“I’m sorry,” he finally said, reaching across the table with his palm up. He wanted me to place my hand in his, so he could reel me back in. I wasn’t in the mood.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said.
“I didn’t take you with me at first because I didn’t know where I’d land. I wanted to get my feet under me, make sure no one was gunning for me, then contact you again.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Well now I got a job. In Kentucky. Mechanic. Nice town, good people. You’ll like it there. And we’ll be safe. I’m legit now. I promise. No more hustling, just you and me starting over all legal and shit.”
I would have given anything to hear this before I met Lance. Now those dream words had soured before they could reach my ears. “Okay,” was all I said.
“I love you, Tara.”
Crap, he was pleading now. I glanced up to see his puppy dog eyes. The ones that never failed to make me soften. Except I wasn’t the same Tara.
“I love you too. But you need to understand I’m not getting over this in five minutes just because you say nice things to me. It might be a while. And you need to let me be upset for as long as it takes me.”
That hurt him. I could see the pain slash through his features before he covered it up.
I sighed. “Please don’t do that. Don’t make me feel guilty for not accepting your apology—”
“That’s not it,” he said swiftly, his eyes roaming to the window. “It hurts me to see you like this, and know that I’m the cause. I’m pissed at myself. Not at you.”
That was not what I expected him to say. Maybe he had changed a bit during his exile. “I—okay.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked, then he smoothed his features. “You ready to go? We have a drive ahead of us.”
“Yeah,” I said, eager to get out of this booth that reminded me of Lance. Eager to get to the other side of mourning the loss of us.
Bryan tossed some bills on the table, sent a smile and a wink to the waitress—she nearly swooned—and then we were outside in the night air walking toward a massive white truck in the corner of the lot. He beeped the locks and grinned at me. “Like her?”
“She’s pretty.” A Dodge Ram. A massive one that probably cost a pretty penny. My brother did always like the finer things in life.
The interior was amazing—soft leather and completely clean. My brother not only liked the finer things, but he took care of the things he owned, always had. Usually, I fell under that umbrella too.
He started up the truck, and pulled out of the lot. We were on a two-lane deserted highway within a few minutes, and Bryan began to babble about the town we were driving too. He knew the population size, which grocery store had the best produce, everything. He was thorough, but his voice was putting me to sleep. I leaned against the door and blinked at the lights of an oncoming car in the distance before looking at Bryan. “I think I’m going to sleep.”
“Sure. I got a blanket in the cab if you need it.”
I was about to reach back for it when the headlights of the oncoming car crossed over the center line in front of us. “Um, wow, are they drunk?”
Bryan laid on his horn. “Fuckers are gonna hit us head-on.”
He swerved the wheel farther to the shoulder, but then the car did the funniest thing. It swerved with us.
“Bryan!” I reached out and latched a hand on his thigh. Something wasn’t right. Deep in my gut, I knew, and Bryan did too. Because he cursed and slammed on his brakes, but it wasn’t quick enough, we didn’t have enough time, because the car coming for us was playing a game of chicken they intended to win.
“Bryan!” I screamed again as the headlights barreled toward us.
Whatever Bryan yelled back was cut off by the car slamming into the front of Bryan’s truck at an angle, the impact centering on his left headlight. I tried to cover my face with my arms, but the force of the hit sent Bryan’s truck careening off the road, down the shoulder. My head slammed into the passenger side window. I yelped in pain as my skull protested and something sharp slashed into my arm.
Then the truck was rolling, side over side, down some sort of gorge. Glass shattered, metal screeched. Men shouted. As soon as the truck came to a stop, I tried to get my bearings, but I had no idea which way was up or down. I blinked and told my foggy brain to focus. The truck was on its side, Bryan closer to the ground. I was higher, held in place by my seatbelt. I glanced down to see Bryan’s face drenched in blood, but his eyes were open, lips moving. I shook my head, not sure if I couldn’t hear or if he wasn’t making any sound. Finally I heard him sputter, “Tara. You okay?”
“Bry,” I answered, but didn’t get to say anything else, because my door was wrenched open and I was hauled out of the truck.
