“I’ll be dead if you end up dead,” he assures me. “Savage can take care of himself.”
“I can take care of myself. Please. I beg of you, Adam.” A black SUV pulls up and the window rolls down to display Smith in the driver’s seat.
“Why are you here and not inside helping Rick?” I demand. “Who’s with Rick?”
“Asher,” Smith assures me.
“And me,” Adam replies, opening the door for me. “Once you get inside the vehicle.”
I hug myself, stubborn rejection in my stance. “Not without Rick.”
“If you’re caught in the middle of a scandal and it’s all over the press,” Adam says, “you become disposable and so does your father. At that point, you’re both better for Gabriel’s campaign dead.”
I drop my hands. “You’re playing dirty, trying to scare me.”
“I’m speaking the truth. Get in so I can go get your fucking pain in the ass man.”
“You’re going to help him?”
“More like stop him from getting pissed off and killing someone we need to talk to first. I told you. Savage can take care of himself. Get in the vehicle.”
“Okay,” I concede. “I am. I will.” I don’t.
He doesn’t seem concerned. Maybe he’s just planning on throwing me inside. He eyes Smith. “Rick said to stay away from the house. Get back-up and use the penthouse.” He turns and starts walking away.
Penthouse?
It’s a code of some sort, but what is he talking about?
“Move, woman,” Smith orders, sirens lifting in the air, screeching nearby. “We need to be gone when they get here.”
I turn and Adam is already out of view. I have no idea how that’s possible, but with a knot balled in my belly, I climb inside the vehicle and shut the door. Almost instantly, Smith sets us in motion, driving me away from Rick and I can’t help but wonder if that’s exactly what Tag and his men wanted. What if they’ve decided Rick is too dangerous to let live?
CHAPTER THIRTY
Savage
With each step toward the bar, I slide into that headspace that I go where it’s me against my enemy and yank the mic out of my ear. Walker doesn’t have the stomach for killing, not my kind of killing. Not the Tag way of killing. And they don’t need to come to my damn rescue. They’ll end up dead.
Country music continues to blast through the doors, where guards try to push a crowd of about twenty back. I bulldoze through the clusterfuck pretty fucking easily, which proves the “guards” are hacks who need to be folding their panties at a laundromat, not protecting a door. Any door. Even the door of their dog’s house. Once I’m inside the bar again, the party is still operating as usual. Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places” has the energy humming, bottles tilted, and feet dancing. This tells me that either the hacks I just blew past haven’t informed management of the rumored troubles inside, or they have and management is avoiding lost revenue and/or chaos. Whatever the case, thank fuck for business as usual because I’d have zero chance of catching Tag’s men in a stampede. Which could still happen at any moment and probably will.
That in mind, I take long strides toward the loft stairwell, scanning for anyone familiar, anyone who needs a bottle broken on their head before I kill them. I’ve yet to find that someone and I’m just passing the dance floor when a blonde chick, with her breasts all but hanging out of her shirt, plasters herself against me. I don’t remember a day in my life since meeting Candace that I had a moment like this and didn’t wish it was Candace instead. Tag’s not fucking up my re-entry into her life, but I’ll thank him for making it happen right before I kill him. Maybe I’ll use a beer bottle and tell him Garth Brooks inspired me. I untangle myself from the woman and keep moving, eyeing the crowd that has gathered at the stairwell that is my destination, then past them up to that loft where I took Candace the night I proposed. Way to fuck up a perfect memory.
I cut through this next clusterfuck of people and reach the bottom step, when a redheaded girl who looks about twelve and is probably using a fake ID, comes running down the stairs crying. I step in front of her and catch her arms. “What’s up there?”
“They dared me to go up!” she shouts. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it!”
“What’s up there?” I repeat, my tone cutting, a sharp command of a question.
