Carry You Home (Carry Your Heart #2) (24 page)

"I'll be fine. There's no risk. No danger."

"I don't believe that," she shook her head. "And you're an idiot if you do."

"Iz," I sighed, my hands on my hips and at the end of my rope. "I need you to get behind me on this."

She swallowed hard and wiped a tear from her cheek. "So that's how it's going be? If I got on my hands and knees and begged you not to do it, you still would, wouldn't you? It doesn't matter what I think. You're still gonna do it."

"I have to."

Her teary eyes rolled up to the ceiling as she shook her head. Now she pushed past me and headed right for the hallway, calling angrily over her shoulder: "You don't
have
to do anything, Caleb."

I squeezed my eyes shut and scrubbed both hands over my face. Then I took off after her, hot on her heels to follow her to our bedroom only to have the door slammed right in my face. My hands immediately shook the knob and I pounded on the door.

"Iz, come on. Don't do this. Just let me in, okay?"

The cold, muffled voice through the door pretty much solidified how I'd spend the rest of my night: "You can spend the night at the fucking clubhouse for all I care."

I sighed and leaned my forehead against the door. I'd expected her to be upset. I'd expected a little bit of an argument, a little bit of fighting, but I definitely hadn't expected this
.
As I ran a hand over my face, I shuffled down the hallway, grabbed a spare pillow and blanket from the closet, and tossed them onto the couch.

Maybe in the morning, maybe when I got back from the run, she'd see how she'd completely blown this out of proportion. When I came home and when I handed her that envelope, she'd be grateful and happy to have the extra security just a few days before our wedding.

Tonight, unfortunately, I was sleeping on the couch.

Caleb

I leaned back against the driver's seat and squeezed my eyes shut. The last 24 hours had been filled with restless tossing and turning and hours on the road. Dom and I buckled down in Cincinnati the night before and then hit the road early this morning to meet up with Theo Wallace and finally get this shit over with. Like I'd predicted, we had no issues. No signs of any problems.

Once Wallace showed up and the exchange was made, we'd be free and clear.

But now that we were just sitting here waiting, that sick feeling I'd spent most of these last 24 hours trying to bat down reared its ugly head again. It didn't help matters that Isabelle had all but shut me out since slamming our bedroom door in my face. Right before I left the next morning, she finally opened the door, let me kiss her goodbye, and whispered to me to be safe. That was pretty much all I'd gotten from her since, too.

Part of me knew how right Isabelle was, and how right Marcus was too, but I'd put my foot down. I'd made a decision and now I had to see it through. How would it look to the rest of the club if I swore up and down that there was no risk, that I would have their backs and protect our deals with the Warlords only to just back out at the last second?

I couldn't back out now for that very reason even if I wanted to.

"Jesus, this is takin' forever," Dom muttered next to me. "I just wanna get this over with."

I nodded tightly. "Yeah. You and me both."

We'd really only been sitting here not even a full five minutes, but each second that ticked by just upped my panic, my dread. I just wanted to be home right now. Even if it meant admitting I was wrong. Even if it meant getting on my hands and knees and kissing Isabelle's feet until she forgave me.

Just following through with this job, just sitting here in the van waiting for the Warlords to get here—it just all felt wrong.

"Honestly," Dom told me quietly, as if he'd heard my thoughts and decided we both needed a distraction. "If things weren't so tight money-wise, I never would've agreed to this. Lex is already talkin' about another kid. Can you believe that shit? Our first one isn't even close to a year old yet and you'd think she'd want to wait a little while since it wasn't exactly like we planned the first one, you know?"

"Yeah, that's something I'll never understand," I huffed out a laugh and shook my head. "It's like a switch just turns on. When Iz first found out she was pregnant, she was the one who completely freaked out, not me. All this stuff about how we weren't ready, we were too young, it was too soon and then...bam! She's sketching a mural in the nursery and getting on my ass about smoking."

"That sounds familiar," Dom nodded ruefully.

"Now she's talking about taking some time off from school after the kid gets here."

Dom cocked an eyebrow. "That sounds like something she'd say, but I take it you don't agree."

"Nah. I don't. She worked too hard to get where she is. Besides, what will she do if she doesn't end up going back?"

"I don't know," he just shrugged. "What will she do even if she finishes?"

"What do you mean?"

Dom scratched his beard in thought. "What does someone with a degree in painting do in a town like Claremont anyway?"

I frowned, my eyes flying back to the gravel road in front of the van. What
would
she do after she graduated? I didn't know much about the art scene or how an artist even attempted to get a career going, but I knew enough to know you couldn't do it in Small Town, USA. That was why I'd wanted her to end up at that school in Richmond anyway.

All my good intentions, all my selfish happiness at her decision to stay in town back in January, all my concerns that she was giving up something she shouldn't just to be with me...I was starting to think that maybe she'd inadvertently sacrificed it anyway without either of us even realizing it.

The reality was difficult to reconcile. I didn't want her to have to give anything up, but if we were living here, raising our family, what options did she really have? Working in the office at the shop? Opening her own gallery in town where hardly anyone here was equipped to really understand her talent, where she'd barely get any recognition or any money for her hard work?

I swallowed back more panic, fighting the urge to stick my head out the window and puke.

Luckily, my stomach was saved when another black van rolled down the gravel road and parked right next to us.

Everything sprung to life just a few moments later as the three Warlords we were meeting jumped out of their van. Following their lead, Dom and I opened our doors and stepped onto the gravel to meet Theo Wallace.

I stepped forward, my hand outstretched to him and Wallace promptly shook it, regarding me with a tight nod.

