Whisper Falls (34 page)

Despite what he’d told Mike, Lucky felt he had to assume the worst case scenario here—that Red had done this on behalf of the Devil’s Assassins. It was the only logical explanation.

But before he did anything, he had to talk to Duke. And that was where he was headed.

When he pulled in at Gravediggers, the place was still open for business—but it was late and the parking lot was mostly empty. Lucky pushed through the door to see a few leather-clad bikers shooting pool and a dude with a bad scar on his cheek making out with a blond biker babe in one corner.

And that guy wasn’t the only one getting lucky at Gravediggers tonight—as Lucky approached the bar, Duke was leaning across it, delivering an open-mouthed kiss to the very same girl he’d suggested fixing Lucky up with a month or two back. The sexy girl with ebony hair hanging to her ass moaned a little against Duke’s mouth.

But Lucky didn’t have time to be polite here, so he stepped up and cleared his throat with purpose. When Duke glanced over, looking surprised and a little pissed off, Lucky said, “We need to talk. Important.”

“Stay put, hon,” Duke instructed the girl, then followed Lucky to the opposite end of the bar to tell him, “This better be damn good.”

“It is. Well, damn
bad
, actually.”

Duke’s expression shifted from irritation to concern. “What is it, brother?”

Lucky proceeded to tell the whole story, and when he was done, Duke just lowered his gaze for a minute and let out a deep sigh. Lucky knew exactly what he was feeling, since he felt it, too:
You finally think it’s over
,
you finally think you’re safe—and then you’re not.

“The way I see it,” Duke said when he looked back up, “is that, first things first, we need to take care of Red. Nobody else from the club is here, at least not yet, so we deal with Red now, before we have a whole crowd breathing down our necks.”

Lucky nodded. He didn’t like it—not one damn bit—but his biggest concern at the moment was protecting Tessa, who Red had seen with him a couple of times, and Johnny, in case Red knew about him, too.

“So I’ll go after him,” Duke went on then, like it was nothing.

And Lucky barked, “What? No way.”

“You got a lot more to lose than I do,” Duke pointed out. Which was damn noble of him, and just the kind of friend he was. But that reasoning wasn’t good enough for Lucky.

“If it wasn’t for me,
neither
of us would be have to deal with it,” Lucky reminded him. “I should be the one to do it.” And though Lucky nor Duke said what going after Red really meant, they both knew what they were talking about. Lucky, for one, just didn’t want to put a name on it. The whole idea made him sick, in fact. Yet he didn’t feel they had much of a choice. He hung his head and muttered, “Shit, I hate this. This isn’t my life anymore—I can’t go back to living that way.”

But Duke didn’t respond to any of that. “Smart thing,” he said instead, “might be to track him down
together
. Outnumber him.”

Lucky gave another nod, deciding Duke was right to keep it simple, stay focused—this was no time for something as useless as emotion. But in the end, he replied, “I’m fucking exhausted—I can’t think straight anymore. I’m gonna go home, get some sleep, clear my head.” Then he motioned to the hot brunette still waiting patiently, playing with the straw in her drink. “And you got business of a better kind to take care of.”

Sighing, Duke said, “Maybe you’re right. We should both sleep on it. We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

I
f Lucky hadn’t
already
felt like an asshole, he would have by the time he stopped at Mike’s in the middle of the night to get Tessa. These were good people—and because of him, the lights in their house were burning bright at three
a.m.
When Mike came to the door, he just said, “Sorry. For keeping you guys up. For everything.”

Mike looked tired, but mumbled, “It’s all right,” as he let Lucky in.

He found the girls in the living room, drinking coffee, and when Tessa saw him, she stood up, anger blazing in her hazel eyes. “Where have you been? What the hell’s going on?”

Jesus. This night just kept getting better and better. He tried to speak calmly. “Can we just go home? Talk there?”

She sucked in her breath, appearing to weigh the request, and finally said, “Fine.”

Lucky only had one helmet with him, so he insisted Tessa wear it. And the wind on his face gave him the sensation it was clearing away the cobwebs in his brain so he could sort through this thing logically.

