I turned and ran toward the left field like Cedar had suggested. Cardio and fitness were not my friends, but I pushed as hard as my tired body and aching head would allow, my vision trained on the dark stalks of corn.
Relief made me light-headed as I hit the field and shoved through the crops, pushing them with my right hand even though more battered my whole body as I plunged through the dense growth. I just had to get through this field and out the other side and I’d be so much closer to safety.
Then, out of the dark, something reached for and in my haste to evade it’s grasp, I tripped over a slippery corn stalk and fell sideways.
Right into my pursuer.
We fell to the ground with a muffled thud, and I opened my mouth to scream even though it pulled open the wound at theside of my face. A hand covered my gaping maw, thwarting the sound, but I knew even when I tried to scream that no one would come for me.
This had been my one and only attempt to save my life.
And now I was caught on the ground in the pitch dark probably minutes away from death.
“Where are do you think you’re runnin’ to, little bitch?”
Piston’s voice, recognizable for the nasal drawl even though it was so dark in the field I couldn’t make out his features.
Terror punched me in the chest because this was the worse person to find me save Hazard.
Piston had been leering at me for weeks, and if it wasn’t for the threat of Hazard and the watchful eyes of Rooster, he would have taken me already. I could still remember that beer-wet texture of his mouth against my breasts as he’d forced his face between them one night.
And now he had the chance.
His laughter, putrid from sour beer, wafted over my face in triumph. He only had to pin my one hand above my head because my left was caught in the sling so he could use the other to reach for the button of my jean shorts. They were undone too quickly even though I kicked and bucked beneath his heavy weight, screaming and shouting now that he’d released my mouth.
But there was no one to hear, maybe, or no one to care.
He reached for his own belt, pulling himself out of his jeans. I gagged, about to squeeze my eyes shut, when I saw the telltale movement of stalks swaying behind Piston’s head.
Motion in the cornfield coming toward us.
I kept my eyes fixed on it as I shouted for help again and again.
“Shut up,” Piston grunted as he released my hand to pull at my shorts.
I shoved the heel of my hand into his nose as hard as I could so his head snapped back. A moment later, something broke through the little clearing our struggle had made in the crops, a flashlight trained on Piston’s form looming over mine.
And thenbang!
A gunshot split the night, and blood erupted across the little clearing a moment before I lost myself in darkness.
BONER
It tookme just two minutes, in the chaos of the brawl behind Eugene’s Bar, to realize that one’a the Raiders had taken Blue.
Just two minutes.
One hundred and twenty seconds too late to save her.
By the time I recognized her absence, the growl’a Harleys was already recedin’ from the parkin’ lot, tearin’ onto the Sea to Sky.
“Fuck!” I’d shouted to the sky ’fore startin’ to storm to my own bike.
“Boner, wait,” Axe-Man said, grippin’ my wrist tight so I was forced to stop and turn back to him. Brother was six foot four and built like a tank with long blonde hair like some kinda Viking, but there was no berserker rage in his eyes as they locked on mine, only calm control. And that was with a fuckin’ push dagger embedded in his shoulder. “You think she’s gonna go down for gettin’ involved in this.”
It wasn’t really a question ’cause Axe-Man knew enough about the way Rooster ran a club to understand Blue intervenin’ in the fight would bring hell down on her fuckin’ head.
“You know she will. I gotta get to her.”
