Payback: A Vigilante Justice Novel

by Kristin Harte

  Just hearing her name felt like hot claws scraping from inside my chest. “I’m going to have to send her away.”

  He didn’t speak at first, so I knew he was taking my statement seriously. Finally, he grunted, the sound somehow chastising. “Safest place for that girl is being looked after by one of us.”

  “They’ll target her because of me. Because of this.”

  “Don’t let them.”

  Such an easy answer for such a complicated problem. I couldn’t control what was coming, couldn’t even guess how the Soul Suckers would strike next. But I knew they would with a surety that set my blood burning. And keeping Shye with me meant putting her life at risk every single day. I was a selfish bastard for sure, but not that much.

  I handed Gage the Beretta for disposal. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.”

  Gage watched me with those flat black eyes of his—emotionless and empty—before nodding once. Releasing me. My time in the barn was over, which meant I needed to throw myself into a deeper level of hell. As much as I hated what I knew needed to be done, I turned and headed for the house.

  It was time to rip my own heart out.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Shye

  Every step away from Alder seemed harder to push through. The distance felt wrong, the fear building inside of me exacerbated by the fact that I’d left him alone outside. This was a bad plan, but it was what he wanted, so I forced myself to climb the stairs and hurry into his bedroom.

  The scene of my crime, in a way.

  Really, I’d committed many crimes against Alder all over Justice. At the truck stop the night we met, when he’d asked me what made me move to town and I’d told him the story my stepbrother had fed me. At the post office when we’d run into each other. At the grocery store in Rock Falls. Every day and night that we spent together, I’d committed crimes against him by lying, hiding myself behind the fake life I pretended to live. All while doing the bidding of the motorcycle club that was likely coming to kill him.

  But he wanted me to hide, so I’d hide.

  Doing what Alder wanted, I locked the door behind me and made my way to his nightstand. It felt wrong going through his things, sneaky almost, but he’d told me to find his gun, so I opened the first drawer I came to. The one I remembered him pulling a gun from the night Bishop had shown up without letting us know. The night I’d first seen him naked.

  Not the time to think about that, Shye.

  Drawer. Right. Gun, condoms—new box, not even opened—and a piece of paper. I reached for the gun, but something about that last item caught my attention and held it. I hesitated, grappling with myself that looking at it would be overstepping, but there was no stopping me. My curiosity won out, so I grabbed and unfolded the simple white sheet.

  A note. From me. One I almost wouldn’t have remembered writing had I not seen it. I’d bumped into Alder’s truck leaving work one night and hadn’t been able to find him inside, so I’d left a note on his windshield, apologizing and promising to pay for the damages. He’d told me the next day that the scrapes on his bumper weren’t important, and there was no need to pay him. Why would he have kept that?

  Three years. I’ve been yours since the first time I saw you in the truck stop, honey.

  My heart jumped, and I had to fight to keep my tears from falling. Three long years of me lying to him for the Soul Suckers…just a few more months and I should have been free. Maybe we could have built something then. Maybe I could have said goodbye to my past and truly been with him.

  Maybe he wouldn’t be fighting the Soul Suckers right now.

  Tucking the note back inside the drawer, I picked up the gun and discovered one more item. A picture…of me. Someone must have taken it at the festival the sawmill held every year. My hair was shorter, and the shirt I wore I recognized as one I’d thrown away my first winter in Justice—it had to have been taken my first summer in town. Which meant Alder had likely been hanging on to that picture for three years. He hadn’t been lying. All that time, I’d seen him as so big and strong, a totally tough man. But the past few days had shown me a side of him I’d missed. A sweet side, one that cared with his whole heart.

  One I’d somehow fallen in love with.

  Without warning, the lights cut out and the house went silent. Dread crawled up my spine. This was it—the attack had to be on. I gripped the gun tightly and tucked the picture back in the drawer, my hands shaking the whole time. Calm, Shye. Stay calm.

