Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(28)

“Sorry, man. Call Delaney in the morning. We’ll make it right.”

“It’s more than fixin’ the room this time, Rad. Storm’s brewin’.”

Rad sighed. They didn’t have trouble in Tulsa. None of the crews shat where they ate. Leave it to some citified son of a bitch to come in and change that up.

“I use your phone? Gotta call for medical.”

Terry scowled, but nodded. “You know where’s at.”

Making his way to the bar, Rad picked up the black desk phone from a shelf under the taps and dialed the clubhouse. Delaney answered on the first ring. It was coming up on midnight, so Rad knew the president was expecting to hear his voice.

“Me, Prez.”

“Sit rep.”

“Ox, Eight, and me are whole. Simon took a blade to the side. Gun’s a f*ckin’ mess. Might need the hospital. Definitely need Griff. Ox is on his way back with ‘em.”

“Fuck. Griff dropped acid with his chick tonight. He called in crowing about the stars in the grass or some psychedelic crap. He’s no good to us. Hospital means questions. You sure they need it?”

How the f*ck should he know? Gunner had taken a bad beating, and Simon had been stabbed in the gut. But Simon said he was okay. And Gunner had been laughing until he’d passed out. Not that that meant shit—Gunner would laugh that crazy laugh hanging from a noose.

“I don’t know, Prez. But…” He stopped. The idea he had was a shit idea. Right? A terrible idea that could blow up in about six ways he could think of.

“But what?”

Shaking his head as he said it, he told Delaney, “Willa. The woman at the wreck. On the sportster. She’s a nurse.”

“That’s right. Dane said you bagged her.”

Ignoring the defensive bolt of anger those words sent up his spine, Rad said, “I’ll call her. See if she can help.”

“Do it. Bring her in.”

Before Rad could say more, the line went dead.

From his jeans pocket, he fished the card on which he’d written Willa’s number, and he dialed.

She answered on the third ring, and her “Hello?” sounded equal parts curious and suspicious.

“It’s Rad, darlin’.”

“Hey.” He heard relief and concern now. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. Got a couple brothers hurt, though. Need some medical attention.”

Silence on the line.

“Willa?”

“Are you taking them to the hospital?”

“That’s a little complicated in this situation. I need you.”

“I don’t have a medical bag like a doctor, Rad.”

Griffin, their medic when he wasn’t riding the LSD train, had been a vet tech. A registered nurse was a big upgrade. “We got supplies. Can you do a decent stitch? And make a good guess how much hurt they got? Know the meds they need?”

She sighed audibly. “Okay. Where?”

He could hear her reluctance, and yet she hadn’t offered much resistance. “The clubhouse. I’m comin’ for ya. Be there in five.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you, baby,” he said, but the line was dead already.

Everybody was hanging up on him tonight.





CHAPTER EIGHT



Rad’s truck was a big, lifted black GMC, with a heavy grille guard and a big light bar on the roof. Willa was surprised; it seemed a flashier truck than she would have expected. More demonstrably macho.

Then she shook that surprise away. He was a big, muscled biker covered in ink, with shaggy, undercut hair. And he wore a Brazen Bulls kutte with a Sergeant at Arms flash. The man was demonstrating his macho all over the place.

The lift was fairly high, and with her leg sore and stiff, Willa wondered, as Rad opened the door for her, how she’d get in.

She needn’t have worried. He picked her up and set her on the seat. As she shifted to settle more comfortably, he took her hand and squeezed.

“Thank you.”

On her nod, he closed the door and went around the front to the driver’s side.

Alone in his truck for those few seconds, Willa had just enough time for shock to turn her stomach again. The past two days—less than that—had been an unimpeded rush down a twisting mountain road. The wreck that had sent Rad barreling into her life had happened at sunset the day before.

Now it was just midnight, only thirty or so hours later, and she was on her way to the Brazen Bulls clubhouse to sew up a guy who’d been stabbed? Another who’d been beaten? Because Rad had asked her to? And who was Rad to her? A man named Radical, whom she’d first laid eyes on at the wreck so few hours ago, who’d left her barely an hour before and had returned with bloody hands and a swollen lip, with blood spattered and smeared on his clothes.

She felt close to him. She had already told him her hardest truth. She’d told him all of it.

Who the hell had she so suddenly become?

Or had she always been this person?

No. She was no longer the Willa from Duchy, Texas. The Willa who’d stayed with Jesse was not the Willa sitting here now.

Or was she? Was she riding, in the middle of the night, with a near stranger, to the clubhouse of an outlaw MC because she was still the same dumb, na?ve girl who’d let an unstable man run her life for years? Who was still hiding from the same man? Was Rad already running her life? Is that why she’d told him about Jesse? Is that why she was in his truck now?