Locke turned his palms up. “Before we swam the river, I was covered in it, and I didn’t know if it was mine or theirs.”
Theirs. Plural. Because he’d killed more than one man to fight his way home to us, and I couldn’t bring myself to be sad about any part of that except the number it was doing on his kind-hearted soul. A struggle I’d witnessed before, only the tortured eyes staring back at me had been baby blue instead of green.
That night, I’d been too young and dumb to say anything that mattered. My dad had done it for me, and the words he’d given Nash came back to me now. “There’s only one way to get over killing someone, and that’s by spending the rest of your days making sure your life is worth more than the one you took.”
“Can I do that by loving you?”
I kissed Locke’s scruffy cheeks, the tip of his nose, and finally his lips. “It’s a good place to start.”
13
NASH
“We’ve got him. He’s safe.”
I’d spent a month believing I’d never ridden so fast in my life, but I was pretty sure I broke the sound barrier the second I hung up on Rubi.
I hit the road like a man possessed, and for once, as Folk tagged in for Saint, he made no effort to calm me the fuck down. He slotted into my slipstream and we burned it all the way home.
Still took us more than an hour though, and it was daylight by the time we roared through the gates.
I skidded to a stop and tossed my helmet.
Rubi waited for me, my wheel narrowly missing his foot.
I stepped around him. “Where is he?”
“In the bunkhouse with the queen.” Rubi blocked my path. “Hold the phone, I need a minute.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
“Deadly.”
His tone gave me pause. I stopped trying to bulldoze him out of my way. “What is it?”
“Viktor’s here.”
“What? How?”
“Locke carried him in. Turns out the Crows had him all along.”
I wasn’t as shocked as Rubi. As Folk as he joined us, hearing enough to catch on.
He spat an uncharacteristic expletive. “Priesthad Viktor all this time? How did that happen?”
Rubi spread his hands. “I have no idea. He’s too fucked up to tell us. Locke’s got him on IVs and shit inside, but I can’t lie to you. I thought he was dead when Locke hauled him in.”
Fuck. “Did you call Jakov?”
“Above my pay grade, Nashie. I wouldn’t know how.”
“Goddamn it.” I scrubbed a hand through my hair. The need to get to Locke and Orla was everything, but with Cam unreachable while he dealt with the murder site, I had a shit-ton of other responsibilities. “Get me a burner?”
“Way ahead of you, brother.”
Rubi slapped one of Alexei’s specials into my palm.
“Awesome. Now get the fuck out of my way.”