“Bono.”
“Who’s asking?”
“Bono Travers? It is you, isn’t it? After all this time, you have the same number.”
I wanted to be angry, but the female voice on the other end sounded faintly familiar and was obviously distressed. “Who is this?” I asked again.
A breath huffed along the line. “It’s Hope.”
A ball of fire grew in my belly as hot as the flames that took Hope’s body from me. I stood from the table, vaguely aware that the room had fallen silent. My fists clenched around my phone and spittle flew from my mouth as I spoke in to it.
“I will fucking kill you,” I said, not knowing who this could be or what game they were playing.
“Bono. It’s... it’s really me.” The words were choked out between sobs, her breath ragged. “You have to believe me.”
Despite my anger, I listened closely to the voice, wondering if I’d recognize it as someone from my past, someone who wanted to hurt me. The voice had matured but something inside made me believe it was Hope’s. But that was nothing more than a fucking foolish fantasy. “Hope’s dead,” I said. “I buried her myself.”
Cane turned to Jameson. “Get Rex,” he said before nodding to me.
I knew what he wanted. The brothers had turned the far end of the room into a makeshift office about a year back when Greg was in the hospital and we were reluctant to leave Cherrie at the bar on her own. Next to a laptop and a landline on the desk lining the wall, Cherrie had placed a pot of pens and a notepad. Cane ripped off a sheet from the pad and handed it to me along with a pen. I switched the call to hands-free and placed the phone on the center table so everyone could hear.
“It’s really me, Bono. The US Marshals only made it look like I’d died in the fire.”
“And why the fuck would they do that?” I asked at the same time as jotting down the caller’s number.
I swallowed the anger bubbling up from inside and tried to keep my senses, despite the confusion swirling through my head.
I’d never forget the night two police officers knocked on my door and told me Hope had died, killed in a fire set to cover the murder of her boss, Kate Ashley. I wanted the fucker responsible dead. They wouldn’t let me near the case, and the reporting was kept to a minimum as it turned out he was some big shot mafia hitman. I couldn’t even learn what crimes he’d been charged with. But an officer called to let me know he’d been convicted. Life with no option of parole.
“I witnessed Kate’s murder. They needed me to enter witness protection and testify.”
I shook my head, wanting with all my heart to believe what I was hearing. “I fucking buried a body,” I yelled into the phone as tears filled my eyes.
“It wasn’t me,” she sobbed as Rex and Jameson entered the room with Lucky behind them. “Witness Protection only made you think that it was.”
Cane didn’t hesitate in taking the paper from my hand and giving it to Rex, who turned on the laptop.
“Remember that night,” she continued. “You came to the office. We... we went into the stationery cupboard.”
“How the fuck do you know that?” My words held venom, but hers had surprised me.
I turned to Cane, who raised an eyebrow. My stomach churned. It couldn’t be Hope, could it?
“We were going to have pizza,” she continued, her voice becoming soft and barely audible. “You didn’t want pineapple.”
I leaned on the table with my head low and my hand’s resting either side of the phone. “Who the fuck likes pineapple on their pizza?” I asked, my voice equally quiet.
“I do.”
“It’s like a party in the mouth,” we both said at the same time.
“Hope.”
“It’s really me, Bono.”
Rex stood from the laptop. “Just outside of Phoenix,” he mouthed, having traced the number.
“Why now?” I asked. “After all this time.” She was the love of my life. I’d never gotten over losing Hope. I had so many questions, not least of which was how she could leave me.
“I saw Mickey Dolmilo two nights ago. The guy who killed Kate. He stared right at me, and I ran. I haven’t stopped running. I... I just... You’re the only person I trust.”
“Impossible. Dolmilo got life.”
The atmosphere in the room had been tense, but it suddenly felt as though the entire place had been filled with expanding foam, and all that cloying energy was pouring off Jameson in waves.
I stared at him as the person I was beginning to think of as Hope continued on the other end of the phone. “That’s what I was told, too,” she said. “But it was him, I’ll never forget the look on his face.”
“Where are you?” I asked, not taking my eyes from Jameson.
“No,” Rex rushed towards me. “Don’t answer that question,” he screamed. “Not on this line. Call her back,” he said and nudged his head at the phone by the laptop.
“You hear that?” I asked Hope. “I’m gonna end the call and phone back.” Without waiting for a response, I ended the call while glaring at Rex.
“You have the same number you had ten years ago,” he explained. “There’s a reason you have to cut contact with everyone you know when you enter witness protection.”
I nodded, understanding that my phone might be compromised. Though it was doubtful after all this time.
“What do you know about this Dolmilo?” Caleb asked Jameson, as I moved to the other phone.
“Nothing good,” he answered. “I’ll go and make some calls upstairs and see what I can find out.” With that, he left the room. Caleb nodded to Lucky, who turned and followed after him.
“Bono,” Hope said with evident relief in her voice when she answered the phone. “You called back.”
“I said I would.”
“Does that mean you believe me?”
“I don’t know what to fucking believe,” I answered. “Where are you? I’m coming to get you.”
