Savage Burn

by Lisa Renee Jones

  “But you’re human, Rick. And you two have a bad history.”

  His palm settles on my neck under my hair and he pulls me close. “I love you. You know that, right?”

  “I love you, too.”

  The doorbell rings again. “That’s not an answer,” he says, kissing me. “You don’t know. That sucks, baby, but I’ll fix it. I’ll make sure you know. For now, stay here.” He sets me away from him and starts walking.

  I take a step to pursue, only to have my cellphone ring again. I glance down to find Gabriel on caller ID. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. I ignore the call, silencing it, but not declining it. I don’t want Gabriel to know that I intentionally didn’t take his call, but I’m not dealing with that bastard right now. I hurry after Rick, for good reason. No matter how removed from his hate for his father he might insist he is, he isn’t. He isn’t at all. And this could turn nasty fast. And nasty feels one step from deadly right about now.

  Rushing through the kitchen, I find Rick standing at the doorway, waiting for me. He catches my waist and leans in, lips near my ear. “Do not, no matter what happens, come outside. If he sees you, if he sees how protective I am of you, that gives him power. Understand?”

  “I’m not promising you that.”

  “Candace—”

  There’s a knock on the door. “Rick!” his father shouts. “I know you’re there.”

  Rick grimaces. “I swear to you, woman, if you come outside, I will spank you and not for pleasure.”

  “And I’ll punch you in the balls.” I tilt my chin and give him a defiant look. “That would be fun.”

  He pulls me hard and fast against him. “I swear, you complete me, baby. I love when you talk dirty.”

  “That was a warning. I wasn’t talking dirty.”

  “Close enough. Stay here.” He steps me away from him and opens the door, exiting to greet his father.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Savage

  I step onto the porch and into a mild seventy-something November day, the only ice in sight, the ice in my veins at the sight of my father. He stands tall and straight, dressed in scrubs for his day at the hospital despite the hollows beneath his eyes suggesting a sleepless night. “What do you want?”

  “You promised me coffee,” he says, his voice etched with exhaustion but the hard lines of his face never rest. He’s forever dominant, eternally arrogant.

  “What do you want?” I repeat.

  “You promised me coffee.”

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  “Son—”

  I step toward him and he backs away. “You should run,” I warn. “I know where you were last night.”

  He doesn’t miss a beat, but then, I learned the hard way that he saves his hesitation for the operating room. “He wants you to know. He told me to tell you.”

  “Of course, he did. You two are alike, too damn alike. That’s why I was foolish enough to see him as a fucking father figure.”

  “I went there because he told me you’d die if I didn’t help him.”

  “Like you give a fuck about me.” I turn away from him, running my hand over my head because if I don’t, I’ll punch him.

  “Son—”

  I rotate to face him. “How much and what did he offer you to work for him?”

  “Your life. That’s all. A couple of men showed up at my door and told me that if I didn’t help, we’d both be dead by morning.”

  “Ah,” I say. “So, you thought you were going to die. They offered you your own life, not mine.”

  “They told me you were bleeding out,” he snaps. “I believed them.”

  To his credit, he delivers that argument with dogmatic intensity, despite being full of shit. They offered him something and it wasn’t my life. “Why are you here?”

  His lips press together a moment. It’s a familiar expression that stirs about a hundred memories of my childhood, and his nastiness to my mother, that he really doesn’t want to stir. “Tag sent me with a message,” he finally confesses.

  “Now we’re getting to the real story.” I motion with my fingers. “Spit that shit out.”

  “He said to tell you: a father is easily here today and gone tomorrow.”

  He delivers that statement without so much of a blink of apprehension. He knows that Tag isn’t threatening him, but rather the general. Tag simply used my father as a prop to deliver a threat, and my father is a willing participant. He doesn’t feel fear. I want him to feel fear. I’m across the porch and slamming him against the banister in seconds. He hits so damn hard it rocks the porch. “Son,” he gasps.

