“That was Maggs,” I said, climbing back into the car. “She wants us to stop by the grocery store and pick up some garbage bags. I guess they’ve run out and things are getting ugly. Let’s swing into Safeway, okay?”

“Sure,” he said and I kept my eyes forward, counting every breath as I drove to the store. As we pulled into the parking lot I chose my spot carefully, then stopped the car. Max got out and as soon as he shut the door I clicked the locks and hit the gas.

My phone rang at least fifteen times during my drive to the farm. I had no doubt that Max had called Horse within seconds of my little stunt, and Horse was mighty pissed.

I’d deal with that later.

Still, I didn’t want him to worry about me more than he needed to, so after I pulled up I sent him a quick text saying that things were all right but that my brother had called and I needed some privacy to call him back. Then I silenced the phone, planning to ignore his response.

The fallout from this was gonna suck, no question.

I grabbed my purse and walked toward the barn. No sign of Jeff. No sign of Ariel either, which made me really nervous. I pushed through the open door, noting the broken lock. Horse wasn’t going to like that either, I thought, biting back a hysterical giggle. Poor man would have a heart attack before the night was over at this rate. Jeff grabbed me as soon as I walked into the barn, pulling me to the side of the door with one hand and waving a gun around in the other. All of Horse’s training must have sunk in, because I hit the ground automatically as the barrel swung toward me.

“Don’t point that at me!” I hissed, and Jeff glanced down at the gun, startled.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry,” he said. “Did you come by yourself?”

“Yes,” I replied, standing up and dusting off my knees. “But they were lighting up my phone on the drive out here. We don’t have a lot of time. What’s the proof you were talking about?”

Jeff walked over to a work bench and pulled out a folder. I flipped it open and saw several articles about the massacre from different news outlets. None of them had any information I hadn’t seen already.

“Keep looking,” Jeff said. I flipped further, finding a copy of Horse’s discharge papers. Honorable. I found a memo stating that his unit was being cleared of charges based on a lack of evidence. Another newspaper article followed, this one stating that the killers had never been found and now several key witnesses had disappeared. That was it.

“You see?” Jeff asked. “It’s right there. Now do you understand?”

I looked at him, confused.

“This doesn’t say he did anything,” I replied softly. “It just says they never figured out who did it. Sometimes that happens during war, Jeff, especially in areas with competing guerrilla groups. This doesn’t prove anything.”

He shook his head, clearly frustrated.

“It’s a conspiracy, you have to read between the lines,” he said. “The witnesses disappeared. Why do you think that happened?”

“Probably because they were afraid they’d get murdered if they collaborated,” I replied, shaking my head. “Jeff, forget about this. You need call off the Jacks and stop working with them. Then you need to disappear. Otherwise I’m afraid the Reapers will kill you. I love you so much—I can’t lose you.”

Jeff’s face softened, and I saw a trace of the laid-back, loving brother he’d been most of my life. He pulled me into his arms but he didn’t feel right to me. His heart raced, he’d gotten far too thin and I felt and smelled clammy sweat coming off him. I pulled back and looked into his face, feeling indescribably sad.

“Jeff, what are you doing to yourself?” I asked. His features hardened and he jerked away.

“I’m trying to take care of my family,” he snapped. Outside I heard the roar of bikes and I froze.

“Oh shit, they’re gonna kill you,” I said, panicking. I started looking around, trying to find somewhere to hide him, which was ludicrous. The barn door flew open and banged against the wall. It was Horse and Max, holding guns. They froze as Jeff grabbed me and held his own weapon to my head.

“Don’t worry, sis,” he whispered in my ear. “I would never hurt you. I just need to get out of this so we can start over somewhere else. It’s going to be great, you won’t have to worry about anything.”

Oh f**k.

Chapter Twenty-One

Horse

Horse saw red when he saw the gun at Marie’s head. Jensen stood next to her, trembling so hard he thought it might be enough to pull the trigger. The man was obviously tweaking hard on something, probably meth. Very bad news. Might even be hallucinating. It took everything he had not to charge Jensen and kill him with his bare hands, but he had to be smart.

