Biker's Claim: The Broken Angel is Mine

Chapter 4

Gunner POV

The ride had been good, a week across the countryside, blowing away the cobwebs, while finding the guys that betrayed us and dealing with them. No one brings drugs into our town, not now, not ever. Drugs were a personal decision, and believe it or not, most of us in our club were clean. We prefer not to have hard drugs in our town.

We had just stopped for lunch when our President received a call that someone was shooting between this town and ours, and to be careful. He said he was some random shooter, taking potshots at all who passed. Truckee called them in, said he blew out some tyres and nearly lost the load on the road. He was stuck on the side of the road near town, worried the shooter would hit him, so he was not getting out of his truck.

There were sixty of us out on this ride. We left in small groups, and I drew the short straw so that I would leave last. We had an intercom we could use, and we set it to the same channel. We often use different channels to talk to our mates, like I don’t want to hear what one of the guys got up to last night with some random chick, but have mine tuned to the President and VP, officers, as more are already with a permanent woman, so the chances of talking about banging some chick won’t happen on this channel. Among the officers, only the two of us are not yet with a woman. Me, because no woman has caught my attention enough to want more than a release, and Taser, our barman, because he gets to see all that goes on with the women, and he rarely uses the club woman for his release.

I took my time to finish my lunch, watching the guys leave in groups. I hope they find the son of a biatch. When the last one had left, I got up and headed to my bike. I was not in a hurry, not yet. I was listening to the guys on the intercom as I rode, trying to enjoy the last few hours of the ride, while they gave me insights into what they found, so far, no sign of the shooter or the truck that was hit. Maybe the truck was closer to town than we thought.

Quickly, I ate up the road on my bike, not excessively, just a little over the limit, enjoying the ride, I was looking about as I rode, hoping not to see the shooter while on my own.

I had just after I passed a jeep, with rock music blaring, when my tyre blew, and I had to fight to stay on the road, glad it was the back tyre and not the front, which would have been deadly, most likely send me spiraling off the bike at speed, not a good end for me. If I lived through it, I would be in a mountain of pain.

At a lower speed, the bike hit the dirt on the side of the road and bucked me off. I flew over the handlebars and was swearing like a trooper before landing hard on my shoulder, sending pain across my body. Lucky that my bike went in a different direction.

“Buddy, where are you? What happened? On my way back,” Voices were calling out to me as I tried to get my breath back. I told them what I knew, and they would be back in two minutes. That’s too many minutes too long, if that shooter was close by. I heard a dirt bike in the trees, and my gut told me that it was the shooter, and I warned my guys of the direction I heard the bike and to be careful.

When the most gorgeous girl I had ever seen brought my attention back to where I was lying, she was talking softly to me, not touching me, yet her assessing gaze was roaming over my body. Did she like what she saw?

I shook my head, cleared my dirty thoughts, and listened. She’s a nurse. How lucky am I? To have a nurse here with me. Can’t say that happens very often. When she leaned in to fix my shoulder, which I knew was going to hurt as much as it did, when I fell, her perfume filled my nose, a sort of vanilla smell, not overpowering like many girls’ perfumes are at the club; this was more subtle, I took a deep breath, before she set my arm, and all the air rushed out of my lungs, and I nearly passed out from the sudden pain. Still, the pain reduced to something more bearable.

Just as I got my breath back, a red beam came searching for me, hunting for a kill shot, and I could do little to get out of range, but before my brain could come up with how to protect the woman or me, Cora jumped on me and took the shot.

I think she's out cold.

This woman just saved my life.

Making sure I held her tight and rolled over, I would gladly accept any more shots. This girl's done enough for me already; she’s a keeper. I wonder where she was headed before stopping to help.

I argued with my team as they arrived that the blood wasn’t mine before they started to work on Cora. I cringed when they cut up her jeans. She’s going to be pissed at that. Guess I owe her some new clothes. They must have hit the main blood vessel, because the moment the pressure of the tight jeans was released, she squirted out blood. They put a tourniquet on the upper thigh and bandaged her up the best they could; they still got her to our medical room.

I struggled to get up and looked at my broken bike as they loaded it on the back of a van that had just arrived. A man screaming was thrown in the back along with my bike, his hands tied behind his back, blood running from his nose, and his left shoulder where one of our guys shot him.

“This girl’s got a serious medical kit here, what is she?” Scrubs said as he inspected her kit and handed it to one of the guys to put it in her car, that one of them would drive to our compound. I thought I had already told him she was a nurse, but I guess he was too busy checking me out to give Cora a thought.

“Her name is Cora, an ED nurse. I want to be with her. I owe her my life,” I replied as I was helped back to the van and climbed in beside the pale, lifeless-looking Cora. She looked so vulnerable, and it was all my fault that her life changed so much. Quiet moans of pain came slipping out of her mouth as we hit several bumps along the road back to the clubhouse, and the larger bump at the gate. It was time to smooth out that entrance. I murmured to myself, feeling each bump causing pain in my shoulder, and wondered how much worse it was for her.

Scrubs carried Cora back to his first aid room, and I trailed behind him. He wanted to check my shoulder. I trusted that Cora had done a good job; she didn’t hesitate to offer to do it again. She sounded confident. That was enough for me.

I sat on a chair and watched as he removed Cora’s shoes and then her jeans completely and got to work removing the bullet from her leg. She didn’t squirm as he put a local in her thigh, and then, with a long tweezers-type instrument, started to dig around to find the bullet. A loud clunk in the metal tray signified he had removed it and was now suturing up her wound. It all looked so easy, so quick, but it felt like it took forever. I wanted Cora to rest in bed.

“You’re next.” Scrubs left Cora on the bed and turned to me, carefully removing my shirt and checking out my shoulder, then rotating it a little, making me grimace.

“That woman did an all-right job, not that I doubted her, with the type of medical gear she had in the kit. Want a sling?” I shook my head.

“Didn’t think so, it would heal faster if you did.” I didn’t put my shirt back on; I thought I would get a shower first, or I would have to struggle with it twice.

“Do you want the girl to stay here?”

“No, she can sleep with me.”

Scrubs chuckled. “Thought as much.”

“Can you carry her to my room? I don’t think I could carry a cup of coffee with that arm.” Scrubs carried Cora to my room and laid her carefully on my bed, before leaving me chuckling as he left the room. Close the door quietly as he went.