by Toni Blake
“Like what was so important you went dashing off in the middle of the night? And why Mike insisted I go home with them?”
Lucky sighed, then began, “It’s like this.” She already knew about his past with Red—now he told her in detail why he suspected the Devil’s Assassins were behind the fire and that there was surely more to come, whether through Wild Bill or some other member. “So I have to take care of Red before anything else happens.”
And that’s when—aw, hell—her look transformed into one of . . . horror. “My God, Lucky.” She wore a big, warm, tie-in-the-front sweater over a tank top and jogging pants, and as she began to ball the sweater’s hem in her fists, clearly agitated, she gaped at him like he’d just morphed into a monster.
Shit—after everything he’d told her about California, he’d thought she’d get this, thought she’d understand why it had to be done. And he didn’t want to scare her, but . . . “Next time it could be you, or Johnny. And either one of you could have been here with me tonight. I have to put a stop to this now. ”
“You just said yourself there was more to come, so how will taking care of Red stop it?”
“It’s a first step,” he admitted.
And she argued, “You could approach this a different way.”
He raised his eyebrows, irritated that she was making this harder than it already was. “And what would that be?”
“Let the police handle it—like anyone else would! Mike told me you’d held stuff back about Red on the police report. So you could go to Mike, officially report all the rest, and trust them to handle it.”
Lucky just ran both his hands back through his hair. She didn’t get it. “There are a lot of reasons that’s a bad idea.”
“I’m listening,” she said, still sounding as on edge as he felt. And God, he was so tired—all he’d wanted was to come back here and hold her, sleep with her in his arms. But it sure wasn’t working out that way. At least not yet.
So he explained that to officially confess to being a member of the Devil’s Assassins was to confess to numerous crimes. “They probably all have statutes of limitations that have expired, but still—it’s opening up a big damn can of worms. And it wouldn’t hurt only me. It would hurt Johnny, and you. And Mike, too.”
Before she could reply, he went on. “And once I admit that, who’s to say the Destiny Police are even gonna be on my side? Who’s to say they’ll pursue Red as hard as they should? Mike would, yeah—but I’m not dumping this on my brother. I’m not making him clean up my messes or defend me to the people he works with. And besides . . .” He stopped, sighed. “Mike’s a small town cop. And a good one, probably. But this is serious shit. And if something happened to him because of me . . .” He shook his head, adamant. “I can’t do it. There’s too much at risk, and every fucking bit of it started with me, so I have to take care of it.”
Still facing him on the couch, the girl he loved let out a big whooshing breath, then met his gaze. He could already see in her eyes that nothing had changed, that his arguments hadn’t swayed her. Her voice came out softer than he expected. “So you mean to kill Red, right?”
Jesus. That was the part he and Duke had avoided putting into words, the part too ugly to say out loud. But he couldn’t deny it. Only . . . he couldn’t make himself acknowledge it, either. The way she was looking at him made him feel . . . small, ashamed. In a way he never really had before. It had been a damn long time since he cared what somebody thought of him. And a damn long time since he’d felt like he was letting somebody down. So he simply didn’t answer.
But she knew what the silence meant. And her pretty eyes grew big and round in the lamplight as she said, “You can’t do this, Lucky.”
He found himself speaking around a lump in his throat. “Why can’t I?”
“Because you’re not that guy anymore. You’re not the guy who killed somebody back in California. Are you? Because you’ve told me over and over how lost you were then and how much you regret all that and how much you’ve changed. And if all that’s true, then you can’t do this. You can’t.”
Lucky’s muscles tensed, his teeth clenching. He had to make her understand. “There’s no other way, Tessa. The police can’t take care of this problem. Best case scenario—they’ll arrest Red, maybe prosecute him. But that won’t make even a dent in the hell that might be coming this way.”
“And killing him will?”
He simply nodded. Once. Because it was the truth. The only truth he knew. It might be a horrible truth, but it was beyond his control to alter it. “Yes,” he said simply. It wouldn’t stop the Devil’s Assassins if they were gunning for him—but it would send a strong message, it would keep them all safe in the meantime, and it would stop the flow of information about him or Duke to Wild Bill.
