Page 55 of Sprog
I don't put a kiss. I'm not there yet. But I send it and I put the phone down. I lie there on my couch and I think about his mouth, his hands and the ten years between then and now. I don’t mean to, but I soon fall asleep thinking about him.
CHAPTER 12
Austin
Two nights later.
We park down the street from the Lost Carousel Motel at eleven. Twelve bikes are in the parking lot, which means we outnumber them, but not by enough to be careless about it.
Prez signals and we move. We keep to the walls, single file, not a word between us. This is what we train for, what the years of brotherhood build toward, twelve men who know each other's movements well enough to operate in silence. I know where Brick is without looking. I know where Cash and Ramsey are. I know Knuckles is three steps behind me and I know exactly how much force he's going to bring when this opens up.
We can hear voices from one of the ground floor rooms, low and indistinct. Light under the door. Prez moves to the front and holds his fist up and we all stop. He looks at us and then he looks at the window and we split, half on each side of the door, backs against the wall.
He pulls the flashbang back and throws it through the window hard.
The bang is enormous in the quiet of the parking lot. There are shouts from inside, movement, disoriented scrambling. The door comes open and men pour out into the night, half-blind, hands up instinctively, and we’re on them before they've worked out which direction they're facing. It's fast and it's controlled and it's ugly in the way violence always is when you're close enough to feel it, and I don't think about it while I'm doing it, I just do it.
One of them has a VP patch. Prez points and we take him down without finishing him. He goes in the van, alive, useful.
I'm backing toward my bike when I feel it. A hot sting in my left thigh, sharp enough to make me stumble a step. I look down and there's blood already spreading dark through my jeans. One of them crawled out of the room and into the car park and he's shooting at anything moving, half-blind and desperate.
Knuckles puts him down before he gets another shot off.
I put my hand over the wound and assess. Not arterial, the blood is coming steady but not pumping, which means I’ve time. The sirens I can hear in the distance mean I don't have as much time as I'd like. I get on my bike.
My first thought, before the clubhouse, before Doc, before anything practical, is Savannah. I notice this happening and I don't try to talk myself out of it.
Doc is good. He's kept every man in this club alive at some point. But Doc is also three miles in the wrong direction and Savannah is two minutes from here. I know what her hands felt like treating EJ and I know what her face looked like when she was focused. She's the better doctor. I know that. And yeah, I want to see her. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Going to her is a choice and I'm making it with both reasons fully acknowledged.
I call Brick as I ride.
"I've been shot. I'm getting patched up."
"You're going to Savannah's." It's not a question. He sounds amused.
"She's closer. And she's better."
"Yeah, alright. Are you going to tell her that?"
"Tell Prez I'll be back as soon as I'm stitched. I want to see the VP's eyes before the night's over."
"I'll let him know. Oh, and Sprog?"
"What."
"You hate that road name."
"Fuck you, Brick."
I can hear him laughing as I hang up.
SAVANNAH
The banging drags me up from a dead sleep.
I look at the clock. Just past two in the morning. I pull on a sweater over my pajamas and pull open the door. Austin is there and my first thought is that he looks wrong somehow. He doesn’t look the way he did when he left this morning, That’s when I see his hand pressed to his thigh and the dark stain around it.
"Austin."
