by Penny Dee
When he was sure my tears had stopped, the tops of his fingers found my chin and lifted it. “You’re safe. I promise. Because I will do everything in my power to keep you safe.”
My chin quivered. Images of Mirabella’s lifeless body in my arms were hard to shut out. “How?”
“Whoever is doing this is not some magical god. He’s human. That means he is flawed. He’ll make a mistake. And when he does, I’ll be there to make him pay.”
CADE
“You need to take time off work,” I said to Indy as she stood at the mirror brushing her hair. I watched as she pulled it back into a ponytail and secured it with a hair tie.
She raised her eyebrow at me.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No.” I moved to stand behind her and looked at her in the mirror. “We’re in the middle of a lockdown.”
“And I have a job. A job I’ve just started. I can’t take time off.”
“Then quit.”
She reached for her jacket and pulled it on. “Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”
“I can’t protect you at the hospital.”
“Just as well the hospital is full of security.” She sat on the end of her bed and pulled on her knee-high boots, leaning forward to zip them up. When she sat up she smiled at me and all I could think about was how beautiful she was. If anything happened to her . . . “I’ll take an escort to and from the hospital. No one is going to get me while I’m at work. Lockdown or no lockdown, life has to go on.”
She stood up and came to me, wrapping her arms around my neck. She smiled seductively as she reached up and brought her lips to mine. Her kiss was slow and teasing.
“I’ve got a couple of hours before my shift starts,” she said, making me hard as she dragged her tongue along my jaw.
Christ, this woman was my weakness.
She was also a welcome distraction from the turmoil taking place inside.
I kissed her fiercely and crushed her to me. Making love to her was always a welcome relief from the seriousness of our situation. For a small patch in time, I could lose myself in the bliss of her touch and the magic of her body. I walked her backwards toward the bed, removing her jacket and unbuttoning her silk shirt. When her hand found the front of my jeans and began to rub over the hard ridge of my cock, a deep groan left me.
“You’re not going to do what I ask you, are you?” I asked against her lips as we started to struggle out of our clothes.
“Not a chance,” she replied.
Our mouths parted long enough for me to pull my t-shirt over my head and for Indy to remove her shirt. The sight of her full, creamy breasts encased in her lacy bra made me painfully hard, and when she removed it and let them spill free it sent me over the edge. I pulled her back to me and took one hard nipple into my mouth, sucking it with my lips and teasing it with my tongue. She moaned and pushed her hands through my hair, her breathing coming quick.
When my phone rang, I ignored it.
But when it started ringing again, I growled and reached for it.
It was the prospect. And he was on Jacob-watch, so I answered it.
“We’ve got a situation,” he said. “Jacob discharged himself.”
The prospect had been perched outside Jacob’s room since he’d been admitted.
“Please tell me you’ve still got your eyes on him,” I said, adjusting the front of my jeans.
“He stuck a gun in my face. Told me to fuck off or he’d shoot me between the fucking eyes. So, no. I don’t have my eyes on him.”
Fuck. We didn’t want Jacob to be alone because we didn’t know what he was capable of doing. “What happened?”
“He went to the funeral home. He was inside for about ten minutes and then came storming out.” He paused and then added, “He was carrying a handbag.”
“A handbag?” A sudden realization shot up my spine. Mirabella’s belongings. “Okay, I’m on it.”
I hung up. I had to get over to Jacob’s house.
“What’s wrong?” Indy asked, already buttoning up her silk shirt.
“Jacob. He discharged himself and visited the funeral home. He left with Mirabella’s handbag.”
“Oh, hell,” Indy whispered. She put her arm on mine. “Her sonogram was in her handbag.”
“Jesus Christ!” I grabbed my car keys off the dressing table. Jacob was going to find the sonogram, if he hadn’t already, and lose his shit.
“I’m coming with you,” Indy said.
I’d learned a while ago not to fight with Indy. I’d get there sooner if I didn’t.