Tessa stayed quiet for a long time, and neither of them looked each other in the eye. Lucky stayed painfully aware of the anxious rise and fall of her chest. When she finally spoke, her voice again turned quiet. “I’m asking you not to do this. For me.”
Oh God. What a request.
He considered it for a moment, seriously thought it over. God knew he didn’t want to do this. Yet the man had struck out at him, tried to end his life. Was he supposed to just sit here and wait for the trouble to escalate? “I wish I could,” he began. “I wish I could not do it—for you. But . . .”
Without warning, she drew her hands into fists in front of her and brought them pounding down on the leather sofa cushion between them. “My God, this is nuts! Every day I have to worry about my brother over in Afghanistan. Will somebody shoot him? Will he have to shoot somebody? He has no choice, Lucky—he has to be in danger, he has to be willing to use that kind of force! But you don’t.”
His reply was resolute. “Your brother has people to protect. So do I. The two situations aren’t so different.”
Looking at him like he was insane, she beseeched him. “What can I say? What can I do to make you change your mind?”
He let out a heavy breath and whispered the only true answer he could. “Nothing.”
Tessa felt as if she were in the middle of a tornado, being whipped in crazy circles where nothing made sense. How was this happening? It was surreal enough that someone had set Lucky’s house on fire—but what he planned to do about it felt impossible to her. She understood the reasons he’d given her, but . . . God.
It was one thing to know your boyfriend had accidentally killed someone in another life, years ago—that was awful enough, but she’d looked beyond it, she’d had faith, she’d forgiven him for being that person. It was another thing, though, to find out he was still capable of such violence, and that this time it would be—oh Lord—deliberate.
And could he? Could her Lucky be that violent? Could the man who’d been so gentle with her, so loving, so kind, really take a life? She just stared at him, trying to see behind his eyes, trying to see inside him. He looked like the guy she’d fallen in love with, but right now . . . she felt utterly abandoned. Emotionally.
Just a few hours ago, she’d trusted him completely, with every facet of her life. But . . . maybe she was wrong about him being reformed. Maybe all those people who’d warned her about him in the beginning had actually been right. Maybe once a criminal, always a criminal. After all, at the first sign of trouble, Lucky apparently reverted to gang member mentality.
It dawned on her now just how quickly all this had happened between them, and that maybe she’d been foolish all along. And that she’d definitely been foolish to let herself believe in him so blindly, fall in love with him so helplessly. “I feel like I don’t even know you,” she finally told him.
And when he reached out to take her hands, his wounded expression tugged at her heart. “Please don’t say that. Of course you know me.”
She peered down, at her small hands in his larger, darker ones. Hands that had killed before. Was that just now really hitting her? That he’d killed someone?
She drew in a sharp brea
th and pulled her hands away—then got to her feet. She didn’t want to let him see her cry. He’d always told her she was strong—and she wanted to stay that way right now, at least on the outside. “I’ve trusted you, Lucky, and I’ve loved you entirely. But if you can do this, you’re a stranger to me.” And with that, she rushed out of his house and ran down the hill toward hers.
“Tessa, wait!” she heard him call behind her, and sensed him following.
But she didn’t want to be around him anymore. Suddenly, he wasn’t the man she knew, the man she’d given herself to in so many ways. Lord, this was ripping her heart out.
“Tessa, stop. Please!”
Yet she hurried in her back door and locked it. Because she couldn’t look at him without crying now—and in fact, tears already streamed down her face.
“Babe—please,” he said through the door.
She turned around and leaned against it, then let her back slide down until she was sitting on the floor.
“Don’t shut me out! Let me in! Let me just hold you.”
Oh God—that sounded so, so good. Especially after all that had happened tonight. Except . . . she no longer knew who he was. And she could never let him hold her again. Because if she did . . . she might love him too much and somehow let herself be convinced this madness was okay.
