Page 23 of Preacher

He peeled off toward the service road while I rode straight through the open gate. A man stepped from beside the office and reached for his waistband. I didn’t give him time. The bike was still moving when I drew, and one shot hit the dirt inches from his boot, close enough to make him jerk backward instead of firing. I dumped the bike, crossed the distance and hit him before he recovered.

He went down hard enough to lose the gun, and I took it from his hand before driving my boot into his ribs and leaving him coughing in the dust.

“Holly!”

No one answered me, but a crash came from inside the warehouse and I ran. Luis lay near the side office with blood dried along one temple, conscious enough to move his hand when I passed. Then I saw Holly, and everything else stopped mattering. She was backed against a stack of pallets. Her hair was loose around her face, and one sleeve torn. Relief hit hard until the man nearest her raised a gun and everything inside me went quiet.

“Holly.”

Her eyes found mine just as the gunman turned, making the mistake of moving the barrel toward her first, I reacted before I knew it and shot him in the chest. The shot cracked through the warehouse. He staggered, stared at the blood spreading across his shirt and collapsed beside the pallets.

The second man lunged for Holly, but she swung a clipboard that had been on the bench next to her before I reached them. The metal edge caught him across the nose, and he swore as he reeled backward with both hands coming up automatically. Holly drove her knee into him, broke sideways and ran toward me.

The man grabbed for the back of her shirt. I caught his wrist before he got a proper hold, and when he looked at me, I broke it. The snap was clean enough that Holly heard it. The man screamed as I twisted his ruined arm behind him and drove him face-first against the concrete wall.

“You were told,” I said.

“I don’t know what the fuck⁠—”

“You were told not to touch her.”

He tried to turn his head, so I drove him harder into the wall. Somewhere outside, bike tires tore across gravel and Gage shouted. A gunshot followed from behind the warehouse, but I didn’t look away from the man in front of me.

“Preacher.”

Holly’s voice was close now. I glanced toward her and found her standing a few feet away, breathing hard, her face pale beneath the dirt. She was still holding the bent clipboard.

“Are you hurt?”

“No. I’m bruised and pissed off, but I’m standing.”

Only then did I let myself believe she was okay. The man against the wall moved suddenly, his good hand diving toward his ankle. I saw the knife before he cleared the sheath and already had my pistol in my hand, the barrel pressed against the side of his head before he got another inch.

“You get one chance. Drop it.”

The knife hit the floor with a sharp metal clatter.

For half a second I considered killing him anyway for even thinking about it. But Holly stepped closer, not touching me and not asking me to stop. She was simply there, and that brought me back far enough to think. Dead men didn’t talk, and I needed to know who’d ordered this. I hit him hard behind the ear with the pistol instead, and he folded at my feet.

“Holly.” This time when I turned to her, I put the gun away first. She dropped the clipboard, and I crossed the space between us and pulled her against me.

Her arms locked around my waist, and that nearly finished me. I buried my face in her hair while the part of me that’d spent the ride imagining blood and silence finally accepted she was alive.

“I’m okay,” she said against my chest.

“You don’t get to say that like you didn’t just scare ten years off my life.”

Her laugh came out shaky. I pulled back enough to look at her and saw a bruise forming near her jaw, another dark mark around one wrist and a tear in her shirt. My anger came back fast.

“Who hit you?”

“The one with the broken wrist.”

I looked down at him, and Holly caught my cut before I could move. “He’s unconscious.”

“Won’t stop me.”

“I know.”