Page 84 of Cognac Secrets

He was close, he was so close! I could hear him even over the intermittent rush of passing traffic and the arguing whispers and talking between my brothers in the cab of the truck. I took several deep breaths, hands, feet, and mouth still bound, struggling to my feet while the boys were distracted by their own bullshit and I forced myself up and over the tailgate.

I was dazzled by the bright afternoon light and I fell,hardto the asphalt of the shoulder of the highway, my shoulder contacting it and making a sickening crunch and just,I didn’t know.

I could see the cop in front of me and I started screaming for everything that I was worth from behind my gag, struggling to get to my feet as he launched himself out of the driver’s seat of his patrol car. I screamed again as my arms and the backs of my legs were pelted by debris as Gideon and Jacob peeled out and left me there. and I hadneverbeen so grateful to be abandoned in mylife.

“Holy shit! You’re okay! I got ‘cha now – you’re alright!” the cop was saying as he went down onto his knees beside me and helped work the gross gag out of my mouth. All I could do was let out a long, broken, wailing sob of relief.

CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN

Bennie…

It was Axeman who caught up with me just north of the city, falling in beside me and giving me a nod, his eyes covered by wraparound sunglasses under his brain bucket, the lower half of his face hidden by a faded purple bandanna.

We were going strong up I-55 and were just south of the Mississippi state border when I saw a Louisiana State Trooper on the side of the road up ahead with a dark-haired girl.

I knew it was Sandrine, even before I pulled up close enough and off to the side up behind the patrol car, Axe with me the entire way.

“Sandy!” I shouted, dismounting my bike, and barely leaning it on its stand proper.

“Bennie!” she screamed and the cop was just cutting her wrists free that were tied behind her back. She brought her arms forward and cried out in pain when she moved her right shoulder, her left hand going to it. My knees hit the asphalt right near her and I didn’t touch her, butlordI wanted to.

“You came,” she sobbed and I put my arms around her even as the cop babbled into his radio at his shoulder. She buried her face in my shoulder and I wrinkled my nose at the acrid tang of vomit and swore I would get these sons a bitches one way or the other – even if the cops did get to them first.

An ambulance came, and Sandy immediately started freaking out aboutthatsaying she couldn’t afford a hospital visit, let alone an ambulance ride, but she didn’t see herself. Face a half mask of blood from a cut over her eye, cradling her arm to her side, holding her shoulders, knees raw and scraped up and I was sure that by tomorrow her fair skin, which her suntan practically floated on like an oil slick on the water with howdeathlypale she was, would be decorated in a fair amount of ugly purple bruises.

Axe was on his phone as I looked back at him and argued with Sandrine on getting in the fucking ambo and getting herself checked out, and he gave me a nod. I could go with her. The boys would send someone up with a flatbed for my bike and whatever hospital we wound up at, we would have a ride back to the city.

That’s what I wanted, and God bless Axe for knowing and understanding without me having to tell him.

“Sandrine!” I barked and she gasped and looked up at me, her emerald eyes wide and filled with fright and stress. I gentled my tone.

“This isn’t an argument to be had, baby girl. I’m going with you. I’ll be with you every step of the way, butyou’re going to the hospital.”

“But I can’t afford it,” she said meekly, and I smiled at her and used one of her lines on her.

“We’ll burn that bridge after we cross it.”

She was silent and still and went to nod slowly, winced, and said, “Okay.”

“Thank you,” the medic said to me. “I don’t like the looks of this head trauma and the fact she threw up.”

“Arms around me, baby,” I told her and I power lifted her up and onto the cot they’d just pulled out of the back of the bus before they could even lower it.

The medic winced. “Shouldn’t have moved her like that,” he said between gritted teeth and I shrugged a shoulder.

“Have your buddy drive fast,” I said, getting up into the back of the ambulance with her.

“Hey!” the cop called. “I need to know who you are! Get your statement!”

“Her boyfriend! Ask the guy behind you!” I called back, taking a seat and not letting go of Sandy’s hand.

The next few hours were both a blur and felt like they tookdays.

We rode to the nearest hospital and they kicked me out of her bay and made me go to the waiting room while they took her to imaging for a CT of her head and an x-ray for her shoulder.

I got on the horn with LaCroix who was waiting for my call.

“I’m on my way to get your bike,” he said when I finished filling him in. “Axe is with it. Do you want him to ride to you and sit with you or do you just want me to send Hex in the truck?”

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