My heart soared. Rescue? We’d be okay. It was then I looked up and into Reb’s eyes. “Reb?” I asked. How the hell was he here? Oh well, didn’t matter. He’d take care of us. “We need to get to a hospital. Bryan’s bleeding—”
Reb cut me off with a firm grip around my bicep. It hurt, but I added it to all the other hurts I was feeling. “Ouch, not so tight.”
“I have her,” he said, and it took me a moment to realize he wasn’t speaking to me. He was speaking to two other men. I blinked to see them illuminated by the headlights of yet a third car—one that hadn’t hit us. What was going on?
Reb’s deep voice rumbled against me, still talking to the two other men. “Don’t give a fuck what you do to him, just do it far away, do it clean, and hide everything.”
Wait what? I twisted in his grip. “Reb? What’s going on?”
The two other men were pulling Bryan from the wreckage of his truck, and he looked dazed, the entire right side of his face dripping with blood that gleamed in the beam of the headlights. He looked at Reb, cocked his head, and opened his mouth.
He never got to speak, because one of the men holding him punched him in the gut. He fell to his knees, gasping for breath, and I went wild. “What the fuck?” I tried to get out of Reb’s grasp, to run to my injured brother who was writhing on the ground. “Reb, do something!”
But Reb didn’t do anything. Not one thing. He stared down at my brother—his fucking best friend—like Bryan was dirt.
Reb spat on the ground, then turned to me. “Time to go, babe.”
“What?” I shrieked. “I’m not going anywhere with you! I’m not going anywhere without Bryan! And don’t call me babe!”
Reb made a tsk sound. “Sorry, but Bryan’s about to be very dead in about twenty minutes.”
“Reb,” Bryan coughed, rolling onto his hands and knees. He stared up at his former best friend, pain and agony etched in every line of his handsome face. “Don’t do this. I took the fall for you. left you alone. You have my territory—”
“I know about the safety deposit box,” Reb said quietly.
Bryan’s face paled, and that made my heart lurch. What was in that box?
“Keeping insurance?” Reb said in a bitter tone.
“It wasn’t like that,” Bryan tried to crawl toward Reb, but a man near him kicked him in the ribs.
“Don’t kick him!” I hollered surging forward, and Reb’s hold on me tightened. He shot me a look unlike anything I’d ever seen from him—eyes dark and glittering, mouth thinned to a cruel line. How had I ever found him handsome? Right now, he was ugly as sin. My breath stalled in my lungs.
Reb focused back on my brother. “Always kept it gentle with Tara. With you around, knew I couldn’t move fast, couldn’t be the man I wanted to be with her. But now? Now she’s mine, Bryan. Big brother won’t be around anymore to keep me in check. She’ll empty that deposit box for me—because yes, I know her name is on it—and then I’ll have her all to myself.”
“What happened to you?” Bryan shook his head and spat out a wad of dark spit. “Fuck, Reb. What are you doing? Let’s forget all this. Get me up. I’ll go back to where I was. You don’t need Tara, man. You get enough pussy. Just let us le
ave. I’ll pretend this never happened.”
Reb held his gaze for a while, and I thought he was caving. Bryan did too, as his face changed, a small smile curving his lips.
Then Reb jerked my arm toward a waiting truck. “Take care of him,” he ordered his men.
I went into panic mode. “Nooooo!” I screamed. I shrieked, I roared. I went limp, so Reb had to drag me, then I fought like a wildcat to get back to my brother. He was screaming my name too, even as the two men dragged him away from me, landing as many blows to his already broken body as they could.
A hand wrenched in my hair. “Shut the fuck up, bitch.” Reb shouted in my face. My brother yelled again. Then something crashed into the side of my head, and the world went black. The last thing I heard was Bryan’s agonized voice crying my name.
Fourteen
Lance
I’d made bad decisions. Plenty of them. A multitude of them. Ones that changed my life in ways I’d never be the same. I knew that all too fucking well.