“His throat,” she sobs, grabbing her own throat. “His throat. Cut.” I set her away from me, the silent kill method proof that Tag’s got at least one man here. Or he did. There’s nowhere to hide upstairs. The killer is gone, but I need confirmation. Sirens sound in the near distance and I shove aside several bodies, double-stepping the staircase. I reach the top level to find Gordan laying against a wooden beam, blood pooled around his body. I scan the room to find no one else present before my gaze returns to the body. There’s a note pinned to his body that reads: For you know who.
That would be me.
I walk around the blood, scan for a weapon I don’t expect to find, nor do I find. I then grab the paper, and shove it into my pocket, wasting no time reading it. Not when the police could find me up here. “Holy fuck!” At the sound of a man’s voice, I turn to find a couple of college-aged guys gaping.
“Holy fuck!” the other one calls out. “That girl screaming about him dying was right.”
“Yeah, man,” I say. “We need to get out of here now. What if the killer is still here?” I run toward them. “Hurry. Hurry.” Both men look shocked and turn and scramble down the stairs, one screaming like a little bitch-ass baby. Holy fuck is right. He causes the panic that had been avoided until now. The entire place becomes a charge and a chorus of screams. It’s what I wanted. I’m now lost in the crowd, before the police can single me out, before anyone can remember I was a guy who was upstairs, bursting at the seams otherwise known as the walls.
I follow the crowd gathering at the back door, and once I’m packed in the hallway, smashed like a sardine going nowhere, I read the note: McDonald’s. We’re hungry, too.
In other words, Tag’s people have been watching us.
I grab my phone and call Adam. “Gordan’s dead. Take Candace to the hotel, not the house. I’ll meet you there.” What I don’t tell him is to clear any cameras in the place. Asher will make sure that happens if Tag’s men haven’t done it already.
“Where are you going?” Adam demands.
I hang up and linebacker my way through the crowd once more, stepping outside into the drizzle now weeping from above. The way I’m about to make some assholes weep. I take off running for my car, and once I’m inside, I spy the firetrucks now in front of the building. The police will follow at any moment. I rev the engine and waste no time getting the hell out of Dodge—hell on wheels, headed toward McDonald’s. I’ve never killed a man with a Big Mac, but I’m creative when I’m pissed. I’ll find a way.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Savage
You want to see me, Tag, motherfucker, here I am.
I pull up to McDonald’s and park right in front of the window. Fuck you, Tag. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on—and probably fucked because that’s the kind of sick bastard you are. I count four people inside and the staff behind the counter. There’s also a line of cars at the drive-thru.
I grab my phone and dial Adam. His phone rings and goes to voicemail. Adrenaline surges inside me. I don’t like it. Candace is with him. I dial Candace. “Rick?”
The sound of her sweet, feminine voice sends a rush of relief over me that I’m not used to feeling. “Where are you?” I ask.
“With Smith on the highway. Where are you?”
I counter with, “Where’s Adam?”
“I don’t know. Rick, where are you?”
“You don’t know?” My tone is sharp. I’m pissed, and not at her. At Adam for leaving her when I trusted him to protect her. “I told him to protect you.”
“I’m with Smith,” she repeats. “I think Adam went to help you.”
In that momen
t, there are three knocks on my passenger window. I slide it down just enough to hear Asher mutter, “Open up, jerkwad.”
I unlock the door. “I have to go, baby,” I say, and already Asher is climbing into the Porsche. “Where’s Smith taking you?”
“The penthouse is all I know.”
“Good,” I say. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Be careful,” she says.
“Always.” Which is sort of the only lie I’ve ever told her. I’m never all that careful, but a man can change. I can change for her. I disconnect our call and eye Asher. “You tracked my phone.”
“Of course I tracked your damn phone. If anyone kills you, it’s going to be me or Candace.”
“I’m the last person who needs a damn bodyguard.”
“Said every asshole who ended up cocky and dead,” he snaps back. “What are we doing at McDonald’s? Aside from the fact that you eat like an elephant.”
