Rogue (Dead Man's Ink #2) Read Online Free PDF

time for you to decide if you were gonna come or not.”
    Cade scrubs his hand with his face, rolling his eyes. “Jesus, I told him he should go see the doc.” He ducks quickly behind the bar, where an overweight guy in an ACDC t-shirt is staring at me with eyes like saucers. It takes me a moment to realize why: I’m half freaking naked. It may be winter, but you wouldn’t know it by the temperature in New Mexico. I’ve been sweltering in Rebel’s airless, AC-less cabin. Shorts and tank tops have been my recent staple.
    The fact that my shirt is covered in blood really isn’t helping matters, either. I try to shrink inside my own skin as Cade grabs a small green case from somewhere underneath the counter, and then he’s vaulting over it and leading me out of the bar. I glance over my shoulder just in time to catch the hateful look being sent my way by a beautiful pink haired woman with tattoos. Her eyes narrow at me, and then she’s gone as I’m dragged out of the clubhouse and across the compound in the direction of the cabin.
    “Is he conscious?” Cade asks.
    “Was when I left him,” I pant. “There was blood on the floor, though. A lot of blood.”
    Cade just grunts. He lets me go and takes off without a backward glance to make sure I’m following. Again, I’m presented with the opportunity to escape.   Rebel is about to get help. Cade will either stitch him up or take him to get further medical attention. My usefulness in this situation is at an end. I should be ducking into the shadows and vanishing, even if I can’t get one of the cars to work and I have to walk to the next town.
    I take a deep breath, watching Cade growing smaller and smaller as he runs up the hill to Rebel’s place, and then I’m looking over my shoulder, out over the endless, scrubby desert between me and civilization…and I’m shaking my head.
    I could die out there. That’s not what stops me from running, though. It’s the fact that Rebel could die right here, right now and I would never know it.
    My head is swimming as I run up the hill behind Cade. I’ve lost my mind. I must be completely insane to be doing this. My father’s face flashes through my head as I summit the hill, running directly back into the place I’ve been desperate to escape from the past ten days. In my head, for some weird reason, my father is smiling.

THREE

    REBEL

    I can’t remember the last time I threw up. Certainly not for any reason other than being blind fucking drunk, anyway. I mean, yes, I suppose I do feel really drunk, but that’s because I’m losing copious amounts of blood and I can’t seem to stem the flow. I’m retching, head spinning, vision blurred when I see a dark shape coming toward me. Coming toward me fast.
    “Fuck me, man, what the hell?” It’s Cade. His voice reaches me, though it sounds muffled, like I’ve got cotton wool stuffed inside my ears. “Well, aren’t you in a state.”
    I weakly lift my right hand from the ground and flip him off. Cade laughs. “See why you sent for me now, jackass,” he says. “Guy gives you a couple of pints of blood in a foreign country and the next thing you know it’s five years later an’ he wants the damn stuff back. Indian giver .” He laughs under his breath, and my brain works sluggishly, trying to decipher what he’s talking about .
    Ah, yeah. That’s right. Afghanistan. We were in Afghanistan and he was shot. He’d lost a lot of blood. I gave him some of mine. The doctors performed a transfusion because we were the same blood type, and Cade was my brother and I wouldn’t just sit by and watch him die while we waited around for the bagged stuff to arrive.
    I’ve been fighting to stay upright, to stay awake, but now that he’s here, I feel like I can stop fighting so hard. The bastard won’t let me die, I know it. I fall back, my head bouncing off the floor, and then Cade’s hands are on my torso, spinning me over slowly so that I’m on my side.
    Pain washes