Move the Sun (Signal Bend Series) (28 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY

Isaac charged into the dorm room. Len had Wyatt against a wall. LaVonne was curled into the corner, cowering, her mouth bleeding heavily. Isaac spared her a glance, then turned to Dan, coming up behind him.

“Dan—get her outta here. Get her some ice or something.” He advanced on Wyatt. “What the fuck did you do, Wyatt?”

“So I hit a woman—back the fuck off!” Wyatt struggled hard against Len’s grip, but Len was bigger and stronger.

Len handed Isaac a phone; must have been Wyatt’s. Isaac checked outgoing calls—none recent. He checked outgoing texts—one, to Ray. It read:
get out now pilot after u cant explain go back 2 camp.

He tossed the phone on the bed behind him. Leaning down into Wyatt’s face, looming over him, Isaac snarled, “That’s the stupid shit I wanted to keep you from doing. If Lilli gets hurt because of this, I will end you slow.”
He shifted his eyes to Len. “Put him in the Room. Chain the fucker down. We’ll deal with him later.”

Isaac felt panic. He didn’t think he’d ever felt panic before, but it was on him now, compelling him to move, move now, find Lilli, keep her safe. But he had to think. He’d tried to call her several more times, to no avail. Something bad had gone down, he could feel it in his very cells. The question was where.

Wyatt’s text hadn’t given Ray any information about where Lilli was. Rover had taken him back to his place. Most likely, then, that was where trouble was. But he needed to be sure. His men were at his back, waiting to know what he wanted. No one had made any suggestions, not even Show. They were waiting for him to work it through. When Len came back from the Room, Isaac knew what he wanted.

“CJ—you stay with Wyatt, make sure he’s contained. Show and Bart—you go to Lilli’s place. Don’t think she
’s there, but I need to be sure. Be careful—she’ll be on alert and maybe suspicious of anybody but me right now. She doesn’t know how the vote went. The rest of us, we’re going to Ray’s. I think there’s trouble, and I think it’s there.” He met each brother’s eyes. “We clear? We good?” They nodded as one and geared up.

~oOo~

They didn’t bother with stealth; instead, they roared up to Ray’s house and ran in, full-bore. Isaac didn’t have the patience for stealth.

The door was standing open; Isaac was first in. Rover was lying at the far end of the short hallway
, a thickening pool of blood making a crimson halo around his head and shoulders. Isaac went to him and squatted to check his pulse; the rest of the Horde fanned out to check the small house. Rover was dead, shot just to the side of his right eye. Isaac hoped he’d gone instantly.

Len was standing immediately behind Isaac. “
We’re clear here.” Isaac looked up at him, and Len nodded at Rover’s body. “You think that was Ray or Lilli?”

Standing and turning fast, Isaac almost grabbed Len. “It was Ray, and you know it. No way Lilli would’ve shot the kid.”

“Not on purpose, but we don’t know what went on here.”

Isaac did.
He could see it clearly. He’d put Rover on watch detail, and Ray had taken him down after Wyatt warned him about Lilli. Jesus Christ, this was a mess.

He needed to find Lilli. She wasn’t in the house, and Ray’s car was in the yard. He knew damn well she wouldn’t have just driven up—she’d given him enough detail about her surveillance to know that her car was probably several miles away. It all added up to bad, but Isaac was convinced she had to be close. But where?
Pushing his panic and worry back so that he could fucking
think
, he went through the narrow back door and out into the overgrown yard.

Like any good country boy, Isaac was an experienced hunter. That made him a decent tracker. But good tracking skills were
n’t required to be able to see that a major fight had gone down at the far corner of the house. The tall grass was flattened and matted and, as Isaac investigated, he saw blood staining the trampled growth—a couple of smaller but still noteworthy smears, a trail of drips and streaks, and then a much more sizable stain that had clearly been a pool before the earth had taken it in.

Squatting at the largest stain, Isaac breathed slowly,
fighting for calm. It was Lilli’s blood. No earthly way he could know that, but he felt its certainty like he felt the ground under his feet. If it had been Ray’s blood, if Lilli had bled him like this, the Horde would have come upon a vastly different scene, he just knew it.

Ray had Lilli
, and she was badly hurt. She was either already dead, and he was disposing of her body, or she would die soon. Despair was crowding in with the worry and panic. Isaac dropped his head to his knees and pushed it all back.
Focus. Focus.
If he had her, where were they be? With a deep breath he lifted his head and looked around. There—a vague trail of displaced grass and weeds. He went toward it and saw that it looked like someone was possibly dragged in that direction. Maybe it was wishful thinking, Isaac seeing a lead where there was none, but he had no better options, so he followed. He didn’t even call his brothers.

But Len saw him go; Isaac heard him hailing the rest of the Horde to follow. Now, though, now he wanted stealth. If there was a chance Lilli was alive, Isaac didn’t want to blow it because Ray saw most of the MC bearing down on him. Isaac turned and gestured for his men to fan out and stay quiet.

They followed the trail for almost ten minutes before Isaac understood where they were headed. By then, it had become much more obviously a trail, and had, in fact, begun to show signs that Ray was following what had been an actual trail trodden into the reedy grass and wildflowers of the lightly wooded field. Soon, they were in a thick stand of trees, and Isaac followed Ray’s progress easily. He came across one of Lilli’s running shoes in the path, and his heart skidded.

They were
headed for an old deer blind. Isaac knew it because he’d hunted the woods all around here his whole life, as had all the men behind him. The blind was on Corin Petersen’s property—which was now a bank’s property. When they came upon it a few minutes later, Isaac ducked behind a cluster of wild growth, and gestured for everyone to stop and be still. He cocked his Glock. The rest of the Horde followed suit.

