Cade POV
The world slowed down. The pain in my leg was a hot, sharp buzz. The shouts of the men behind me sounded muffled, like I was underwater. I saw Riley's mouth move, but I couldn't hear her words. Her eyes were locked on mine, wide and fierce.
I had one choice: lie here and die, or move.
Gritting my teeth against the fire in my calf, I shoved myself up. I didn't try to stand. I crawled. Elbows and knees digging into the sharp gravel, I scrambled the last few feet toward the fence.
A shadow fell over me. I looked up. One of the bikers, a big man with a skull tattoo on his neck, stood over me, a shotgun raised to his shoulder. A cruel smile split his face. "Got ya."
From the hole in the fence, Riley's arm shot out. Not with a gun. With the small can of pepper spray.
PSSSSHHHT!
A direct, blinding stream hit the biker square in the eyes. He screamed, a raw, shocked sound. He dropped the shotgun, clawing at his face, stumbling backward.
"Cade, NOW!" Riley screamed.
I surged forward, shoved myself through the ragged hole in the chain links. Barbs tore at my clothes and skin. I tumbled out onto the soft dirt of the tree line. Riley grabbed the collar of my jacket and hauled me deeper into the shadows.
Behind us, chaos erupted inside the fence. The blinded biker was howling. Men were shouting, confused. The two pepper-sprayed Dobermans were still going insane, adding to the noise. Shots were fired into the air.
"They're shooting at the trees!" Riley hissed, pulling me behind a thick oak. "They don't know where we went."
"They know I'm hit," I gasped, clamping a hand over the wound on my calf. It was wet and warm. "They'll track the blood."
"Then we stop the blood and move." Riley was already shrugging out of her dark flannel shirt. She tore a sleeve off with her teeth, then wrapped it tightly around my leg, tying it with a hard, professional knot. The pressure made me see stars, but the immediate bleeding slowed.
"Can you walk?" she asked, her voice all business.
"I can run," I grunted.
We didn't run. We moved as fast as my leg would allow, a limping, painful rush through the dark woods. Every crashing step felt too loud. Every snapped twig sounded like a gunshot.
We could hear engines roaring to life back at the compound. Headlight beams sliced through the trees in the distance. They were coming.
We reached the thicket where the car was hidden. Riley yanked open the passenger door. Tessa's face appeared, pale and terrified. "Cade! You're bleeding!"
"Just a scratch," I lied, falling into the seat. "We have to go. Now."
Riley was already in the driver's seat, starting the engine. She didn't turn on the headlights. She reversed slowly out of the pines, branches scraping the sides. When we hit the old logging road, she still didn't turn on the lights, driving by memory and moonlight.
"Where?" I asked, my breath coming in short gasps. The cabin was compromised. The farmhouse was a death trap. We had nowhere.
"The only place they won't look right now," Riley said, her face a mask of concentration. "Somewhere with lights and people."
"Town? They own the town!"
"Not all of it." She took a sharp turn onto a slightly better road. "The emergency room."
"What? No! They'll find us in minutes!"
"Listen to me," she said, her voice cutting through my panic. "You have a gunshot wound. If they catch us and you're bleeding, it's proof you were at the compound during a shooting. Our story falls apart. But if we walk into an ER first, we have an alibi. We say we were on our way to the hospital because you were shot in a random drive-by on the county road. We were lost, looking for help. The timing will be tight, but it's the only play that turns your wound from evidence into a cover."
It was insane. It was brilliant. It was our only shot.
"They'll have people at the hospital," I argued weakly. The pain was making me dizzy.
"The sheriff's deputy, maybe. Not fifteen armed men. It's a public place with cameras. They can't gun us down in a waiting room." She finally flicked on the headlights and pressed the gas. "We're twenty minutes out. Hold on."