Was there any other way to deal with this besides the one he and Duke had discussed?
Damn
, how he wanted there to be another way.

But no matter how he examined it, he came to the same conclusion: He’d caused too much trouble for everyone, Duke included, and he
should
be the one to end it. His fault, his mess to clean up. He was
tired
of running from shit. This was the only way to protect the people he loved.

And he needed to take action quickly, before Duke figured out he was going Lone Ranger.

When Lucky pulled the bike into his driveway, the sobering sight of his charred garage met him, one whole wall and half the door gone—everything inside either burned to a crisp or blackened by smoke. And while he didn’t look forward to what he had to do, the sight was like a punch in the gut, reminding him he had no choice.

Walking inside, it relieved him to see Logan had been right—everything in the house seemed fine. He’d shut the windows before he’d left, and turned on the A/C, and after closing the door he couldn’t even smell the remains of the fire anymore.

“Are you gonna answer my questions now?” Tessa asked. She sounded a little less upset than she had at Mike’s, but not much.

In response, Lucky took her hands and led her to the couch—and he sat them down there, facing each other, cross-legged. He might be deceiving Mike a little, and maybe even Duke, but that was for their own protection. And when it came to Tessa, he owed her the whole truth. “Babe, there’s . . . some stuff I need to tell you.”

“Like what was so important you went dashing off in the middle of the night? And why Mike insisted I go home with them?”

Lucky sighed, then began, “It’s like this.” She already knew about his past with Red—now he told her in detail why he suspected the Devil’s Assassins were behind the fire and that there was surely more to come, whether through Wild Bill or some other member. “So I have to take care of Red before anything else happens.”

And that’s when—aw, hell—her look transformed into one of . . . horror. “My God, Lucky.” She wore a big, warm, tie-in-the-front sweater over a tank top and jogging pants, and as she began to ball the sweater’s hem in her fists, clearly agitated, she gaped at him like he’d just morphed into a monster.

Shit—after everything he’d told her about California, he’d thought she’d
get
this, thought she’d understand why it had to be done. And he didn’t want to scare her, but . . . “Next time it could be you, or Johnny. And either one of you could have been here with me tonight. I have to put a stop to this
now
. ”

“You just said yourself there was more to come, so how will taking care of Red stop it?”

“It’s a first step,” he admitted.

And she argued, “You could approach this a different way.”

He raised his eyebrows, irritated that she was making this harder than it already was. “And what would that be?”

“Let the police handle it—like anyone else would! Mike told me you’d held stuff back about Red on the police report. So you could go to Mike, officially report all the rest, and trust them to handle it.”

Lucky just ran both his hands back through his hair. She
didn’t
get it. “There are a lot of reasons that’s a bad idea.”

“I’m listening,” she said, still sounding as on edge as he felt. And God, he was so tired—all he’d wanted was to come back here and hold her, sleep with her in his arms. But it sure wasn’t working out that way. At least not yet.

So he explained that to officially confess to being a member of the Devil’s Assassins was to confess to numerous crimes. “They probably all have statutes of limitations that have expired, but still—it’s opening up a big damn can of worms. And it wouldn’t hurt only me. It would hurt Johnny, and you. And Mike, too.”

Before she could reply, he went on. “And once I admit that, who’s to say the Destiny Police are even gonna be on my side? Who’s to say they’ll pursue Red as hard as they should?
Mike
would, yeah—but I’m not dumping this on my brother. I’m not making him clean up my messes or defend me to the people he works with. And besides . . .” He stopped, sighed. “Mike’s a small town cop. And a good one, probably. But this is serious shit. And if something happened to him because of me . . .” He shook his head, adamant. “I can’t do it. There’s too much at risk, and every fucking bit of it started with me, so
I
have to take care of it.”

Still facing him on the couch, the girl he loved let out a big
whoosh
ing breath, then met his gaze. He could already see in her eyes that nothing had changed, that his arguments hadn’t swayed her. Her voice came out softer than he expected. “So you mean to
kill
Red, right?”