  “You’ve called me that three times,” I say. “Every time you do, I want to cut your tongue out, the way I did an asshole in Iraq after he raped a thirteen-year-old. I can show you my technique. That’d be a good way to demonstrate my surgical skills, don’t you think?”

  “Rick!” Candace yells from behind me. “Rick, stop.”

  Candace’s voice and presence don’t motivate me to pull back. In fact, her presence motivates me to hurt someone before she gets hurt. “Tell Tag I’m coming for him. Tell him he’s not going to survive this.”

  “He said you’d say that,” my father replies. “He said to tell you, that he doesn’t want Candace dead. He wants her alive and well. That way she’s capable of hating you when her father ends up dead because you didn’t keep your blood oath.”

  In other words, Tag’s threats didn’t work on me last night so he’s trying again by way of my father. The message there being that he can get to anyone close to me whenever, and however he so pleases. “You still didn’t tell me what you get out of this.”

  “I didn’t want to be involved. You got me involved.” His eyes darken. “You shouldn’t have come back.”

  “Translation: you get a payday that you’re justifying by blaming me.” My lips thin. “You and Tag deserve each other.”

  “You did this. You made this happen.”

  “Your words or his?” I challenge.

  “Both.”

  “Of course. You’re a team now. Just to be clear, Pops, you’re already dead to me. You’ve been dead to me for years; therefore, I won’t save you, nor will I grieve for you when he kills you. And he will. He never leaves loose ends alive.” I release him. “Don’t come back here. If you do, I swear to God, I’ll take a finger instead of your tongue, then what little surgical skill you have left won’t exist.” I turn to find Candace missing, which can mean only one thing, the obvious. She not only heard the threat against her father, she’s figured out that I didn’t tell her about it last night.

  And again, I think that’s the point of this visit: to rattle me by rattling her.

  I walk back inside the house and when Candace is nowhere in my line of sight, I shut the door behind me before locking it. Listening a moment, silence is all that greets me, but that won’t last. If I know Candace at all, and I do, her anger is about to blow its horn right in my damn face.

  Walking through the empty living room, I track onward to the kitchen. A light wind flows into the room off the patio and I walk to the open door. Candace is there, waiting for me, leaning on the railing, facing me. “How long have you known that my father was leverage?” She holds up a hand. “Wait. No. Correction. How long have you known that my father’s life was being used as leverage?”

  “Last night.”

  She pushes off the railing. “And you didn’t tell me?” she demands. “Seriously, Rick?”

  “I was going to tell you.”

  “Were you?” she challenges.

  “Yes.” I scrub my jaw and press my hands to my hips. “Probably.”

  “Probably? What was your decision-making criteria? If today was sunny, you’d tell me and if it rained you wouldn’t?”

  “Tag knows I’ll kill him if he touches your father.”

  “He doesn’t seem to care.”

  “He cares. That’s the point in today’s visit. He needed you to freak out. He needed you to pressure
me to do whatever it takes to protect your father.”

  “You mean kill Gabriel.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Exactly.”

  “So, Tag not only used your father against you,” she says. “He used mine.”

  I cross to stand in front of her, encouraged when she actually lets me settle my hands on her waist. And damn it, when I touch her, I don’t know how I lived a day without touching her. “He’s using you,” I say, “and I let that happen when me and my bad friend, otherwise known as vodka, professed our love for you in his presence.”

  “Because I’m a weakness.”

  “No. You’re the reason you and your father survive this, baby. You’re why I’m here. I meant what I said to my father. Tag doesn’t leave loose ends. He would have killed you, him, and Gabriel. Now, he has to go through me and my team.”

  “He had to know you’d be a problem. Why be stupid enough to bring you into this?”

  I decide right then and there that I’m not doing her any favors by keeping her out of my headspace right now. She needs to know where I think this is headed. “Think about the headlines. Man kills ex-fiancée and her new fiancé as well as her father, before killing himself. It’s a perfect cover-up, don’t you think?”

