Deadline to Damnation: Sons of Templar #7

by Malcom, Anne

  My breath was fractured, though I kept my façade. I’d kept this even, blank look on my face in front of warlords, so much death I couldn’t understand it, bombs, machine gun fire, some of the worst acts of depravity humans have committed and called it war, but keeping my expression blank had never been harder than it was in this moment, with my beautiful, damaged and scarred past staring at me with violence and heartbreak.

  I wasn’t quite sure I’d survive explaining the truth to him. But no way I could lie.

  I didn’t have to do either. Because he didn’t ask a question. Only nodded once and sat down on the bed.

  I exhaled.

  “I won’t go anywhere,” he promised. It sounded like an oath.

  But it worked as an omen.

  Chapter Four

  I got changed in the bathroom after a long and thoughtless shower.

  You’d think after being faced with everything I had seen tonight that my mind would be pulsating with pain, with thoughts, panic, anger.

  But I had a nifty trick perfected over years of pain, panic, and anger. My job that was nothing but trauma. It was somewhat of a gift. The gift of an empty mind when life became too full.

  Too all-consuming.

  This situation was all-consuming, to say the least.

  So as I washed with soap that smelled of him, in a bathroom with a hint of a scent of bleach, abandoning bloodstained clothes at my feet, I thought of nothing. When I stepped out of the shower and into men’s sweats that smelled of him too, I still thought of nothing.

  I walked into the bedroom to see him exactly where I’d left him, hands clasped on his knees, eyes on me.

  Then there was no such thing as nothing.

  I sucked in a harsh breath, pain blindsided me with his simple stare. His simple presence.

  I sank my fingernails into my palms once more. It stung, opening up wounds that hadn’t even begun to heal. But that’s what this was. All of it. An open, festering, wound.

  Liam’s eyes moved to my hands and he was off the bed in a slow blink. My hands were no longer my own, they were in his grip, in his possession.

  He turned them over and let out a curse at the crescent-shaped cuts in my palms. They were bleeding. I was happy about that.

  “Peaches,” he murmured.

  I yanked my hands back. “Don’t touch me,” I hissed. “And don’t call me that.” I skirted around him so there wasn’t a door behind me, so he couldn’t back me into a corner. “I need to get out of here. I need you to tell them that I won’t talk. That I won’t snitch. Then I need to order a taxi, get to my car and go...” I trailed off. Where the fuck was I going to go? I couldn’t go home. Not to my true home. Not with the big, ugly rotten truth I’d been exposed to. I couldn’t tell a big, ugly rotten lie to Kent and Mary when I saw them. That I still believed their son was dead.

  No way could I tell them that he was alive either.

  It might kill them.

  Not that the son they’d cherished and mourned was alive. No, that he’d made them believe he was dead.

  “So I can leave,” I finished, figuring I’d sort it out once this was all in my rear vision mirror.

  “Peac—Caroline, I can’t let you leave. Not without an explanation.”

  I stared at him. “There is no explanation,” I snapped. “Not one that will do anything. That will excuse this. I don’t need to hear it. I don’t want to. I just want to leave.”

  My voice had a desperate quality now. Despite the fact I’d moved from the wall, Liam had cornered me. With the truth. With my own pain. I wanted to claw my skin off to escape.

  He looked torn. Tortured. Fists clenched at his sides. Tattoos moving with the tenseness of his sculpted muscles. Scar tearing through his face.

  I itched to touch it. To know what happened to him that scored through his skin.

  But that wasn’t my story to know.

  This wasn’t a man for me to know.

  The door was right there, to my right. I could open it. Leave. Run.

  Not once in my life, in my career had I run from a story.

  Not once had I imagined I might run from Liam.

  And I was going to do just that until the door in question slammed open and Claw tore through it, eyes wild, feral and on me.

  He had me backed up against the wall before I could fully fathom what was going on.

  “Who the fuck are you workin’ for, bitch?” he demanded, gripping my throat with a violence I didn’t think the man who’d flirted with me over the past month was capable of.

