Free Oliver (Inked Menace MC 2) by Ryanne Hawk

started the van. A steady rumble soothed Oliver’s frayed nerves.
    “Do you hear that?” Amara said and jerked herself to sit upright, eyes wide as she looked left and right, then at her sister.
    “Hear what?” Oliver said.
    “The bloody ticking.”
    Maura stopped talking and tuned into their conversation as Hammer put the van in gear and started to back up.
    “Patrick, stop the van.”
    Hammer didn’t question her demand, which made Oliver hyper-focused, and then he heard it. The sound was so faint he marveled at Amara’s sensitive hearing. The van jerked to a stop as his president slammed it into park and glanced back at her with a brow raised. Maura tilted her head.
    A faint tick, tick, tick came from beneath where he and Amara sat.
    He glanced at her, and her face was scrunched, eyes closed,then they snapped open as her lips parted and she yelled, “Bomb!”
    Hammer and Maura didn’t hesitate. They jumped out of the front doors just as Oliver jumped up and slid open the back. A potent fear struck him at the loss of those few precious seconds.
    Tick, tick, tick.
    Amara was the last out, and as they rounded the back of the van, a blast of fire rained over them, sending them both flying through the air. Oliver reached out and tackled Amara to the ground about ten feet from the vehicle, rolling a few times to get further away, shielding her with his body as smoke, flames, and metal flew in every direction. A sonic boom shook the concrete under their cheeks, and the van exploded, sending a raging inferno over their bodies.
    They lay on the ground, stunned, as their ears rang. Oliver’s body burned as pieces of metal fell onto his pants and scorched holes through his jeans, singing his skin. He told his limbs to move.
    Amara lay still underneath him.
    He licked his lips and slid to the side. “Amara?” he croaked.
    She didn’t move.
    Oliver lifted his eyes and scanned the garage, spying Hammer and Maura about ten feet further ahead, both on the ground but alive, shaking their heads to clear the ringing. Hammer met his gaze, his eyes a burning gold matching the fire surrounding them. He nodded once and pressed a kiss to Maura’s cheek.
    “Amara?” He nudged her with his elbow. She didn’t flinch or call him names. Her face was tilted in the other direction. Oliver crawled onto all fours and moved around her body, and when he saw her face, he knew why she wasn’t answering.
    A huge lump was forming above her forehead, and her face was covered in dirt and grime from the ground.
    A second later, Maura was at his side and Hammer was by Amara’s feet, and on the count of three, they lifted her body and carefully maneuvered her to a much safer distance from the heat and wreckage.
    “Who did this?” Maura seethed through gritted teeth. She smoothed her sister’s hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ears a they all waited for her to wake up.
    Oliver pressed a hand to Amara’s heart to assure himself she was alive. Her head rested in his lap as he cradled her body and he fervently sent a prayer up to the collective universe to heal her.
    Her breaths were shallow, but steady, as her animal worked inside to repair the damage caused by the explosion.
    “The authorities will be here soon. There’s no way this went unnoticed,” Hammer said. “We’ve got to move.”
    “I know,” Oliver said and carefully lifted Amara into his arms. For a normal human, carrying dead weight would have been hard, but thanks to his shifter strength, he carried her with no issues. “Where should we go?”
    “Who do we trust?” Maura countered. “Was this done by our own, or is LexCorp around and watching?”
    None of them had an answer for that.
    Oliver’s mind worked double time and he said, “Call Flip. Fill him in and ask him to find us a safe location on the down low. Ask him not to alert the others that there was a problem. Not yet. Not until we know what we’re dealing with.”
    Hammer nodded, pulled out a