“I— Yeah, maybe,” Adam said, shrugging in a casual manner belying the seriousness of the problem. “Once we’re finished with the tracks we’re putting down, Nate and I are going to visit my family for a few days, anyway. By then the cops should have caught the gunman and everything will return to normal.”
“And what if it’s not okay?” Morgan asked. “What if this guy is after you? Shouldn’t you tell the cops?”
“We’ve already reported the shooting and the break-ins,” Adam said. “There’s not much more we can do.”
“I agree we should take care with security,” Cade said. “That’s not stupid. Even if we tell the cops our suspicions, Adam’s right in saying there’s not much they can do. We’ll have to play it by ear and watch out for each other. Think, have you pissed anyone off lately?”
“No one!” Adam said.
“Past lovers?” Nate asked.
“Good one, Nate.” Morgan sniggered. “That’s a good way of worming info out of him about his love life.”
“Nate knows about my past,” Adam said. “We don’t have any secrets.”
“You kept secrets from us,” J.T. reminded them. “And we’re your best friends.”
Nate kept driving, not wanting to add anything else. It was Adam’s place to tell them about Kokopelli if he wanted to. He’d done his job and made them aware of security. At this stage, there was nothing more they could do.
“Have you reached the assassin to cancel the contract?” Lara asked.
Justin winced, resenting the reminder of his failure to put right his wrongs. “I’ve tried. The contact number I have goes to voice mail. I’ve left several messages, and I’ve tried the email contact.”
Lara set a mug of coffee in front of him, a frown on her pretty face. Justin hated seeing the scowl and would do anything to make it disappear. He’d thought he’d been happy before. He’d been wrong. Happiness was holding Lara. Happiness was spending time with his wife, making love with her. He’d never felt such a connection before and thanked the gods every day for bringing her into his life. Thank goodness she’d relaxed her rule about sleeping in the same room.
“You should contact your brother. Tell him what you’ve done.”
Justin realized his mouth was agape and shut it firmly. “I…” He trailed off, closing his eyes to marshal his thoughts. He knew Lara was right, knew it with every ounce of his soul, but he couldn’t. Lara didn’t know how hard he’d tried to shoot his brother. He would have done it, gone through with the murder if the other park visitors hadn’t interrupted him. But that was then. He’d changed in such a short time. He didn’t want Adam dead now. While he didn’t want to give up the prestige of being Kokopelli, he wanted to do a good job now instead of exploiting people in exchange for his benevolence. Hell, listen to him. Lara had changed him. Six months ago, he’d never imagined being in this position.
“My brother and I parted on bad terms. I’m not sure he’ll agree to speak with me.”
“We will visit him in person,” Lara said firmly. She smiled then, a mysterious curve to her lips. Her hand slid over her belly, and in that instant Justin knew. His heart beat in three hard pumps of anticipation.
“Are you—?”
“We’re going to have a baby, Justin.”
Justin sprang off his chair and dragged her into his arms, squeezing her in his exuberance. A father. He couldn’t believe it had happened so soon. Oh, he’d hoped, but he’d expected it to take time. He was going to be a father.
Lara was beaming when she pulled back. So pretty. Her cheeks glowed, and he’d never loved her more. “We need to tell your brother. Do you know where he is now?”
“In Wyoming, I think. That’s where he was the last time I checked. He has a band called Stampede. If we can find the band, where they’re playing, then we should find Adam.”
“I will do a search on the Internet as soon as we finish our dinner.”
“All right. You find Adam, and I’ll go to visit him.”
“No,” Lara said. “I’m going to visit your brother with you.”
“No!” Justin said, fear rippling through him. “No. It’s dangerous. I don’t want anything to happen to you, to the baby.”
“Justin, you put a contract out on your brother. At some point, you wanted your brother dead. The least we can do is to warn him.” Her small chin lifted in determination, and Justin sighed. He knew what that look meant. Sometimes Lara would discuss things, let him persuade her from her course of action, but this was her stubborn look. The look that told him she’d dig her toes in and refuse to divert her path. She wanted him to talk to Adam and intended to witness their meeting.