Driving away from that diner leaving behind Tara’s sad eyes and Bryan’s guilt-ridden tension felt like a mistake I’d never recover from. A mistake that would break me more than living behind bars. It felt like a movie that ended too soon. The credits were rolling but there’d been no resolution. I didn’t want to walk out of that theater. I wanted to march right up to the projector room and demand they show the rest of the movie.
My fingers twitched on the steering wheel. Fuck I was exhausted. How long had I been up? I couldn’t remember that last time I’d gotten a decent night of sleep. Maybe that first night Tara slept in my bed. The coffee in my empty stomach was making me feel wired, jumpy.
I didn’t even know where I was going. Back to Waterstone? Why? To live in that warehouse with the memories of Tara? I could go to Hal and listen as he reamed me for walking away from her. Because he would. I knew it.
I could start over. Find another bar and another woman and hope I forgot about what I’d walked away from. But the longer I drove, the more I couldn’t remember why I was driving.
Not gonna fight for her?
Bryan’s words filtered back into my brain. At the time I thought he’d been goading me, but now I wondered if that had been a test. A test in which I’d failed. Maybe he had wanted me to fight for her, to prove that I hadn’t used her to get to him. I resented proving anything to Bryan. But now I wondered if I’d answered differently…where would I be now?
I didn’t think any more. I didn’t second guess myself. With a slam of the brakes, and a squeal of the tires, I wrenched the steering wheel to the left. Just like that, I crossed the center line in a U-turn and was on my way back to the diner.
Fuck this. Fuck a future without Tara. Fuck librarians named Samantha. I didn’t want that. I wanted her.
My speed crept to eighty as I fumbled around for my phone on the passenger seat while keeping an eye on the road. It was then I spotted a car on the side of the road. I hadn’t noticed that car on the way here, although a few vehicles had passed me on my way out. My headlights caught on skid marks on the road, then tire tracks leading off the shoulder into a deep gorge.
I slowed down, something souring in my gut. I rolled to a stop behind the car, not sure why, just knowing something happened here and that something was not good. Call it sixth sense, call it whatever, but I couldn’t drive by. Knowing Bryan and Tara were near, with the kind of heat Bryan had on him, that not good feeling deepened until I felt sick.
I turned off the engine, pulled my gun out the glovebox where I’d stowed it, and slowly stepped out of my car. My boots crunched on the gravel of the shoulder, and I tried to lighten my steps. I peered down the gorge to see a truck on its side. It was turned off, headlights dark, but the muddy tracks showed me this wreck was fresh. And that truck? It’d been parked outside the diner. I’d clocked that vehicle as something flashy Bryan would drive. My pulse beat loudly in my ears.
I slid down the gorge and peered into the truck. When I flashed the light of my phone inside, the beam caught on blood. Blood on each seat. But no people.
That sour in my gut turned to poison.
That was when I heard voices. The gorge led into a wooded area with weeds up to my knees, out of control vines climbing tree trunks. I headed into the trees and toward the voices, gun drawn and out in front of me. My heart pounded, and I had to rub my damp palms on my jeans before I regripped my gun.
I heard the deep guttural tone of a man, speaking so low I couldn’t decipher his words. Then came the unmistakable sound of Bryan’s voice. He was pissed, his words slightly slurred. “Fuck you,” he said. “You guys think you know what’s going on, but you have no fucking clue. Reb’s playing all of you.”
“Shut your mouth.” The sound of flesh hitting flesh filled the air, and I flinched.
Coughing followed that, followed by Bryan’s voice. “Your funeral.”
“No, it’s yours.”
I slipped behind a tree and peered around it to a small clearing. Bryan knelt on the ground on all fours, like he’d just fallen there. He glared up at two men, one who had his gun drawn, pointed at Bryan’s forehead. Blood dripped from Bryan’s face, and his breathing was labored, chest heaving. I glanced around but didn’t see Tara. No. Fucking. Tara.
My hands tightened on my gun.
Bryan lifted his head, and he spoke through gritted teeth. “You better make sure I’m dead then, pump me full of all the lead you got, because I will stop at nothing to get my sister back from Reb, you fucking pieces of shit.”
