Page 4 of Shade

That was when I heard the motorcycle.

It came roaring up the dirt road from the old mine, one headlight bouncing through its own dust. I stood there with a crate of rifles open at my feet and blood all down my arm and watched it come, because I’d run out of options and had no place to run.

The bike skidded to a stop twenty feet away. The man riding it was off before the engine died.

He was huge through the shoulders, with a dark beard. He had a black leather vest over a black tank top, and he had a gun pointed straight at my face.

And God help me, even then, I noticed he was the best-looking thing I’d seen all day.

CHAPTER 2

SHADE

The woman had blood running down one arm, a crate of rifles open at her feet, and she put her hands up before I’d said a word.

I’d been riding home on the county road when that plane came over me, low enough that I ducked. One wing was throwing out a long white spray of fuel and the engine sounded sick. It dropped toward the old mine and never came back up. I pulled over, texted Preacher and turned off onto the mine road.

Nobody flies into Salvation. So if one was coming down out here, I figured it belonged to the cartel.

Now I was looking at it. The front wheel was gone and the nose was down in the dirt. There was a line of bullet holes along one wing, and the window beside the pilot’s seat had been blown out. HARLAN AIR CARGO, LAS CRUCES was painted on the tail.

I kept the gun on her.

“Anybody else in that plane?”

“No. It’s just me.” Her voice shook.

I wasn’t taking her word for it. I walked her back ahead of me to the open cargo door, with the gun at her spine, and looked inside. Black crates, rows and rows of them, strapped to the floor. Nobody hiding behind them and nobody up front.

I backed her out again and turned her to face me. She looked at the wreck, then at my gun. “For the record, I’m a much better pilot than this looks.”

I’ve had men piss themselves at the end of my gun. Nobody had ever tried to make me laugh.

I didn’t let it reach my face. “Who are you?”

“Mya. Mya Crawford. I fly freight for Russ Harlan.” Her chin wobbled. “Flew. Russ is dead. They shot him.”

“Who did?”

“The men we deliver to. I didn’t know what was in the crates. I swear to God I didn’t know, not until one broke open.”

People with a gun in their face usually lie. But she was white to the lips and shaking hard enough that her hands wouldn’t stay up, and the blood soaking her left sleeve was running down her wrist into the dirt. It was hers, and it was fresh.

I put the gun away, and that was when I got a good look at her.

She was covered in dust and blood, with her face wiped clean of color, and I still couldn’t take my eyes off her. Big eyes, a mouth made for trouble and a body that filled out those jeans in a way I had no business noticing.

She’d just watched a man die. I stood there wanting her anyway, which tells you exactly what kind of man I am.

“Sit down before you fall down,” I said.

I kept a kit in my saddlebag. I got it out and crouched in front of her where she’d sat down on the edge of the crate.

“Jacket off.”

She tried to do it one-handed and went gray when it pulled on her arm. I took hold of the collar and eased it down off her shoulders myself. Under it she had on a black top with thin straps, and she was all soft curves and goosebumps in the cold. I made myself look at the cut and nothing else.

The cut ran along the outside of her upper arm, long and deep. Torn metal, by the look of it.