  Determined to be brave for Alder, I curled up in the corner of the room, hiding behind the bed itself, and laid the gun in my lap. I had a feeling I wouldn’t need it. I trusted Alder to keep me safe, which was a new feeling for me. Ever since the death of my dad, since my stepbrother had gotten more involved in the Soul Suckers, I’d been living scared.

  Alder made me feel safe.

  I’d repaid him by being untruthful.

  That couldn’t go on a moment longer. And like the dawning of a new day, a light inside my mind shone on the solution. The hiding ended tonight. No more lying. No more dishonesty. I’d tell Alder the truth about my past, about my father and our family link to the Soul Suckers, about my stepbrother’s abuse and my debt to him, and about the danger that came right along with me. That way, he could choose if he wanted to be with me or not.

  The idea of him choosing not hurt, but I had to be ready to accept it.

  Time dragged, minutes feeling like hours as I waited in the dark for some sign of what was going on outside. The first came when the lights clicked back on. I blinked against the sudden brightness, rising to my feet but keeping my back against the wall and Alder’s gun in my hand. The second came when footsteps approached the door. My stomach dropped at the sound. Alder would be running, he’d hurry to get to me. I knew it like I knew he’d do anything to defend me. These steps sounded slow…almost careful. A trudging beat against the wood floors.

  Oh god, what if they’d hurt him? He could be bleeding on the other side of the door. Or they could have killed him and sent someone else for me. To take what I owed them from my flesh.

  Not again.

  Aiming the gun at the door, I took a deep breath and prepared to shoot. My dad had taught me how to handle a gun almost as a joke, but those lessons had stuck. I could shoot, and I would. If I had to. I really hoped I didn’t have to.

  “Shye. Are you okay in there?” Alder’s voice broke the silence, and I nearly fell from relief. Alive. He was at least alive. But I still had to be sure.

  “Alder? The barn?”

  “It’s over now. Everything will be all right. Why don’t you unlock the door for me?”

  I set the gun on the bed and rushed to the door, turning the latch and yanking it open almost in one move. I jumped at the man on the other side, wrapping my arms around him as my heart thumped mercilessly hard. I kissed him before I even saw him, clung to the body I’d learned so well. He held me just as tight, his mouth meeting mine with the same frenzy. His tongue sliding past my lips as he pressed me against the wall and gripped my thighs firmly.

  I wanted him. Not just lust or desire, I wanted him. Every inch. Every moment. Every tic and trait. I wanted the man who kissed me like kissing was an event to be won, who held me like I was a prize. I wanted the happily ever after with my dragon because the prince would never love me as strong.

  But having him—really having him as mine—meant what I’d dreaded for so long needed to happen. It was honesty time. I hated the thought of laying out all my secrets, of telling him how I’d lied to him, but it was the best thing. The right thing. No future could be built on a false foundation. And I wanted a future with him. Deep down, I always had.

  But before I could do or say anything, Alder pulled away, setting me on my feet and putting space between us. Space I wasn’t ready for. Space that screamed something was still wrong. He stood there in the hall a solid three feet away from me, looking damn near defeated. A fact that froze my heart.

  “What’s
wrong?”

  He couldn’t look me in the eye. “You have to go.”

  My stomach plummeted, a giant fault line opened in my heart, and my breath caught as I whispered, “Why?”

  “You can’t stay here anymore, honey. It’s not safe.”

  The cracks in my heart spread, sending an unbearable ache through my soul. This couldn’t be happening. Not then—not when I was finally ready to move forward. “I’m safe with you, Alder.”

  But forward wasn’t the direction he wanted to go…at least not with me.

  His eyes finally met mine, blazing. Angry. Emotions I’d never seen directed at me. “That’s not true, and you know it. I’m sending you to my brother Elijah’s place in Denver for a few days. Just until we get you a new trailer on your property. Maybe if I call the insurance company—”

  “Why are we talking about insurance?” I choked, tears falling. “I don’t care about insurance. I want to stay with you.”