Jesus. That was the part he and Duke had avoided putting into words, the part too ugly to say out loud. But he couldn’t deny it. Only . . . he couldn’t make himself acknowledge it, either. The way she was looking at him made him feel . . . small, ashamed. In a way he never really had before. It had been a damn long time since he cared what somebody thought of him. And a damn long time since he’d felt like he was letting somebody down. So he simply didn’t answer.

But she knew what the silence meant. And her pretty eyes grew big and round in the lamplight as she said, “You can’t do this, Lucky.”

He found himself speaking around a lump in his throat. “Why can’t I?”

“Because you’re not that guy anymore. You’re not the guy who killed somebody back in California. Are you? Because you’ve told me over and over how lost you were then and how much you regret all that and how much you’ve changed. And if all that’s true, then you
can’t
do this. You
can’t
.”

Lucky’s muscles tensed, his teeth clenching. He had to make her understand. “There’s no other way, Tessa. The police can’t take care of this problem. Best case scenario—they’ll arrest Red, maybe prosecute him. But that won’t make even a dent in the hell that might be coming this way.”

“And killing him will?”

He simply nodded. Once. Because it was the truth. The only truth he knew. It might be a
horrible
truth, but it was beyond his control to alter it. “Yes,” he said simply. It wouldn’t stop the Devil’s Assassins if they were gunning for him—but it would send a strong message, it would keep them all safe in the meantime, and it would stop the flow of information about him or Duke to Wild Bill.

Tessa stayed quiet for a long time, and neither of them looked each other in the eye. Lucky stayed painfully aware of the anxious rise and fall of her chest. When she finally spoke, her voice again turned quiet. “I’m asking you not to do this. For me.”

Oh God. What a request.

He considered it for a moment, seriously thought it over. God knew he didn’t
want
to do this. Yet the man had struck out at him, tried to end his life. Was he supposed to just sit here and wait for the trouble to escalate? “I wish I could,” he began. “I wish I could
not
do it—for you. But . . .”

Without warning, she drew her hands into fists in front of her and brought them pounding down on the leather sofa cushion between them. “My God, this is nuts! Every day I have to worry about my brother over in Afghanistan. Will somebody shoot him? Will
he
have to shoot somebody? He has no choice, Lucky—he
has
to be in danger, he
has
to be willing to use that kind of force! But you
don’t
.”

His reply was resolute. “Your brother has people to protect. So do I. The two situations aren’t so different.”

Looking at him like he was insane, she beseeched him. “What can I say? What can I do to make you change your mind?”

He let out a heavy breath and whispered the only true answer he could. “Nothing.”

Tessa felt as if she were in the middle of a tornado, being whipped in crazy circles where nothing made sense. How was this happening? It was surreal enough that someone had set Lucky’s house on fire—but what he planned to do about it felt impossible to her. She understood the reasons he’d given her, but . . . God.

It was one thing to know your boyfriend had accidentally killed someone in another life, years ago—that was awful
enough
, but she’d looked beyond it, she’d had faith, she’d forgiven him for being that person. It was another thing, though, to find out he was still capable of such violence, and that this time it would be—oh Lord—deliberate.

And
could
he? Could her Lucky
be
that violent? Could the man who’d been so gentle with her, so loving, so kind, really take a life? She just stared at him, trying to see behind his eyes, trying to see inside him. He
looked
like the guy she’d fallen in love with, but right now . . . she felt utterly abandoned. Emotionally.

Just a few hours ago, she’d trusted him completely, with every facet of her life. But . . . maybe she was wrong about him being reformed. Maybe all those people who’d warned her about him in the beginning had actually been
right
. Maybe once a criminal, always a criminal. After all, at the first sign of trouble, Lucky apparently reverted to gang member mentality.

It dawned on her now just how quickly all this had happened between them, and that maybe she’d been foolish all along. And that she’d
definitely
been foolish to let herself believe in him so blindly, fall in love with him so helplessly. “I feel like I don’t even know you,” she finally told him.