  But I knew better than anyone that any man, any human was capable of anything. Or everything, given the right circumstances.

  Claw was ripped off me before he could prove my point.

  Liam’s fist flew into his face, the crunch of bone against flesh echoing through the room.

  “You tell me what the fuck is going on before I continue beating the fucking life out of you,” he said, voice still. Calm. Cold.

  Frightening.

  I’d heard some dangerous people speak. I’d interviewed them. It had been disconcerting. But most of the time, I’d been able to discover the human underneath the monster the world saw. Because monsters were all just humans, somewhere.

  But in Liam’s voice, I didn’t hear it.

  The human.

  Or maybe I was listening for the boy I used to know.

  I definitely didn’t hear him.

  And it frightened me like nothing else had.

  Claw’s nose was bleeding.

  He didn’t seem to notice.

  “She’s a fuckin’ journalist, man,” he hissed, eyes wild on me. “She’s been doin’ a fuckin’ story on us. Wire tapped into her hard drive. She had shit on us. On the club. Notes.”

  Shit.

  I wasn’t stupid enough to leave physical notes lying around, in case anyone decided to check out my apartment. My computer was encrypted. I didn’t store anything in the cloud because I wasn’t an idiot. But I shouldn’t have been surprised that the Sons had what I guessed was a world-class hacker.

  Liam froze and gaped at me. There was accusation in his stare that he had no right to fling at me, but that hit me just the same.

  I jutted my chin up in defiance.

  He had no right to say anything about my choice of profession.

  He had no right to anything, as far as I was concerned.

  Liam shook his head at that head tilt with a familiarity that he wasn’t entitled to.

  Then he ran his hand through his hair and began pacing. “Fuck,” he hissed through his teeth.

  “Fuck is right,” Claw said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He was regarding me with pure hatred.

  I was used to such looks. So I didn’t waver.

  “We thought we had a problem with a civilian witnessing our hit, but now we’ve got a fucking rat,” he seethed, spitting the word at me. “Club doesn’t need this shit right now. Club can’t have this shit right now.”

  Liam was steel. “Don’t think I know that?”

  “Well, we need to get rid of the rat.”

  I was under no illusions about what that meant.

  I’d known it could go this way. Half of me had expected it to go this way. I’d always had a strange certainty I’d die for a story. Funny that it would be the past that killed me.

  Liam had his hand on his gun the second Claw moved toward me, presumably to kill me. “Unless you want a bullet in your kneecap, you’ll stop right there.”

  Claw blinked some of the hatred from his face, but anger still remained. “You’re fuckin’ protecting her? You know better than anyone what needs to be done for the club. Is this ‘cause she’s a woman?”

  “No,” Liam replied. “Because she’s my woman.”

  Both Claw and I jerked in unison at Liam’s words. It would’ve been impressive, the synchronicity of it, were the situation not so dire.

  Hansen chose that moment to appear in the open doorway. His eyes flickered between the two
men facing off, then to me, then back to Liam. “Church,” was all he said before turning on his motorcycle boot and walking off.

  I guessed that’s how it was when you were president.

  The air was wired as Claw stalked off, not keeping his glare from me and Liam not letting go of his gun. I almost wanted Claw to lunge at me, just to see if Liam would really shoot his brother for a girl he used to know.

  But he was gone and Liam’s hand left his gun. He eyed me. “Let’s go.”

  I raised my brow. “Is this my execution hearing?”

  He flinched. “I’d never let anything happen to you, Caroline. I promise.”

  “Well then I better start digging my own grave, because we both know you don’t keep your promises,” I shot.

  Then I walked to ‘church.’

  I knew I wouldn’t find any god there.

  Even the devil had forsaken this place.

  * * *

  “You want to start explaining?” Hansen asked after Liam shut the door behind him.

  He was regarding me coldly, clinically, with none of the anger that was present from Claw, the only other patched member in on the meeting.

