Page 2 of Axel (Riders of Retribution #1)

Hazel

“Hey, stay with me!” I yell, falling to my knees next to the man who rescued me.

If he’s lost consciousness, this isn’t good for him.

I might be able to patch him up with the supplies I have on hand, but I don’t have any blood for a transfusion.

As a former ER nurse living half an hour from the nearest hospital, I keep a healthy first aid kit on hand, but there’s only so much my collection of medical supplies can do.

I take a moment to assess the situation. He was only hit once, in his upper thigh. He’s losing a lot of blood, so there’s a chance the bullet nicked his femoral artery. If that’s the case, it might be a death sentence for him.

Like hell I’m going to let him die, though.

With all the strength I can muster, I shove my fingers into the blood-soaked hole in his jeans and pull, ripping the fabric to give myself better access.

I struggle slightly, but eventually the denim gives, and I’m able to get a look at his leg.

While he’s still bleeding, I don’t see the kind of gushing you’d expect from an artery being hit.

That’s good. He still has a chance. I might be able to get him put back together without having to take him to a hospital. The voice of the man on the phone still rings in my ears – no hospitals unless the MC deems them necessary.

God, I can’t believe I’m mixed up with another motorcycle club. Like the mess I’ve already found myself in isn’t enough. There isn’t time to think about that now, though. Now, I’ve got a patient in desperate need of attention right in front of me.

“Hazel, what the hell happened out here?”

I glance up momentarily as II rip my jacket from my body to shove against the wound to stop the bleeding. My dad is standing on the porch, his eyes wide as he takes in the carnage. I ignore the question because I’m pretty sure that he watched this whole thing go down from inside the house.

It’s crazy to me that he can get us into this mess, but he’s too scared to help me clean it up. That’s something for me to dwell on later. It’s a discussion that’s long overdue, but one that we’ll have once this stranger is stable.

“I need you to help me get him inside,” I say as I shove my jacket against the wound. “It’s going to take both of us to carry him up the stairs. I need to keep pressure on this.”

My dad, for his credit, nods and rushes towards us.

The two of us get the man into the air, me supporting him with one hand while I’m pressing down on his thigh, and my dad cradling him, struggling under his weight.

We make our way inside, straight to the dining room that we rarely use.

It’s the cleanest room in the house, and by some stroke of luck, I used a disinfecting wipe on the table this morning.

“Get me my first aid kit,” I say, gripping onto the man’s wrist to find his pulse. “And the scissors. I need to get the bullet out and the hole stitched up.”

Without a word, my dad leaves the room, following my instructions. While he’s gone, I take a deep breath and focus on counting the beats of his heart. His pulse is normal, so I can only assume that he lost consciousness due to shock and an adrenaline drop.

That’s good for him, actually. That means he’ll be out while I stitch him up. The process is painful without local anesthetics, which is something I don’t have in my first aid kit.

My dad reappears with everything that I requested, then stands back to watch me work. Thankfully, he isn’t a squeamish man. He’s just not a fan of being in imminent danger, but who is?

“So, what happened?” he asks as I’m cutting the man’s jeans away from his body. The bleeding seems to have slowed down significantly since getting him inside.

“Well, your friends The Apex Runners decided to pay us a little visit,” I say through gritted teeth, pulling out the supplies to disinfect the bullet wound.

“They’re not my friends.”

“And if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be their on-call nurse,” I shoot back. I love this man with all of my heart. He raised me and loves me unconditionally, he just has a gambling problem that he can’t seem to get under control. “So, if they’re anyone’s friends, they’re yours.”

“Is now really the time to do this, Hazel?” he asks, crossing his arms. When I don’t respond, he sighs, clearly knowing better than to argue with me. “So, who’s this man you’re working on? Those colors don’t look familiar to me.”

“Honestly, I have no idea who he is,” I admit as I wipe away blood and gunpowder residue from his leg. The bullet is still lodged in his thigh. “He just showed up, guns blazing. Seemed to take it as a personal offense that I was being roughed up by the two guys that showed up earlier.”

“So he–” my dad cuts himself off with a shiver. Once he gets himself under control, he continues, “Is that the reason there’s a man bleeding out on our front lawn?”

