Jagger could not let go of the premonition that this wasn’t going to end without ripping families apart. Without ripping the club apart.
“We’re ridin’ out to Amber in the morning,” Hansen said by answer.
“Everyone?” He thought of Caroline, where she would fit in this. She was in danger now. Real fucking danger. This was going to get uglier. No one was safe. Wars they’d had with rival MCs had cut them. But other MCs knew the score, knew to keep the death to men who wore cuts, who chose this shit.
Fernandez was different. He didn’t play by the rules. He looked for the deepest blow. And it was obvious that the deepest blow was the women.
He needed to send her home. Away from this shit. But that didn’t guarantee anything.
“Everyone, Caroline included,” Hansen said.
“I’ll get her a car, get her back to Castle Springs,” he said instead.
Hansen shook his head. “You know that can’t happen, brother.”
Jagger clenched his fists. He did know it couldn’t happen for all the reasons that Hansen was thinking of in regards to the club. He also knew it couldn’t happen because for all of his honorable intentions, he couldn’t let her go. Caroline was under his skin in a different way than she had been when they were kids. He couldn’t fucking breathe without knowing she was safe. Without knowing she was at least unsafe with him. She was his. He was turning into a fucking caveman and he couldn’t help it.
“Yeah, that can’t happen,” he agreed.
Cade
“We can settle this like gentlemen, can we not?” the other voice at the end of the phone asked.
Cade clenched his fists. “We both know that neither of us are gentlemen,” he growled.
Fernandez laughed on the other end of the phone. “Ah, outlaw honesty, I do so enjoy it. It’s refreshing.”
“Cut the shit, you asshole,” Cade snapped. “We both know this is war. We both know there’s only one way this ends. It’s not with a truce. It’s not with surrender. It’s with blood, it’s until one of us is left standing.”
A pause on the other end of the phone. “I understand that what I thought might be a profitable friendship for us both turned into a minor problem I was content on ignoring, with a warning of course, until your club pushed it, so I have no choice but to take action.”
Cade’s blood boiled. “You slaughtered men and women. That’s not a fucking warning. And everything you are, everything you’ve done, makes it impossible for you to be nothing more than another unmarked grave.”
“Ah, so confident,” Fernandez mused. “Arrogant. You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into. I don’t relish a lot of bloodshed. So I will give you one last chance to enter into a deal.”
Cade didn’t say shit.
This wasn’t a deal with the devil.
He’d already made plenty of those.
“I thought as much,” Fernandez said as he took Cade’s silence for what it was, ‘fuck you’ in every language.
“You want this to be over. You fight like a fucking man.”
“This isn’t the Wild West, Mr. Fletcher,” he said, his voice smooth and cultured, as if that made him somehow fucking better. “There are no duels at dawn.”
“You gonna take the coward’s way out and send more men in to murder my men when they’re not expecting them?” he spat. “‘Cause that ain’t gonna work. We’re all expecting you. We’re ready.”
“I expect you are,” Fernandez sighed. “You want your war. You’ve got it. Be careful what you wish for.”
He got dead air.
Slammed his fist down on the table.
He stared at the empty table. At the gavel. It had been brought down many times, and it had continued through all the shit the club had been through. Even the darkest of times.
He’d been so fucking sure that the darkest times were behind him, that maybe even outlaws, even devils deserved sunshine.
The massacre of the New Mexico and Vegas charters were proof that they didn’t get sunshine.
And now this fucking phone call.
He. Was. Done.
Brock walked into the room. He clocked his expression immediately.
“Fuck,” he hissed.
Cade nodded. “Yeah.”
Cade held church. Got all the brothers in, all the brothers that had been to hell, not all of them coming back. He told them what was happening.
What needed to be done.
“We’ve got New Mexico arriving tomorrow,” Cade said. He looked to Steg. “Evie good makin’ arrangements for them? And the other charters who will be here in the next few days?”
Steg nodded. “She’s got it sorted. Got rental properties empty. She’s buying out the supermarket and liquor stores.”
Cade nodded once. “Good.” He was about to continue.
“I’ve got it,” Wire said, bursting into the room, holding his laptop, his cut hanging off him and eyes twitching. Cade didn’t want to know when the last time he ate or slept was. Or how many of those energy drinks he’d been chugging to stay up.