Page 21 of Ruin

“What do we do now?” she asked in a shaking voice.

I cleared my throat. “We find the rest of the gang and figure out what we’re going to do,” I told her, forcing my voice to be firm. My people were counting on me to lead them right now, and that was what I had to do. “We find Remy and figure out what’s going on out there.”

I’d barely finished speaking when three sets of headlights came rushing into the driveway, following each other so closely that they had to be nearly colliding.

I braced and shoved Saraya behind me, my hand going to my gun and my senses sharpening. Who the hell was here now? And what did they want? I didn’t think Devil’s guys would have come back already, but they might have followed Brock from the police station—or the cops might have phoned Devil and let him know that Brock was out again.

“Run for the house,” I told her quietly. “And don’t look back.”

“What?” she gasped.

“Go!” I commanded.

I felt her grow tense at my tone of voice, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stand the thought of her being hurt in yet another shootout. If those men had guns, I didn’t want them even knowing Saraya was here.

Then a voice called out to me through the darkness.

“That you, boss?”

The air rushed out of me, leaving me lightheaded. I knew that voice. Those weren’t Devil’s men. They were mine.

“Remy, thank goodness.”

I would have moved for him, but he pulled to a screeching stop right in front of me and bounded off his bike and right into my arms.

I was evidently going to set a record tonight for the number of hugs I got in the space of twenty minutes.

“Did you find Gem?” I asked, unable to think of anything but my lieutenant. “Is he okay?”

“In rough shape,” he answered, drawing back from me. “He’s alive, but it’s a close call. Nearly dead and very cold when we found him. We had a hard time getting him onto a bike and keeping him there, but we managed it. Barely. That’s one tough bastard.”

“Injuries?” I asked.

“Shot through the shoulder. Beat to hell. Probably some broken ribs, definitely a broken arm, maybe some internal bleeding. And the original bullet wound.”

My mouth went dry. Barely alive sounded bad, and I’d seen enough of the other bikes to know that he definitely wasn’t with the guys. “Where is he now?”

“Hospital. We couldn’t keep him upright long enough to take him anywhere else, and honestly, it might have been better for him if we’d called an ambulance. But we didn’t want him lying around on the street any longer than he’d already been there.”

“Right. Devil’s men might have come back to finish the job.”

Remy shrugged. “If they had, they would have found us there waiting to take them on. More importantly, he was freezing. He’d lost a lot of blood, on top of what he lost the first time he was shot. The man’s been through the wringer, Knight. I didn’t want him out in the weather any longer than I had to leave him there. So we took the chance. Got him to the hospital.”

Smart. Remy had always been one of the sharpest minds in the club—and the most experienced, at fifty-six—which was why he was also one of my most trusted advisers. He’d been the VP for the Angels crew my father had belonged to, and I’d known him since I was young. He’d taken me under his wing when my father died, and had never looked back. When I started my own crew, he was the first man I called.

He was the reason we’d been able to make it as far as we had without getting into the drug trade, and his advice was the reason I’d had as much success as I had. I didn’t know what I would have done without the man, and I never wanted to find out.

No surprise that he’d taken one look at Gem, catalogued his injuries, and decided the best way to keep him alive until he could get help.

Remy was on the short list of people I would have trusted my life with, and that meant I trusted him with Gem’s life as well. I was fucking lucky he hadn’t fallen prey to the raid from the cops.

“What about the rest of the guys?” I asked, remembering that most of my gang had been picked up by the cops. “Any word on them?”

“Talked to Adams on my way here,” Remy replied. The lack of hesitation told me that he’d been assuming I was going to ask and had made sure he was prepared with an answer.

Good man.

“They’re in lockup,” he continued. “As we knew. The charges are... vague. Nothing specific, which makes sense. After all, we were just on the side of the road, talking. No one was doing anything illegal there, unless it’s suddenly become illegal to party in the desert in the middle of the night.”