Page 3 of Poisoning Ivy
The fucker looks like a lawyer who failed out of school but got hired on at daddy’s firm anyway. But when I step up in front of them, he doesn’t jump to his feet to begin defending himself. Instead, his dark eyes turn to me, looking inconvenienced by my sheer existence.
Nancy and Warren Giles, whose pickup I recognized as soon as I saw it, came toward me at once.
“How’s it going, captain?” Warren nods, holding out his hand for me to shake.
“Better if I were still in bed.” I tell him honestly. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“Yes,” Nancy nods. “Of course. We were behind the semi, coming home from my bridge game, and then it all happened. He tried to avoid the car, but we didn’t have enough time to…” Her voice breaks as she covers her mouth with her hands to stifle a sob. “The woman in the car. She’s still trapped in there. Is she okay?”
I turn to Rob, who shrugs, looking dubious. “No one told me there was still someone trapped.”
“Hey, Slick,” I snap, moving before the pseudo-lawyer and snapping my fingers to get him to look up. “You had a passenger in your car?”
The man blinks at me stupidly before anger flushes across his face, turning it scarlet. “Who the fuck are you?”
“You should be more worried about what will happen to you if you don’t answer my questions. You were driving the Jetta.” It’s not a question, but he nods anyway. “Is there someone still trapped in the car?”
“Yeah,” he nods. “My wife.”
“Don’t look too worried.” I roll my eyes, striding the distance to where the Hyundai came to a stop. The passenger door is still open from where the sobbing woman must have crawled out—the driver’s side is pinned against the Jetta, but even through thewebs of glass coating both windows, I can see the blood, rivers of red running down the shattered mess.
There’s a lot of it.
The adrenaline sends a surge of my own blood rushing to my cock in anticipation of what I may find in the carnage. Nothing gets me hard like the sight of blood, so vibrant and red. I’ve seen some shit in my days, but nothing gets me quite like the splatter of it decorating walls like a Jackson Pollock.
I’m suddenly grateful I brought CiCi with me—I may need her services to drain my cock once I get this little bird patched up and on her way to the hospital.
The only thing second to the sight of blood (and taking a life) is the rush ofsavinga life.
The thought makes me hard, but I ignore it as I brace myself against the hood of the Hyundai and catapult myself over it to the Jetta adjacent. Shards of glass from the broken windshield bite into my palms as I crawl up the center of it, moving up the hood to where a mess of red hair is splayed against the dash.
“Ma’am?” I say, prompting her for any sort of response. “Ma’am, are you with me?”
There’s not a sound from her, but as I brush the hair from her face, I notice that, despite the chill to her skin, she’s not cold or lifeless yet. I reach for her wrist, crawling the last inch across the hood to get to her, and note the way her wrist curves, clearly broken. Compound fracture, and she’s lucky it didn’t break through her flesh, though bone protruding from her fair skin would certainly be a beautiful sight.
Her pulse is weak when I find it, which isn’t much of a shock given the sea of blood inside the car. If I’m going to save her, I’ve got to get her out of here quickly so I can assess where the puncture is and stem the flow. There are no obvious signs of trauma to her chest and nothing pinning her in place, so I thread my arms beneath hers and drag her toward me.
The hood is hot beneath the exposed skin on my stomach from where my shirt rode up, and the smell of gasoline perfumes the air, though I can’t tell which car exactly it’s coming from. There’s a good chance that the ticking under the hood is a threat as real as the smell of gasoline—a literal ticking time bomb.
She’s limp and light as I drag her out the windshield, throwing her over my shoulder so that I can crawl off the Jetta, over the Hyundai, and deliver her safely on the opposite side of the road where the ambulance waits for my call. It’s exactly what I do, breaking every protocol established because when you’re the chief, you call the shots. Moving her is a calculated risk, and one I’ll accept the consequences of if she ends up dying.
Nora rushes at me as I emerge from the wreckage, ready to triage, but I shepherd her away with my other arm. I’m pretty positive one of those cars is going to blow—maybe even multiple of them. Rob backs everyone up to the forest line, his arms out as he calls out instructions. The husband doesn’t run to me or sink to his knees in gratitude. He doesn’t look too concerned at all, honestly, as I lay his wife on the gurney set out by Ros and John, taking a few tentative steps forward. When I set her on it, they crowd in, assessing vital function and wounds.
I’m about to hop off the back of the rig and send them off when something in me tells me to turn back around, that I’ve missed something crucial. I do it, scanning her body for obvious wounds, and then move the hair, sticky with blood, from her face.
The explosion of the cars rocks my world at the same time the revelation does.
I know this woman.
Chapter three
Theo
“What do you mean, she’sback?” Monty asks, glaring at Killian as if he brought her here himself.
“I mean, she’s fuckingback. It was her.” Killian shakes his head, his jaw set in rage. And yet, as pissed as I can tell he is, his eyes are burning with an excitement we don’t often get from him. He’s usually only so alive in the moments before and after he kills, feeding his demons. He barely even does that nowadays. “And she’s fucking married to a pretentious lawyer prick who doesn’t give a fuck about her.”
“I don’t care.” I shrug, popping the top off my beer and letting the cap clatter to the bar. “Who gives a fuck about that bitch?”