  “Oh God,” she whispers. “Yes. I’m scared, Rick.”

  “Fear is good. It keeps us sharp and alive. Come. I have something for you.” I catch her hand and lead her inside the kitchen, where I pull open a drawer and set a handgun on the counter. “Merry early Christmas.”

  She eyes the weapon and then me. “Sig Sauer P238. Easy to handle and conceal.” She picks it up and checks the chamber, which is loaded. “Thank you,” she says. “It was on my naughty list.”

  “Then I take it you still know how to shoot.”

  “We confirmed that while I huddled on the floor of the Porsche with a gun in my hand. Yes. I still know how to shoot.”

  “Right,” I say. “There was that unfortunate incident where we indeed had this conversation. When were you last at the shooting range?”

  “It’s been too long.”

  “Then we’re going today.”

  “Sure,” she agrees. “I’m all in. Please let Tag pay me a visit with that Sig on my person.”

  And there she is. The woman I fell in love with. Tough as nails. She’s standing strong. She’s fighting. She sets the gun back down and folds her arms in front of her. “So, Rick,” she says, “tell me about the tongue you cut out.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Candace

  I watch Rick’s handsome face process my query, seconds ticking by, his expression unchanged. To most, he’d be unreadable, unaffected even, but I know this man. His spine is stiff, his shoulders knotted. His jaw hard enough to shatter. Yes, I’m pushing Rick. Yes, I’m making him talk about the hard stuff, but with reason. When his father pushed him to a place where he forgot to hold back, he gave me the gift of realization. That scar on Rick’s face, the one he won’t talk about, tells me everything I need to know. I just didn’t realize it. It tells his story, the one he doesn’t want me to know. The one he replaces by labeling himself a monster and killer, only he’s not simple. He’s never been simple. He needs to know that he isn’t that simple to me, either. He is not a label to me. He’s not good or bad, right or wrong. He’s a man, flawed and perfect all at once.

  Several drawn-out seconds go by before he scrubs that jaw, his hands settling on his hips. “I could tell you I didn’t do what I said I did. I could tell you I was just talking, but that would be a lie and you know what? I’ve never lied to you. I’m not going to start now. Yes. I cut his damn tongue out because he did things to that little girl with his damn tongue. And I don’t regret it.” He holds his hands to his side. “This is me. Still a surgeon and always a savage, baby.”

  Before he even finishes that sentence, my arms are around him and I’m peering up at him. “Thank you.”

  His brow furrows. “For what?”

  “Trusting me and telling me the hard truth.”

  “What happened to our deal?”

  “I can handle the truth, even the dark, hard truth, Rick. But you calling yourself a killer and a monster, over and over, feels like a wall that you used to hide from me and divide us. It also makes me realize that I have some guilt in why you stayed away. I obviously made you feel that there was only black and white. That I couldn’t live inside the gray with you.”

  “You didn’t. That’s not what happened. That’s not how things happened at all. It’s not that simple.”

  Not that simple.

  Words that he might as well have snatched out of my own mind.

  His hand settles at the back of my head and he leans in close, settling his forehead on mine. “I know you can handle a lot of things.” He pulls back to look at me. “I admit I was afraid to see myself through your eyes, but more so, I thought you deserved better.”

  Words that ping a warning in my mind. “And now?”

  There’s a really badly timed knock on the door. “Of fucking course,” Rick mumbles, kissing me fast and hard before saying, “Sorry, baby. That would be Adam, and—”

  “I know. Let him in.”

  He hesitates, searching my face before he says, “And now, you’re stuck with me. Killer, monster, and Purple People Eater.”

  I smile despite myself, forever charmed by his goofy jokes that make almost no sense. He smiles, too, and when Adam knocks again, he grimaces before he shouts out, “Enter, asshole!”

  He and I turn to find Adam entering the kitchen with Smith on his heels. “I see you let your pops live,” Adam says, setting a box on the counter. “Donuts,” he says. “A dozen, and Candace,” he adds, “if you want more than one, I suggest you dive for the box. I’ve seen Savage inhale that many or more in about sixty seconds flat.”

