Have Gun, Will Travel (The Bare Bones MC #5)(60)

“We weren’t,” I said lazily. “He was a major f*cking *.” Then I realized I said “was.” This stranger, probably one of our audience from yesterday, would see our guns, realize the culprit was dead, and be forced to tell the cops on us.

“Fuck,” said the hiker, “I hope you don’t mind, but I called the cops. I didn’t know what was going on, just that you”—he nodded at Sax—“weren’t here, your bike was gone, and some stranger was manhandling her. So just a warning, the cops are on their way. Don’t know how urgent I made it sound, just that I saw something that might be wrong.”

“No, that’s fine,” said Sax. They were finishing up wiping blood from me, and Sax squeezed a narrow ribbon of Neosporin onto my lacerated breast. “Wolf, Harte, just drag that motherf*cker into the garage and put a bike cover over him. I’ll just tell cops we were playing. Make sure there’s no blood anywhere. I’m glad you did that, friend. If I hadn’t of gotten here, things could be hairy by now.”

“Hairy,” I echoed. I put out a hand to pet the white dog as the two other men slung Tormenta like a hammock and carried him off. The dog was cute. “I want a dog, Sax.”

Sax smiled. “You can have any dog you want, sister.”

“I like them big and fluffy, like this one.”

“All right. We can get a sidecar for him.”

“Her.”

“Her.”

“What happened to Slayer?”

“Well, Tormenta dropped him off halfway down the hill. We saw him wandering with his hand held to his head, poor guy. That’s why we were late. We would’ve arrived sooner, figuring Tormenta would come directly here. But we had to drop Slayer at the hospital. Tobiah stayed with him.” He was wrapping my boob like a sling around the shoulder, like a very tight sports bra. This wrapped the shoulder wound too. No more blood.

“Wow,” said Plaid Blue Shirt. “You guys sure live an exciting, dangerous life.”

Sax snorted. “Yeah. Sometimes too exciting and dangerous. Harte, you find the bike cover? Cover him good?”

Harte was back in the kitchen. “Yeah, he’s covered fine. Let me get these drops from the floor in case the cops want to take a gander.”

“Harte, you ever hear this saying? ‘The sun never sets on a Bare Bones patch.’”

Wolf snorted. “Tobiah claims it’s a real thing.”

“Sure, I’ve heard it,” said Harte. “My mom embroidered it on a sampler. It’s on the wall behind my dad’s desk.”

“Your dad.” It sounded like Sax muttered skeptically under his breath. “Your dad,” as though his dad was a piece of radioactive bear shit.

Now Harte squatted next to the love seat. “Sax. I’ll deal with the cops. You put Bee into bed. Maddy will be here pronto.”

“But don’t let her sleep,” said Wolf, “in case she’s got a concussion.”

Sax cut the end of the tape with scissors and fastened it down securely. “You guys hide your pieces somewhere. If we were having a bondage scene, there’d be no reason for you to have irons.”

“Wow,” said Blue Shirt. “I’d like to join The Bare Bones.”

As Sax stood me up, Wolf made a lip fart. “You serious, you tree hugger? I’m a f*cking Prospect. Been a f*cking Prospect for over six months now. Know how many guys I’ve killed?”

“You don’t need to brag,” Sax warned as he dragged me to the bedroom, my arm slung across his shoulder.

“Well,” said Wolf, “a lot. I can’t tell you how many, but a lot. A whole hell of a lot. Are you prepared to kill a lot of men? I didn’t think so.”

“I might,” said Blue Shirt, “if I was defending my brothers’ honor.”

“But it’s more than honor, I tell you! You’re defending the dignity, esteem, and reputation of every single Bare Boner when you are forced to kill some crappy, wife-beating, woman-slashing scumbag! It’s a credit to your name, I tell you, when you are forced to bury some low-life spitter like that guy there who can’t be bothered to take the gold grill out of his mouth before he spits back up the bags of crystal that have been cut with drain cleaner…”

We left Wolf spouting his stories of glory, and Sax put me down gently on his bed. I had made the bed earlier, and now was glad I had.

“We’ll have to find a shirt for you, cover up those bandages in case cops want to see you, make sure you’re okay.” Sax was rooting in his walk-in closet for a boyfriend shirt, I guessed.

“Zane?” I said groggily. I was still halfway in a daze. I had to focus my attention on Sax, otherwise he started to morph into Roscoe Flantz, into Baldy Avery. It was my brain telling me I needed to learn to trust. I couldn’t trust those former two guys. Sax, I could. “Now that we’ve got Tormenta, are you gonna let me go back to my nursery?”

His answer wasn’t immediate. He pretended to be choosing between two shirts, finally selecting a button-down light blue thing. I wondered where Sax ever wore that, with a tie. Maybe some BDSM awards dinner.

He sat next to me on the bed, bowling me toward him. He took a small white bottle of something from his nightstand. It was ibuprofen, and he shook out four. “I should. But we should also gauge to what extent Tormenta’s organization is going to want revenge. We made no bones about it being us—we wore our cuts, we wanted him to know who it was.”