The horrible fact slapping her squarely in the face right now was that she and Lucky were from two different worlds. They might have both been born and raised in Destiny, but that was where their paths diverged. She’d known it from the start and had looked past it for the sake of sex, never expecting it to be any more than that. And then she’d looked further past those differences, letting herself believe people could really change. And maybe they could. Jenny’s husband, Mick, had changed. But the sad truth in this world was that, mostly, people didn’t change. Not in ways that big. Not in ways that went to a person’s core. And she’d been so, so foolish, seeing this whole situation through rose-colored glasses—all because she was so drawn to him and so eager to be loved.
“Go away, Lucky. Go home,” she called through the door. Oh, crap—could he tell she was crying?
“No!” he said. “We need to talk more. I need to make you understand.”
“You can’t!” she screamed at him. Then her voice came quieter—she was too tired to yell. And just very sad inside. “I don’t know you anymore,” she said. “Maybe I never did.”
I will never again come to your side:
I am torn away now, and cannot return.
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Eighteen
Lucky felt like he couldn’t breathe. What the hell was happening here? He hadn’t seen it coming—not at all. He’d thought she’d understand everything at stake, why he had no choice but to take action.
“Tessa! Open the door! Let me in!”
But then . . . maybe he’d forgotten. Who she was. A nice girl from Destiny. The kind who didn’t usually go for guys like him. For a reason. Guys like him were too rough for her, and had too much baggage. He’d known that the second he’d laid eyes on her. But he’d just forgotten it somewhere along the way.
Yet that didn’t change one important fact here. “I love you,” he said through the door.
Aw, shit—was she crying on the other side? He almost thought he heard her, sobbing a little—but his mind was so jumbled at this point, maybe he was imagining it. Maybe . . . this wasn’t tearing her to pieces the way it was him.
He shut his eyes for a second, tried to calm down. Then tried to wish it away. But it was still happening—Tessa had locked him out. Told him he was a stranger to her.
“God, I love you so damn much.” He didn’t say it as loudly this time, too tired to keep yelling, and perhaps saying it more to himself than to her. “I love you more than I knew I could.”
He leaned forward, rested his forehead against the glass on the door, which was covered with little white curtains on the other side. Then he clenched his eyes shut tight. He’d fucked up. He’d fucked up his whole damn life. And he had a bad feeling he couldn’t fix this. Suddenly, the very idea of him and Tessa being together seemed . . . crazy. Unfathomable. And it felt like . . . she’d finally seen the real him. Part of the real him anyway. The uglier, angrier part—the bits left over from a time of living on the edge.
But as devastating as all that was, it didn’t change what he had to do.
And he needed to do it as soon as possible, yet . . . he couldn’t leave Tessa alone like this, unguarded, no matter how much she might hate him. Red could come back, after all. Red could have been spying on them enough to know she lived right next door—and if Wild Bill was calling the shots here, Christ. The memory of Bill’s threat against any woman Lucky might ever care for made his blood run cold.
Lucky sat down on the concrete stoop outside her back door, leaning against the house. Exhaustion gripped him, but it vied with an anxious energy inside him now, an old familiar feeling from his days as a Devil’s Assassin—it was the sense of knowing you had to be on alert, ready for danger; it was also a sense of wanting to step up and meet that challenge, be the dangerous one, win the fight, bring it all to an end so you could sleep easy for a night or two before the next ugly hazard came along. And that energy kept him awake, kept his ears open and listening for anything beyond the songs of crickets and tree frogs in the woods. And it kept him thinking through all of this—kept him feeling the hurt of what Tessa thought of him now and the frustration that he couldn’t make her see things his way. And it kept the fury toward Red growing inside him, just like the flames he’d witnessed earlier, getting higher, wilder, hotter with each passing minute.
Daybreak came quicker than he’d expected, the first soft rays of morning peeking through the trees behind his house. As the air around him lightened, he stood up, looked around. In one sense, the daylight made him feel safe, a little bit protected. But a glance up toward his home—his first real, clear look at the fire damage from last night—brought back every bad feeling, even multiplied them.
