Lone Star (Dartmoor Book 7)

by Lauren Gilley

  “I have no opinion of you,” he said, and thought he managed to keep his voice flat and neutral. Restraining himself was a foreign concept; he was struggling with it.

  Ten chuckled; a forced sound, another practiced behavior too perfect to have been real. He sat down on the empty patch of bedspread where the knapsack had rested. “Do you know what your problem is?”

  That I hate you.

  “You haven’t been challenged.”

  Reese thought of the small composition notebook in his sock drawer, the one rubber-banded shut. Thought of the tally marks on the pages. Of the accounting of his kills. He’d dropped over the wall of a bathroom stall to strangle a man to death. Had sniped down targets from rooftops, four blocks away before the body had cooled.

  He’d crawled through the tangle of wires and vents and dropped out of a ceiling to save Ten’s own sister – whom he didn’t know, and didn’t love.

  He lifted his chin a fraction. “I’ve been challenged.”

  That earned another chuckle. “What? Killing rednecks? Drug dealers, and hooker-killers? You paint your face black, and you play grim reaper, and, what then, disappear? You murder the untrained civilians your masters point you toward. Where’s the challenge in that?”

  When Reese only stared at him, Ten’s gaze sharpened. “You stick out. You stick out in a room full of people like a stinking, festering wound. You can’t play at charming, or interesting. You barely know how to speak.

  “Could you work the long game? Could you befriend someone? Seduce someone into bed? Learn all their secrets before you slit their throats? No,” he said, when Reese gathered breath to speak. “You can’t. You haven’t the faintest notion how to get information out of a mark. Killing is good – it always comes down to killing, in the end – but any dog can kill. The best assassins can learn – and I don’t think you can.”

  I hate you, Reese thought. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

  Ten stood. “Fox might be taking you, but he doesn’t need you. When we get to Texas, stay out of my way.” He turned to leave.

  He was at the threshold when Reese found his voice. “I have a name.”

  Ten froze. Turned back around.

  “I have a name,” he repeated. “And you only have a number. Don’t pretend you’re more human than me.”

  Ten stood impassively a long moment. Then he bared his teeth in another too-sharp smile, and walked off.

  His shoulders were tight, though. Reese noticed that.

  Because he noticed everything.

  ~*~

  Axelle drove back to her place and packed a bag. She’d become ruthlessly efficient about it over the years. Only the barest essentials – with a little makeup, and, okay, some underwear that verged more toward fancy than functional. By the time she headed back to pick up Eden, her stomach was doing somersaults.

  They’d talked a few times via text – benign stuff. How was your day? What’s up? Isn’t this dog cute? But she hadn’t seen him in person since their date. Which hadn’t ended badly…

  But.

  Axelle had grown up around a certain kind of guy. She’d known Albie was different – was better – from the first, even when she’d still been trying to hate him and everything his club patches stood for. But she still didn’t know how to behave around him; didn’t know the automatic reactions to the things he said, to the glances he gave her. He was dancing to one beat, and she to another, and it was driving her nuts.

  When she climbed out of her car in front of the clubhouse, someone got up from one of the picnic tables under the pavilion and walked out into the sun, toward them. It was Albie, she saw, stomach tightening with a mix of gladness and nerves.

  He walked around the nose of the GTO to meet her, frowning a little. Walked right up to her – but stopped a fraction farther back than was intimate. A respectful distance, but not a personal one. “Hey. Fox said you were coming.” His gaze moved over her in an assessing way; she wanted it to feel heated, like he was checking her out, but really he was just cataloguing her boots, and jacket, and judging her readiness to leave. Probably thinking of saying something stupid like don’t go or it’s too dangerous.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Eden decided the cheating husbands and missing cats could wait a week or so.”

  “Probably can.” He nodded, and then met her gaze, his head tilting, measuring. “And what about you?”

  “She’s not dragging me along, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Oh, no, I didn’t – it’s just that–”

  “Do you wish I wasn’t coming?” she asked, already shriveling inside.