Twenty minutes later, we pulled into Jacob’s driveway. The shades were drawn and the front door was closed. There was no answer when I knocked, but I could smell fresh cigarette smoke coming from inside the house. When I tried the door, it opened. Jacob was sitting in a chair in the living room, a fifth of Jack Daniel’s resting between his legs. Without looking at us, he took a swig.
“Did you know?” His deep voice broke the stillness. He stared straight ahead, a cigarette burning between his fingers.
“Know what?” I asked.
He held up the piece of paper in his hand and looked at Indy.
“I found it in her handbag,” he said.
I took the paper from him. It was the sonogram. Behind me, Indy exhaled deeply.
“Is it true?” Jacob asked, looking away as he took another swig from the liquor bottle. “Was she pregnant?”
Indy stepped forward. “Jacob, I’m so sorry—”
“Is it true?” He snapped.
Indy paused and then nodded. “Yes. She was pregnant.”
Pain washed over Jacob’s face. He closed his eyes as if to brace himself against the agony, his fingers gripping the arms of the chair.
“It says she was fourteen weeks. Does that mean she knew what the sex was?”
“Yes,” Indy whispered. “She knew.”
More life seemed to drain from his face.
“Was it my son or my daughter who was murdered with her?” he asked.
Indy glanced at me but then turned back to Jacob. My girl was strong. She could handle this. “It was a girl,” she said calmly.
Jacob’s eyes closed and his chin quivered with something close to torture and rage. He took another swig of whiskey and his façade finally cracked beneath the weight of his pain, and he broke down. I took the cigarette from him and smashed it out in the ashtray, then took him by the arm.
“Come on, brother, I’m taking you home.”
He shook me off.
“I’m staying here!” he said sharply. And I could tell by the darkness in his eyes that he meant it. “I don’t want to leave. I can smell her here. I can feel her.” He collapsed back into the chair and his face crumpled again. “Out there she’s gone. But in here, in our home, she’s everywhere.”
“Then I’m staying with you,” I said.
He took another mouthful from the bottle. “I don’t need a fucking babysitter.”
“No, you don’t. But I’m staying here to help you finish this bottle.” I took it from him and drank down a mouthful. Whiskey burned its way down my throat and spread through my chest. I looked at Indy and she nodded.
“I’ll come by tomorrow and pick you up,” she said.
“No. Leave the car here. I’ll get Vader and Maverick to pick you up and escort you to and from work.” Indy wasn’t going anywhere on her own. “And I want you to stay at the clubhouse tonight, okay?”
For a moment, she looked like she was going to protest, but she didn’t. Instead, she nodded and then walked over to Jacob and crouched down.
“She had only just found out and was going to tell you that night. She wanted to call her Hope. Because it was what you had given her from the moment she’d met you. Hope.”
Tears streamed down Jacob’s face but he said nothing. There was nothing he could say.
There was nothing anyone could say.
INDY
Mirabella was buried on a clo
udless Fall morning in November. While Isaac’s funeral had been somber and dramatic with a stormy sky, Mirabella was buried in the beautiful warmth of the Mississippi sunshine. Her closed coffin was draped in a sea of magnolias and irises, her favorite flowers, and in the center of the arrangement was a small envelope addressed to Mirabella and Hope. It was a final farewell from a grieving husband and father-to-be.
Jacob was inconsolable. It was like the light had gone out of him.
Finally sober for the first time since his wife’s murder, he wasn’t able to cope with his grief, and at one stage his knees crumpled beneath him and Cade and Caleb had to hold him up. He was devastated. Broken. Destroyed.
Afterwards, when everyone went to the wake at the clubhouse, Jacob sat motionless in his chair at her graveside, staring with unseeing eyes at her coffin as tears spilled down his cheeks.
Cade, Caleb, and I hung back. I was gutted. My chest full of grief. But it wasn’t even in the realm of Jacob’s pain.