  He shook his head and took another step back. Lining himself up with something sitting in the hallway. Something I hadn’t noticed. Something that solidified Alder’s decision in my head.

  The goddamned bag I’d packed when I’d tried to run from him.

  He’d already planned this out—the bag, where I would go, probably how I would get there. I had no doubt someone from the mills or one of his brothers would be waiting for me when I went downstairs. Waiting to take me away from Justice. He wasn’t going to listen to my arguments.

  “I’m sorry.” He handed me the bag I’d packed. The one with all of my clothes and stuff, the one I’d thrown together when I’d decided to leave him instead of telling him about my scars.

  Ironic—I’d wanted to go and ended up staying. Now, I wanted to stay, and he was forcing me out.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Alder

  “I’m a fool.”

  Bishop’s dark chuckle certainly didn’t help my mood any. Neither did his smartass response.

  “Could have told you that.”

  I lifted my beer bottle to my lips, swallowing hard to try to battle the throbbing ache in my head. I couldn’t stop seeing Shye’s face when I’d told her she had to leave. That flash of absolute pain before nothing. Smile gone, light gone…that glimmer I could have sworn was something that could turn into true feelings, gone.

  Gage grabbed a beer and joined us at the dining room table, Rex watching him from where he lay by the front door as if waiting to go home. “I’m with Bishop on this one. You’re a fool.”

  Like I needed them to agree with me. Shye had been gone exactly twenty minutes—driven away by my brother Finn as I’d instructed—and I’d regretted letting her walk out the door for nineteen and a half of them. Fuck, I hadn’t even really explained myself to her. After the sex and the scars and the barn, my mind hadn’t been in the right place to deal with that slip of a woman. So I’d sent her away, and I regretted that decision completely.

  “I fucked up.”

  Gage shrugged. “You wanted to protect her.”

  “She’s safest with me. At least, if she were here, I’d keep an eye on her. I’d make sure she had everything she needs.”

  “So then, why isn’t she here?” Gage raised an eyebrow, pinning me with that shark-like gaze. Forcing me to admit it again.

  Jackass. “Because I’m a fool.”

  “We’ve established that. Now, how about we figure out how to keep these Soul Suckers from using that against you?” Bishop kicked my chair, earning a glare from me. He simply grinned in return before growing serious once more. “I have no interest in burying a brother, even if he is a complete moron when it comes to women.”

  Gage grunted his agreement. “Ditto.”

  “I don’t see either one of you doing any better,” I said, taking another swig from my beer. Bishop flinched, but Gage simply stared right back. Bishop had dated Anabeth Monroe throughout his college years, but that relationship had crashed and burned in a way that had sent him straight into the Navy SEALs program for some reason. I’d already been in the Special Forces by that time—my little brother’s dating life hadn’t been a top priority, and he’d seemed to handle things well enough. It wasn’t until we’d both come home and I’d realized the man refused to allow another woman to get close to him that I saw how much her leaving had hurt him. Sure, I’d seen him out with women since, but no one local, and never more than once.

  Gage…well, I’d never seen him with anyone but my brothers or his dog. I didn’t even know if he dated. Yet these two were the ones giving me relationship advice.

  Fool wasn’t a strong enough word.

  “So what’s the plan?” Bishop asked, directing the conversation away from the one I knew he didn’t want to have. The one about Anabeth. But no matter how many women he picked up on his many travels, how much he’d glossed over their breakup, I knew his heart still hurt for the girl he’d lost.

  I also knew I’d end up just like him if I lost Shye.

  “Boss?” Gage looked me over, head cocked, eyes hard. Fuck, I needed to focus.

  “The plan is that we go on the offensive.” I rolled the bottle, staring down at the table. “You have to act like an MC to go against one, and an MC wouldn’t let another group just waltz into their territory. They’d fight for it. They’d attack the interlopers.”

  Bishop sat back, his brow heavy. “Attack how?”

  “We go for their money first, and we do it in their style. Not just to shut that kitchen down, but to make a fucking point.”

