“I knew it then Liam was dead. I had to be sedated.” My voice was even, almost robotic. A tone I employed when talking about stories that touched my heart, but I couldn’t get emotional about.
My eyes were dry as I met Liam’s shimmering ones.
I hadn’t missed the way his body had jerked as I spoke. But I didn’t soften in the face of his pain, I couldn’t with what I was saying next.
“You see, in addition to being Mary and Kent’s son and Antonia’s big brother, Liam was also my fiancé,” I continued, turning to face a slack-jawed Hansen. “We buried an empty coffin five days later, because they said there wasn’t anything to bury.” I paused. “And they were right.”
I didn’t wait for a comment from Hansen or Liam, both of them wearing granite expressions, Liam had gone a dull gray with my words. As if they had sickened him. I hoped they had. I hoped the poisonous truth was acid to his veins.
Because it was acid to mine.
I turned on my heel and walked calmly out the door.
Chapter Five
I was obviously not allowed out the front gates.
Ironically, it was the same prospect that had reservations letting me in that refused to let me out. Silently, with his hand on his gun and a borderline apologetic look on his face.
That’s how I knew the news of who I really was hadn’t hit yet. There would be no apology in his eyes if he knew he was staring in the face of someone who had betrayed the club. That news was being kept under lock and key, I doubted it was to protect me, likely it was because the club couldn’t afford to look weak right now. And letting a woman, of all people, through the club’s defenses would definitely do so.
It would get out, though.
Good news didn’t travel, fast or otherwise. But bad news traveled with devastating speed.
It was worth more, too.
Good news wasn’t worth much at all.
I didn’t argue with the prospect. It wasn’t worth it, and it wouldn’t change anything. He was under orders. And unless I felt like wrestling his gun off him and shooting him, I wasn’t getting out of that gate.
Frustration clawed at my throat, but I forced myself to remain outwardly calm, slowly walking to the edge of the parking lot and sitting on the ground, my back up against the outer wall of the clubhouse.
It didn’t pay to panic in situations like this.
Ones where you were trapped around a bunch of men with guns who followed orders until death. It wasn’t a foreign situation, though it was not one I expected to face on home soil. Or with Liam in the mix.
It was the Liam part that was clawing at my throat.
The rest of it, being potentially labeled as a rat by one of the biggest motorcycle clubs in the country, my fate being held in the steady hands of a man wearing a president’s patch and a cold expression, none of it really compared to Liam.
“I’m gonna marry you one day, you know?” he said, drawing lines on the palm of my hand.
“I know,” I replied.
He stopped. “You don’t seem surprised.”
I grinned. “Of course I’m not. I knew from the moment I met you, I’d figure a way to make you fall in love with me.”
“You cast a spell on me, Peaches?” he teased.
“A witch never tells.”
His chuckle was throaty and deep, more like a man’s every day. He continued tracing. “Doesn’t matter,” he decided. “I’m gonna marry you, spell or no spell.”
I expected the man in the cut that settled beside me to be Liam.
Though I knew it wasn’t the second I watched the figure stroll over.
I remembered Liam’s walk.
It hadn’t changed.
Funny how everything about a person could change, but the way they walked stayed the same.
Hansen settled on the ground beside me.
He didn’t speak for the longest time.
Neither did I.
As a journalist, I knew the value of silence was almost more than that of questions.
As a human going through unthinkable torment, I didn’t have anything to offer the man that might order my death but silence.
“Jagger came to the club fucked up,” he said finally. “Fuck, most prospects come to the club fucked up in one way or another. This ain’t exactly a mecca for the well-adjusted.” He looked at the building as if it were living, staring at him. “But Jagger more than most. I’d served, so I knew the look of a man, one that had seen too much. Done even more. He wore the mark on his face, obvious to anyone, it was fresher then. But that healed. It’s scar tissue now. What hasn’t healed is whatever brought him here.” He paused. “Now I know a little bit of that.”
“You mean to tell me you didn’t know about what he left behind coming here?” I accused. I found that to be bullshit. Hansen didn’t look like a man who only knew half a story. I expected that he helped Liam tie up loose ends.