  I was sitting straight in my chair, trying to ignore the fact that Liam was so close to me I could feel the warmth of his body. His gaze was zeroed in on Claw, as if he expected him to launch himself across the table and slit my throat.

  His expression didn’t do much to help that. Nor the way he was gripping his knife.

  “I’m a freelance investigative journalist,” I replied. My eyes went to Claw. “Which means I don’t work for anyone. No one has hired me to gain intel on you for reasons to hurt or ruin your club from some preexisting rivalry. I found out about the club after Christmas and the small amount of press coverage that followed. I sensed a story. Having just come back from Iraq—”

  “Iraq?” Liam demanded, something sounding like panic threading through the single word.

  I didn’t look at him. “Yes, I was there under contract with Reuters. But that contract ended, and I couldn’t obtain a longer visa in the country so I came home. I don’t do well not working. So I came here.” I gave Hansen a meaningful look. “Under my own volition. No one else knows where I am or what I’m doing. Nor am I feeding information to anyone.”

  “How the fuck do you expect us to believe that?” Claw demanded.

  “I don’t expect you to,” I replied, glancing to him. “Your entire club was almost wiped out. You’ve got a powerful heavyweight in the underworld looking to do whatever damage he can. You’ll protect your club at all costs, and I doubt you’ll take any chances or take a stranger at her word. I knew that coming in.”

  Claw blinked twice, some of the fury flickering from his face. I guess he expected me to cry or plead for my life.

  It was Liam that spoke. “You knew that coming in?” he repeated, slowly, purposefully.

  Still, I didn’t look at him. I nodded. “I’ve known that on every story I’ve ever covered that there’s a chance, a high one, that I won’t be alive to write it.”

  Another flinch. I saw it from the corner of my eye. Then his fist slammed down on the table. Even Claw jumped, not expecting it. I didn’t move. Because I was half expecting a gunshot.

  Hansen was unflapped too. He was regarding me with furrowed brows. “You’ve done your research. You see a lot. And no, I cannot take you at your word, because you’ve proven that you’re willing to lie to the club for personal gain.”

  “It’s not for personal gain,” I argued.

  He raised his brow. “You don’t want the fame of having the scoop on the club? Don’t want to be the next Hunter S. Thompson?”

  I laughed. “No. It’s safe to say that I don’t want to be known. A good journalist exists only in the footnotes.”

  “So I’m to believe that your motives are unselfish? You believe you’re doing the right thing, exposing criminals?”

  “Everyone’s a criminal. And there’s no such thing as the right thing, so I don’t expect you to believe either.”

  The corner of Hansen’s mouth turned up ever so slightly. “You’re going to be difficult.”

  My mouth did not move, I wondered if I’d ever smile again, if I’d have enough time to heal to a point where I was capable of smiling. “I don’t have to be. Despite what the past has communicated, I am true to my word. I don’t make a habit of becoming a witness. I only bear witness. Silently.”

  It was as close as I was going to come to pleading for my life. With logic. Because if someone like Hansen had decided to kill me, he wouldn’t respond to pleading. He was likely hardened to it. Logic was the only way.

  It might’ve been wishful thinking, but I thought I saw something in Hansen. A precursor to an agreement.

  But Liam spoke before his president could grant me a pardon.

  “We can’t let you go, you understand that, right?”

  I gritted my teeth, finally turning my head to regard him. I did my best to empty my expression and hide the reaction to seeing his scarred but beautifully alive face. “I understand that you can let me go, but your chosen lifestyle means you won’t,” I said flatly.

  A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you were a journalist?” he asked instead of treating my words with a response.

  “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you didn’t die in the desert alone?” I screamed, unable to hold onto my composure.

  Anger I hadn’t let myself feel bubbled up like lava in my throat, suddenly I itched to sink my nails into the skin of Liam’s face that wasn’t marked and leave scars of my own.

  Hansen jerked back, blinking rapidly, as close to a dramatic reaction as he could have. “What the fuck is she talkin’ about, bro?”