  “No! No, I mean, I’m glad you are – but it’ll be–”

  “Dangerous?”

  He sighed. “Yeah.”

  “Can’t be as bad as London,” she pointed out, and he nodded in an agreeing way.

  “Hopefully not.”

  That was when she noticed what she’d detected in him from the first, but been unable to label. Just beneath his calm exterior, an energy buzzed; one that turned his eyes electric, and betrayed itself in the way he kept taking short little breaths. His fingers, when she checked, curled and uncurled. As she watched, he lifted both hands and cracked his knuckles, making a face when it tugged at the nerves in his newly healed wrist.

  “Albie,” she said, careful not to sound judgmental – or too eager herself. “Are you excited about this trip?”

  “What?” He was glancing back toward the clubhouse, where Fox was coming out, Ten and Reese in tow, bags slung over their shoulders. “Oh, um.” He turned back to her. Pushed a hand through his hair, thick and disarrayed as ever. She hadn’t had a chance to touch it on their date; had vacuumed her couch cushions to within an inch of their lives in the hopes they’d up there, tangled and breathing hard. She could have touched his hair, then; could have raked her fingers through it and taken a tight grip. But, no. Only awkward goodbyes at the door and the ghost of a kiss that hadn’t happened.

  “Maybe?” he said, wincing apologetically. “Not that I don’t enjoy Knoxville, and this will be dangerous, and–”

  God, this was too painful. “I’m excited,” she said. “Dead bodies all over the place? Sounds like a party.”

  A brow lifted. “I thought you were having fun playing…who was it?”

  “Jessica Jones. You need Netflix. And, yeah, fun. Boring fun.”

  “Oh.”

  Fox reached them, gaze hidden behind a pair of Ray-Bans. “We good?”

  The sun was dipping down, bobbing low along the river, the night coming on cold and smelling of frost.

  “We’re good,” Eden said, voice laced with anticipation.

  Ready was a disease, in this case, and they all had it.

  Axelle jangled her keys. “We’ll follow you. Lead the way.”

  Amarillo

  Seventeen

  It had been a strange two days in the wake of what Michelle was thinking of as “the accident,” because “that time I flipped a truck off the road” was too much of a mental mouthful.

  Immediately afterward, when she’d hung up with Fox, she’d thought to stay up and wait for Candy to arrive home. But the adrenaline crash was too strong, and the next thing she’d known, she was waking to the feel of a big hand on her shoulder, and Candy’s voice saying, “Shit, babe, are you okay?”

  She’d tipped sideways so that she lay with her head resting on the arm of the sofa, and Candy knelt on the floor in front of her, shaking her gently, expression horror-struck. For a minute, she wondered if there was something on her face; wondered, with a flare of panic, if something had happened to TJ. But then she remembered the drive home, and the truck, and she sat up as it all clicked into place.

  “Baby,” he said again, urgently.

  “I’m okay.” Dizzy, though. Exhausted. Sore in the way that sheer terror always left you. “What time is it?”

  His expression didn’t soften. His raised brows left a tidy stack of lines pressed into the sun-bronzed skin of
his forehead. “After midnight. Jinx told me what happened. Baby, I’m so sorry I wasn’t with you. I shoulda been here. Pace was being…” He trailed off with a frustrated sound, and reached to touch her face.

  Her reaction was automatic. Unconscious. She ducked back, just before his hand made contact.

  Candy froze. They both froze, gazes locking.

  She didn’t know why she’d done that. Nerves, she guessed; still keyed-up from what happened.

  She shifted forward on an exhale.

  But Candy put his hand down without having touched her, the furrow between his brows deepening. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, sitting back on his haunches, hands braced on the sofa cushions on either side of her hips. “I should have been there.”

  “Why? So your bike could have been all dented up like Jinx’s?” She sighed and said, “You couldn’t have done anything, love. No one could have predicted what happened, and no one could have stopped it.”

  A muscle in his cheek leapt as his jaw clenched. “You shouldn’t have gone at all. I shouldn’t have let you,” he said heavily, his gaze shifting inward.

