Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1)(62)

This was not her life. This couldn’t be her life.

“How do you know he was trying to kill us?” she beseeched him, willing him to tell her it was all a horrible joke. “Maybe…maybe he was just sent to scare us or something. After all, that CIA guy had a chance to kill us at Delilah’s, and he didn’t. How do you know this guy wasn’t going to do the same? How do you know he wasn’t—”

Her stomach was no longer in her throat. Heck no. Now it was spinning around like a whirligig, and…yeah…she was going to hurl. No stopping it this time.

A gurgling sound emanated from the back of her throat.

“Goddamnit!” Nate swore. “Can y’puke while in motion, or do we need t’pull over?”

She couldn’t answer him. Not when she was busy leaning over the side of the speeding bike, lifting her visor, and projectile vomiting.

Well huh, what do you know? It appeared she could puke while in motion.

And lucky for her—if anything about this whole disastrous situation could be considered lucky—she managed to miss both her leg and Nate’s. She couldn’t speak for the fate of the back tire, though.

Saliva pooled thick and hot in her mouth as she watched the guardrail zoom past.

“You okay?” Nate asked, his voice strangely discordant.

Right about now he was probably really regretting giving in to her demands to come along on this mission.

Oh, who was she fooling? She herself was regretting it with the burning intensity of a thousand suns.

“Y—” she spit—gross—and tried again. “Yes. I…I think so.”

Sucking in a deep breath, she licked her parched lips and straightened.

Okay. Okay, she could do this. She could deal with the fact that not only was the CIA after them, but now a hit man as well. She could deal with the fact that…

“Erp,” she ground her jaw when her stomach turned over again.

All right, maybe deal with was too strong a phrase.

She wasn’t dealing with anything except trying to combat the urge to toss her cookies. Problem there being there weren’t any cookies to toss, which meant dry heave time. And she really, really hated dry heave time.

“Ali, do y’need me to pull over?”

“No,” she assured him. “I’m…I’m fine.” She sucked in another cleansing breath and willed herself to be so.

He snorted, the sound loud and particularly disbelieving through the Bluetooth headset.

“Okay, I’m not fine,” she admitted shakily. “But I’ll live.”

His only response was a grunt.

Yeah, she’d live, because Nate was back to his oh-so-verbose self, which meant things must be okay, or as okay as they could be…considering.

She breathed a silent sigh of relief. Her stomach settled…a little. Then something hot and wet slid over her fingers where they wrapped around Nate’s waist. Daring to loosen her grip, she held on with one arm as she brought her hand close to her face.

Something oily and black met her eyes.

What in the world?

She couldn’t for the life of her figure out what it could be. Then they zoomed beneath a glowing yellow street light, and the black oil turned bright, horrible crimson.

“You’re bleeding!” she yelled, fresh panic making her voice break on a hard edge.

“Yep,” he grumbled, “that’s what happens when y’get shot.”

“Shot!” she howled. “He shot you?” So much for the just sent to scare them theory.

“Ali, stop screamin’. You’re gonna burst my eardrums.”

Was he crazy? He was worried about burst eardrums when he was shot?

“Where are you going?” She suddenly realized they were flying down the highway, heading away from Jacksonville at a speed that would’ve scared her to death had she taken the time to think about it. “We have to get you to a hospital!”

“No,” he ground out. “It’s nothing. Barely a scratch.”

“A scratch?” she screeched incredulously, once more glancing down at the sticky blood staining her trembling hand. “A bullet does not leave a scratch, you big dumb idiot. It leaves a hole. Where were you hit?”

He didn’t answer, just continued to drive Phantom like a bat out of hell.

The cool wind was a hurricane in her face, the dashed lines in the middle of the road whizzed by so fast they almost appeared unbroken. The cars they zoomed past looked like they were standing still.

“Nate,” she demanded, “where…were…you…hit?”

“Upper left shoulder. Right above my collarbone. Don’t worry, it went in and came out.”

Don’t worry. Someone was trying to kill them, had actually shot him, and he was telling her not to worry.

Was he crazy?

He must be since she’d asked herself that same exact question two times in as many minutes.

She looked at his left shoulder and sure enough. His thick, leather jacket was torn, and a frightening river of dark blood oozed down his broad back.

Taking a deep breath, she spoke softly, calmly, lest she start screaming her head off. “Nate, you’re losing blood. Now, either you turn this bike around and head to the nearest hospital, or you pull over somewhere where I can examine your wound. If you—”