by Cara Carnes
But he was far from functional. From what Kamren had seen, he still drifted through life like he always had, using what money she deposited in the family account to get whatever he couldn’t mooch off friends. Or everyone out at The Arsenal. She’d hoped a few weeks around Dallas and the other operatives would have rubbed off on him, maybe instilled a fire to do something with his life.
But it hadn’t.
“I see you’ve landed on your feet,” she commented, her gaze on the new sneakers. “Nice shoes.”
“It’s about time someone gave me a leg up.”
“You aren’t owed a leg up, Cliff. You earn it, same as everyone else.”
“Always the know-it-all. Don’t you ever get tired of always knowing what’s good for everyone?” He laughed. “That’s classic fucking Kamren.”
“Is Rache taking her meds?”
“Why do you care?” Cliff shook his head. “You think we can afford those useless pills? Said it a thousand times, sis. No pill is gonna take away our crazy. It’s in our blood.”
“Cliff, you know she needs them,” Kamren whispered as she shifted uneasily on the sofa beside him. They’d never seen eye-to-eye on how to deal with their little sister. “She seems happy, but she’s having troubles out here.”
“That isn’t my problem, sis. I’m not the one leaving for weeks on end, chasing ghosts best left dead. If you’re so worried, stay the fuck where you belong and tend to her.” Cliff picked up a beer, took a long swig, then slammed the bottle on the coffee table. “Better yet, do us both a favor and forget I’m here. Rachelle’s not my problem. You sure as fuck aren’t my problem.”
“And that’s your problem, Cliff. One day you’re gonna wake up and realize you can only fly under the radar so long before you have to fucking do something. Live.”
“Oh, yeah? What should I do? Chase some phantom killer of a bastard I’m glad is dead? Worry about a sister who’s doing better than me and her know-it-all big sister combined?” Cliff chuckled. “I’m eating as much as I want, sleeping in a clean, soft bed, and doing whatever the fuck I want. So is Rache. The only one having a problem with all that is you. Maybe you’re the one that needs to wake the fuck up and accept a few truths.”
“And what truths would those be?”
“You aren’t ever gonna be anything but white trash; none of us are. Dad’s dead, thank fuck for small favors. Rache isn’t ever gonna change. There’s no pill to take the crazy out of us. That’s one thing the old man had right. We’ve all got a splash of whacked in us. Rache embraces hers. Me? I’ve pickled it.” He chuckled as he took another swig of beer. “It’s time you shelve the high-and-mighty act and accept you’re nothing but a crazy white trash whore, just like Mom.”
13
It took more phone calls than Dallas expected, but they finally secured a private meeting with Dom. While Jesse remained back at The Arsenal, Nolan insisted on coming along. Personally, Dallas just wanted it done so he could get back to the compound.
Back to Kamren.
That kiss.
His entire body stirred at the memory, the way she’d awakened within his arms. He hadn’t wanted a woman that bad in a long, long time. Way before Hailey. Marla.
He glowered at the door as the buzzer sounded. Restraints rattled as the prisoner was shuffled in. Nolan remained along the back wall of the small detainment room they’d commandeered for their private conversation with a man he’d once looked up to. A dull throb radiated in his gut. Back then he’d been a stupid, young punk with nothing to prove and everything to learn. He’d had the best dad around and five brothers to admire.
Yet he’d chosen Dom as a mentor, someone he’d revered. In many ways he’d been an excellent choice. He had the same raw need to rage against unjustness, push boundaries and kick the asses of anyone who dared mess with him. Yeah, Dom had once been a hell of a man. Now?
Prison had hardened him. The steely determination Dallas had once respected in the man’s gaze had been replaced with controlled rage. He was bigger than Dallas remembered, well over six foot—by at least four inches. Broad shoulders had been bulked up by too many long hours of nothing else to do put pump iron. The Marville Dog tattoo had been modified, the once semi-bloody bone now filled in fully. Another one was now beneath the first, half full with the blood drops that distinguished kills for the crew he’d started.