The next twenty minutes were a blur of pain and fear. Tessa leaned forward from the back, putting pressure on my leg with a clean cloth from her suitcase, her hands steady despite her tears. Riley drove like a professional getaway driver, fast but smooth, her eyes constantly checking the mirrors.
We saw no pursuers.
The lights of the small county hospital appeared ahead. Riley pulled right up to the Emergency Room doors.
"Okay, new plan," she said quickly, turning to us. "Tessa, you're in shock. You're panicked about your brother. You do the talking. Cry. Be confused. I'm just a friend who was giving you both a ride. Cade, you're in and out of consciousness. You don't know what happened. Got it?"
We nodded. It was the thinnest story in the world, but it was all we had.
Riley and Tessa helped me out of the car. I leaned on them heavily, letting my head loll. The second the automatic doors slid open, Tessa let out a wail.
"Help! Please, my brother's been shot! Somebody shot at our car!"
The triage nurse jumped up. Within seconds, there was a flurry of activity. I was placed in a wheelchair, rushed through a set of doors. A doctor was asking questions. Tessa, true to her role, was sobbing hysterically, giving broken answers about a dark road, a loud noise, and blood.
They put me in a curtained-off bay. A nurse cut away my pant leg to clean and examine the wound. "Looks like a graze," she said. "Deep, but clean. You were very lucky."
As she worked, I saw Riley hovering near the entrance to the bay, watching the hallway. Her body was tense, ready for a fight.
Then, I heard the voices I dreaded.
"Evening, Shirley." It was a man's voice, smooth and familiar. The sheriff. "Heard you had a gunshot come in. A Merrick."
"Just a graze, Sheriff," the nurse said. "Family's pretty shaken up."
"I'll need to speak with them. Official business."
My heart stopped. Riley's hand slipped inside her jacket, where I knew she had Harlan's pistol tucked into her waistband.
The sheriff, a large man with a thick mustache, pulled back the curtain. He looked at me on the bed, at Tessa crying in a chair, at Riley standing guard. His eyes were cold and knowing. He didn't believe our story for a second.
"Cade Merrick," he said, his voice devoid of warmth. "You've had a busy first day home. First a fight with Harlan Colter that sent him to the clinic with broken ribs. Now a mysterious bullet wound. Quite a coincidence."
He stepped fully into the small bay, blocking the exit. His hand rested casually on the butt of his service weapon.
"I think you and I need to have a long talk down at the station. About what you were really doing tonight."
He was going to arrest me. He'd take me to a lonely station, and Marcus's men would be waiting. I'd never make it to a cell.
Riley took a small step forward, a fake, worried smile on her face. "Sheriff, he's just been treated. Surely this can wait until morning?"
"I'm afraid it can't," the sheriff said, his eyes never leaving mine. "There's been… developments at the Colter property tonight. Gunfire, a trespasser. Seems relevant." He pulled out a pair of handcuffs. "Cade Merrick, you're under suspicion of aggravated assault and trespassing. Turn over and put your hands behind your back."
The nurse gasped. Tessa cried harder.
This was it. The system Riley warned me about, owned by the enemy, was closing its jaws.
The sheriff moved toward the bed. As he reached for me, his back was to Riley.
In one fluid motion, Riley drew the pistol from her waistband. Not to shoot. She reversed her grip and swung the heavy butt of the gun in a short, vicious arc.
It connected with the back of the sheriff's head with a sickening thud.
His eyes rolled back. He collapsed to the floor like a sack of rocks, out cold.
The nurse screamed. Riley stood over the fallen sheriff, the gun now pointed at the floor, her breathing calm. She looked at the terrified nurse.
"He slipped," Riley said, her voice chillingly steady. "Hit his head on the bed rail. A terrible accident. You should call for a doctor to help him."
She then looked at me, her meaning clear. The sheriff's "accident" had just bought us minutes, maybe less.
But we were now trapped in a hospital, with an unconscious sheriff at our feet, and every cop in the county about to descend on us.
Our alibi had just become a cage.