Ride Hard (Raven Riders #1)(99)

“Haven,” Cora said on a shaky exhale, her expression shattered.

“Your friendship meant the world to me,” Haven said, blinking back tears. She didn’t have time for them. With a look over her shoulder to confirm that the men were too distracted to notice her movement, Haven took a few slow steps toward the door. And then she made a dash for it, shouts ringing out from behind her as the door closed.

Haven wasn’t sure where to go to find her father. But as he was looking for her, she assumed she just needed to go somewhere out in the open and he or one of his men would find her. She ran along the main concourse hallway, dodging groups of people and looking over her shoulder to see if she was being followed. The roar of the race was so much louder outside. Apparently, the crash hadn’t stopped the racing. When she got to midtrack, she stopped and stared down at the wrecks of three or four cars piled between the edge of the track and the center field, her stomach rolling. Because her own father had caused that. And, in a way, she had, too.

She walked up to the fence and stood there, willing someone to see her before anyone else got hurt. Almost everyone in the place was on their feet watching the pit crews and first responders pull people out of the crumpled cars. Then she turned in a slow circle, her gaze scanning for any faces she might recognize. Back to the field, Haven found herself looking down a hallway that cut out into the darkness of the lot beyond. She almost turned around to the field again before she realized she was seeing something on the ground out in the darkness.

Whatever it was moved.

On instinct, Haven took off, her gut telling her that was a person lying out there. No one else seemed to notice, because everyone was watching the race and the aftermath of the crash play out.

She was halfway down the hallway when she was close enough to make out what she was seeing. And it nearly killed her.

Dare. Lying on his back in the shadows. “Dare!”

His head rolled toward her, face painted with agony. He gave a shake of his head she didn’t take the time to process before she skidded to her knees at his side.

“Oh, God, Dare!” He was bleeding from his right shoulder and his left side, which he had his other arm curled around. His hand was shaking and bloody.

“And there’s my f*cking little princess,” came a voice from her right.

Ice ran down Haven’s spine as she turned to find her father standing a few feet away, gun pointed in a shaking hand at her and Dare. With short dark-blond hair and a face that looked too much like hers, he was bleeding from his thigh but still standing.

“Leave him alone,” she said, noting that Dare’s gun sat at least four feet from his boots. She’d never reach it. “I’ll go with you willingly, but leave him alone.”

Her father jerked the gun toward her, his leg and hand shaking worse. “That’s right. You’ll go willingly. Everything that’s happening here, it’s your fault. Including this prick’s death. Now, get the f*ck up.”

Haven leaned her body further over Dare’s, so far that she had to brace her hand on the other side of him, making sure her father didn’t have a clear shot at his head or abdomen. She wasn’t afraid of her father shooting her. She knew she was too valuable to him. “You’re not killing him.”

“Haven, don’t.” Dare’s whisper was just loud enough for her to make out.

“You’ve done enough damage here,” she pressed on. Sirens wailed in the distance. “So agree to leave him and tell your men right now not to harm anyone else, or I’ll drag this out and those sirens will get here and you’ll be trapped.”

Chuffing out a humorless laugh, her father shook his head. “Aw, you’re a big shot now, huh? Ran away and found your spine. I’m gonna have a good time beating that back out of you.”

She didn’t take the bait. “Do we have an agreement or not? Those sirens are getting louder.”

“Fine. I’ll leave him. Now get the f*ck up.”

“Call the shootings off now,” she said.

Glaring, her father spoke into his phone. “I’ve got her. Pull back now. I repeat, pull back. We’re moving out.” He lowered his gun some and scanned his gaze around. “Now let’s go before I lose my f*cking patience with you.” The words were a lie—she already knew she was going to pay for her defiance. But it would be worth it to keep anyone else from getting hurt.

Keeping one eye on her father, she looked down at Dare’s face. He was pale. Scary pale. And his eyes were dazed, unfocused. “You hang on, you hear me?” She gently dragged her hand up his side, trying to avoid the wound, though she couldn’t entirely. Please, please, let that one be from his back holster.

“Haven, I swear to Christ,” her father bit out.

She leaned down and kissed Dare’s forehead, and her fingers brushed the end of the grip of his second weapon still holstered under his cut. Oh, thank God. She’d never handled a gun before—her father had always kept her away from them—but she had to try. She had to fight. “I’m just saying good-bye,” she said.

She shifted her legs like she was getting up and wrapped her fingers around the grip. As it pulled free, her eyes met Dare’s. A moment of clarity spilled into those brown depths as he grimaced at the movement at his side.

Crouched on one knee, Haven whirled and pulled the trigger. The first shot caught her father in the shoulder, but the surprise of the hit sent him reeling even as he squeezed off a round that went wide. The second caught him low in the gut. The third, in the chest, and he went down on his back, blood bubbling out of the wounds. Every hit was the result of his low expectations of her, and she’d never been happier to be discounted in her entire life than she was just then.