Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(5)

Willa saw a woman standing at the side of a crushed compact, screaming and yanking on a door handle. She hadn’t been noticed yet. Setting her hands on the beefy forearms of her personal Good Samaritan, Willa pushed him back.

She saw the patches on the front of his leather kutte. Two strips of white with black western lettering on the left side, one atop the other: Sergeant at Arms above Tested and True. On the right, another similar flash, in cursive lettering: Radical. She guessed that for his road name. Below that, a long white diamond Willa knew, with a simple symbol in the center: 1%.

Just in case anyone was unclear on whether the Brazen Bulls were an outlaw club.

She shook her attention from his broad chest and said, “Somebody’s trapped in that car.”

Radical the Bull turned in the direction of her nod, then nodded himself and headed that way. Willa followed, getting better control of her limp, and the pain that made it, with every step.

As they reached the remains of the little red Nissan, sirens finally began to wail.



oOo



The young man in the Nissan was obviously dead. He’d been sitting in the front passenger seat, and his body stopped below the seat belt, where the back wall of the engine compartment had severed him. The driver, another man, likely also dead, was almost entirely buried under the engine. All that showed was half his head, and a crew cut that had been grey before it had been dyed in blood.

The woman continued shrieking incoherently. While Radical went to the driver’s side to try to force the door open, Willa got her arms around her and forced her away from the car. She didn’t need to stand there in sight of the gory remains of people who were important to her.

When she had the woman turned from that tableau of death, Willa took hold of her face and tried to make her focus. “Your head is bleeding, honey. Let me see your eyes.”

“It’s his birthday! It’s his birthday!” the woman wailed. “His birthday!”

Willa cast her eyes back to the ruins of the little car. She supposed one of those men would have the same date for birth and death on his grave marker.

Radical met her eyes and shook his head, indicating that he hadn’t gotten the door open. No matter—the driver had to have been killed when the engine landed on him. Someone must have hailed the biker just then, because his head swung around to look over his shoulder. He met her eyes once more, then trotted off, probably toward someone he could actually help.

Willa focused on her patient. She needed to help this woman calm down, at least enough for triage. “What’s your name, honey?”

That question often pulled people back from the brink, as if the brain was so hardwired to its own name that, with any awareness at all, it couldn’t remain insensible to someone’s interest in it. The woman—she was young, maybe still in her teens, no older than early twenties, Willa guessed—cut off her wails with a sniff. “A-A-Allison.”

“Hi, Allison. I’m Willa.”

Blood creased in Allison’s forehead as she frowned. “Will?”

“Willa. But lots of people call me Will, too. You can, if you want.” She dropped a hand and picked up Allison’s wrist, checking her pulse—rapid but strong.

“My dad calls me Al. It’s his birthday.”

The driver, then. Willa couldn’t let her go down that mental chute again; she needed her to keep her attention away from the car. “How old are you, Allison?”

For a second or two, Allison only stared, slack-jawed, her focus far away. With a blink, she came back. “Nineteen. Jarod is twenty-one.”

“Jarod?”

“My brother. I can’t get them out.” She started to turn her head back toward the Nissan, but Willa took hold again and kept her facing away from the car. “Help is coming, Allison. Just stay with me, okay? Tell me how you’re feeling.” As she asked, she studied the girl’s eyes. They didn’t hold focus very well, but they were working in tandem, and that was good.

“My head hurts.”

A paramedic in a blue uniform trotted up to them, a field pack on his shoulder. Willa worked at one of the biggest hospitals in Tulsa, so she knew some of the emergency personnel in the city, but not this guy.

“You two need assistance?”

“Allison here is a little disoriented. I think she took a good crack to the head. Two males DOS in the Nissan.” She hoped the girl didn’t know that DOS meant ‘Dead on Scene.’

At her choice of acronym, the medic gave her a sharp look. “You a pro?”

“I’m a nurse at Tulsa County.”

As the medic took hold of Allison’s hand, he said, “Looks like you took some hurt, too.” He nodded at Willa’s right side.

Willa looked down. The arm of her leather jacket was shredded, and her leather pants were torn. She saw blood peeking through the tattered edges of the tears.

“I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

Willa f*cking hated to be a patient, but even if her first reaction hadn’t always been to avoid medical attention, on this day, in this scene, she was legitimately low on the triage list. Alert, oriented, ambulatory. She was okay. “I’m sure. I can help. What can I do?”

Before the medic could answer, an explosion shook the ground.



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