Chapter 30
thirty
She shifted her weight. The gravel crunched. Hobbs didn’t look at her.
Good.
She’d been working her left wrist against the plastic since Gemma shoved her down here.
Small movements. Nothing that would draw attention.
The zip tie was tight—Gemma had pulled it hard, taking some satisfaction in that—but not impossible.
Rainey had thin wrists. If she could just get them to loosen a little bit, she’d be able to slip free.
The plastic edge scraped skin raw, but skin healed.
She kept the rhythm steady. Pull, relax, pull, relax, her hand angled to create the smallest gap.
Mal stood near the front of the SUV, phone in his hand, thumbs moving across the screen.
He had his father’s build. Broad through the shoulders, the same shaved head—which she knew he kept shaved to hide the gray at his temples.
But while he looked like Rux, he lacked the quiet menace.
Rux had never needed to perform power. Mal performed it constantly.
God. And she’d once thought he was attractive? He was pathetic.
Gemma paced. She’d been pacing since they arrived, five minutes of restless movement grating on Rainey’s nerves. She kept looking at Mal, waiting for something—approval, instruction, acknowledgment. He gave her none. He’d given her none since they arrived.
Rainey almost felt sorry for the woman.
Almost.
Creed leaned against his motorcycle, arms crossed, his dark hair falling across his face. He hadn’t spoken since they arrived. He watched the ridge line, not the road, and his stillness was different from Hobbs’s. Hobbs was patient. Creed was waiting for something specific.
Rainey’s wrist burned. She kept working it.
They’d left Tilly tied to a pine at the first stop, the County 12 turnout where Gemma had delivered her.
Rainey had heard the dog barking as they drove away, a deep, furious sound that cut off when the SUV rounded the bend.
She didn’t know if Tilly would chew through the rope or starve to death or if someone would find her.
She didn’t know anything except that the dog had tried to follow, lunging against the leash, and Gemma had pointed the gun at her for one heartbeat before Creed said, “Leave it. The dog’s not the job. ”
Rainey hoped Tilly chewed through the rope. She hoped the dog found her way back to Valor Ridge and Evander. He’d need her to get through this if Rainey didn’t survive.
She tested the zip tie again. A millimeter of give. Maybe less.
“You know what I don’t understand,” she said.
Hobbs turned his head to glare at her.
Mal looked up from his phone.
Gemma stopped pacing.
Only Creed didn’t move. But his eyes shifted to her, quick, from behind the curtain of his hair.
“I don’t understand,” Rainey continued, “why you think this is going to work out for you.”
She directed it at Mal. He was the one who’d engineered this, who’d sent Gemma to infiltrate her brother’s bed, who’d stood in a clubhouse and put a bullet in Roy Bishoff’s head while she watched and thought she wouldn’t say a fucking thing because she was his possession.
Mal tucked his phone into his jacket pocket and walked over, stopping to smirk down at her. “Everything works out for me, Rainey. You should know that by now.”
Her stomach churned, but she forced a smile as she met his gaze.
“Not this time. You know I already testified, right? Recorded deposition. Federal marshal present. Everything I saw. Everything I heard. Roy Bishoff’s books, the laundering, the arms deals, you putting a bullet in a man who’d kept your secrets for fifteen years.
” She watched his eyes. “It’s all on tape.
So even if you kill me, you’re fucked. You’re going to prison, Mal.
You wanted me to use my voice? I used it, and you’re done. ”
Gemma moved closer, drawn by the conversation or by Mal’s proximity. Rainey didn’t look at her. She kept her eyes on Mal, watching him process, watching him decide what mask to wear.
He smiled. It was a slow expression, built from the corners of his mouth outward, and it didn’t reach his eyes.
“You’re right,” he said. “The testimony will probably survive. I have lawyers—very expensive lawyers—tell me the same thing.” He crouched down, bringing his face level with hers.
She smelled peppermint on his breath. “But here’s what else they tell me.
Killing you doesn’t erase the testimony.