"Nice to see you again, Sawyer," Wallace greeted me, gripping my hand a little tighter as he spoke.

"You, too," I retorted and quickly gestured to the back of the van. As far as I was concerned, there was no time for small talk.

Wallace seemed to agree and skirted around to the back of the van, where Dom was already waiting with the back door open so Wallace could inspect the product before he took it off our hands.
 

Wallace ran a hand over his shiny bald head and then stroked the dark scruff on his face as he perused the contents of each barrel, double-checking to make sure we'd held up our end of the deal, just as he should.

"Looks like everything's there."

I squinted at him, a little surprised that he would even imply it wouldn't be. "Of course it is. So we ready to do this?"

Wallace tipped his chin down in a nod, never one to mince words, and then gestured to the other two guys with him towards the van, stepping back so they could jump inside and start moving the product into their transport.

Once the barrels were safely inside the Warlords' van, Wallace reached inside his cut and held an envelope out to me. I'd barely gotten the envelope inside my own cut when five sedans tore out onto the gravel road from around the corner and skidded to a stop just a mere 10 feet away from where we stood.

There was no time to react. No time to even think about reaching for the Glock tucked behind my jeans. No time to even think about hopping into our van to make a run for it.

Because the doors to each sedan flew out and 10 agents aimed cocked guns at us, screaming to get our hands up and on our stomachs.

We were surrounded.

We were caught.

I was numb. Paralyzed by shock. Stunned into immobility. But when Agent Jordan's smug, triumphant face came into clearer view, that was when everything snapped back to life. That was when my blood boiled over, when loathing took the reins and spilled over, drenching the smirking bastard stalking toward me and most of all, on myself.

I should've known better. I should've listened. I should've backed out when I had the chance.

Now I was completely screwed and I'd taken Dom down with me.

Even as Jordan hovered over me with handcuffs in his hand, even as he slapped those same handcuffs over my wrists and knelt down, I didn't care.

"I bet you thought you'd never see me again, huh?" he chuckled in my ear. "Good thing you ended up being exactly what I thought were: stupid and predictable."

All he was doing was rubbing salt in an open wound. Kicking me while I was already down. Throwing sand in my face.

All I could see now was Isabelle. All I could think about now was our baby.

The timing was just a sick joke. Part of me wanted to raise a fist to the air and scream:
Congratulations, universe. You win. Thanks for giving me everything I've ever wanted and then ripping it away.
The other part of me wanted to curl up into ball and wail like a baby. This was my fault. I was the one in control of this situation. I was the one who'd made this decision and followed through with it.

And for that, I was going to miss everything. Every kick, every doctor's appointment, every time she needed me to do something for her, I wouldn't be there. Someone else was going to have to do it. I would miss the birth of my own kid just because of greed. Because of my ego. Because of my pride.

My stomach swirled and nearly emptied itself right here on this gravel road, right over Jordan's scuff-free leather shoes and I let him haul me off the gravel, yank me to the nearest sedan, and throw my ass in the backseat.

.
     
.
     
.

Isabelle

My paintbrush moved in broad strokes, up and down in the wall, covering my pencil markings effortlessly and a little too absentmindedly. I wasn't in the right frame of mind to do this right now. I really
shouldn't
be doing this right now, but I needed something to take my mind off all this ugly, to focus on something positive, something that was still good in my life.

Painting the baby's mural today of all days was a terrible idea.

Now, every time I looked at it, I'd forever be reminded of this day. The fear. The pain. The heartache. The loss. How much I wanted to murder my baby's father right now.

I just shook my head at that thought. I wanted to hit him, not murder him. Scream at him. Kick him. Throw something at him.

He was probably on his way back from the clubhouse right now after being released from holding in Pittsburgh. More than likely, he'd taken one look around the parking lot, saw that I wasn't there and jumped back on his bike to head right to our house.

I didn't want to see him, mainly because I was terrified of what I would say to him, terrified of what I
wanted
to say to him and right now, I just wasn't sure if I could even stomach looking at him.

Over the last two days since he'd called me from holding in Pittsburgh, I'd gotten a crash course in navigating the dark waters of legal representation. My whole life I'd only seen it from from my dad's point of view as a lawyer himself: his view of the cases, the defendants, and the rulings. Now, here I was on the complete opposite side of it and barely able to keep my head above water.

I now knew way more than I'd ever thought I'd have to know about gun trafficking laws, too. Apparently, there was no federal statute in writing which was a good thing, the lawyer, Ross Hinkley, had said. Thinking about how it was a
good
thing not to have a federal statute standing against you, that we should be grateful Congress couldn't agree on a law...it was mind-boggling. I couldn't wrap my head around something like that. To make my head swim even more, there was the whole issue of the fact that Caleb and Dom had crossed state lines.

If they'd gotten caught in North Carolina, they would've been looking at a much shorter sentence. Since they'd gone all the way up to Pittsburgh, not that the distance mattered, they were looking at a maximum sentence of five years. The three Warlord members who'd been arrested with them would get less time just on that technicality alone, and in spite of my fury, even I had to admit that didn't really seem fair when all five of them had basically committed the same crime.

The second Hinkley had said the words
maximum five years
, I'd felt my eyes practically roll back in my head and I'd almost passed out right on the clubhouse floor.

Of course, he'd been quick to add that the best course of action was to plead guilty, which would automatically lower their prison sentence, even if it raised the length of their probation, and since this was their first charge 'of this nature', as Hinkley had so eloquently stated, and since they hadn't been transferring any assault weapons, it was likely a judge might be lenient. Hinkley was going to ask for a reduced sentence of 12-18 months with parole at Caleb and Dom's sentence hearing in two weeks.