“All I know is how to retaliate against death,” he whispered, shame dripping from every word. “I know you’ll always fight. I’ve seen you fight and win over and over again. My worry isn’t about what you can and can’t do. It’s about what men like me will do to you if we let them get close. Men like me,” he repeated in a voice so quiet, I wasn’t sure he meant to say his thoughts aloud.
I didn’t fight his grip on my wrists. Instead, I turned them slowly, my palms landing on his bare chest. I could feel the rush of his heart under them. I could feel his sudden shift in mood roll over me with enough force I felt the ache of it myself. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“I can’t lie to you anymore.”
“Then don’t,” I whispered, searching his face. “You can tell me anything. You know this.”
“There’s somewhere we need to go. There’s something I need to show you,” he said quietly.
“Now?” I asked, still trying to catch his eyes.
“Now.”
Night had fallen when we’d left the compound again. Slater had been on the porch with a beer, but one look at Drew’s face and he’d stayed where he was, a small nod of acknowledgment in my direction. So much was said in so fewwords these days.
I hadn’t known where we’d been going, and the warmth of our previous ride out was absent now. There was a distance in Drew that only grew more perceptible when he’d turned down a familiar dirt road that I could have honestly gone a lifetime without seeing again.
Memories of the night we fled to the safe house crowded my mind, adding some extra padding to my defenses as I watched the corners pass us by and the dim and dark shape of the house rise from the darkness like a stain on the horizon.
When Drew came to a stop and killed the engine, I didn’t move. His quiet stoicism had been another passenger on the bike all the way here, and now he was withdrawing again. It wasn’t as bad as it had been, but there was a rigidity in his shoulders that said he was preparing for the worse, waiting for that other shoe to drop and the fabric of it all to fall apart and finally swallow us all in the chaos.
“If things are different after this, know that I understand,” he said calmly.
I had a feeling they would be different, no matter what happened inside. I had that gut feeling, that intuition that something big was happening. That unshakable sense of change that I was unable to derail. Even with all of that hesitance and fear, I had a belief in my heart that it wouldn’t be the end of anything like Drew seemed to think it could be.
I swung my leg over the bike and pushed the helmet from my head.
For such a strong, determined, fearless man built of nothing but scars and muscle, Drew lifted himself from that bike looking like a defeated man. He blindly reached for my hand, and I took it, having no choice but to follow hisslow, heavy footsteps as he made his way up the stairs of the wraparound porch, pausing in front of the door.
“We have two pretty solid rules in our club. Two that we’ve managed to stick to for the most part. Never go after children. And never go after women unless they come after you first.” Drew lifted his head, turning his guilt-filled eyes on me. “Sometimes rules get broken that should never be broken.”
He twisted the handle on the door and pushed it open slowly.
That familiar musty smell greeted us. I automatically stepped closer to Drew, hiding from my memories more than fear of what I was going to find inside. I watched his face, trying to understand why he’d given me rules I was more than familiar with.
When I finally dragged my gaze from him, I understood.
The living room had been cleared. The usual furniture had been pushed against the walls. Blankets covered the windows, and a tarp hung in the space between the living room and kitchen. A small camping lantern rested at the end of a metal-framed bed that hadn’t been there before. It sat directly in the center of the room and under the ceiling fan. The bed was clean, and so was the bedding that covered it, but the woman that was sprawled out on top of the sheets was a contradiction. One arm was handcuffed to a chain attached to the metal frame of the bed, giving her enough room to reach a bucket that was at the head of it. The other arm was bandaged from shoulder to elbow, a small pink stain standing out starkly even in the dim light. Her hair was dull and knotted, brushed back from her face and staying there probably due to days, if not weeks, of not being washed, and the jeans she wore werecovered in dirt at the knees.
She only moved when she heard my gasp of shock, her legs scissoring as she tried to sit, her hand brushing hair back from her face again. She looked terrified, but aside from her arm and a bruise on her cheek, pretty much unhurt. There were burger wrappers in a small trashcan and soda cans littered around the floor, so she’d been well fed. Unfortunately, none of these positive things seemed to take away from the unfathomable truth of what I was looking at.
“You—” I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t process what I was looking at, so I turned around and walked out of the building without saying another damn word.
Chapter Sixteen
DREW
Ilet Ayda go, remaining focused on Helen Taylor the same way she was focused on me. I was staring at the same woman I’d told Jon Taylor was dead. The one whose life was saved at the very last minute by a ghostly cry from Harry and Pete, just before I pulled the trigger on her. She wasn’t as afraid as she had been at the start, the night I’d brought her here with a bullet in her shoulder and a few bruises against her temple. But that had been weeks ago, and she’d seen me plenty since then. She knew my temperament—the way to gauge my moods.
“That her?” Helen asked roughly, her voice hoarse from sleep.
I blinked, turned on my heels, and ignored the question, letting the door smack against the frame behind me. Ayda was bent over in front of the bike, one hand on her thigh while the other covered her mouth. Her hair was falling forward, hiding all her features. I didn’t need to see her face to know this hadn’t even started to get bad for me yet.
Standing at the top of the porch steps, I waited. Legs spread and arms hanging limply by my sides. I could give her this space. I had to.
Pushing up from her curled position, Ayda paced back andforth cutting a line in the dried dirt. She didn’t move her hand from her mouth, but I could see she was mumbling behind it.
“Who else knows?” she finally asked, skidding to a stop and sending up a cloud of dust around her feet. “Please tell me I’m not the only person who doesn’t know about this.”