I tune him out, my gaze follows a new customer entering the restaurant, a big man with gray hair, slumped over to walk with a cane. He’s even carrying a trash bag. The man looks homeless and familiar. “I won’t ask where Adam is,” I say because I know Adam, master of disguise. And that’s Adam.
Asher doesn’t confirm or deny Adam as the homeless man. “Back to why we’re here,” Asher says.
I hand him the note. “It was on Gordan’s body.”
He reads it and shoots a photo before texting it to our team. His cellphone buzzes with a text before anyone has time to see his message. “Our team watching Candace’s house has eyes on a couple of guys lurking in the shadows.” He cuts me a look. “They seem to be waiting on your return to Candace’s house.” He glances over at me. “Could be they hoped Candace would return home alone while you were here.”
“There’s a reason I had her taken somewhere other than home.” I thrum my fingers on the steering wheel, considering my next move.
Asher’s impatience has him asking, “What are you doing, man?”
“I’d planned to beat someone with a Big Mac and choke them on a chocolate shake, but since it appears my victims are no shows,” I look over at him, “why stay? Let’s go pay those assholes lurking in the shadows a visit.” I start the engine and crank the music to something that isn’t country. I’ve had all the country I can stand right now.
About halfway to the house, Asher’s phone pings with another text. “They entered the house and left,” he says, eyeing me. “Why would they do that?”
“Because no one wants me to have fun tonight, apparently. No McDonald’s Big Mac massacre for me tonight. And now, no backyard brawl.”
“What are you thinking, man?” he presses. “Bomb? Booby trap?”
“We’ll know when we get there.”
“We’ll know when our team clears the house.”
“I’ll clear the damn house,” I snap. “I do my own dirty work.”
“You aren’t a bomb or booby trap expert. And you have a woman to stay alive for now, remember?”
“That would be Smith, who’s presently with Candace. I don’t need to pull him and shake her up.”
“Adrian Mack just got into town. He’s funny as fuck and deadly. He’s already on his way to meet Smith at the hotel.”
“I don’t know him. I don’t want him near my woman.”
“I know him,” he insists. “I trust him and you trust me.”
“Do I?”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” he snaps. “And if you don’t want Adrian’s help, the other option is that you sit this one out and let us handle it while you go play house with your girlfriend.”
“As tempta-licious as that is, meanwhile you get killed because you’re a goody-goody Navy SEAL.” I grab my phone and dial Smith.
He answers with, “Smith here,” all dry and formal, which defines the Smith we see. In other words, there must be a kinky freak of a beast beneath that man’s surface.
“Ground pounder,” I say. “How’s my woman?”
“Safe and worried about you. We just got to the hotel and checked into the penthouse under my Dave Boone identity. Apparently, the extra space was meant for her to pace.”
The penthouse being the go-to for any top security operation. They’re harder to get to and easier to protect. “That asshat Adrian there yet?” I ask.
Asher scowls my direction. “You don’t even know him.”
“He’s on his way up,” Smith says. “Why?”
“We need a bomb squad.” I pause for drama because that’s my thing. Drama. I kill big. I fuck big. I fuck people up bigger. “Now,” I add.
Smith’s silent several beats before he says, “Where?”
“Candace’s house.” There’s a knock on the door.
“That will be him,” he says. “I’ll be right there.” He disconnects. I glance over at Asher. “Adrian better be a killer.”
His lips quirk. “Oh, he’s a killer.”
I glare at him. “What the hell does that mean?”
“He’s ex-FBI. He went deep undercover inside a Texas motorcycle gang. He resigned when he got out. Blake got a hold of him and sent him overseas for a few years. That’s where I met him on a mission. I’d say his story and mine, match yours and Adam’s pretty damn closely. Only he didn’t operate on me in the middle of a warzone like you did Adam.”
My jaw flexes. “Adam needs to stop telling that story.”
“Because you’re afraid someone might actually see you as a decent guy?”