“We doing two on one with me in chains?” Dom asked as he rattled the restraints and looked back at the guard.
“Unlock him,” Nolan ordered.
“That wasn’t part of the deal,” the warden argued as he shifted from one foot to another. “Prisoners remain locked. This is highly irregular.”
“Phone call you got was pretty clear. Whatever we want,” Dallas said. “Release him, then get the hell out.”
The man muttered under his breath as he nodded at the guard. A few moments later, both the men disappeared as the door slammed behind them. Dallas didn’t move. Neither did Nolan.
Dom shifted restlessly as he stood his ground in the center of the room. Dallas pointed at the camera and held up a hand.
“It’s down,” Mary said.
“We’re clear,” Dallas said as he closed the distance between the man who’d once been so much of his world. He held out a hand and waited.
“What the fuck is this?” Dom asked.
“Depends.”
“On?”
“On how much of the bullshit the MDs did over the past few days was you, and how much was Javier,” Dallas answered as he withdrew his untouched hand and sat.
“Heard you and your brothers were back and setting up shop in Resino.” The man sat. His gaze swept the room and landed on Nolan. “You brought big brother to handle me?”
“He doesn’t need my help handling anything these days, especially scum like you.”
“My friend here’s training Riley to become a private investigator. She started looking into some troubles in Marville recently, troubles involving Rachelle. You remember they were tight?”
“Don’t give a shit what your little sister does, though I’ve heard she’s a looker.”
Dallas gritted his teeth. Nolan growled and shoved off the wall but kept his distance. They’d agreed Dallas would lead this discussion. “Sisters are off limits. Those were the rules, right? Gotta admit, Dani’s filled out, too. I’m starting to wonder why she hates my family so much.”
“She has her reasons.”
“Those some of the reasons you’re in here?” Dallas asked. “We’ve got shit to discuss, but I want the air cleared first. What went down that night?”
“That night’s not up for discussion, now or ever. Two pieces of shit got what was coming to them. They’re rotting in the ground. The law needed someone to lockup. I’m okay with taking the hit.”
He didn’t do it. Dallas fisted his hands and looked away as he thought back to what little he remembered. One of Dom’s cousins had come out to the street they raced on. Frantic and upset, he’d snagged Dom. By the time Dallas had gotten away from the idiots he’d been racing, hell had broken loose at Dom’s house. Cop cars and ambulances were there.
Two dead bodies.
Dom’s brother, Ricardo, took off hours later, never to be seen again. And Dom was arrested for murder. Pled guilty.
Twenty years, fifteen with good behavior.
“Why the fuck are you darkening my world, D?”
“Tell your crew to stand down and step off Kamren Garrett,” Dallas ordered. “They don’t, I’ll clean house in a way that’ll leave you a lone dog.”
“That so? You think you’ve got the balls for that? You grow some in the Army or wherever the fuck you ran away to?”
Dallas grinned, but didn’t offer a rebuttal at first. He let the silence tick by but held Dom’s gaze. There’d been a time he couldn’t have looked the man in the eye—hadn’t been ballsy enough to try. Now?
“You’ve changed,” Dom said.
“So have you. The man I remembered wouldn�
��t have been down with his crew intimidating women, slashing their tires. Warning women they won’t be breathing much longer if they don’t toe the line. He sure as fuck wouldn’t be down with his blood saying a woman’s mouth is only good for taking Marville Dog.” Dallas shrugged, dragged out his cell and pushed play.
The man paled as he snagged the device. Dallas regretted the shitty maneuver because the video he’d queued up had been frozen on Dani’s image. Dom’s hands shook as he held the phone as if it was an alien device. Cell phones hadn’t been all that small or smart back when he’d gone away. When the recording was done, he tapped on the screen.
“Again,” he growled.
Dallas replayed the video several times before the man’s rage was fully contained. He slammed his fists into the table, but remained locked within his chair otherwise, as if not trusting himself to move. It was simple for Dallas to put himself in Dom’s place, imagine being gone for years and seeing Riley for the first time.