At Bryan’s words, my entire body jolted. A twig under my feet cracked, and the man pointing his gun on Bryan looked up and met my gaze.
I didn’t think, didn’t hesitate. I lifted my gun, pointed it at him as he swung his gun toward me, and I fired. The man’s body jerked back on a yelp, an arc of blood sprayed into the air, glittering in the moonlight, just as Bryan launched himself from a crouch at the other man. I sprinted toward them just as another gunshot went off, and I skidded to a halt to see Bryan stumbling to his feet, the other man’s gun in his hand, the top of that man’s head blown clear off.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I whispered, unsure how it happened that ten seconds ago, these men were living and now one had half his head missing while the other was twitching, a pool of blood spreading out below his body in the weeds. His neck was a massive wound where the bullet had ripped clean through.
Bryan fell to his knees beside the man I’d shot, the one who was still alive. “Where’d he take her?” He screamed in the man’s face. “Where!?”
The man didn’t answer. Blood gurgled out of his mouth. We both knew he wouldn’t be answering.
“Fuck,” Bryan spat. He rolled to his feet and kicked the man’s body. “Motherfucking shit!”
I’d killed that man. This time hadn’t been a mistake. I’d aimed, and I’d fired. But I’d have to cleanse my soul in another lifetime. I met Bryan’s gaze and that was when I saw that the charming Bryan Drayer was gone, and in his place was a man scared shitless. If Bryan Drayer was scared shitless, then I knew shit was bad. It was worse than two dead men at my feet. It was worse than Tara gone. It meant she wasn’t safe.
I finally found my voice, but only to whisper a hoarse. “Where is she?”
That was when his body bucked, and he shuffled toward me. He grasped my shoulders with blood-soaked fingers. His face was swelling like crazy, which was why his words were a bit garbled. “Reb took her. Reb fucking took her.”
I remembered Reb in the parking lot, the way he watched Tara. I’d known deep down in my soul that man wasn’t good, that seeing Tara at my side wasn’t something he wanted to tolerate. He wanted her back. But he wanted her back enough to put a bullet in his best friend?
Bryan swayed into me, eyes locked on mine. “No idea why you’re here or how or why but we gotta get her back. If you are who you say you are, and she’s to you what you say she is, you gotta help me.”
I shook his hands off me and he staggered. “
Of course I’ll help you. But let’s be clear. I was on my way back to fight for her. We do this, and you walk away. You let us be us.”
“You can shove your happiness down my throat every goddamn day as long as we get her back,” he said, his voice cracking.
I nodded toward the bodies on the ground. “What’ll we do with them?”
“Get me to your car, and I’ll make some calls.”
“Can you walk?” I asked.
“Kinda. Reb and his crew ran us off the road. That fucked me up, then his fucking soldiers fucked me up more.” He was holding his entire body funny and I had no doubt he was in pain.
“Let’s get to my car. Then you gotta start making some fucking calls, Drayer.”
He nodded. I wrapped an arm around his waist while he draped his over my shoulder. He took pained breaths with every step, and I started to wonder how the hell he was still conscious. “What’s broken?” I asked.
“What isn’t?” he wheezed. “Nose isn’t feeling good. Hard to breathe so I probably got some messed up ribs.”
Climbing up the gorge was near impossible. Bryan tried to help me so I wasn’t dragging him, but if his curses were any indication, his body wasn’t listening to his brain. It didn’t help that he had a massive head wound which had only just begun to clot.
Finally we made it the car, where I eased him into the passenger seat. I sprinted around the other side, and then we were peeling out onto the road as Bryan dug in his pockets for his phone.
“Talk to me,” I said. “Because last I heard, you and Reb were tight. Now he’s got your sister and ordered his soldiers to whack you on the side of the road.”
Bryan pulled out his phone, lips moving as his thumbs flew across his phone. “Texted a guy. He’ll deal with the bodies and tow my truck.”
Of course Bryan had a fucking guy who dealt with bodies. Jesus Christ.
Hidden Truths (Boots Book 1) Page 12