I don’t comment. It’s not a topic I want to travel with Asher. The truth is, a part of me still believes that Candace is better off without me. That part of me wants to confess my sins and turn her stomach. But the problem with that is that it might work. And the truth is, she might be better off without me, but that woman is the meringue on my pie, the peanut butter to my jelly, the icing to my cake. I’m not better off without her. I’m not even close to better off without her.
“No comment?” Asher presses.
I turn us down Candace’s street, our street back in the day, and I glance over at Asher. “Here’s your comment. Bitch.”
He laughs and moves on. “The surveillance team has cameras up at Candace’s house. They just sent me footage of the guys who entered the house. They got both of their faces.”
I pull us to a side street and then pull over beside a park, where I kill the engine. He hands me his phone with a video ready for viewing. I push the play button and watch as two men in all black slink along the side of the house and then break the bedroom window, but I can’t see their faces. Something about one of them is familiar though, and not in a good way.
“There are two more videos,” Asher says. “Number three. One of the men looks into the camera and smiles.”
I cut him a look, ice sliding through my veins. Now I know I know who this is, but I never assume anything. I skip to video number three and I start watching. “Three-minute mark,” Asher tells me.
I fast forward and freeze frame at the piece-of-shit who not only smiles at the camera, he shoots the finger. At me. He shoots it at me. Because we have a history. “You know him?” Asher asks.
“Yeah,” I say, handing him his phone. “I know that little prick.” I open the door and get out of the car.
“What the hell are you doing?” Asher asks, catching up with me a few steps down the street.
“Finding out what was left for me in that house.”
“Wait on Smith.” He grabs my arm and I grab his shirt.
“Back off, Asher. I know him and we don’t need a bomb expert. We need me. Because this is personal, and a bomb isn’t Wes Casey’s style any more than a booby trap is. He wants to kill me after he kills Candace.” I release him and stride long and hard, adrenaline pumping through me.
“It’s personal,” he says, catching up to me easily.
“Yeah. It’s personal.”
“How personal, Savage? I’m going along with you on this, so tell me what I’m up against.”
/> “I killed his woman.” I round the corner, to Candace’s street.
“Holy Mother of Jesus. Why?”
“She needed to die,” I say, and that’s the truth. It’s not a kill I regret, not that I regret many. I don’t explain myself to Asher. If he wants to judge me a waste of air again, like he once called me years before, I don’t care.
“What did she do?” he asks, actually assuming I had good cause for the kill. Or he’s diplomatic. It’s another SEAL thing. So damn polite.
“Not in the mood to have this conversation,” I snap, approaching Candace’s house. “Stay behind. I got this.” I step onto the driveway and he follows. Damn fish face.
Once I’m at the front door I realize I don’t have a key. Asher motions to his phone and makes a call. “Code.” He listens and hangs up. “2255.”
I punch it in and open the door, entering the house without any hesitation, without fear. I then go exactly where Wes wants me to go. I charge into the master bedroom, and Asher is right on my heels, proof he trusts me more than either of us ever thought possible. Or he’s a fool. I don’t care which. I flip on the bedroom light and walk to the bed, where a note is stapled to a photo that sits next to a wet spot.
Anger prickles in every pore of my body to the point I barely contain a scream. I pick up the photo of Wes jacking off on the bed and read the note: She’s next if you don’t do your job. He means to kill Gabriel. I hand the damn thing to Asher. “A picture of the dick I’m going to chop off. I don’t plan to use my surgical skills. Just an ax.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Savage
I turn and walk into the bathroom, making my way to the closet, where I grab a suitcase and the start filling it with Candace’s things. She’s not coming back here. “What are we doing right now and how can I help?”
“I want her out of here.”
“What is Honest Gabe going to say about that?”
“Fuck Honest Gabe,” I say. “She’ll meet him at the event if I don’t kill the bastard first. He’s why she’s in this mess at all.” The suitcase I’m loading is now full. I grab another and start filling it. I have no idea what all I’m pulling off hangers. I just do it. I want her out of this house. “Right now, I don’t want her to have a reason to come back.”
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