Hell, he’d been there not too long ago.
“Respect. We’re here giving you a warning that Javier’s trouble. Trouble that needs a lesson, then it needs to get cleaned.” Dallas met the man’s glare with one of his own. “We came back, set up shop, but didn’t have an eye to our backyard.”
“Now we do,” Nolan added.
“I’ll deal with Javier,” Dom said.
“You handle him; we’ll keep Dani safe. No blow back,” Nolan said.
Dom’s gaze flashed to Dallas. “Your word. I don’t know your brother, but I know you. Got no beef with him, but he wasn’t in my crew. You were. Your word and it’s done.”
For Kamren he’d promise just about anything. The realization startled him a moment.
Dom leaned back in his chair. “Thinking I got played back then. You heard from Ricardo?”
“No, man. That went down; I enlisted,” Dallas admitted. “You want, we’ll look into him.”
“Yeah. I…” He swallowed. “I need to know the truth.”
“About that night,” Nolan finished. “It wasn’t you.”
Dom didn’t deny the statement, nor did he admit anything. Dallas looked at his brother. “Our crew will look into it. We’ll get answers.”
“Okay, boys. Reunion’s over. Time to get back here,” Vi said in the com.
“What’s wrong?” Dallas asked.
“Why do you say there’s something wrong?”
“Because you sound like you just swallowed a tank full of helium, Vi.”
“Fine. While you all were en route, there was an incident. Everything’s fine, but things with Rachelle sort of festered. She went after Jesse in the mess hall. Kamren and Ellie waded in, but Riley saw the whole thing. Everyone’s retreated to their corners, but we could use you both back here.” She paused.
Dallas stood and looked at his old friend. “We’ll be in touch.”
“It’ll take a couple days to get things in motion, but brace yourself. Marville Dog justice is swift and furious.”
Which was why Dallas had come without Dani. If they wanted Marville truly cleaned up, it meant knocking the Marville Dogs down at the ankles in a way that they’d never get back up. With one problem sorted, he’d just added another to the list.
What the hell had happened the night Dom was arrested for murder? It was a mystery he hoped Jud and Riley could solve. She needed the practice. For now, they needed to haul ass home.
He yanked out his cell when they got to the parking lot and fired off a text to the brainiacs, adding Riley and Jud at the last minute. The man was right. It was time they started treating Riley like the investigator she wanted to be and made her do the digging.
Dig into Ricardo DeMarco. Everything. Entire family, too.
The bed shifted behind Kamren. She sprang up, but a heavy arm settled around her stomach and dragged her back down. The scream in her throat died down when her gaze settled on Dallas, whose face was illuminated from the bathroom light she’d left on.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Her heart thundered wildly.
“Apparently scaring the shit out of you.” He ran a hand down her face. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I figured you’d be dead asleep.”
She’d tried. She’d been worried about how the visit with Dom had gone. She’d been worried about Rachelle and how she and Riley were doing. She’d been worried about Jesse. The frustration bubbled from her like a boiling vat of stew. Worries, fears, doubts, guilt and other things festered within the concoction until there was no hope she’d ever sleep again.
Dallas’s heat settled along her back. She tensed within his embrace, unsure what the heck he was doing.
“Relax, Kamren. I need to hold you a minute. It’s been a shit day, and the only thing I’ve thought of the past few hours getting back here was smelling your hair and feeling your soft curves against me. Let me hold you.”
She stilled, unsure why holding her would help him. Truth be told, the physical contact was nice. Okay, it was way more than nice. The brew she’d simmered, stirred and fussed over the past few hours slowly calmed within the silence as it ticked by. His heat and the strength of his arms around her chased away any thoughts beyond the powerful body behind her.
“It went bad,” she guessed moments later.
“No. Dom’s handling Javier. We’re keeping Dani safe.”
“Good luck with that. She’s not a fan of anything Mason.”
“We got that, sweetheart. You know why?”