“Hey,” Max said, sounding a little too casual. Horse glanced over at him and caught his play. “We’re just here to make sure Marie’s all right. We were afraid the Jacks got her. We know you love her and would never hurt her so let’s talk this through. Win/win, right?”

Jeff laughed, the tone high-pitched and more than a little crazed.

“I showed her the evidence,” he said. “She knows all about what you did in Afghanistan to those kids. And now you’re going to die for what you did to her.”

Horse ignored his words, focusing on reading his tone and body language. No clear shot, obviously. How could he get to her? He’d been in tighter situations but never with so much at stake.

“I’m going to put down my gun,” he said, setting the gun very slowly and carefully on the floor. Then he held his hands up, showing Jeff they were empty. “Max will do the same. Then you can take the gun away from her head. I don’t want any accidents. We’ll let you get in her car and go, sound good?”

Jensen laughed again, something new and ugly on his face…honest glee, with a hint of gloating.

“I want you out in the center of the floor,” he said. “No tricks.”

Horse stepped forward, hands up. The gun trembled in Jensen’s hand as he pulled Marie backward, deeper into the barn’s open central floor. Fuck.

“That’s good,” Jeff said. “Your turn,” he added, looking at Max now. Horse heard Max shuffle behind him and then Marie’s eyes went wide. She opened her mouth and screamed at him as a bullet tore through his back, pain exploding as his vision started going dark.

He hit the floor, seeing his blood flowing out onto the ground next to him. He couldn’t move but he could feel, the pain beyond anything he could have imagined. This is how Bagger went, he realized. Alone in a pool of blood, knowing that he failed his woman. Then he stopped thinking and everything stopped.

Marie

Horse hit the floor and my world ended. I think some part of me had doubted whether our love was real. Not anymore. I hardly noticed as Jeff let me go, I just ran over to Horse and felt his neck for a pulse. It was there, and while the blood was pooling beneath him it wasn’t spurting out.

I still had a chance.

I stood to see Max and Jeff greeting each other, guns lowered. Holy shit.

“This was a setup,” I said. Jeff glanced over at me.

“Max is my inside source. He knew I’d be here tonight and planned to deliver you, but it made things a lot easier when you gave Cookie a ride home.”

“Too much talk,” Max said, narrowing his eyes at Jeff. “We can’t trust her.”

Jeff nodded, looking sad.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “Marie, I know this is hard for you but you’ll get through it. You’ve only known him a few months and it was all fake anyway. You’ll see.”

“Everything ready?” Max asked. Jeff nodded.

“All set up,” he said. “Haven’t pulled the money from the accounts yet, didn’t want to do that and tip them off until we got her out. Marie, grab your purse, we gotta go.”

He picked it up and tossed it toward me, then pulled Max away, talking with him quietly. Both men seemed extremely excited and agitated as they pored through papers on one of the work benches. I didn’t care about that—I needed to find something to stop the bleeding. I saw a pile of rags that looked pretty dirty, but figured we’d worry about infection if he managed to survive. It wouldn’t matter if I kept the wound clean if he bled out.

Once I had the rags on him and started applying pressure, I tried to think of the next step. I definitely wasn’t going anywhere with Max and Jeff. I’d finally grasped the reality—I’d already lost Jeff. There was something really, really wrong with him and I’d never be able to fix it. Even if I did, I didn’t want him in my life anymore. Not after he killed Horse. Tried to kill Horse.

He wasn’t dead yet. Gotta keep the thoughts positive.

Max and Jeff were engrossed in whatever they were studying—apparently I wasn’t a threat to them. I could use that. I glanced down at my purse and realized I had two very powerful tools in there. My phone and my gun. I couldn’t call and say anything though, because they’d hear me. I guess I could’ve called 9-1-1 in the hope they’d find me, but considering it was a cell phone that wouldn’t happen very fast.

I’d call Picnic and hope to hell he answered. Maybe he’d hear something useful.

