Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(4)
Screams and moans already undulated in the air.
The cage that had started all this mess was gone—the rager had bolted. As Rad had suspected he would.
Nearly as one, every biker stood his bike on the shoulder or laid it in the grassy median and ran forward to offer their help. It would take some time for emergency crews to get to the scene, through the mess of traffic and the crumpled snarl of involved vehicles.
Rad saw the little silver sportster on its side in the middle of the interstate, its rider lying prone not far from it. He ran there first.
As he neared, he felt a charge of relief when the rider worked her way to a seated position. She pulled off her black helmet and showed short blonde hair.
Rad skidded to a stop at her side, then dropped to his knees. “You okay?”
CHAPTER TWO
Willa groaned and tried to get her bearings. The world spun and shrieked around her.
“Hey!” a voice at her side demanded, and fingers snapped before her face. “You okay, darlin’?”
Okay? Was she okay? Why wouldn’t she be? Where was she?
With a sudden blast of sensation, the world came into focus. She was sitting on the pavement. Her head hurt, and her right side ached like someone had been beating her with a bat. Screams and moans and bright, metallic chaos shook the air around her—air that smelled of gasoline and hot rubber. Her helmet was in her lap.
Her helmet. The side was scraped and gouged, and that brought the scene home and woke her up.
Fuck, she’d been riding home. On US-75. That * in the silver Aerostar.
She looked around. Her bike was several feet away, and she could see from here that it was f*cked. The front wheel tipped drunkenly upward—the fork was bent. And a puddle of fluid was growing around the body.
Fingers snapped in front of her face again, and she knocked the offending hand away. “I’m okay, I’m okay.”
“You sure? You took a hell of a drop.” A hand took firm hold of her elbow, and Willa finally looked up to see who the hell was in her business.
The leering ape in the Bulls patch—a broad, bearded beast in black shades. The setting sun washed him in backlight and made him seem like some kind of wacked-out angel come to take her home.
Willa had been on her way back from the Big Texas Heart Ride, Rally, & Show in Houston, which had turned into something like a Randall family reunion. Willa didn’t go home to West Texas anymore—ever—but they’d all decided that the rally in Houston was far enough to be safe. Her whole family rode—parents, brothers, sister. It had been a very good weekend.
Living in Tulsa the past couple of years, she knew the Brazen Bulls by reputation. They weren’t really the kind of bikers she wanted to commune with.
But she’d enjoyed riding back surrounded by patches from all sorts of clubs, and she’d enjoyed the attention she’d gotten from a few—like this guy. She always felt like a badass astride her Harley, and getting appreciation from actual badasses stroked her ego just right.
It could be a problem, her enjoyment of that appreciation. Except that she had learned some lessons, and she was a good student.
She pulled her elbow from his grip, but he grabbed her again. “Let’s get you out of the road. Can you stand?”
“Jesus! I said I’m okay!” Why was she was snapping at this guy? He was trying to help. He didn’t seem particularly offended, however. “Sorry. Yeah, I can stand.”
She let him help her to her feet—ow, shit. Her right knee buckled, and her Bull angel caught her around the waist with his free arm.
“I’m okay, I’m okay.”
He barked a harsh laugh. “I don’t think you know what that word means.”
She put weight on her leg again, and it held—not broken. Her knee was hurt, maybe a strained ACL or MCL. The pain was too widespread to tell. But she could hold herself up on it.
The scene around them had taken on its full dimension, and she saw an arm—just an arm, its meat spilling out around a spear of white bone, lying in a pool of blood.
Willa finally really looked, sent out her attention beyond her own pain and confusion and looked.
US-75 was the picture of the apocalypse. Cars filled the macadam from shoulder to median, turned every which way. Those closest were crumpled together in Picasso-esque shapes and spewing vapor and fluid—and smoke. The acrid tang of mechanical smoke wafted over the scene. Willa saw no flames, but they couldn’t be far off.
People wandered aimlessly, bloody and rumpled, moaning and crying. Some were screaming.
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah,” the Bull said. “If you’re really okay, I want to get you to the shoulder. I need to help out. Paramedics are gonna have a time gettin’ through this shitshow, and people are hurt bad.”
He tried to urge her toward the side, but she resisted. “No. I really am okay—shaken up, and sore, but okay. I need to help. I’m a nurse.”
A Labor & Delivery nurse, but she’d done her time in the ER, too.
Dark eyebrows came up over black sunglasses. “Yeah? You feelin’ up to help?”
All around, people were helping. Not everyone—some were standing, stunned; others were obviously hurt and wandering around like extras in a George Romero flick. But lots of people were helping, too, and lots of them were wearing kuttes.