Chapter Three
Bono
Thanks to Amber and her job at Denver International Airport, I’d been on the twenty-past-ten flight to Phoenix that night. The location Hope gave me matched the one Rex had traced, fueling my belief that she was who she said she was.
Two and a half hours later, I was driving the rental car Amber had also arranged towards the motel Hope was holed up in when my phone rang.
“Talk to me, Jameson?” I said, noting his name on the display before I answered.
“Mickey Dolmilo’s out.”
Fuck! “Do you think Hope’s in serious trouble here?”
“She is. Dolmilo’s a hired killer for various mob families. He’s out on a technicality under appeal. That and all the evidence against him has conveniently been lost or destroyed.”
“Wouldn’t they have called Hope as a witness again?” I asked.
“You’d think.”
I sighed and rubbed my hand over my face. “What’s all this got to do with Hope?” I asked. Ten years was a long time to hold a grudge. “You think he’s after revenge?”
“It’s worse than that. Dolmilo needs to prove himself to get back in the business.”
I turned off the main road and saw the motel in the distance. My heart raced. “Prove himself?”
“If he can’t take care of his business and clean up his own mess, then why should anyone else trust him with theirs?”
Fuck! I thought again. “So, what you’re telling me is that this fucker is a trained for-hire killer who needs to kill Hope to clear the way for him to get back in the game.”
“I’m telling you, it’s a miracle she’s not already dead.”
As if I didn’t know that. I pulled the rental to a stop outside the motel. Despite being almost two in the morning, a few lights were on in some of the rooms, and the reception area was lit up like a Christmas tree. I glanced at the third floor where Hope had said she was. I’d told her to barricade the door and not move or make another phone call, unless she needed to call the
police, until I got there. Her room was dark.
“Thanks, Jameson,” I said.
He sighed down the phone. “Hurry home. We have a better chance of keeping her alive if we’re all together and in familiar territory.”
“I know.” It was a thirteen-hour drive back to Castle Rock, but there weren’t any non-stop flights out of Phoenix to Denver until 6:25 a.m. and that was full. I was beat, having been up for nineteen hours. But it wasn’t the first time I’d needed to go without sleep for a few days, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. I glanced back up to the room. “We’ll be on the road within ten minutes,” I said.
With a promise to try and get more information and possibly help from his contacts in New York, Jameson ended the call. I huffed out a breath and left the car.
No-one challenged me when I bypassed the reception area and walked straight up to the third floor. I stood before the blue door of room thirty-seven for a second, my heart in my throat. I closed my eyes and tried to conjure Hope’s face, her sparkling eyes and the dimples that formed in her cheeks when she smiled. It had grown harder over the years to pull her image to mind, but it was there in full glory tonight.
Fuck! If this wasn’t her, I didn’t know what I’d do.
While dread rolled in my stomach, I opened my eyes, took a deep breath, and knocked on the door. “Hope. It’s me, Bono,” I said.
I heard movement on the other side of the door. The sound of shifting furniture. It stopped and I stood frozen as though between one heartbeat and the next. The door opened a crack, and Hope’s wide brown eyes greeted me.
Her face was the same, but older with a maturity I didn’t remember. I shuddered. She was as beautiful as I remembered. My insides whirled in confusion, and I was bombarded with one emotion after another. Relief, love, anger, denial. But within it all, I felt strangely numb.
Hope looked at the ground and shifted from one foot to another. I hadn’t known what to expect. During the flight, I’d pictured her running into my arms, me spinning her off her feet and kissing her the way she’d kissed me the last time we’d seen each other. Instead, neither of us moved.
“We should leave,” I said, breaking the silence. “Grab your things.”
“I’m wearing all that I have,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
I took in the leggings and her oversized hooded-top and nodded before stepping back away from the door.
We walked to the reception, where I stood outside while Hope returned her key. We got in the car and on the road without saying a word to each other.
The drive would take forever with neither of us talking, but still, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. The road ahead lay empty and black, and a quietude filled the night. Only the turning of the tires and the faint whir of the engine broke the silence.
Hope twisted the ring on her finger, drawing my gaze. In the dark, it was hard to make out, but even though it was on the wrong hand, it looked like the one I’d given her all those years ago.
It had been a long time since I’d thought of the ring. Before I’d proposed, I’d teased her about her slender fingers and bet that she took a child’s size just to get her ring size from her. I’d even managed to find out what sort of design she’d like by dragging her around jewelry shops under the pretense of wanting a new watch and commenting on a few rings while we were there. After that, and a lot of searching, I finally found the ring I thought perfect for her.
Unable to stop myself, I reached out and lifted her right hand to get a better look. I half expected her to flinch away from my touch, but she didn’t.
“Is this...?” I asked. Hope nodded. “You kept it.”
“I couldn’t bring myself to part with it.” I released her hand, but instead of pulling it back down to her lap, she stroked the bristles of my beard. “How long have you had this?” she asked.
I clasped onto her fingers to still them. “Not long,” I answered, unsure why anger built inside me.
Hope must have sensed my mood. She pulled her hand away and shifted in her seat to stare out the window.