Justin thought about the assassin lurking in the shadows, his gun—the man’s preferred method of execution—trained on Adam, trailing his every move. What if he shot Lara by mistake while they were with Adam?
Oh, hell.
Justin forced a smile and nodded, even though acute fear lay in the pit of his stomach. He’d die if anything happened to Lara. Maybe he could contact the police, tell them about the assassin and the man’s target. No! No, he couldn’t do that. They’d ask questions, want to know how he knew.
“What? What are you thinking?”
“Maybe I could ring the police and leave them an anonymous tip?”
“Wouldn’t that cause trouble if the assassin learned you’d passed on information about him?” Lara sounded worried, and he realized how lucky he was that she was still talking to him, still believed in him despite all the bad things he’d done in his life. Meeting Lara and marrying her was a second chance, and he didn’t intend to screw it up.
“Yes, probably. If he found out. How would he find out?”
“The man isn’t stupid. Didn’t you say he’s been doing this for a long time? He hasn’t survived by making mistakes.”
Once again, Lara made sense. Justin recalled the weeks it had taken him to even contact the assassin, and all the hurdles he’d had to leap to organize the hit in the first place. Lara was right. An anonymous tip would likely do more harm than good.
“All right. Find Adam for me, and we’ll go and see him together.” And they’d discuss the topic of Kokopelli, because it was obvious Justin was no longer the chosen one. Transference out of the family line had occurred on rare occasions in the past, but the powers had always returned to the James’s line. No one else in the village had come forward, which meant…
Hell, he didn’t know what it meant. That’s why he needed to discuss the situation with Adam. Better his brother than their father. Their father always expected so much of them, the burden becoming too much at times. Was it any wonder both he and his brother had rebelled in their own way?
The next morning, Nate left their motel room and scanned his surroundings, searching for anything out of the ordinary. To his right, a profusion of flowers in the garden beds offered a burst of color against a plain brick wall. The buzz of hard-working bees vibrated through the air, the insects flitting from bloom to bloom. A row of flowering trees, branches covered with furled buds and numerous leaves, swayed in the gentle breeze. A dog lifted its leg, relieving itself on one of the trunks. When nothing suspicious grabbed Nate’s attention and the itchiness at the back of his neck didn’t arrive as usual, he gestured for the guys to exit.
“I feel as if I’m walking around with a cross painted on my back,” Cade grumbled as they piled into the van to head out for another day at the studio.
J.T. snorted. “I know what you mean. I keep looking over my shoulder. An old lady scared the crap out of me in the café this morning.”
“He had to go and change his underwear,” Cade said with a chuckle.
Morgan scowled. “I still think we should go to the police.”
“And tell them what?” Adam snapped.
Nate squeezed his shoulder in silent sympathy and urged him inside the van. This wasn’t easy on any of them, and Adam in particular.
“I’m sitting in the front with you,” Ada
m said, shrugging off Nate’s hand and stomping around the front of the van before Nate could stop him.
Biting his tongue, Nate climbed behind the wheel and started the van. He wanted to shout at Adam and tell him not to be such a stupid fool. It would kill him if something happened to Adam. Rosa’s death had almost done him in. He couldn’t lose Adam as well, not now that he’d finally found him to love.
“Fuck!” Nate jammed on the brakes.
“What’s wrong?” Morgan demanded from the rear.
“Did you see something?” Cade asked.
“No, it was private,” Nate answered, still stunned at his sudden realization. He loved Adam. When the hell had that happened? Yeah, he enjoyed spending time with Adam, he enjoyed the sex, but love… After Rosa, he’d decided he’d never put himself in that position again.
“Did you and Adam have a domestic?” J.T. asked.
Adam snapped, “No, we did not!”
“Oh, it speaks,” Cade mocked.
“Knock it off,” Adam ordered. “I have a family problem I have to deal with, and I can’t think with you rattling your jaws.”