  Liam looked to his president.

  “Yes, Jagger, do clue Hansen in on what the fuck I’m talking about,” I said, voice flat.

  Liam glared at me, then to Hansen, opened his mouth. Shut it again. There was a cold fury in his features, but there was something else. Guilt. He was saturated with it.

  I still couldn’t bring myself to care.

  Maybe I would’ve if I didn’t see his mother collapse under the weight of the sorrow at his funeral. Watched his father retreat further into himself with the loss of his only son, until he spoke sparingly and went gray at forty-three.

  If I hadn’t watched his sister develop an alcohol habit that gave her a drunk driving conviction at sixteen because she didn’t know how to stomach her pain, so she swallowed cheap vodka instead.

  If I hadn’t lived with visceral agony every single day up until now.

  Then I might’ve felt sorry for the boy I loved more than life in such visible pain.

  But this wasn’t that boy.

  “The cat seems to have snatched Jagger’s tongue,” I said, voice sharp. “No matter. Talking about death comes easy to me, since it’s my job.” I leaned back in my chair with a faux laziness. “You see, the man you know as Jagger, your brother, is also someone I knew as Liam,” I said after a beat. “Who has a sister named Antonia, a mother named Mary and a father named Kent.”

  Liam flinched as I said their names, as if he hadn’t heard them in a long time, as if the names were bullets.

  I kept speaking. “He went to school in Castle Springs, Alabama, and played football for fun.”

  Hansen raised his brow ever so slightly. Maybe because Jagger didn’t have a hint of a Southern accent, though neither did I, press training ensured that I evened out my accent as much as I could.

  “He could’ve gotten a full ride on that talent alone but he didn’t want one,” I continued, remembering all those fat envelopes he hadn’t seemed excited about. “He also could’ve walked into any Ivy League college in the country with a scholarship, he was that smart. But he didn’t. Instead he enlisted. Became an infantryman in the army. Served exactly sixteen months thirteen days. Then two soldiers came to Mary and Kent’s door, with news their son wasn’t coming home. I heard Mary scream
from my house at the end of the street.”

  I heard the scream in my mind, tearing at it. I hadn’t known humans could scream like that. Now I knew. I’d heard a variation of it all over the world. Not from the dying. But from who the dead left behind.

  “I knew it then Liam was dead. I had to be sedated.” My voice was even, almost robotic. A tone I employed when talking about stories that touched my heart, but I couldn’t get emotional about.

  My eyes were dry as I met Liam’s shimmering ones.

  I hadn’t missed the way his body had jerked as I spoke. But I didn’t soften in the face of his pain, I couldn’t with what I was saying next.

  “You see, in addition to being Mary and Kent’s son and Antonia’s big brother, Liam was also my fiancé,” I continued, turning to face a slack-jawed Hansen. “We buried an empty coffin five days later, because they said there wasn’t anything to bury.” I paused. “And they were right.”

  I didn’t wait for a comment from Hansen or Liam, both of them wearing granite expressions, Liam had gone a dull gray with my words. As if they had sickened him. I hoped they had. I hoped the poisonous truth was acid to his veins.

  Because it was acid to mine.

  I turned on my heel and walked calmly out the door.

  Chapter Five

  I was obviously not allowed out the front gates.

  Ironically, it was the same prospect that had reservations letting me in that refused to let me out. Silently, with his hand on his gun and a borderline apologetic look on his face.

  That’s how I knew the news of who I really was hadn’t hit yet. There would be no apology in his eyes if he knew he was staring in the face of someone who had betrayed the club. That news was being kept under lock and key, I doubted it was to protect me, likely it was because the club couldn’t afford to look weak right now. And letting a woman, of all people, through the club’s defenses would definitely do so.

  It would get out, though.

  Good news didn’t travel, fast or otherwise. But bad news traveled with devastating speed.

  It was worth more, too.

  Good news wasn’t worth much at all.