking at him in the rearview mirror, I could see he was serious and fighting off unconsciousness with everything he had. This was important enough to defy the needs of his bleeding and battered body. Sheer stupid force of will. “No…family.”
“I promise,” I said.
A second later, I hit another ditch and he was silent in the backseat.
Out like a light. Six feet of bleeding, criminal, badass light. Thank God.
What was I doing? Fleeing the scene of a crime with a dangerous MC president? I mean, I’d done some crazy shit in the last twelve hours, but this seemed…
I stopped myself before I could spiral any harder.
He was my last chance to get my sister. My last chance.
And there was nothing I wouldn’t do to save my sister.
And I’d saved Max’s life. That was a good thing, right? Not crazy. Noble.
I was quickly rewriting the script so I could stay the hero, I know that.
But I had to keep moving and that was the only way to keep myself from curling into a ball and crying for the next week.
Lights off and driving slowly, I cleared the edge of the woods, hit the last ditch, and was up on the dirt road that led back to the Flowering Manor campground. I had a trailer there, or I used to anyway. No telling if my shit was still there. My first aid kit. I needed that.