“You have a family?” J.T. teased. “I thought they found you in a cabbage patch somewhere.”
“That was your parents,” Adam shot back.
Morgan frowned. “So why don’t you ever talk about your family?”
“We’re not close. I told you the other day I had a difficult relationship with my father.” Adam clicked his seatbelt into place.
“I thought it must be something like that,” Cade said. “I remember when we first met in the pub in that small hick town. You didn’t say much.”
“But I could sing and play the sax ten times better than any of you, so you decided to keep me around,” Adam said in a smug voice.
Nate hid a smirk, loving the interplay between the men. They’d made him welcome from the start, drawn him into their family and helped him fill the huge gap in his life left by Rosa’s death. He pulled up at a set of traffic lights and listened to the good-natured insults that bounced from one man to the next while he waited for the signal to turn green.
“Light’s changed,” Adam prompted him, placing his hand on Nate’s knee.
Nate sucked in a hasty breath, worried about the others seeing. “I see it.” Although he knew their relationship was no longer a secret, he couldn’t help glancing in the rearview mirror to see if the others had noticed the intimacy.
“Hands off the driver,” Cade piped up. “He needs to concentrate on driving.”
“I’m concentrating,” Nate said, accelerating smoothly into the intersection.
“Holy fuck! Watch out,” Adam shouted.
The words had scarcely left his mouth when a gray sedan barreled into the passenger side of the van. Nate spun the wheel, but too late. The impact sent the van skidding into the path of a blue SUV. Horns tooted. Brakes shrieked. Nate cursed, flung forward against his seatbelt by the impact of the second vehicle. The front airbags exploded, engulfing him when gravity flung him forward. Nate gasped for air, struggling against the airbag. His leg. He couldn’t move his damn leg. And blood. He could feel the wet seep of blood running down his calf. Damn airbag. He couldn’t see a thing. The van jolted to a sharp halt, then there was silence, apart from a loud moan coming from the rear of the van. Nate shoved the airbag out of the way, cataloguing the ache in his right shoulder in the back of his mind, trying to see his leg. He tried to lift it. The slash of pain forced a groan from him.
“Nate? You okay?” Adam sounded frantic.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” Or he would be when he could get out of this tin can. “Everyone okay in the back?”
“Think so,” Cade said.
“What the fuck happened?” Morgan asked.
A horn droned in the background. Outside, people shouted. Nate could see smoke coming from the gray vehicle, smell gasoline. They needed to get out right now.
“Everybody out,” he ordered. “We need to get out of the van.”
“My door won’t open,” Adam said.
A siren sounded in the distance, coming closer and closer.
“My door won’t open, either,” Nate said, fear starting to rise inside him because of the amount of smoke rising from the sedan.
“Try the side door. Morgan? Cade?”
One of the guys at the back grunted, pounded on the door with his fist once.
“It won’t damn well budge.” Cade sounded frustrated, a thread of alarm splintering his voice. Nate understood exactly how he felt. The building smoke obscured his vision through the windshield as he struggled with the airbag and the seatbelt.
A masculine shout came from outside, metal screeched and the side door wrenched open with a sickening crunch.
“You guys okay?” a man asked.
“Mostly,” Cade answered for them all.
“You need to get out,” the man said tersely. “I don’t like the amount of smoke.” As he spoke, he reached for Cade to help him out of the van.
“Adam, can you crawl out the back?” Nate didn’t like the look of the blood trickling down Adam’s face. “Go on,” he said, couching it as an order. “You first. You’re bleeding.”
“And you’re right after me. Right?”
“Don’t you worry. I’ll be on your heels.” If he could move. His left leg seemed to be stuck somehow, and he could still feel the slickness of blood on his lower leg. He willed Adam to leave the van and gave a soft sigh of relief when his lover finally started to move.
Adam cast a last, worried glance at Nate, then crawled past him, concentrating on dragging his aching body over the console and into the back of the van. Every bone in Adam’s body ached, and his head thumped in time. A drop of blood plopped on his arm, drawing his attention. He shuddered and hurriedly looked away, focusing instead on the open door and the stranger standing there ready to help him out.
