Page 29 of Wilder’s Mistake

“Wilder.” Kane’s voice reaches me from somewhere behind.

The man’s good hand twitches toward Lucy. I grind the barrel harder into his skin. “Move it again and the next round goes through your skull.”

He freezes.

A Perdition brother swings his shotgun toward me. Three Kingdom Come weapons move with him.

“Try it,” Griz says.

Nobody does. I leave the wounded man breathing because Lucy says my name. I turn and reach for her. Her hands are still bound. Blood runs across one knuckle, and the bruise on her cheek is darker up close. I cut the plastic with the knife from my boot.

“Where else?”

“My wrist. That’s all.”

I touch her ribs, her arms, the back of her head. My hands will not stop.

“I’m okay,” she says.

“I came back and you were gone.” The words tear out of me before I can lock them down. Her face changes and she catches my cut in both fists and pulls me to her.

I get one arm around her and bury my face against her hair. Behind us, Bishop orders his men back. Two haul the wounded brother away and the others retreat beneath Kingdom Come’s aim.

Bishop stops beside his bike. “Cyrus won’t forget this.”

Kane’s voice stays cold. “Good. Tell him we won’t either.”

Bishop looks at Lucy once. I turn with her against my chest and raise the pistol. “Don’t fucking tempt me.”

He faces me. “Chains bought you a head start,” I say. “That’s all he bought.”

Bishop mounts and Perdition rides up the logging track beneath a wall of Kingdom Come guns.

We don’t shoot. We don’t need to fire to prove whose road this is.

Cash wraps Lucy’s wrist while Kane watches the last taillight vanish. Lucy gives us the part that matters. Chains handed her over at the junction and showed Perdition the blind ground beyond the rear gate.

Griz’s jaw tightens. “He planned it wearing our cut.”

“Not ours anymore,” Kane says. “Chains is out. The colors on his back are stolen. Any brother sees him, he comes home without them.”

“Cold war’s done,” Tank says.

“Yeah,” Kane replies. “Cyrus made it open.”

Above the ramp, Chains’s headlight crosses a bare section of hillside. My bike is ten strides away. I know a track through the north woods that could put me near Mason Creek before him.

My body turns toward it, but Lucy’s fingers close around my wrist. The tremor through her is small enough that no one else would see.

I holster the gun and pull her back against me. Chains can run for now.

Kane sends the brothers to clear the ramp and I take Lucy toward the river, far enough that the engines dull behind us. Moonlight catches the raw skin around her wrist.

“I’m sorry. I trusted him,” she says.

“He wore our cut. You were supposed to trust him.”

“They took me because I married you.”