  Gage nodded. “So we burn down their business.”

  “That stretch of woods has a lot of dead pine,” Bishop said, always the cautious one. “We start a fire out there, it’ll have to be controlled.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time we had to burn in dry conditions.” Gage kicked back, balancing the chair on two legs. Shye would have told him to sit correctly so he didn’t break the chair. I’d learned that lesson at the truck stop early on in my obsession, which was why I’d moved to always sit in the corner booth. I hated to disappoint her. Of course, tonight, I’d done worse. I’d hurt her.

  Goddammit, I had to stop thinking about her. I took a deep breath, trying to focus on the plan. The sooner this ended, the sooner I brought Shye home. “So we bring Cam’s team in to clear the site, then we burn the fucking place down. Between two missing members they sent here and that, they’ll know we’re not fucking around.”

  “Cam might want to be the one to light it up,” Bishop interjected, making a fuckton of sense. “I know I’d want to get revenge if it was my girl. Wouldn’t you?”

  Just the idea… “I’d want to bury every motherfucker who dared to touch my Shye.”

  “Right, and we already took care of Spark. So we bring in Cam to run the blaze, and we prep the site for a burn out.” Gage tipped up his bottle, draining his beer before continuing. “And when they come after us for that and our friends in the barn?”

  “We take them out one by one, just like we did tonight. No second chances. Their guys disappear in Justice, they’ll know why.” I gave him a significant look. “But we do it carefully. Nothing can come back on us.”

  Gage shrugged as if I’d told him to change the oil in a Kennard Mills truck, not get rid of some dead bodies, the guns we’d used to kill them, and set up the future scene of a crime. “I’ll run any cleanup that needs doing.”

  Which was why he was such a good man to have on a team. He got shit done, no matter what.

  “I’ll get in touch with Cam,” Bishop said. “We’ll set up a team to take care of the kitchen. It will probably take a day to prep, though.”

  I nodded. “Cleanup tomorrow, burn the next day. Bishop, I want you to stop at Miss Hansen’s place. See if she needs any help or if she’d be willing to move closer to town. I don’t want her involved in anything.”

  He nodded. “I’ll check in on her.”

  “You sweet on the old lady?” Gage asked, smiling. “You seem to be the one to check on her a lot.”


  “I dated her granddaughter, so I know her is all. She’s got a soft spot for me.” Bishop’s face turned stormy. The fact that he hadn’t told Gage about Anabeth set me back. She’d been such a huge part of his life, though I guess that was a long time ago. She hadn’t been back to Justice in at least a decade. Good thing, too. I’d had to hunt Bishop down the last time he’d run into her. Found him in Vegas, circling the bottom of a bottle and chasing her all over the city. It had taken me two days to clean him up and get him home.

  But remembering Anabeth and the pain she inflicted on my brother only made me think of my Shye, who would never hurt me. She gave me such joy with her presence and her sweetness, and I’d rewarded her by sending her away. Fuck the planning; I needed to fix things with my girl before I ended up as alone and emotionally closed off as my brother had become. I didn’t want a string of one-night stands to keep my dick wet. I wanted dinners at my table, Shye’s ass swinging in that wicked way as she danced through our house. I wanted her wrapped in my arms every night and to wake her every morning with my face or my cock in her pussy. I wanted every moment she had to give me, and I wanted it all to start immediately.

  Even a fool could see that was the prize worth fighting for.

  “We good, then? Plan set?” I glanced from one to the other, wanting to get the conversation back on track so we could call it done. When they both nodded, I rapped my knuckles on the table. “Excellent. Get rid of some bodies and set some fires, boys.”

  I kicked back my chair and strode for the front door, grabbing my keys as I went.

  “Where you going, Alder?” Bishop asked, the smile in his voice obvious. Not that I gave a fuck. Not anymore.

  “I’m going to bring my girl home. I’m a fool, but I’m not too stupid to learn from my mistakes.”

  Gage roared a laugh before pointing at my brother. “Pay up, pretty boy.”