In Dark Woods (Signal Bend Series #4.5) Read Free Page A

back, locked into a dead body, doomed to spend the rest of his years shitting the bed.
    He didn’t even have his hands so he could pull a trigger.
    The doctor regarded Isaac quietly for a few more seconds. Then he turned to Lilli. “I’ve arranged for a rehabilitation therapist to stop by in the next day or two. She’ll talk to you both, get some information, and set some goals. Then she’ll make a therapy plan.”
    He turned back to Isaac. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You still have a great deal of healing to do. You survived severe trauma, Isaac. There was extensive organ damage, nerve damage, skeletomuscular damage. Your first priority is simply basic healing. Then we’ll see where we are.”
    “Yeah.”
    If where ‘we’ were was on ‘our’ back in this fucking bed, then it didn’t fucking matter.
     
    ~oOo~
     
    Lilli smiled down at him. “Hey. You’re awake.” She kissed his cheek, and he lifted his head as much as he could, trying to prolong the contact. “Show’s here. I’m going to step out and let you talk.”
    “Don’t go.”
    “Just right outside, love. Promise.” She brushed the backs of her fingers over his cheek; he turned into her touch. Then she backed away, and Show moved up.
    “Hey, boss.”
    “Lilli told me how I got here.” He still had no memory of it himself. The last thing he remembered was pulling Havoc and Len off of Shiv. “How fucked are we?”
    “You sure you’re up for this already?”
    “How. Fucked. Are we?”
    A faint grin twitched on Show’s mouth, and he nodded. “We gotta step back and see. Ceej and Vic—that’s done. Lilli saved you—don’t know how she told it, but she put a bullet in Ceej’s head. Crack shot.”
    Saved him for what ? That was the question now.
    Show went on, “The Scorps are gone. I think we’re okay.”
    “How?” He had talked to Sam—it was one of the last things he’d done on two legs—and Sam had been implacable. He wanted the Horde patched over. Period. When Rick had come in, told them that a brawl was on in the Hall, Isaac had been telling Sam that a patch-over vote would happen over his dead body.
    Ironic, that.
    Show cleared his throat, and his eyes dropped from Isaac’s. If he could have felt his spine, Isaac would have felt a chill run its length; Show was not a man who looked away.
    “We…we made a deal.”
    Fuck. They did patch over. Fuck. Oh, Jesus fuck.
    “What kind of deal?”
    Now Show faced Isaac, his eyes a riot of emotion. “Bart’s patching over to the Scorpions LA charter.”
    “What? Why?”
    “He can work the intel from L.A., stay on top of the media at its source. Sam gets a top-shelf hacker on the west coast.” Show hesitated. “And somebody near at hand he can hurt if our shit gets in his way.”
    “A hostage? No. No fucking way.” Bart couldn’t handle that heat. He was just a kid—well, he was thirty, but he might as well be just a kid. The shit they’d had to do in the fight with Ellis had fucked him up hard. And the Scorpions were into much heavier shit. “No, Show. Get in the way of that. They’ll tear him apart.”
    Show dropped his eyes again. “It’s done, boss. It’s done. It was Bart’s call. Hell, he came to us with it. His call.”
    “Christ. It’s wrong, Show. It’s fuckin’ wrong.”
    And it was all on him. He had failed his club. He’d failed Bart. And there was nothing he could do about it. Trapped in a body that had abandoned him, he could not lead the Horde.
    He could not be Horde.
    Ride or die.
    He couldn’t ride.
     

THREE
     
    For the first time in nearly a month, Lilli went home. Fall had come on while she’d been sitting at Isaac’s bedside, and she sat in the passenger seat of Show’s truck and watched the brilliant colors of the woods go by. It seemed strange to her that the world had been going on its way, turning on its axis, moving around the sun, all this time.
    Show knew her well and didn’t try to start a conversation. He drove,