Page 124 of Cold Bastard
Don’t do it, brother. Don’t throw your life away for mine.
I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes, remembering the last time I saw him.
Everything hurt as I held my stomach and quietly left my room, walking across the hall into Indigo’s room. Seeing my brother lying flat on the bed, not moving, pissed me off. The whole attack was a fucking shit show from hell.But the assassination attempt on FIRE was premeditated and calculated. I fucking knew the Death Dogs were too fucking stupid to pull off something like that. That was why I needed to speak with Indigo.
Walking over to my brother, I found Indigo awake, looking at the ceiling.
“Took you fucking long enough,” the cranky bastard muttered.
“In my defense, I was shot too.”
Indigo huffed. “Stomach wounds don’t count.”
“Yeah, well, when you have your insides rearranged by a bullet, you can bitch at me,” I grumbled, pulling a chair to sit down next to his bed.
“It was a hit.”
Sighing, I muttered, “I know.”
“King knows I know something.”
“He say anything?”
“No.” Indigo shook his head. “But he knows, and so does Luc. Fucker wants me transferred back to Destiny ASAP. Said he wants to debrief me himself.”
I groaned, rubbing the back of my neck. “That’s not good, Indigo.”
“No, it’s not.” Indigo turned to look at me. “That’s why I need you to find the motherfucker who tried to eliminate us, before anyone else does.”
Sitting up straighter, I ignored the twinge of pain and growled. “Who? Tell me and consider the fucker dead.”
Indigo took a deep breath, looked me dead in the eyes and said, “Andrew Jacobson. Major Andrew Jacobson.”
The name confused me. Not a biker. Not someone associated with the Table, but a Major in the military? An outsider orchestrated a coordinated hit on FIRE? Why?
And that when I knew. Whatever happened to FIRE had nothing to do with the biker war. Whoever this dead man walking was, it had to do with something bigger. Something darker. Something Indigo had kept hidden and was now trusting me with.
“I’ll find him,” I whispered, my voice rough with pain and fury. “I’ll find him and I’ll put him in the fucking ground.”
Indigo nodded, his eyes closing. “Good. Because if you don’t, a lot more people are going to die.”
“ALEX!” Poseidon’s voice bellowed out like thunder, the sound reverberating off the walls and snapping me back to the present moment as my club brothers, Poseidon and Kraken, along with several heavily armed Bastards, stormed into the blood-spattered room I was in. Their boots pounded against the concrete floor, the sound echoing through the abandoned warehouse.
Upon seeing me crumpled on the ground in a growing pool of my own blood, Poseidon and Carver immediately rushed over to me, their faces etched with concern and barely controlled panic.
“Fuck,” Poseidon cursed harshly as Carver kneeled beside me and ripped open my shirt with urgent hands, exposing the bloody mess underneath. The fabric tore easily, already soaked through and sticking to my skin.
“We need to get him to a hospital now. He’s ripped his stitches open,” Carver said grimly, examining the damage. “He’s losing too much blood.”
“Where’s Alex?” Poseidon demanded, his eyes scanning the room frantically as his jaw clenched tight. “I saw my bike out front. Where the hell is she?”
“She’s gone,” I muttered weakly, tasting copper on my tongue as Morpheus and a few other Bastards stood over the dead body of Arizona, their expressions cold and calculating.“Thought you were someone else come here to kill us both. Gave her my keys and told her to run. Had to get her out of here before things got worse.”
“Good job killing that fucker,” Cerberus stated, standing behind Carver as he worked frantically to stem the flow of blood coming from my stomach. His hands were slick with it, as he pressed gauze that quickly turned crimson against the wound.
“Wasn’t me,” I grunted through gritted teeth, every word sending fresh waves of pain through my torso. “It was Alex. She saved me. Took a fucking beating for it too, but she did the Gods proud. Didn’t fucking blink. Just aimed and fired.” I could still see her face, bruised, bloodied, but determined. Unflinching.
Poseidon looked over his shoulder at Arizona’s body, riddled with bullets, blood pooling beneath him in a dark, spreading lake, eyes open and unseeing, staring at nothing. He stood there for a long moment, just looking, processing what his sister had done.