  “Would you have me sit at home and live in fear?” she asked.

  “I’d have you stay safe.”

  She’d sensed an impasse; an ugly, thorny sort of argument she didn’t have the energy for now.

  He’d wanted to know all the specifics, so she’d delivered a play-by-play, all that she could remember. It sounded reckless and crazy as she delivered it in halting monotone. Reliving it left her numb; exhaustion dragged at her.

  Candy’s eyes got wider and wider, his jaw tighter and tighter. His hands migrated from the sofa cushions to her thighs, and she managed not to flinch this time.

  “Christ,” he said when she was finished, hands tightening against her. “I can’t believe you did that.” He attempted a smile, one that wobbled and fell. “Actually, I can. But I can’t believe it worked.”

  “Me either.” It seemed even wilder and dumber in retrospect. “What happened with Pacer?”

  He’d made a face. “I swear he was on something. Wasn’t himself. Could barely walk. I asked him about the guys he lost, and whether or not they’d been in debt, or on anyone’s shit list. He couldn’t tell me shit.”

  “Drowning the pain with pills?” she’d guessed.

  “Probably.”

  They’d gone to bed without any answers that night; he’d slept at her back, curled protectively around her, a hand resting on the slight swell of her belly. He fell asleep quickly, his breathing evening out against the back of her neck, stirring her hair. But Michelle, after her nap, stayed awake long after, staring into the shadowy darkness of their room, straining for nefarious sounds that weren’t there, thoughts churning.

  She hadn’t told him she’d called Fox. It felt like she was hiding something from him, but she wasn’t ready to admit it yet – if an admission it even was.

  Her brain was a mess.

  Fox will fix it, she’d thought, before she finally drifted off. She had a moment to reflect that, perhaps, this wasn’t fair to her husband.

  But then her eyes closed, and she tumbled headfirst into nightmares of headlights and squealing tires.

  ~*~

  Candy woke before dawn. He lay for a long moment in the faint silvery light, listening to Michelle’s deep breathing, keenly aware of how little area she took up on the mattress. She’d never felt so small and fragile to him; vulnerable and breakable. When he thought of someone trying to run her off the road – to frighten her? To kill her? – his hands tightened into fists. Tension stole through his entire body, and, finally, carefully, he slipped away from her and out of bed to keep from waking her. She’d been exhausted when he found her last night, fast asleep on the sofa, curled up protectively around her belly, brow creased with worry. Not a peaceful sleep; she’d looked like she was in pain.

  “I didn’t want to wake her,” Jenny had said, but Candy hadn’t been able to let her sleep, not when she looked that miserable.

  He tiptoed around the bed, now, headed for the closet, and glanced back toward the bed, peering at her face through the gloom. She still looked troubled, hand curled in a tight fist on top of the sheets. Her expression wasn’t slack and soft like it should have been, tension evident in her brow, and jaw.

  That was his fault. That was because terrible people were doing terrible things in his city, and he hadn’t put a stop to it yet. Didn’t even know how to put a stop to it.

  For one dark moment, standing in his underwear in the chilled morning air, he felt devastatingly helpless. Useless.

  Give yourself some credit, he imagined his dad saying. You can’t fix everything all by yourself all in one day.

  But this was his old lady. This was personally unforgiveable.

  He turned away, dressed, and headed for the main room, and the door that led out onto the little back porch where Jenny used to sit and drink wine in the evenings, when she’d lived her.

  The scent of coffee on his way through told him someone else was up – a welcome bit of nostalgia stealing over him. It could have been Colin, but somehow he knew it wasn’t, a suspicion confirmed when he pushed through the propped-open door and found his sister sitting curled up in one of the two chairs that overlooked the vast, shadowed sweep of the back ten acres.

  Jenny wore a thick down jacket over a flannel robe that looked like it belonged to Colin; a pair of those ugly, but warm tug-on boots. She held a steaming mug between two hands, and had left another, full, black, sitting on the arm of the second chair.

