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 breath 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
L
ucky 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.
T
he 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.
It was as he pulled Duke’s office door shut behind him, stepping into the hall, that he heard a loud noise from outside, just out the back door a few feet away—like metal scraping on concrete. And any other time, he’d assume there was some logical explanation—but right now, his muscles tensed and he instinctively clicked the Glock’s safety off. Just in case.
Pausing at the door just long enough to feel ready, in one swift motion he turned the lock, opened the door, and aimed the gun outside even while protecting as much of his body as he could with the building.
And—shit. Part of him had expected to see nothing and feel relieved. But instead, right in front of him, not ten feet away, stood Red Thornton pouring gasoline around the bar’s foundation.
Red looked up with a start, and Lucky said, “Don’t move a muscle, Red, or I’ll take you down.”
Red froze, wide-eyed, appearing appropriately scared, and it pleased Lucky in an old, familiar way. That had been the good—even if shameful—part of being in a gang: feeling powerful, invincible, when people feared you. And now that strange, gripping satisfaction permeated Lucky, delivering an even firmer sense of control.
Red dropped the gas can on the gravel beneath him and put up his hands. “Now don’t go shootin’ me, Lucky. This ain’t like it seems.”
Christ, Red was an idiot. First, he’d failed to succeed in burning Lucky’s place down, and now the numbnuts was pouring gas around a building constructed of cinderblock.
And he actually expected Lucky to believe any of this wasn’t like it seemed?
But Lucky used the moment to take in more than just that. Red’s sister’s Camaro sat nearby, trunk open—which explained why he hadn’t seen it out front. And Red looked about as worn out as Lucky felt. So it would be smart to use Red’s exhaustion against him, to get as much information from him as he could before he ended this.
“If you’re gonna tell me you didn’t torch my place last night, save it, asshole. I saw you.” The small lie avoided putting it on Tessa, and besides, this would scare Red more.
And it did—the scraggly-bearded man began to tremble slightly. Then he stuttered a little, but no real words ever came out.
“The only thing that surprises me is to see you doing this in the daylight,” Lucky said, his eyes spewing venom. “I figured a rat like you only came out to do Bill’s dirty work in the dark.”
Red just scowled. “Had to wait all damn night for that girl to leave so Duke would finally turn out the lights and hit the hay,” he muttered.
Good—he was no longer denying it. That would make getting information from him easier. “When’s Bill comin’ for us, Red?” Lucky asked.
To his surprise, in response, Red turned belligerent, even boastful. “Bill
ain’t
comin’. Not yet anyway. He don’t even know yet.”
Now that Red was getting a little bolder, Lucky concentrated harder on staying alert, keeping the gun trained on him. “He doesn’t know
what
yet?” And when Red didn’t reply right away, Lucky raised his voice. “I’m pointing a gun at you, you son of a bitch—
answer me
.”
“All right, all right,” Red said, clearly trying to calm Lucky down. Then he let out a sigh. “Fact is, I was gonna call Wild Bill after I took care of you and Duke, was gonna get back in his good graces that way. I—I was gonna be like . . . a hero.”
Lucky narrowed his gaze on the other man, beginning to get the picture now—finally. “So what you said about no longer being with the club—that was the truth.”
Red nodded, swallowed nervously. “Never
did
get patched in, and Bill kicked me to the curb about five years ago.”
Lucky simply shook his head. “And you’re just like a little puppy, still tryin’ to get Bill’s attention. God damn—that’s fucking sad, Red. This was bad enough when I figured you were his errand boy, but this makes you even more pathetic than I thought.”
Red defended himself. “Way I see it, it’s you and Duke who’re pathetic, runnin’ the way ya did. Well, looks to me like you can run but ya can’t hide. ’Cause Wild Bill mighta gave up lookin’ for ya, but as soon as he finds out where you are, you’re as good as dead.”
A thick anger gathered in Lucky’s gut, and when he spoke, the words echoed lower, meaner, than before. “You’re forgetting something, you stupid little prick.
I’ve
got the gun.
You’re
the only one here who’s as good as dead.”
Red’s eyes changed then, and Lucky realized Red had forgotten his predicament for a minute, too busy trying to be the big man he’d never been—and would never be. Now his voice came out nicer—hell, he even tried for a smile. “You wouldn’t kill me, would ya, Lucky?”
“I’ve killed before,” he reminded him.
And Red blinked nervously. “But listen, like I said, Wild Bill don’t know nothin’ about where you are yet. So we can just let all this go. I won’t call him—I promise.”
Lucky just shook his head. Idiot. “You tried to burn down my house, Red, with me inside it. You’re trying to do the same thing to Duke right now. If you weren’t such a screw-up, we’d both be dead. So if you think you’re walking away from this, you’re wrong.”
That’s when Red’s features contorted in a way that made Lucky think he might cry.
“If you got any prayers to say, now’s the time,” Lucky informed him, then steadied his finger on the trigger, his heart beating a mile an hour.
Red swallowed visibly, and his voice trembled. “Come on now, Lucky—don’t do this. Take mercy on me. I’ll do whatever ya want.” Then Lucky’s eyes were drawn downward as a dark spot spread over the denim between Red’s legs and descended one thigh. Christ, he was pissing himself.
Lucky said nothing. Because it was time to stop talking and do the deed, end this. And it came with the satisfaction of knowing that taking Red out really
would
be the end—that was all he had to do to bring this to a conclusion, for all of them.