He drew in a breath, let it back out.
Then he looked toward Tessa’s bedroom. Red seemed like exactly like the kind of guy who would only strike under the cover of darkness—and more from cowardliness than brains—so Lucky’s instincts told him Tessa would be safe for now if he left. And he couldn’t stand guard over her forever—it was time to get this thing done.
Just as the police had deduced, since Red had been in his sister’s car last night, his sister’s place in Chillicothe was a good place to start his search. But first, he needed to pay a quick return visit to Gravediggers.
The early morning ride over to Crestview was cool and quiet. If not for the grim task at hand, Lucky would have enjoyed the fresh, crisp air, the sight of a dew-covered meadow shimmering in the sunlight, the sense that the world was brand new again. But the world wasn’t new—in fact it felt very old to him just now, like he could never escape his past, like it would always be dogging him, no matter how much he wanted to be a different man than the one he’d been in California.
He tried to block Tessa out of his mind because right now he had to stay focused—it was all important, literally a matter of life and death.
He was going to Gravediggers to get his gun, the one he’d turned over to Duke a few months back, convinced—and determined—he’d never need it again. Maybe it would be smart for him and Duke to go after Red together, but as he’d decided last night, this was on him—all of it. And besides, he already knew the guilt and emptiness that came with the task at hand—he saw no reason for Duke to endure it, too. And Duke was right—Lucky had more to lose than Duke, and that’s exactly why he had to be the one to protect it all.
Even if his stomach was churning. Even if he couldn’t quite envision how all this was going to come down in a way that would let him live with himself. Push that aside. Just do this. You have to.
Gravediggers sat along a stretch of road lined with aging strip malls flanked by pockmarked
parking lots, all empty of people at this hour. The area felt so desolate right now that as Lucky approached, he realized the noise from his Hooker troublemaker pipes might wake Duke in his apartment above the bar, so he slowed down, deciding to park at the end of the adjacent strip mall. As a bar owner, morning was for Duke what night was for most people—his time to sleep. And Lucky’s plan was to get in and back out, quick and quiet, so that Duke would never even know he’d been there. The fact that no cars or bikes remained in Gravediggers’ lot assured Lucky that if his buddy had gotten busy with the hot brunette, she’d since headed home.
The quiet walk across the barren asphalt lots felt like roaming a modern day ghost town. Lucky gripped his keys tight in his fist, glad he’d never bothered to take the one to Gravediggers off his key ring after staying with Duke back in the winter.
Reaching the big black building’s front double doors, he slid the key in the old lock and slipped inside, quiet as a burglar. All was silent and still as he crossed the floor and walked down the short hallway. Duke’s office was unlocked, as Lucky had known it would be—Duke sometimes secured the room during business hours, but after locking the outside doors and stowing the night’s take in the safe, he tended to leave the office open.
The safe sat on an old metal file cabinet in the corner and Lucky went straight for it, turning the combination lock to 36, then 24, then around again to 36. It gently clicked when he pulled downward and the steel door released. Inside were two shelves—on one rested a zippered money bag from last night, on the other lay three handguns. He drew out his Glock from between the other two firearms Duke stashed here in case of trouble. Checking the clip, he found his friend had kept it loaded, so he jammed it back in place, a step closer to completing the mission at hand.
Closing the safe back up and giving the lock a spin, Lucky paused, looked down at the gun, tested the weight of the G19 in his hand. It had been a while since he’d held it, fired it, but he’d visited a shooting range in Milwaukee on a fairly regular basis before heading south to Ohio, and now he had to trust that it would be like riding a bike. With the safety still on, he stepped into an open area in the office and assumed a shooting stance, legs spread, arms stretched straight in front of him, both hands on the weapon. The very position tightened his chest a little, geared him up for action. Yeah, he could do this. He could be the bad-ass he’d once been for a little while longer, to protect the people he loved.