Suddenly rising to his feet, Jacob walked toward his wife’s coffin, his eyes dazed and unfocused, his face slack with despondence, his arms hanging motionless at his side. I linked my fingers into Cade’s big hand and we glanced at one another, worried. Then, just as suddenly as he had stood up, Jacob dropped to his knees and fell backwards, his broad chest exposed to the sky as a primal roar ripped out of the very core of him to shatter the stillness of the afternoon.
Tears streamed down my face as I watched him unravel in front of us, his pain exposed, his body rigid and stiff with the anguish erupting from him. Veins bulged like ropes in his neck and forehead as his roar grew hoarse and rough, and the energy finally petered out. He fell forward onto all fours and hung his head low, his body wracked with the sobbing that consumed him.
Caleb and Cade went to him. Cade knelt down.
“Let us take care of you, brother,” I heard him say.
Caleb and Cade got him into an awaiting car. He hadn’t ridden his bike to the funeral. He hadn’t ridden his bike since the day Mirabella had died, and it was probably a good thing because he was in no state to operate a vehicle. Cade opened the door for me and I slid into the backseat beside Jacob, curling my hand in his and holding it tight during the ride to the wake.
Mirabella’s parents had organized the celebration of her life at Jacob and Mirabella’s home, and the backyard was full of friends and family, drinking and celebrating the beautiful young woman we had all loved and cherished. Everywhere you looked there were flowers and photographs of a smiling Mirabella, and every time I glanced at her smiling face, I couldn’t believe that she was gone.
Unable to handle the crowd, Jacob grabbed a full bottle of bourbon and walked back into the house, disappearing into his bedroom with a slam of the door. He had refused any medication for his grief. Now he was going to medicate with liquor.
“What do we do?” I asked Cade.
“We leave him to grieve the way he wants to,” he said.
I spent the next hour talking with Mirabella’s family and her sister Cora. I made small talk with strangers, had wine with Ronnie and my mom and some of the other old ladies, and helped to clear away plates of food from the picnic table when the sun began to sink and people started to disperse. As dusk turned to night, I went inside and walked straight into Cade, suddenly realizing I hadn’t seen him for the last hour.
“Sorry, baby, I’ve been with Jacob,” he said.
“Is he okay?”
He shook his head. “No. He is far from okay. Bull and Maverick have taken him back to the clubhouse. We don’t want him to be alone.”
He stepped closer to me and ran his big hands up my arms. He looked exhausted but still very physically powerful and strong. He bent his head and kissed me, pressing his lips to my ear.
“Let’s get out of here. I need to hold you,” he whispered roughly. “I need you in my arms.”
I nodded and wrapped my arms around his thick waist, finding comfort in the gentle thump of his heartbeat. “Take me home,” I murmured.
He bent his head and pressed a kiss to my forehead, then led me out the door.
CADE
“You need to leave. You need to pack your bags and head back to Seattle.”
It was two days after Mirabella’s funeral and I was rattled. Watching Jacob bury his wife was like watching my worst nightmare.
Indy looked at me like I was crazy. “I’m not going anywhere.”
But I ignored her. “You still have your apartment, right?”
“Yes, I own it. But I’m thinking of renting it out. Oh, and that’s right. . . I’m not leaving.”
“Indy, I’m not asking.” I knew she wouldn’t leave without a fight. But I was ready to make sure she would listen. It had been seven days since Mirabella’s murder and we were no closer to finding her killer.
It meant we were all at risk.
Jacob was a mess. Inconsolable. His world had been ripped from under him and he was devastated. The other night, after the funeral, I’d found him lying in the dark on the bed he used to share with his wife. Conquered by grief. Clutching his dead wife’s silk robe. His words disconnected. His voice eerily calm, yet flat and robotic. His Glock sitting on the nightstand next to him—the safety off.
We moved him into the clubhouse the next day.
“I’m telling you, you have to leave town until we sort out what the fuck is going on,” I said. Christ. I would probably think about eating my gun, too, if I lost Indy. “It’s not safe.”
Indy climbed off the bed, wearing nothing but a tight tank and tiny panties. And despite my anxiety, despite my fear for her safety, the sight of her near nakedness still made my dick hard as a rock.
