46
Deacon
We rolled up with my rage burned down to something cold and quiet.
Priest killed his bike beside mine and swung off in the same motion.
Ink and Ghost came in behind us, engines dying almost together, while Graves broke left and Nomad cut right on foot.
Castor had the back. With him, that was enough.
The man carried silence like a second skin, and if he said he had an exit covered, I believed him.
I tore off my helmet and stared at the house. One downstairs light burned behind drawn curtains. The lawn was neat, the street quiet, every ordinary detail scraping against the tracker location glowing on my phone.
Priest caught my arm before I made it three steps. “You go in blind and angry, you get her killed.”
I jerked free, but I made myself stop. He was right, and I hated him for being right. “Then don’t let me go in blind.”
That earned the smallest nod. We moved.
Priest and I took the porch while Ink and Ghost spread toward the edges of the house with their guns up.
Graves and Nomad were somewhere beyond my sightline.
Castor would already be behind the place if he wasn’t inside the shadows yet.
The porch boards creaked beneath our boots, and then a copper smell slipped through the crack around the door.
Blood. Priest caught it too. His eyes changed before he eased the door open.
We entered with our guns raised. Mason Reid lay on his back in the living room, blood pooled beneath him and already going tacky at the edges.
One arm was twisted wrong. His eyes stared at nothing.
I had spent weeks wanting the man away from Lila, but dead on a hardwood floor was not a picture I had ever bothered imagining.
Priest’s gaze swept the room without settling on the body. “What the fuck happened here?”
A voice answered from deeper in the house. “Well.” The word floated out light, almost amused. Then Jude stepped from the kitchen. “Guess the neighborhood is going down the drain. Neighbors are going to start complaining about a noise problem.”
Lila was locked against his chest, and everything in me stopped.
His arm crossed her chest, pinning her back against him.
A gun pressed beneath her jaw. One wrist was cuffed, the chain dangling from Jude’s fist. Her lip was split.
One side of her face had swollen, blood tracked down from her hairline, and her other arm hung in a way that made my stomach turn before I could name why.
Her eyes found mine. “Jackson.” My name came out of her like pain.
Jude smiled at whatever he saw happen to me. His own face was cut open above the brow, scratches carved down one cheek, but he looked pleased with himself. Wired. High on control he only had because he was hiding behind her.
“Easy now,” he said, tightening his hold when I shifted forward. “Would hate for this reunion to get cut short.”
The gun dug harder into Lila’s skin. Priest’s hand came across my chest, firm enough to stop momentum without turning it into a fight between us. “No shot,” he said quietly.
I knew. My body still wanted to move, every instinct screaming at me to get her out of his hands. “Let her go.”
Jude’s grin widened. “That’s adorable.”
Lila flinched against him, and my grip tightened around my gun until my fingers ached. I forced myself to loosen it before tension showed in the muzzle.
He looked from Priest back to me, enjoying the room far too much. “Your president and best buddy.” His eyes brightened when they landed on me. “And you, the long lost lover and proud father. Lila should feel honored, you came fast. That’s love, I guess.”
I kept my sightline steady on his face instead of the barrel under hers. “Only reason you’re still breathin’,” I said, “is because she’s in front of you.”
“Oh, I know.” He tipped his head against hers for half a second. Lila recoiled as far as his grip allowed. “That’s what makes this fun.”
Behind me, Ink and Ghost held the entrance.
Graves and Nomad were somewhere outside, and Castor was a promise at Jude’s back.
I couldn’t look for any of them. Couldn’t give Jude a reason to wonder what I was waiting for.
I needed him talking, comfortable enough in his own cleverness to forget that five other men had come to this house with me.
Priest shifted half a step left, widening Jude’s field of attention. “You killed the doctor?”
Jude glanced down at Mason like the body bored him. “He got emotional.” A small, horrified sound slipped from Lila, and Jude’s smile sharpened. “See? That’s the problem with weak men. Too many feelings. Not enough follow-through.”
I kept my eyes on her. Her chest was rising. Falling. Too fast, but steady enough. Blood at her temple. Bruising on her face. Terror in her eyes she was fighting to hold together.
“I’m here, baby,” I said, keeping my voice low enough that it belonged only to her. Her mouth trembled, but she stayed with me.
Jude laughed softly. “God, that’s pathetic.”
