He presses his lips to mine before pulling back a few inches. His eyes roam over every part of me, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt more valued than I do right now.
“You were crying,” I say, reaching up with my uninjured hand to trace the scruff on his jaw.
“I’m really happy you’re okay,” he says.
“I didn’t think you could cry.”
He smiles a sad smile before brushing another soft kiss against my lips.
“I’ll tell you why some other time, okay?”
I nod as he turns me around, his palm resting protectively on my lower back as he guides me from the room.
“Oh my God,” I gasp as we walk across the warehouse.
“They must’ve gotten into a fight. The tattooed guy shot the other one then turned the gun on himself,” Finn explains as he tries to usher me quickly out of the building, but my eyes are glued to the carnage in front of me.
Other than television, I’ve never seen such a scene in real life.
My mother’s funeral was closed casket, and then realization hits me that I’ve never seen a dead person in real life before. The blood pooling around their bodies looks so much darker than what’s portrayed in the movies. Their skin is an ashen gray, and I don’t know that I’ll ever fully get the sight of their corpses out of my mind.
“Hospital, Kendall. You’re safe now.”
I nod, letting him steer me away. It may be the end of those two, but I doubt this incident is the last time I hear from anyone connected to the Keres MC.
Three hundred thousand dollars will never be forgiven. Even bloodshed wouldn’t satisfy Adrian Larrick. His pride has been wounded. He was bested by Ty Penman, and that won’t go unpunished.
I cling to Finn on the ride to the hospital, his boss Deacon driving the sleek, black SUV.
I’m somehow wired and utterly exhausted, in a weird catatonic but functioning state when he shifts his weight in the back seat, telling me that we’ve arrived.
The numbness is setting back in, and because of that, I plan to take all he has to offer, at least until I can get my kids and me out of the state. I won’t stick around and hope that Adrian grows a heart. Leaving and getting away is the only way to keep us safe.
My kids are the only things that can matter. My broken heart will always come secondary.
Chapter 34
Finnegan
“What color are you going to get?” I ask stupidly as I sit beside the gurney Kendall is lying on.
“What?” she asks, her head slowly turning toward me.
She was given pain medicine when we first arrived. Her wrist has been x-rayed, and it’s definitely broken. Now we’re waiting for the doctor to come put her cast on.
“Your cast,” I clarify. “What color?”
I give her a weak smile, but she doesn’t even attempt to give me one back.
“Doesn’t matter,” she whispers, once again looking away from me.
She’s safe. The kids are safe, but I still feel like I’m in the middle of a nightmare. Ty Penman has been gone for years, but he’s still managing to drain her, to take from her, and it kills me that I can’t seem to find the right words to make everything okay.
Telling her she’s safe now would be a lie.
This is Adrian Larrick’s doing, although neither Wren nor the local police have been able to find a direct link between the Keres MC and the two dead men at the abandoned warehouse. They didn’t have club tattoos nor were they wearing the custom-leather cut.
Wren has contacted the feds working the cases against the MC to see if those two have popped up on video footage, but I know they won’t find anything. Larrick is meticulous with how he outsources jobs. Hell, the two men working for him may not even know that’s who they were working for. Rumor has it from others arrested and suspected of carrying out jobs for Keres that all they get is an untraceable phone call, and once the job is done, they pick up money from a drop location.
I know Larrick isn’t going to stop until he gets what he wants, and the man doesn’t care who he has to plow through to get it. Pride will keep him moving the pieces until he produces the outcome he desires.
So, no, Kendall isn’t safe. She’s not in any immediate danger, because I’m sure Keres is regrouping, but it’s far from over.
“Kayleigh would pick pink,” I say, continuing the ridiculous conversation. I also want to remind her of those three special people waiting for her to return.
I doubt the woman is giving up, but I also don’t want her mind racing. She gets a little crazy when she gets a thought in her head—the fake bomb at the office for example—and the last thing I need her doing is something outlandish to put her right back in Keres’s line of fire.