“Pretty sure the guy was dead as soon as he hit the ground,” I admit, moving in close as I hold the tweezers, ready to dig the lead from his leg. It’s too dark, though. “Dad, can you bring a light?”

Dutifully, he pulls out his phone with the flashlight illuminated. As I pull the bullet out, he says, “So, what are we going to do with the body out front?”

“I’m pretty sure he took care of it before he lost consciousness,” I say, setting my tweezers aside and grabbing my sutures. They’re not the best quality, but they’ll have to do. “He called one of his friends to ask for a cleanup crew. I gave them the location.”

I decide against telling my dad that they’re with another MC. He’ll find out eventually. For now, I’d prefer I didn’t have to talk him down from whatever ledge that’ll put him on. My focus needs to remain on the patient in front of me.

“So is he a professional hitman or something?” my dad asks, working himself up anyway. Typical Dad. “We can’t have someone like him in the house. We need to– we need to call the police or something!”

“Absolutely not,” I say, neatly sewing the stranger up. “We’re messed up with way too much shit to call the police.

“But, what if–”

By some stroke of luck, someone – probably the cleanup crew – knocks on the door. My dad looks like he’s going to jump out of his skin. He stares at me, eyes wide, mouth firmly shut like if he’s quiet enough whoever’s there will just leave.

“We can’t ignore that, Dad,” I say, turning away from him as I tie off the last stitch. “It’s either the people this man called or the police. It’s probably his people, though. Do you really think they’re the kind of men who like to be kept waiting?”

That’s enough to kick my dad into action.

He rushes from the room, straight to the front door where our visitors are pounding on the wood again.

I’m aware that as soon as they’re inside, I’ll have to recount the events of the afternoon for them.

I’m fairly certain I can count on them being a little more level-headed about this than my father, at least. Becoming an ER nurse made me desensitized the sight of blood, so I’d imagine that the kind of person who disposes of bodies with no questions asked is not going to freak out on me the way my father is.

I mean, if they’re the kind of people that can be called to dispose of a body and show up with no questions asked, I imagine they’re not going to freak out.

“Where the hell is Axel?”

Or not.

The man repeats his question. I recognize his voice, though it sounds much more intimidating when it’s not filtered through a phone speaker. That must be Saber. There are other voices that I don’t recognize, and all at once the gravity of this situation hits me.

Not only are we involved with the Apex Runners thanks to my father’s stupidity, but now their rivals are involved, too.

Sure, they don’t have any problems with my dad and me; It’s not like we asked the man lying on our kitchen table to step in, but I can’t imagine they’ll be happy about this.

We’re the easiest scapegoats for what transpired.

If it hadn’t been for the shakedown that happened in my front yard, Axel here wouldn’t have stopped.

He wouldn’t have felt the need to jump in.

My chest tightens as Saber rounds the corner like a bat out of hell.

I steel myself, pulling on all of my experience from when I was working in the emergency department.

I might have moved to the oncology unit last year, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still work well under pressure or with irrationally angry family members.

“What the fuck happened?” Saber demands.

“He showed up and started a firefight,” I say, highlighting the fact that this was Axel’s idea. If he hadn’t shown up here, I would have been fine. Maybe I’d be sporting a few bruises, but I can handle my shit. “He killed one guy and took a bullet in his thigh. He’s stable now. And stitched up.”

“Fuckin’ impulsive idiot,” Saber says as he scrubs a hand over his face. “We’ll clean up his mess. How long until he wakes up?”

“Could be any time now,” I say, glancing at Axel’s stupid, handsome sleeping face.

His hair that looked black under the dying sunlight takes on a brown hue under the artificial lighting of the kitchen.

His eyelashes fan over his cheeks, an unfairly beautiful feature for someone so rugged.

“I didn’t give him anything, and I don’t think he lost enough blood to be out for long. ”

Saber nods and says, “Then if he’s not up when we get back, we’ll wait.”

Before I can respond, he leaves the kitchen and starts barking orders at the men he brought along.

My body relaxes a bit now that we’re not sharing the same space.

I have no idea what I’m going to do or why things have happened the way they have, but a voice in the back of my head tells me that Axel holds the key to something.

I just hope it’s the key to solving our problems and nothing more sinister.