The blind was sized to accommodate
four men for a day of waiting. It was elevated, its floor about four feet off the ground, and had once been painted in a camouflage pattern. Age, weather, and disuse had taken its toll, though, and its color was almost uniformly the grey of dying old wood. Most of the windows were still closed, their board shutters latched with hooks. Weeds had grown up all around it, and it was the weeds that told Isaac they’d found Ray’s destination. The growth was disturbed in a path directly to the basic set of steps leading into the blind, and tall, strong weeds had been broken sharply off at the point where they grew up in the empty spaces between each step.

At first, Isaac neither heard nor saw anything. Then, just as he was preparing to step out of cover and advance on the
blind, its floor creaked, and he saw the building shimmy slightly. He stopped. He had to get in there, and he needed to surprise Ray when he did so. He had no idea what state he would find Lilli in. He needed to think.

Len sidled up to him then and whispered, “Havoc and I w
ill divert him. When we start making a din, you get in there.” Isaac nodded. It was a good plan.

But they didn’t get a chance to put it in play, because just then Ray shouted, loud enough to be clear to the Horde’s ears, “Scream, you fucking cunt! Scream!”

All plans evaporated, and Isaac just ran.

He charged up the steps and slammed through the door; the dry-rotted wood gave way almost instantly, and Isaac
nearly lost his footing. He caught himself, aimed, and shot twice before Ray could get his own gun up. Ray went down, two bullets in his chest. He didn’t move at all.

Except to kick Ray’s gun away, Isaac ignored him and went straight for Lilli. She was lying on the floor
, her hands bound with Ray’s belt, her clothes badly torn, as if—Isaac stopped that thought. There was blood everywhere, pulsing slowly in a dark ooze from her neck, where a soaked bandana was tied. Except where it was doused in her blood, or bruised, her skin was waxy white, almost blue. But she was conscious and looking at him. She seemed . . . calm. He dropped to his knees, undid the binding around her wrists, and gathered her up. She was cold. Jesus.

“Baby—God, baby.” She blinked up at him. There was so much fucking
blood
. She smiled a little and tried to lift her arm, but it only came up a couple of inches, and then she let it drop back to the floor with a thud. Her eyes fluttered shut. “Lilli!” He shook her, and a wrinkle crossed her brow, but she didn’t open her eyes.

He checked her pulse. Thin and fast. Turning to Dan, who was standing at the door—somehow they’d pulled Ray’s body out already—
Isaac said, “We have to get her help! NOW!”

Dan nodded and called out the door
. “We need the van up here—close as you can get!”

Isaac was frantic; he couldn’t push it off any longer. “She’s bleeding out. It’s too much—it’s too fucking much!” Dan knelt next to him and put his hand on his shoulder. He reached out and checked Lilli’s pulse, gently holding her wrist.

“She’s in shock, Isaac. Nobody’s got cell service out here, so we need to take her in the van.” He pulled his kutte off and shrugged out of his grey cotton button-down, leaving him in nothing but a wife-beater t-shirt. He put his kutte back on and fashioned a bandage with his shirt, wrapping it around her neck. “We need to get her in the van and get her legs up, keep the blood to her organs. You carry her, I’ll apply pressure, boss. She’s already lost too much blood. She’s got to keep what she still has.”

Isaac heard the van coming fast through the brush. He stood, Lilli’s limp body in his arms. Dan walked backwards down the steps, his hand pressing into Lilli’s neck. They climbed into the back of the van, leaving Len and Havoc to clean up and rid the world of Ray Hobson’s remains.

The hospital was 20 miles away. Sitting on the floor of the van, Dan sitting in front of him, keeping pressure on her wound, Isaac bent over the still body of his old lady and, for the first time since his sister left him alone with their father, he prayed.

~oOo~

He told the people at the hospital she was his wife. He didn’t hesitate at all. He knew they wouldn’t question him, and he needed to make sure they gave him access to her. But they’d whisked her away from him almost immediately, and now he and Dan were in the waiting room. Waiting. Isaac was losing his fucking mind.

He
had been wearing a rut in the waiting room floor for almost three hours, with no word whatsoever, when Show and Len turned up. Show caught him in the middle of his circuit and pulled him aside.

“Ray’s handled, the site is clean, and your bike is at the clubhouse. I know this is a shitty time, but we need to talk about Wyatt.”

Isaac had only one thing to say about Wyatt. “That motherfucker is dead. Leave him for me.”

Show shook his head. “Not without a vote, boss. You need to think clearly.”

The taut wire of control holding Isaac together snapped, and he grabbed Show by his kutte and slammed him against the nearest wall. “Do you see the blood? There was so much blood! She could die—she could be dead already!—and Wyatt did it. I will tear him apart with my bare fucking hands. I will gut him.”

Dan
was at his back, pulling him away. He released Show and stormed to the far end of the room. He couldn’t think about this shit now. He could only think of Lilli. What was
happening
? Why wouldn’t they tell him anything? He dropped to a chair and put his head in his hands.

Steady as ever, Show came back up to him and sat down. “Focus on her for now, boss. I’ll make sure Wyatt’s held until you’re ready. I got the rest. You focus on your old lady.”

Isaac nodded and went back to waiting.

~oOo~

When a doctor finally came out and called, “Lilli’s family?” Isaac was so tightly wrapped in his own hell of worry and guilt that Dan had to nudge him. He stood, and the doctor, a woman who looked too fucking young to be entrusted with his old lady, gestured to a small grouping of chairs in a corner.

When he brought her in, he’d said only that he’d found her bleeding out, which was true.
Now, the doctor, whose name, R. Ingleton, was embroidered on the right side of her coat, asked him, “Is there nothing else you can tell us about what happened?”