“No, but the shift in her thinking went down around the same time Dom went away,” she said. “Something bad happened to her, Dallas. She never shared what, but she changed overnight. I lost my best friend back then, and I don’t even know why.”
“Nolan’s gonna keep her safe. Jud and Riley are looking into it.”
“Dallas, something happened when you were away.”
“I know, sweetheart. Vi and Mary showed me the recording,” he whispered in her ear. “Are you okay?”
“Me?”
“You.”
“Why the heck are you asking about me? You should go find Jesse. He was the one she touched. Or Riley. She was really upset.”
“Sweetheart, talk to me.” He squeezed her tighter. “It’s only you and me. Offload whatever you’ve been chewing on for hours and trust me to handle it. Whatever it is, it’ll stay between us.”
“You’ve done enough.” He’d just spent hours on the road back and forth between Huntsville getting the Marville Dogs off her. That alone was enough. Add in helping find her dad’s killer and the whole dealing with Rachelle and her wandering hands for God only knows how long, and she’d incurred a big enough debt with the Masons. She didn’t get to offload more on them. They’d taken on enough of her crap already.
“You said something earlier today. You ‘saw’ what I said to Jesse at the rescue.”
She tensed within his embrace. He traced a path across her shoulder and down her arm.
“You read lips. The night your truck exploded, Brant mentioned your dad teaching you all how to do it,” he continued.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I try not to see things I shouldn’t, but…” She bit off the excuse. Truth told, there weren’t any excuses. She’d been too drawn to the horrors within their words, the haunted expressions within them both afterward. By then it’d seemed too vile to admit she’d spied on them.
“We left our coms on, Kam. Everyone on the line heard,” Dallas said. “But if you need a quid pro quo to give me a piece of what’s troubling you, I’ll do it.”
“Why? Why does it matter?”
“Because I’m not turning away from whatever this is between us. I haven’t wanted to drive my dick into someone this bad in a long time, sweetheart. The fact that I haven’t even tried to seduce you is because you’re too important to me tells me this is more than a roll in the sack.”
“I’m not a good woman, Dallas.”
“I’m so far from a good man I can’t even see the border anymore, sweeth
eart.”
She didn’t believe it for a second. Everything about Dallas and his family proved him wrong. She almost laughed, but the intensity in his voice gave her pause as the conversation she’d seen replayed in her mind. “The Collective was really bad.”
“Yeah.”
“Dad was really bad, but he wasn’t the worst one.” She burrowed deeper against him as she whispered the words she’d never shared with anyone. “Mom had problems, the kind of problems that people didn’t get over. No matter what Dad did, she never got better.”
“She hurt you.”
“Yeah.” Kamren swallowed. “Everyone thought it was Dad; sometimes it was. But Mom…she didn’t handle him choosing me for his prodigy well. I was her first, the little girl she’d wanted to turn into a doll. I didn’t want to be a doll. But I didn’t want to be my Dad’s hunter either. I just wanted to be me.”
“We saw the scars, Kamren.”
“I figured you had,” she whispered. “She got angry easy, flew into this madness where she had insane notions of what merited punishment. Most of the time I took the brunt, but sometimes Rachelle would cry or earn a punishment. Usually I could take it for her, but when I couldn’t…”
“What happened then?” His ran a hand down her hair, drew her closer.
“She’d make me punish Rachelle. If I didn’t hit hard enough, Mom would beat us both even harder, so I had to make it hurt enough to keep Rachelle from getting hit real bad.”
“Fuck, sweetheart.” He kissed the shell of her ear. “Is that what Brant saw in the barn?”
“Yeah. It only happened a couple of times, but it was enough. Rachelle was sensitive, she couldn’t handle what we went through. What she’s like is because of Mom. Dad.” She reached for his hand. “Me.”
“No way in hell was it your fault, Kamren.”
“I hurt her.”
“No. You were forced to hurt her.” Dallas squeezed her face. “There’s a big difference, sweetheart. Tell me you know the difference.”
“I should’ve done more to protect her.”