The driver in the gray car had purposely rammed them. Adam had seen it with his own eyes, his gaze connecting with the driver’s just before the impact. His hands clenched around the top of a seat. Yeah, there were a few things he’d like to say to that crazy son-of-a-bitch. Like what the hell was his problem? Nate hadn’t done anything wrong, committed any traffic offenses.
Finally, strong arms grasped Adam firmly and took some of the strain, yanking him from the van. Once on his feet, he wobbled slightly, feeling lightheaded.
“Whoa! Man, you okay?” a man asked.
Adam fought past the woozy sensation. “Can you help Nate? He’s the last one.”
A cop hurried past and peered inside the van. A second cop took Adam by the arm and drew him away, toward the other band members.
“What the fuck happened?” Morgan asked. “I’m sure Nate didn’t do anything wrong. He had a green light.”
Adam stared over J.T.’s shoulder at the wrecked gray vehicle. A man lay on the ground near the car, a bystander working on him. Probably a doctor. “The guy in the gray car saw us and aimed his vehicle at the van. I saw him, saw the look on his face.” Before he’d even finished the words, Adam strode toward the man and the crumpled gray sedan. He wanted to talk to him, intended to talk to him and ask why.
“Stand back,” a cop ordered.
“No. I need to talk to this guy.” He ignored the cop, intent on his goal.
“Let him talk,” the man lying on the ground rasped out.
“Just a moment,” the cop agreed.
Adam stumbled to the man’s side and crouched down. “Who are you? Why did you smash into us?” He scanned the man’s grizzled face with not a jot of recognition. Bulky bandages, now blood-splattered, covered his upper right arm, and the doctor pushed a heavy cotton pad against his chest. Blood turned his white T-shirt red.
“You…you ruined my life,” the man gritted out.
“Me? I don’t even know you.”
The man said something, his voice so weak Adam couldn’t hear. Adam leaned forward to hear. “You have the devil’s own luck. I’ve tried to shoo
t you four times. Line you up and you’d move, someone would get in the way. Someone called the cops on me.” He paused to gasp, his breath coming in a bubbling wheeze.
The wail of a siren told Adam he’d need to hurry because it was coming closer and closer. The man didn’t look good. Even if he hadn’t guessed the man wasn’t far from death, a quick glance at the cop’s face would have clued him in. “Why the fuck are you trying to shoot me? I don’t even know you.”
“Job. Paid.” The words were scarcely more than strained whispers.
“Someone paid you to shoot me,” Adam snarled, his voice rising in anger. What the fuck had he done to deserve that? He smiled at children, opened the door for old ladies. “Who? Who the fuck would do that?”
The man made another of those bubbling sounds deep in his chest, coughed weakly, and Adam saw blood at the corners of his lips. His face was deadly pale, but his eyes glittered without repentance.
“Who?” Adam leaned even closer, ignoring the jagged pain in his head.
“J…Just.” The man’s face went slack, and his head dropped to the side.
“No!” Adam howled. “Just what?”
An ambulance pulled up, and medics jumped out. One grabbed Adam while the other consulted with the doctor and started to work on the stranger.
Beneath his T-shirt, the Kokopelli tattoo pulsed, and he focused on that heat, drawing from it. Someone wanted him dead. The man had tried to kill him, not once but several times. All the accidents, the close calls—Nate had been right. He didn’t get it. Did. Not. Get. It.
A cop walked over. “We need a medic at the van. The driver’s leg is trapped. We want you to take a look before we cut him out.”
Adam’s head lifted sharply. “Nate? Nate’s trapped?” Judging by the smoke coming from the engine, it looked as if it might catch on fire. A fire truck sped into the intersection and within seconds the firemen were grabbing equipment and examining the scene. It didn’t help the fear that exploded inside him. Nate was injured, yet he’d never said a thing. God, he couldn’t lose Nate. Nate meant everything to him.
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