I gave him nothing. “Look at me, Princess.” Lila did, and the room narrowed until there was only her face and the fact that she could still find me through everything he had done to her. “That’s it,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Just keep lookin’ at me.”
Jude tightened his arm until she winced.
“You know what’s funny? She came all this way because she thought her little girl was in trouble.
” His eyes stayed on me, hungry for the reaction.
“Walked right into a trap for that brat.” His mouth twisted as he kept going.
“Always hated the way she looked at me, like she saw right through me. Smart mouth. Sharp eyes. That constant little dismissal, like I was something stuck to her shoe.” A soft laugh crawled out of him.
“And all because Lila went and had a kid with the wrong man when she was supposed to be mine all along. Guess that’s what Lila’s always done, though.
Throw everything away for the wrong people. ”
Lila jerked against him. “Where is Jade?”
“Not here,” Jude said easily. He watched the fear move across her face and fed it. “Maybe she’s scared, though. Maybe she’s cryin’ for her mama while her biker daddy tears up the wrong town.”
Her face went white. Jude noticed. Of course he did.
“Could be anything by now, right?” he went on. “Scared somewhere. Hurt maybe. Learning real fast nobody gets saved by men like you.”
The sound Lila made tore through me. I moved before thought caught up, and Priest’s fingers clamped around my arm. “Don’t.”
Jude smirked. “Touchy subject?”
I dragged in a breath through my nose and forced the rage back down where it belonged.
Getting angry enough to make him nervous would get Lila hurt.
Getting him angry enough to make a mistake might save her.
“You talk a lot for a man who needs another body in front of his to feel big.” His eyes flashed exactly the way I wanted.
“Careful,” he said. “I’m in no mood to be insulted in my own house.”
Priest didn’t look at me. He didn’t need to. He caught the opening and pressed. “You killed the man dumb enough to trust you.”
Jude’s jaw flexed. There it was, the first little fracture in the smug control he had been wearing since we walked in.
Priest’s voice went colder. “That’s all you are, isn’t it? A coward with a badge and a gun.”
Lila’s breath hitched. Jude’s bloody hand jerked around the cuff chain. Anger was starting to eat through his control, and angry men watched the insult instead of the room around them.
I shifted another step sideways, slow enough that he had to choose whether to follow me or keep watching Priest.
His gun tracked with me. “Don’t,” he snapped.
I let my voice drop. “Or what?” I asked softly. “You gonna shoot her too?”
Uncertainty flickered across his face, there and gone before he could hide it. I kept pressure on it. “You don’t want her dead,” I said. “You want her watching you long enough to mistake fear for love.”
His nostrils flared. Lila’s gaze snapped back to mine, glassy but sharp enough that I knew she understood what Priest and I were doing.
“That’s it,” I murmured to her. “I got you.”
Jude’s gun hand shifted, barely enough to count, but Priest saw it too. “How’d all that work out for your partner there?”
Jude’s eyes cut toward him. “He was weak,” Jude said.
“No,” Priest said. “He saw what you were.”
Silence dropped hard enough that I could hear Lila breathing. Then something whispered behind Jude. His eyes flicked toward the sound, but Castor was faster.
The suppressed shot coughed through the room. A dark bloom opened through the front of Jude’s throat, and disbelief held him upright for one impossible second. His fingers loosened around the gun, then he dropped.
Lila went with him halfway before his hold released. I was moving before his body hit the floor.
The gun skidded beneath a side table. I ignored it, dropped to my knees, and got both arms around Lila. I pulled her away from Jude’s body and into my chest, careful too late when her broken sound told me how much pain even that movement caused. “Baby.”
She was crying now, not neatly, not quietly. Her whole body shook with it.
“It’s okay. I got you.” I pressed my mouth against her hair and temple, desperate to put reassurance anywhere she could feel it. “I got you. I got you. I love you so much, baby. I’m here.”
Her good hand fisted in my shirt. “Jade.” The name broke in the middle. “Jackson, Jade’s still missing.”
I caught her face as gently as I could and made sure she saw me. “No. Listen to me. Jade is safe.”
Every tremor in her stopped. She pulled back just enough to search my face, looking for the lie people told when truth was too cruel to survive. I let her look.
“She’s safe,” I said again. “We’ve got her. She’s on the way home.”
Relief hit her so hard it looked painful. Her body sagged against mine, and another sob tore free.