I studied the side of her face. A wariness reflected in eyes surrounded by dark circles. If that wasn’t enough to show me the stress she’d been under, the furrow of her brow would.
For eight years, she’d been my whole life. From the time I first met her at fifteen until she died... until she left at twenty-three, she’d been my everything, and I’d never stopped loving her. Or rather, I now wondered, I never stopped loving the memory that used to be her. Otherwise, why would now be so difficult?
My chest clenched and I found it hard to breathe. Too many emotions warred inside me. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t think. For now, all I could do was stare at the road ahead and count down the hours until we reached Castle Rock.
“Did you marry someone else?” I found myself asking a while later.
“No. Did you?”
I shook my head. I wanted to tell her that there was never anyone but her for me, but the truth was, I didn’t know who the hell she was. My Hope was there. I saw it in her every movement, in the way she held her head and crossed her legs even in the car, but ten years was a long time to be apart, and I’d changed so much. The me of ten years ago wouldn’t recognize myself in the man I’d become. How much had Hope changed during that time as well?
“This was a mistake,” Hope said, her eyes focused on the darkness outside. “You should drop me off—”
“The only mistake you made was running out on me ten years ago,” I said, unable to stop the hurt and anger pouring out in my voice. I slammed my fists against the steering wheel. “What the fuck happened? Why the fuck didn’t you come to me?”
“Dolmilo killed Kate,” she said as she turned to face me and I noted a tear streamed down her cheek, making me feel like the biggest fucking asshole in the world. “I was scared, confused. The police were there within seconds. They took my phone, didn’t let me make a call. Before I knew what happened, I was in some orientation center in Washington, having counseling for the life I was being forced into. It just... it all happened so fast, and they said I had to cut all ties, that you thought I was dead and it would be better for you if I stayed that way.”
Her words made my anger shift from her to the fucking Marshals. They’d railroaded Hope into the program alone to suit their needs, never once thinking about what was best for her.
“I would have come with you,” I said.
This time it was Hope’s voice that filled with anger. “Don’t you think I know that.” She wiped at the tears as though they were acid burning her cheeks. “Don’t you think that not a day has gone by where I haven’t questioned my every action? When I’ve wanted to pick up the phone and call, even if that meant hanging up before speaking just to hear your voice?”
I shook my head. “You should have called me.”
She shifted her gaze back out the window. “Yeah? Look how fucking well that’s going for me now,” she muttered, her voice full of derision.
Despite myself, a small smile crept onto my face. There was the Hope I knew. The one who’d sooner punch me in the fucking face than let me shout her down.
“All this time and you still haven’t learned that pineapple has no place on a pizza,” I said to try and break the tension.
“All this time, and you haven’t learned that it does,” she countered.
“Only for fucking crazy people.”
Hope laughed. The same laugh I’d missed every day. When she sobered, she reached out and placed her hand on top of mine on the steering wheel. “I’m scared,” she said. “This guy, this Dolmilo. I had the chance to learn all about him. He’s not a good man. If he wants me dead, then I’m dead.”
“Not gonna happen,” I said, shaking my head. “Not again.”
Chapter Four
Hope
I couldn’t believe I was sitting in a car next to Bono with him driving along the road towards his home in Castle Rock. I couldn’t believe he'd moved to Colora
do when we’d grown up in L.A. We’d both spent a lifetime apart and I couldn’t imagine what he’d been through. There was a sadness in his eyes, and something told me it wasn’t just my supposed death that had put it there.
I assessed his bearing. He was still all muscly perfection, but his muscles were a little leaner than they used to be, and his movements were more deliberate, as though he debated everything in his mind before acting on anything. He’d always been a little that way, but it was more obvious now.
After Trish had managed to successfully get me away from the club, I’d asked her to drive me to the bus station. When she realized I was running, she gave me the gym clothes she kept in the trunk of her car. The hooded top was a little big, but the leggings and crop top fit, as did the running shoes. I couldn’t thank her enough. She still refused any money and gave me her phone number as well as her good luck wishes instead. I’d caught the first bus out and ended up in Phoenix. I’d been tempted to phone Special Agent Weathers and WITSEC, but when I finally reached for the payphone, I found myself calling Bono’s old number instead. Hell, I’d been surprised that I remembered it, but not as surprised as I was when he answered. And now he was here, next to me, driving along the road to Colorado.
There was no question about it. Things were awkward as fuck. But a strange peace washed through me and for the first time in a very long time, I found myself relaxing. I took a deep breath, leaned my head against the rest, and closed my eyes. I only realized I must have fallen asleep when bright sunlight glared behind my closed lids and the car came to a stop.
“Are we there?” I asked, wondering how long I’d slept.
Bono smiled and shook his head. “We both need a decent rest and some food,” he said and motioned out the window to a motel very similar to the one I’d just left.
“I am hungry,” I said as my stomach growled.
“We’ll book into a room and I’ll head across the road to grab some breakfast.
“A McGriddle sounds just about perfect right about now,” I agreed. “Some coffee wouldn’t go amiss either.”
Forever Midnight MC Collection: Books 1-3 Page 29