It erases the witness. It makes every lawyer in that courtroom work harder to convict me.
” His smile widened. “But it also means Evander Cole walks into this turnout thinking he’s trading his life for yours, and instead he watches you die before we take him apart.
It means your brother spends the rest of his life knowing his girlfriend delivered his sister to her death.
It means everyone who helped you—Walker Nash, that marshal, the whole bleeding-heart ranch—spends years wondering if they could have done something different. ”
He leaned closer. She didn’t flinch. She’d spent sixteen years learning not to flinch at her father’s voice, her father’s hands.
But Mal Granger was not her father. He was just another man who thought fear was currency.
And she was so done being afraid.
Rainey’s wrist burned. She kept the rhythm going, invisible, her hand working against the plastic while her face held still.
“You’re a sad little boy,” she spat, “playing at being his daddy.”
Mal’s smile dropped away, and he straightened as she’d slapped him. She’d hit a nerve.
Good. She’d keep poking at it.
“Rux was a professional,” she continued.
“You know what I remember about your father? He never talked this much. He never needed to explain why something was worth doing. He just did it. You’re standing here justifying yourself to a woman tied to a tire because you need someone to agree you’re scary.
” She tilted her head. “You’re not scary, Mal.
You’re desperate. And desperate men make mistakes. ”
He backhanded her across the face, his knuckles catching her cheekbone, and her head snapped sideways. Pain bloomed hot, and she tasted copper at the corner of her mouth. Her mouth filled with blood and she spit it out.
Hobbs shifted his weight, but didn’t intervene. He wouldn’t unless Mal told him.
Gemma made a small sound of excitement. “Hit her again. Shut the bitch up.”
Rainey turned her head back and looked up at Mal. She didn’t wipe the blood from her lip. She let it sit there, let him see it, let him understand that she’d taken worse from better men and kept talking.
“See?” she said. “Desperate.”
Mal’s jaw worked. He turned away from her, toward the road, and she knew she’d gotten to him. Not enough. Not nearly enough. But somewhere beneath the performance, somewhere in the place where he still measured himself against a dead man’s shadow, she’d scratched the surface.
She tested the zip tie. More give now. The raw skin had lubricated with blood, and the plastic had stretched. Not enough to pull free. Soon.
Gemma moved into her line of sight. She crouched down where Mal had crouched, and her face was different now. The warmth Rainey had seen at Valor Ridge—the easy smiles, the way she’d teased River, the attentive listening—gone. What remained was harder, brittle, ugly.
“You don’t know anything about him,” Gemma said. Her voice was low, intimate, the tone of a woman sharing secrets. “About us. What we have.”
“I know exactly what you have,” Rainey said. “I had it too. For about two minutes, before I saw him shoot a man in the head.”
“Roy Bishoff was a liability. He was going to talk to the feds.”
“And you think you’re not a liability? Sylvie Granger is missing, presumed dead, because she saw what I saw.
He probably killed her. His own sister. And now he’s going to kill me, his ex-girlfriend.
You’re the only other woman who knows what I know.
So how long do you think that lasts, Gemma?
How long before you’re the next problem he needs to solve? ”
Gemma’s hand closed around her arm, fingers digging into the muscle above the elbow. Her nails were short, practical, but they found the nerve and pressed.
“Mal loves me,” Gemma said. “He’s going to take me with him. We’re going to get out of this state, start somewhere clean. He promised.”
“He promised me a music career,” Rainey said.
“He promised Sylvie she’d always be sheltered from club business.
He promises things. It’s what he does. And then he uses you until you’re not useful, and then he finds a way to make your death look like someone else’s fault.
” She leaned forward, close enough to smell Gemma’s shampoo, the same brand River kept in his shower.
The intimacy of that detail—her brother’s smell on this woman’s hair—lit something vicious in her chest. “He doesn’t love women, Gemma.
He values us. He values what we can do for him.
The second you stop being useful, you’re Roy Bishoff.
