HARDCORE: Storm MC(67)

Hunter, Tinny, and Cain were followed by Bones, who was pressing the barrel of his gun against the temple of a skinny man with a gruesome-looking stomach wound. The rest of the Blood Eagles filed in behind them, and the last one locked the door.



“Missy, go into the office and stay there for a bit, okay?” Hunter said as he and Tinny laid Cain out on a table. “We're gonna need some space in here, and there's probably some cash that needs counting.”



Under normal circumstances, Missy might have made a sarcastic remark about being dismissed like this, but one look in Hunter's eyes told her how serious this situation was and how much he was trying to conceal his own fear. From the state Cain was in, she wasn't surprised. He looked like he'd been run over by five trucks.



So Missy nodded briskly and headed to the office, listening as Hunter continued to bark orders.



“Bones, take that fuckin' cumstain to the supply room an' tie him up good an' tight. Then grab some rags from the bar an' see what you can do about plugging up the hole in his belly. We don't want him bleedin' out too fast.”



“Please just kill me if you're gonna,” the skinny man whined. “Just do it, come on, if that's what you're gonna do anyway then just get it over with, don't hurt me, don't do nothin' to meeeeee...” His quavering voice rose into a high-pitched wail at the end.



Bones ignored this as he snatched some towels from the bar and dragged the man into the supply room, slamming the door behind him.



Missy entered the office and closed the door most of the way, leaving just enough of a crack for her to peer through. She may have gone along with being banished, but she had no intention of counting out crinkled bills and pretending nothing was going on in the next room.



She had never interacted much with Cain, but she knew how much Hunter valued him as a friend and VP. She was worried about how Hunter would take it if Cain didn't pull through.



When Eagles had been hurt by others in the past, Hunter had flown into nuclear rages, coming at their enemies straight away and spraying bullets indiscriminately until no one was left alive. He'd been lucky with these scorched-earth retaliation tactics before, and they were part of the reason why the Eagles regarded him as such a strong leader.



But Missy worried that eventually, Hunter's blind fury would make him lead such a charge against a gang that was big enough, armed enough, or organized enough to respond by completely annihilating the Eagles, down to the last man.



And right now, she was looking at the state Cain was in and how Hunter was taking it, and wondering whether she was watching the first domino fall.



Missy watched as Tinny ran a couple of towels under cold water and brought them over to Cain, gently wiping the blood from his face. A potbellied ginger with close-cropped hair and a round baby face, Tinny had served in Afghanistan as an Army medic, and he'd proved himself useful when Eagles got in crashes or needed bullets dug out of their flesh. But whether he could treat someone this badly beaten remained to be seen, and judging from the look in Tinny's eyes, he wasn't so sure himself.



Under all the blood, though, Cain's face didn't look quite as badly damaged as Missy had expected, and she even heard a couple of Eagles let out sighs of relief.



“Well, Cain, you won't be moonlighting as a runway model anytime soon,” Tinny said, “but you've still got two eyes, two ears, and an intact jaw from the look of it, so that's something, at least. It doesn't even seem like your skull or cheekbones got any fractures, which is a miracle given the beating you took. You've got some deep lacerations, but nothing a few dozen stitches won't take care of.”



“Good,” Cain nodded. He licked his swollen lips, wincing with pain. His eyes still looked surprisingly alert considering the head trauma he'd suffered. “Can you splint the arm?” he asked.



“Sure, I can,” Tinny replied. “It looks like a pretty clean break. But the arm isn't the problem. It's those ribs.”



“Tape 'em, then,” Cain said.



Tinny let out a sardonic chuckle. “Well, shit,” he said, “here I've been patching guys up for the club for what, six years? And it turns out you were a damn doctor the whole time. Your ribs aren't just broken, Cain. Some of them look like they may have splintered inward. If I start tightening bandages around them, it could drive them further into your body and end up skewering vital organs. And besides, you might already have internal bleeding, which I'm not equipped to detect or treat from here. You need a hospital.”



“I'll be fine,” Cain insisted. “Now that I've had a chance to get my shit together, I feel a lot better already. So just do what you need to do with the arm and the head and the ribs, and I'll rest up for a day before going to dish out a little fucking payback.”