Part 10 (1/2)
Eve flipped onto her stomach in time to see his Nikes disappear over the threshold.
Delilah had just saved her life...
But for how long?
Her head weighed a hundred pounds, but she still managed to lift it, fully expecting that when she did she'd be staring down the barrel of the first gunman's weapon, but- Boom! A third blast from the shotgun.
This time, Delilah caught a piece of the first masked man's leg, shredding his jeans and the flesh beneath. He howled in agony, grabbing at the wound with one hand and squeezing the trigger of his pistol with the other. Bullets exploded from the gun in quick, ear-shattering succession as the gangster wildly laid down covering fire, his limping retreat toward the door leaving a shower of blood droplets in his wake. A light fixture burst with a crash. The red vinyl cus.h.i.+on on an empty booth belched up a cloud of cotton stuffing after absorbing a round.
Eve once more covered her head, her blood rus.h.i.+ng through her veins so hard and fast it sounded like a waterfall roaring between her ears. When she breathed, the acrid smell of cordite and the iron-like aroma of hemoglobin filled her nose, making her fight the urge to gag. A vehicle roared to life followed by the sound of tires squealing. Through the swinging front door, she caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a white van hauling b.u.t.t away from the place.
Then, silence reigned...
For one heartbeat, maybe two, the world stopped spinning, and Eve glanced up to find the bar set in a motionless tableau. Patrons littered the floor, hands over their heads, completely and totally frozen in fear. Then, an ear-piercing scream splintered the silence, and Eve turned to see Delilah scrambling over the bar, the bartender's pretty face twisted with horror.
What...?
But then she saw it. The potbellied biker-Buzzard?-was slumped on his stool, a ghastly river of red dripping down his stomach and pants, pooling beneath his dangling black biker boots in a slick, gruesome puddle.
”No!” Delilah screamed, pressing a hand to the gus.h.i.+ng wound in the center of Buzzard's chest. ”No, Buzzard! No!”
Eve was the first to jump to her feet, hurdling p.r.o.ne patrons as she raced toward her purse still sitting on the bar, digging frantically for her cell phone.
Where are you? Where the heck are- When she finally found it, she punched in 9-1-1 with shaky fingers and looked over at Buzzard-Delilah was sobbing hysterically and continuing to try to apply pressure to that gruesome wound. To her utter horror, she discovered the man's eyes were open and vacant, staring at nothing but death.
Oh, sweet Lord, no...
”Nine, one, one. What's your emergency?” a nasally voice sounded over the phone.
”I-I need an ambulance at...” she had to swallow the bile and tears burning up the back of her throat. ”At Red Delilah's biker bar.” She gave the address. ”A man has been sh-shot.”
The emergency operator asked her a question, but she didn't hear it as the phone slipped from her nerveless fingers.
There she is. That's what the second gunman said before raising his weapon. Which meant they'd come here for her. To kill her. But instead...Buzzard was dead.
And that meant this was all her fault...
No G.o.d, no! She choked on a sob, her knees threatening to buckle beneath her, but she refused to give in to the grief and hysteria bubbling just beneath her surface. It might be too late to help Buzzard, but perhaps she could still help poor Delilah...
The Corner of Western and North Avenues 6:32 p.m.
”What in the world?” Bill heard Mac yell over the grumbling sound of dual V-twin engines. He gripped Phoenix's handlebars tighter as he squinted up the block to where the red-blue-red flash of emergency vehicle lights bounced menacingly against the surrounding buildings.
They'd kinda, sorta, pseudo-fixed the Bat Cave door. But the thing was still acting sketchy as f.u.c.k, sometimes opening and closing of its own volition, so they'd decided to ditch the Hummer in exchange for the bikes. Especially considering that the tunnel was such a tight fit for the giant SUV that opening the doors of the vehicle once inside the sucker was nearly impossible.
Yeah, to say neither one of them had fancied the idea of getting stuck inside the Hummer down in the tunnel and having to pull the Holy Grail of all reverse maneuvers back out to the exit in the parking garage was putting it mildly. Bill just hoped Eve was okay with riding- ”I think that's Delilah's!” Mac's voice sliced into his thoughts.
He realized in that moment, as he twisted his wrist and blazed through the red light and cross traffic-heedless of the sound of squealing tires on either side of him and the fact that the silver b.u.mper on a Chevy half-ton pickup truck came within an inch of his biker boot-what it meant when people said their hearts froze. Because his stopped beating, turned to a hard fist of dry ice in his chest, and proceeded to burn a hole straight through his soul.
Eve...
He wasn't thinking when he blasted into the little parking lot in front of Red Delilah's, Phoenix's fat rear tire bouncing over the curb until his teeth clacked together with brain-jostling force. He wasn't thinking when he toed out the kickstand and jumped from the bike, switching off the growling engine. He wasn't thinking when he ran toward the waiting ambulance and the body-bag-laden stretcher being loaded inside.
”Eve!” He frantically tossed off the restraining hands of the police officers who leapt toward him, instinctively shoving an elbow into someone's nose. ”Eve! Eve!” His wailing, breathless cries howled from him like the wind blowing over the dunes in the desert. His lungs worked like bellows, but no oxygen got to his brain.