You’re Sylvie. You’re me. You’re a problem to manage. ”
Gemma’s grip tightened. Her face had gone pale, the blood draining from her cheeks, and for a moment—just a moment—Rainey saw doubt flicker in her eyes.
The same doubt Rainey had felt in the clubhouse, watching Mal’s hand move to his weapon, understanding too late that she’d walked into something that would not let her walk out.
Then the doubt curdled into anger. Gemma’s mouth twisted. She shoved Rainey back against the tire and yanked the zip tie tighter, pulling Rainey’s wrists together with a vicious jerk that made her gasp.
“You don’t get to tell me what I am,” Gemma said.
Her voice had gone high, brittle, the pitch of a woman holding something together with force of will.
“You don’t get to poison this. Mal gave me a job when I had nothing.
He gave me purpose. He gave me a way to matter.
” She leaned close, her breath hot against Rainey’s ear.
“And if he asked me to put a bullet in your head right now, I’d do it.
I’d do it and I’d sleep fine. So don’t tell me what he feels.
Don’t tell me what I mean to him. You don’t know anything. ”
She stood. Brushed gravel from her knees.
Walked back to Mal’s side, and Rainey watched her go and understood that she’d failed.
Not completely—she’d planted something, maybe, a seed that might grow if given time—but Gemma wasn’t going to crack today.
Gemma had invested too much. She’d slept in River’s bed for a month, learned his routines, his fears, his hopes, and delivered his sister to death.
That kind of investment didn’t unwind because the victim said something true.
Rainey’s wrists throbbed. The zip tie was tighter now, Gemma’s adjustment costing her the progress she’d made. She’d have to start over.
Okay. It was okay.
She had time.
She hoped she had time.
She looked at Creed.
He hadn’t moved from the motorcycle. His arms were still crossed, his hair still fallen across his face, but his posture had changed.
Subtle. The set of his shoulders, the angle of his head.
He was listening. He’d heard every word between her and Gemma, every word between her and Mal, and he wasn’t liking any of it.
He was Mal’s tool, but he wasn’t Mal’s believer. Maybe she could use that.
“Boone lived,” she said to him.
Creed’s eyes moved to her. He didn’t speak. But he didn’t look away.
“Clean through-and-through in the shoulder. He’s already trying to get out of bed. You could have killed him. You didn’t. You could have killed Evander after you knocked him out. You didn’t.”
“Rainey,” Mal said. Warning in his voice. He’d heard.
She ignored him. She had Creed’s attention, and she wasn’t giving it up.
“You’re not one of them, Creed. I see it. You’re playing a part, but you’re not committed to it.”
Creed’s jaw tightened.
“You can still do the right thing,” she continued. “The hard thing. This isn’t over for you until you decide it is. You walk away from this, you help me get out of here, and you’re not what they say you are. You’re not irredeemable. You just made bad choices, and you can make different ones.”
“Shut up,” Gemma said. She moved toward Rainey, hand raised, and Rainey braced for the blow.
“Gemma.” Mal’s voice stopped her. He didn’t raise it. He didn’t need to. “Let her talk. She’s entertaining. It doesn’t change anything.”
But it did. Rainey saw it in Creed’s face, the way his gaze had shifted from her to Mal and back, calculating. He was listening. He was weighing. He was closer to the edge than he’d been five minutes ago.
A truck appeared on the road below them, and Mal clapped his hands together. “Finally.”
The truck was black with the VR logo on the side. Ranch truck. It slowed as it approached the turnout, gravel crunching under tires, and stopped thirty yards out.
For a moment, nothing happened. The engine ticked. The exhaust plumed white in the cold air.
Then the driver’s door opened.
Evander stepped out.
Rainey’s breath caught.
He’d come alone. He’d actually come alone, walking into this mess with nothing but his hands empty at his sides, because Mal had demanded it and because somewhere in the twisted logic Evander lived by, trading himself for her was the only equation that made sense.
You fucking idiot, she thought. I love you, you fucking idiot.