“I’m not leaving, and that’s that.” She looked up at me with those dark brown eyes and tenderly touched my cheek. “We’re together now. And that means we’re together through everything.”
I tried to ignore how hard she was making me. This was serious and I wasn’t going to let her sway me by giving me those big brown eyes. But she was my kryptonite. The one thing that could bring me to my knees and make me lose my mind.
“You could die, Indy. Do you get that? Someone is out to hurt The Kings. Three of us are already dead. Look at Mirabella. I don’t want you to get caught in the crossfire.”
She fixed me with fiercely determined eyes. “I’m not going anywhere. Do you hear me?” Then her expression softened and she reached for me by my belt buckle. “Now, will you please stop talking so much bullshit and come and fuck your woman?”
She pulled her tank over her head, revealing her perfect, naked body. Deliberately trying to distract me. “Or do you need a little more convincing?”
She ran her hand over the front of my jeans.
My dick didn’t need much more convincing than that. I pulled her into me and kissed her hard.
“I don’t want to hear any more talk about danger or me leaving, got it?” she whispered against my lips.
She pulled me down onto the bed and the move put me right at the beginning of where I wanted to be. With some minor adjustments, I pushed into her and instantly my mind went somewhere else. Her body. This girl. It was easy for me to get lost in her. And as I made love to her, the craziness of what was happening around us simply vanished and I lost myself in loving her, kissing her, bringing her to a climax, one, two, three times, until I couldn’t take it anymore and I came inside her with a blinding wave of pleasure.
But as the warm glow of my orgasm faded away, the cold reality of the situation began to seep back in. Indy was my weakness. I couldn’t be without her. If I left her, I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep away. She would only need to look at me with those big, beautiful eyes of hers and I would go running back to her. She was my addiction. My everything. I needed her close but that put a huge target on her back. If someone was trying to take down The Kings—if someone wanted me dead—Indy could get hurt. And the thought of her getting hurt made me feel insane.
It was then I realized I was tr
apped. I couldn’t leave. But I could sure as hell make sure she did.
I hated what I was going to do. And it was going to break my heart. But it needed to be done because it was the lesser of the two evils.
Either way, I was going to lose Indy.
But at least this way she would be safe.
I had wrestled with the idea for days, but had come back to the same conclusion every time. I had to get Indy as far away from this fucking club and this nightmare as possible. It would mean the end for us and she would never forgive me, but she would be alive. When I had second thoughts about it, I thought of Mirabella lying dead in Jacob’s arms, her brains running out of the bullet wound to her head, and it was all I needed to convince me that this was a good idea.
Sandy was the perfect accomplice.
She flashed her wicked, bad-girl smile at me and closed the door to my room behind her. She was in a too-tight tank and the tiniest pair of denim shorts I’d ever seen.
“Are you ready, baby?” she asked, unbuttoning her shorts and climbing out of them. She was completely naked underneath.
I averted my eyes but nodded, my heart already dying a slow, torturous death in my chest. Indy would never forgive me. And I was counting on it. This would hurt her, but it would hurt her a lot less than a bullet to the head.
Slipping her tank top over her head, Sandy climbed onto the bed and kneeled in front of me, looking up at me with bright, come-fuck-me eyes.
“Well, what are you waiting for, honey?” she cooed.
I sighed and began removing my shirt.
No turning back now.
INDY
At the end of my shift I was surprised to see Maverick waiting for me and not Cade.
“Cade asked me to pick you up. Said he’s got some business back at the club house,” he explained.
“You’re not dropping me home?”
“He said to make sure I brought you straight to the clubhouse. Didn’t want you alone at the house during lockdown.”
I didn’t know why, but a strange tingle took up in the base of my spine. Trying to ignore it, I climbed into the SUV, but by the time I arrived at the clubhouse, the tingle had morphed into a thousand startled butterflies churning in my stomach and my hands had started to shake. Something wasn’t right.