“I’ll explain later,” I murmured into her hair. “Right now we gotta take care of you.”
Priest crouched beside us, phone already in his hand. “I’ve called Blue.”
Only then did I look beyond Lila. Castor stood in the kitchen entry with his gun lowered, his expression blank.
Mason lay dead near the front of the room.
Jude was crumpled only feet away. Blood marked the hardwood in two different places, and Lila had some of it on her clothes, her face, my hands.
Castor’s gaze moved once over the room. “Archangel’s coming. ”
Cleanup.
I brushed damp hair away from her face. “Stay with me, baby.” Her lashes fluttered. Her lips parted like she meant to answer, but her weight suddenly changed. “Lila?” Nothing. Panic punched straight through the cold that had carried me into the house.
Priest’s hand landed on my shoulder. “She passed out. Shock. Pain. Maybe a concussion. She’s breathing.”
I checked anyway, locking onto the faint movement of her chest until my own lungs remembered what they were supposed to do. Yeah. Breathing.
I kept one arm around her while I pulled out my phone and called Matty. He answered on the first ring. “Yeah?”
“We’ve got her.” I looked down at Lila as the silence on the line stretched just long enough to tighten my chest.
Matty’s voice came back lower, stripped down to the one thing he needed from me. “Alive?”
That one word nearly dropped me. I looked down at Lila’s bruised face. “Yeah. She’s alive.”
Matty breathed out, rough enough that I heard what he had been holding back. “We’re almost at the cabin,” he said. “We’ll have Jade soon.”
“Take her to Evan’s apartment,” I said. “Let her stay there tonight while I get Lila settled.”
The line went quiet again. Matty knew me well enough to hear everything I hadn’t said. “Is she okay?”
I looked over Lila properly. Split lip. Blood at her hairline. Swelling along her face. Her shoulder was wrong, and dark marks were already beginning to show at her throat.
“She’s hurt,” I said. “But she’s alive.”
Another pause settled between us before Matty asked, “Who was it? Who had her?”
My eyes traveled across the room. Mason. Jude. Too much blood for a house this clean. Too many answers neither Matty nor Lila had yet.
“We were too slow getting together to figure things out with Jude,” I said. “He had her. And some doctor she worked with. Doctor was dead when we got here. Don’t know all of how he fits yet.” I tightened my arm around Lila. “Can’t tell you more right now, Matty. Not if you want to keep your job.”
His teeth ground audibly through the phone. “She has to be told everything, Jackson.”
I looked down at the woman I had spent seventeen years trying to protect with silence, only to find her bleeding in my arms after lies from every direction had finally caught up with us.
“I know,” I said. My voice came out quieter than I expected, stripped of everything except exhaustion. “I didn’t want to destroy her world, man. I love her, and goddamn it, I couldn’t be the one to do that.”
Matty didn’t answer immediately. When he finally spoke, his voice had lost the anger. “He’s the one who did that. Not you.” His voice roughened. “And he’s the one who gets to live with the consequences.”
The sentence hung between us until he cursed. A car door slammed on his end.
“Gotta go. We’re here.”
“Keep my little girl safe,” I said. “And don’t tell her about her mom yet.”
His grunt was enough. The call ended, and I shoved the phone away.
I stood with Lila in my arms, taking her weight slowly enough to keep her bad shoulder as still as I could. “Get a prospect to come pick up my bike. I’m putting her in her cage and taking her home.” I adjusted her carefully against my chest. “Tell Blue to meet us there.”
Priest nodded once. “Already done.”
At the doorway I looked back at the room. Two bodies. Castor standing near the kitchen, still as ever. Blood darkening polished hardwood where somebody had probably once worried about scuff marks and spilled drinks. I tipped my chin toward the room. “This mess?”
Priest’s face flattened. “Handled.” That was all I needed.
I carried Lila outside. Cold night air hit the blood on my hands while the men around us shifted quietly back into motion, clearing space, making calls, doing whatever had to be done without asking me for anything. Somewhere across town, Matty was almost to Jade.
Both of them were alive. Relief didn’t feel clean.
It came jagged, tangled with rage and fear and the image of Lila under Jude’s gun that I knew would be waiting for me every time I closed my eyes.
But she was breathing against my chest, and my daughter was coming home.
For tonight, I could build everything else from there.