  “He’s exaggerating,” Rick assures me. “It takes me a full five minutes for a dozen.”

  “It used to take ten minutes,” I tease.

  “With age comes wisdom and technique,” he says, and I don’t feel even a tiny cringe with reference to technique despite it reminding me of his conversation with his father.

  “What did pops have to say?” Smith asks, stepping to Adam’s side.

  “A bunch of bullshit,” Rick murmurs, walking to the box of donuts and snagging a chocolate glazed one before he adds, “He swears they came to him and told him that I was bleeding out, and yet he came here to threaten Candace’s father. He was full of shit. He’s working for Tag.” He takes a bite of the donut and motions for me to come and taste it.

  My growling stomach isn’t going to argue. I move to Rick’s side, and take the donut from him, while he grabs another.

  “He might be telling the truth,” Smith offers. “We can’t find any communication between him and anyone close to Tag before last night.”

  “Gabriel uses a burner phone,” I say, licking chocolate from my finger. “Why can’t he?”

  “He could,” Adam agrees, glancing at Rick. “Asher’s searching cameras at various locations your father frequents, looking for a point of contact.”

  “Whether they met before last night or last night really doesn’t matter,” Rick says. “He’s with them.” He grabs another donut. “What’s happening with Gabriel? Anything new?”

  “Interesting answer there,” Smith says. “He’s meeting with Ted Pocher, the billionaire behind many a political campaign. A man rumored to be a powerhouse in the Deep State, or to some the Society, if you believe that shit exists.”

  “It does,” Rick says. “And the people involved will do whatever it takes to win where they want to win.”

  Adam arches a brow. “I take it Tag worked for them?”

  Clearly doing the unthinkable and losing his appetite, Rick tosses a donut back into the box, unfinished. “He all but gave a few of their people belly rubs. And that, my pretties, is why Tag wants Gabriel dead. Because as long as Tag exists, Tag’s a liability. It also confirms my suspicions as to why he wanted me
front and center. He wants to be damn sure this doesn’t look like a black ops hit that gets him on the wrong side of the Society. Not even he wants that.”

  “This just gets worse,” I say. “They’re never going to let us walk away.”

  “Of course, we will,” Rick says. “By dethroning Gabriel. If he doesn’t exist, if he’s no longer a viable candidate, then the Society goes away. At least where we’re concerned. Gabriel’s reputation is the only reason that the black ops operation is a problem for them.” His brow furrows. “What I don’t get is why Tag didn’t tell me they were involved. That piece of information steps up the intensity. It motivates me to end this quickly. That’s what he wants.”

  “What if he doesn’t know?” Smith suggests.

  “He knows,” Rick assures him. “Zero possibility he doesn’t. The minute this turned political, my head should have been in that space. What I don’t get is why Tag didn’t use the Society as a way to motivate me to kill Gabriel and free Candace.”

  “Maybe he felt that would make you grab Candace and run,” Smith replies. “He needed you here to kill Gabriel.”

  “I don’t run,” Rick states. “Tag knows that. We’re missing something and we need to figure out what that is.”

  My cellphone rings and I pull it from my pants pocket where I’ve slipped it, glancing at the caller ID with a cringe. “It’s Gabriel.”

  Rick’s hand immediately covers my hand where it holds the phone. “Let it go to voicemail.”

  “I can’t do that,” I insist quickly. “I already ignored one of his calls and my father—”

  “You need to let it go to voicemail.”

  “She’s right,” Adam adds. “She needs to buy us more time to get everyone out of this.”

  “Butt out, fish man,” Rick snaps, but his eyes never leave my face. His focus remains on me. “Trust me. Let it go to voicemail.”

  Trust me.

  Those words undo my resolve. This isn’t an emotional response for him. There’s a reason. I need to do as he said and trust him. I let the call go to voicemail.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Candace