”Stand down, a.s.shole!” one of the officers shouted in his ear, snaking an arm around his throat as two, then three more uniformed CPD boys tried to wrestle him to the ground. He fought them like he was fighting for his life, hissing and biting, punching and kicking. He was a mindless beast, bent on only one thing: getting inside that ambulance and- ”Billy!”
When he heard his name, when he heard her sweet voice, all the fight seeped out of him like air from a torn balloon. He choked on a hard, wet sob that lodged in the center of his chest. Then, the next thing he knew, he was kissing concrete, there were an unknown number of very pointy knees digging into his back, and his wrists were being secured by a cold, hard set of handcuffs.
He didn't care. Because she was alive! The CPD could take out their billy clubs and pound the living s.h.i.+t out of him for the rest of the evening if they wanted to, and he'd still be smiling.
”Get off him! Get off him!” From the corner of his eye-the one not being ground into the parking lot's hot pavement-he could see Eve pus.h.i.+ng officers aside. ”He's with me!”
Slowly, the restraining hands disappeared, as did the pointy knees. And after a ringing command from Eve that someone should help him up, two policemen grabbed his elbows and hauled him to his feet. The very next instant, Eve was pressed against him. Her arms were around his neck, her head was on his shoulder-the smell of her fruity shampoo obscured the more pungent aroma of car exhaust-and she was sobbing and squeezing him so tightly he could barely breathe.
Who cares? Oxygen is overrated anyway.
”Jesus, Eve...” Her name was a benediction and a prayer all rolled into one. He wasn't a religious man, but he whispered a quick thanks skyward to anyone who might be listening and went to wrap his arms around her, to hold her close to his pounding heart. But the handcuffs stopped him with the bite of unyielding steel.
”Get these f.u.c.king things off me,” he growled at the officer closest to him.
The man wiped a hand under his bleeding nose-apparently this was the one Bill'd clocked with his elbow-and glowered. Then the policeman took a deep breath, obviously deciding he might've done the same thing had he thought the body of someone he cared about was being loaded into a waiting ambulance, and moved to oblige Bill's request.
Bill had just enough time to wonder uneasily at the direction of his thoughts-Someone he cared about?-when the handcuffs disappeared and his mind blanked because...heaven. She was safe in his arms, warm and alive and breathing his name into the s.p.a.ce where his T-s.h.i.+rt ended and his chest began.
”What happened here, Eve?” He dipped his chin to whisper against her ear, the delicate sh.e.l.l felt baby-soft against his lips, and the subtle smell of her lotion elicited an ill-timed response from the imbecile housed behind his zipper.
For the love of G.o.d, nuclear bombs could be exploding around me and being this close to Eve would still have me springing a chubby.
She pulled back, and he recognized the look on her tear-soaked face. He'd seen it plenty of times in the killing fields of this war or that conflict. It was a combination of shock and horror...and guilt. And it was enough to take the edge off his unrepentant libido.
”Th-that was s-s-supposed to be me.” She nodded toward the ambulance, her expression caving in on itself, her slender form quaking like a rickety telephone pole on the edge of an immense fault line. ”They c-came here for m-me.”
Supposed to be her? What?
”What do you mean?” he demanded, instinctively thumbing away a glistening tear from her smooth cheek, growling when he noticed the circle of angry bruises darkening up around her neck making the white of her pearl pendant stand out in harsh contrast. He'd seen that before, too. Some sorry sonofab.i.t.c.h had tried to strangle Eve. Some sorry, dead sonofab.i.t.c.h should Bill ever find him and get his hands on him...
”Th-the men who killed Buzzard,” she choked. Buzzard? He glanced toward the ambulance, then closed his eyes as a wedge of remorse briefly invaded his mounting rage. The rascally biker had been an annoying, charming, and licentious old fart by turns. But he'd been a decent fellow, all things considered. And he'd certainly deserved a s.h.i.+tload better than whatever violent end he'd obviously met. ”He caught a stray bullet,” she went on, and once again his heart stopped cold because...bullet. There'd been f.u.c.king bullets involved? Jesus Christ. ”But it was a bullet meant for...for me.”
Her voice rose with each syllable, and he knew the sounds of hysteria and shock when he heard them. Soon, she was very likely to either completely lose it or go catatonic. He'd seen both, experienced both, and he wasn't sure which was better. One allowed the horror to spill out in a vile, endless stream. The other allowed it to slowly simmer until the terror coagulated and hardened into something awful that you carried around inside yourself for life.
Sweet Jesus, how he wished he could take it all away. Just pluck the experience from her psyche and take it into his own, lock it in the box where he kept all his unspeakable memories...
”H-he...he said,” Eve stammered, and he could tell she was becoming more and more unstrung with each pa.s.sing second. ”He said, there she is and pointed his gun at me. I dove for him. We...we struggled. So...so-” She couldn't go on, and he did the only thing he could think to do. He pulled her against him again, holding her as tight as he could.