  She’d been waiting for him.

  Candy picked up the coffee and sat, taking an appreciate inhale of the fragrant heat still wafting up out of it. “How’d you know I’d come out here?” It was only half-curious. He thought he knew what her answer would be.

  She took a sip from her own mug and sent him a look just readable in the early hint of light: a penetrating, motherly sort of assessment. He didn’t know if telling her she looked a hell of a lot like their mother right now would be received well or not. “Cause this is where I’d come, too, if I was thinking the way you are right now.”

  “And how am I thinking?”

  “Like an idiot who thinks that if he’d been there last night, he could have stopped all that from happening.”

  He shifted in his seat rather than answer.

  “Not that you’ll admit it,” she continued, “but, magic fists or not, you can’t stop a truck all by yourself, Candy.”

  “I coulda tried,” he said, just to be stubborn, and she snorted.

  “Everything’s okay. She’s a smart cookie, your wife. Reacts well in those kinds of situations.”

  That was true. “Yeah.” It didn’t make him any less wound up, though. “But what if–”

  “Derek,” she said, firmly. She didn’t say it the way Melanie did – and always had; like someone who thought he was silly for letting people call him a made-up name. She said it like she knew him; like she could see through all his bullshit. It was comforting, in its own way. Being known was his favorite part of having a family, blood, and chosen. “You worry about shit less than anyone I’ve ever known. ‘What if.’ You could ‘what if’ yourself to death being attached to this club. What will you do? Go legit? Sell all the guns and open a charity? You’ve spent your whole life making enemies; they won’t stop coming just because you want to bow out of the race.”

  He sent her a rueful smile. “When’d you get so smart?”

  “I’ve always been this smart, asshole.” She took a sip of coffee, but not before he saw the ripple of doubt that crossed her face. He knew she was thinking of Riley, of her first marriage, and all the mistakes there.

  He didn’t call her out on it. Sighed instead, settling back more deeply in his chair. Out across the flat expanse of the back lot, the sun touched the distant hills, a thin ribbon of pink nearly too bright to look at; pale rays like the spokes of a wheel thrust up into the sky from the still-hidden sun.

  “
You know,” he mused, “we’ve been in deep shit before. Deeper shit than this, really. But every time, I knew who to blame it on. I always knew who wanted my head on a plate.” He turned toward her, her face looking flushed in that wash of pink light. “Am I losing my touch?”

  Her brows went up, gaze sliding over. “What?” She sounded truly surprised.

  His chest tightened. Anxiety of that sort – personal doubt – was so foreign that, for a second, he thought he was having a heart attack.

  He sighed again and said, “When I told Blue that I was gonna call Cantrell out to your place, he said I’d gotten soft.” The word tasted foul on his tongue.

  Her gaze dropped toward his middle. “Uh, not to be that creepy sister, but if anything, I think you’re more jacked than ever. Damn, I hate you for your metabolism.” She pulled her jacket a little tighter across her own middle.

  “Jen,” he said, not in the mood for teasing.

  “Yeah, yeah, okay.” She rolled her eyes, and then got serious. “I don’t think soft is fair. You’ve always been…” She hesitated, shrinking down in her chair a little, voice going self-conscious. “Good to the people you care about. You’re a sweetheart a lot of the time. When you’re not punching people’s heads off.”

  He couldn’t help a little smile, and she smiled back.

  “But you love big. You didn’t turn into a pussycat when you got married.”

  The relief that washed through him was overwhelming. “I don’t have a history of cooperating with the law,” he said, because he felt like he had to.

  She shrugged. “You don’t have a history of being a dumbass, either. You wouldn’t do something just to be stubborn; that’s not your way, Candy. You look at your options, and you make the right decision for the circumstances. Outlaws that run their clubs outta spite and tradition are clubs that don’t last long.”

  He stared at her, stunned silent.

  “I love Blue, but he’s old school. He’s also not the president. You do what you gotta do, bro. Even if you catch some shit for it.”