Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,8
the fuck out of my way!” Dylan jerked me sideways and opened the door. Max’s half-conscious body nearly toppled out onto the ground.
“Jesus,” he groaned, catching Max before he landed in the dirt. Ben was beside him, useless and frail, but trying.
“I tried to tell you,” I said.
And I had no time to be sympathetic. Or even pretend to be sympathetic. I had miles to go tonight before I could take a deep breath. I also had a minor surgery to perform in the backseat of this car.
So I looked at Dylan and Ben trying to help Max and I thought—you fucking suckers.
Annie came back out holding a duffel bag and a half-full black plastic garbage bag. “Oh my God,” she cried when she saw the men, then dropped the stuff and bolted across the dirt to help Dylan and Max.
I rolled my eyes and went over to grab my stuff.
There were some general oh my Gods, and then Annie ran back into her trailer to get some towels while Dylan looked under the bandana I’d tied around Max’s leg.
“The bullet is buried in the muscle. No bones,” I said, popping the trunk. “I can get it out and I can stitch it up. I’ve got materials in my stuff. But we need to get out of here.”
“He needs a hospital,” Annie said, arriving with an armful of towels.
“Hospital won’t work,” Ben, the old gangster said. “It’s a gunshot. There will be too many questions.”
“And we can’t stay here,” I added, shoving the bags in the trunk. “People are going to be looking for Max.”
“You mean they’re looking for you,” Dylan said.
“They might be.”
“Who did this?” Ben asked, looking down at his son with a palpable grief that I did everything in my power not to feel anything about.
“Rabbit,” I said.
“He dead?” Ben asked, clearly thinking about revenge.
Max will be thinking about revenge, too, I realized. When he wakes up and gets better. He’ll go looking for Rabbit. Which was not at all why I saved his life. I was going to have to come up with a plan to stop that.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s total chaos over there. But Rabbit wasn’t alone. He had the whole MC on his side. This wasn’t an assassination. It was a coup. You have to believe me. He’s not safe here.”
“Where are you going to take him?” Annie asked.
“Someplace safe,” I said. “I swear to God.”
“What about his head wound?” Annie asked. “He’s probably got a concussion. It might be serious.”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.” I slammed the trunk down.
Max’s legs spasmed and everyone looked back down into the backseat of the car. His eyes were open but unfocused. He looked like a character out of a slasher movie, covered in blood.
He was shaking his head. “D…E…A. Not. DEA.”
Shit, I thought. I did not need to waste time talking about that nonsense. Annie still thought I was undercover DEA.
“What’s he saying?” Ben asked.
“ ‘Not DEA,’ ” Dylan’s eyes raked me. “You taking him in? Gonna make him turn rat? Because he’ll be staying here if that’s your plan. We can take care of him.”
“I’m not DEA,” I said. “I never was.”
Annie gasped, “But the badge?”
Oh, you trusting idiot. The world is going to make a mess of you.
“Fake. I got about twenty fake badges in that bag. I’m not DEA, I’m not…anything.”
Oh, the truth in those words, they had no idea. Bad Boyfriend #2 had left me holding the bag on some long cons he’d been running (with my help—like I said, chaos is my friend), but he also left me with the fake badges, which had been plenty useful.
“Then what are you doing?” Dylan asked.
“Trying to stay alive,” I said. “And trying to keep your stupid brother alive. Listen to me—we don’t have much time. But where I’m taking him, he’ll be safe. He’ll be away from the club, which,” I licked my lips, and aimed my arrow right at his heart, “you know he wants.” I needed to get moving and Dylan was the key to that.
“How do you know?” Dylan asked. Max wouldn’t have walked around broadcasting that fact; it would have gotten him killed even faster.
“Because I do,” I sighed. “Because your brother and I are…friends. Sort of. You have to trust me.”
All of us knew what kind of friends Max had. Liars. Cheats. Killers.
I had already proven to be a liar.
Fuck, this wasn’t going to work. They weren’t going to let me take him.