I scooted around Horse’s body, turning my back to them. That felt wrong, but I needed some cover to dig through my purse. I also needed to keep up the pressure on his wound, so I leaned down and across him, holding down the rags with the weight of my body as I searched quickly through the bag. I found the phone first, turning down the sound and hitting Picnic’s number. It rang forever. Nothing. Shit. I heard their conversation shift and realized I was running out of time. I hit Maggs’ number and set the phone on the floor behind Horse’s arm, hoping she’d answer and hear something. I couldn’t do more than that, not right now.

Now for the gun.

Horse had given me a really cute leather purse that had a little compartment in it designed especially for a handgun—crazy, right? I was damned thankful for it at the moment though, because my .22 slipped right out when I pressed the latch. Now all I had to do was c**k it. I got ready and then coughed loudly as I chambered a round, sliding it under his arm.

“You should leave him,” Jeff said behind me. “He’s going to die, no way you can change that. Grab your shit and let’s go.”

I lifted my chest and pressed against Horse again with both hands. Then I scooted around to find Jeff standing over me.

“I’m not going with you,” I said, meeting his eyes. “You guys should get out while you can. Leave us. I won’t even tell them who did it, I just want you gone.”

Max laughed and came up behind Jeff, holding up a paper. He smiled and shook his head, studying whatever it said.

“I can’t believe it’s this simple,” Max said, shaking his head. Jeff turned back to grin at him, the maniacal gleam coming back into his eyes. “You’re a genius. We’ll be set, even after we pay off the cartel.”

“It’s only simple because I spent so much time setting it up,” Jeff said, looking pleased, although I noticed his hand had started twitching again. Of course, he kept his finger on the trigger. Just what I needed.

“You did a hell of a job,” Max said, shaking his head ruefully. “It’s a thing of beauty, man.”

Jeff grinned at the compliment.

“I’m really glad they didn’t listen to me back in September,” Max continued. He looked at me and smiled almost fondly. “Gotta thank your old man for that, Marie. I wanted to kill you months ago, Jeff. Figured you might expose me on the skim. Never figured on a payoff like this. Damn. I’m actually sorry I have to do this. It’s not personal, okay?”

Jeff looked at Max, puzzled. He never saw the biker’s hand lift and for the second time in ten minutes I found myself screaming a warning too late for someone I loved. Jeff’s head exploded. Literally exploded, chunks flying off. One of them hit me in the face, which I didn’t notice at the time because in the instant Max shot him, Jeff’s hand spasmed and pulled the trigger on his own gun. A second shot rang out almost instantly and I felt a line of fire across my arm. I ignored it because my brother was dead, my lover was almost dead and I had a really, really bad feeling that I’d be dead, soon too.

Max looked down at me, tapping his gun against the side of his leg. He wore the same puzzled look he’d had the night he’d attacked me.

“He’s going to die,” Max said, looking down at Horse thoughtfully. “Your brother was right about that. You might as well let him go, because his blood is getting all over your clothes.”

“What’s wrong with you?” I whispered. “Why would you do this?”

He shrugged.

“Money, what else? Get out of the way unless you want me to shoot you too. I want to f**k you first. Your call.”

My eyes widened as he raised his gun and pointed it right at Horse’s head. This was it. Horse was out of time. I needed a distraction, just for a second.

“Oh my god, I’m covered in blood!” I squealed suddenly, pulling my hands away from Horse to tear off my shirt and bra. Max’s eyes went straight to my tits right as my hand grabbed my gun. A thousand memories flashed through my mind in an instant, but the one that stayed with me was the sound of Horse’s voice, that first day he taught me to shoot.

Just remember, you ever point this at a person, you shoot it right at his heart and you shoot to kill. Never point a gun unless you’re ready to end a life.

I lifted my gun and pointed it straight at Max’s heart like I’d practiced hundreds of time. I didn’t even think as I pulled the trigger over and over and over until I ran out of bullets. Like Jeff, Max’d pulled his trigger as he died but his arm had dropped just enough to miss us. I crawled over to his body and grabbed his gun, taking it back with me as I climbed onto Horse, sitting on the rags as I grabbed my phone.