Chapter 63
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Romeo
Something shifted beyond the back window, too fast and too deliberate to be one of the creatures that had spent the last two weeks deciding Fiona and I were harmless enough to ignore.
I caught her around the waist before she could turn toward it and pulled her away from the glass.
Her hands closed around my forearms as I moved us deeper into the cabin, and when I looked again, there was nothing beyond the window but cypress trunks, tangled brush, and water gone still beneath the trees.
“Jasper?” she asked quietly.
“Stay with me.”
She did without arguing, which scared me more than if she had fired off ten questions.
I pulled the pistol from the back of my waistband and checked the room again, measuring the entrances differently now that I knew someone was close enough to cross a window.
The cabin had been perfect for disappearing.
Not so fucking perfect once somebody found you.
I opened the kitchen drawer where Gator had left another gun and held it toward Fiona. Instead of taking it, she stared at the weapon for a second before her eyes lifted to mine.
“I don’t know how to use a gun.”
That surprised me enough to pull my attention from the windows.
Then I thought about Georgie, Granny, Frank, and everyone else who had spent years putting themselves between Fiona and anything ugly enough to reach her.
She understood guns. She’d been around bikers long enough that seeing one didn’t make her nervous, but apparently nobody had ever decided she needed to know what to do with one.
I put the extra pistol into the back of my jeans. “First fuckin’ thing we do when we get home is teach you to fuckin’ shoot.”
Her expression changed. It was small, just a softening around her eyes before she nodded, but her fingers tightened briefly around my wrist.
“Okay.”
I caught the back of her neck and kissed her forehead. “Until then, you stay behind me. If I tell you to move, you move. If I tell you to get down, you get down.”
“That’s very bossy.”
“Been told it’s one of my finer qualities.”
The corner of her mouth twitched, and some tight place in my chest loosened. Even scared, she was still Fiona.
Three hard knocks struck the front door.
Her almost-smile vanished.
I turned toward the sound, every muscle tightening again.
Men sneaking through the bayou with weapons and enough sense to hide their boat didn’t usually stop to knock.
Instead of approaching the door, I moved to the side window and angled myself far enough to see the porch without putting my body directly in front of the glass.
The man standing outside was one I recognized.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”
Fiona remained tucked behind the interior wall. “What?”
“It’s Mac.”
Relief came fast enough that I actually felt my shoulders drop.
Mac wasn’t somebody who wandered into other people’s business.
He was one of Sal’s top three, the kind of man Sal trusted when something needed handling rather than discussed.
If King had reached out to his father after my warning, Mac showing up made sense.
Fiona leaned just far enough to see past me, but instead of relaxing, her body went rigid.
“I know him.”
I looked back at her. “You do?”
“He was in Rosewood when everyone came for Morgan.” She stared through the window, her brow drawing together as if she were dragging up a memory she hadn’t expected to need again. “He looked at me.”
There was something in the way she said it that kept me from brushing the comment aside.
“He didn’t say anything,” she added. “He just stared. I remember because it gave me this weird feeling.”
I looked outside again. Mac stood on the porch with his hands visible, wearing the same unreadable expression he usually did.
The man could make breathing in his direction feel vaguely threatening, so Fiona remembering an uncomfortable look wasn’t enough to turn one of Sal’s most trusted men into an enemy.
“That’s Mac,” I told her. “He makes most people uncomfortable.”
Her expression didn’t ease, but she nodded.
“Stay back.”
I approached the door with my hand close to my gun, more habit than suspicion, and opened it without stepping completely out of the way. Mac’s gaze landed on me first, and that last thread of tension eased enough that I almost smiled.
“Sal send you?”
He didn’t answer.
His attention shifted past my shoulder.
I felt Fiona behind me without needing to look at her.
Mac’s expression barely changed before he said, “Kaitlyn.”
Everything inside me stopped.
There were moments when your body figured out the truth before your brain was willing to touch it. My grip tightened around the pistol hidden behind my leg while part of me was still trying to find an explanation for why Mac had looked directly at my wife and used a name he had no reason to know.
He should have called her Fiona.
If Sal had sent him, he should have asked if she was safe.
Instead, he had said Kaitlyn like that was the woman he had come to find.
I started to bring the gun around.
Mac moved first.
He came through the doorway hard, driving his shoulder into my chest before I could raise the weapon. My back slammed into the wall, the impact knocking the breath out of me and throwing my gun arm wide. By the time I shoved myself upright again, Fiona was no longer behind me.
Mac had her.
His arm locked across her upper chest, dragging her back against him. The gun in his other hand stayed low against her side, close enough that he didn’t need to point it anywhere for the threat to be clear.
“Jasper.”
I had heard Fiona afraid before, but never with somebody else’s arm around her.
The room narrowed until there was only Mac, Fiona, and the space between us.
“Let her go.”
Mac took a step backward, forcing her to move with him. His gaze dropped to the pistol still clenched in my hand.
“Put it on the floor. Nice and easy.”
I lowered the gun without taking my eyes off him. Fiona’s gaze stayed locked on mine while Mac watched my hand, and I could see how hard she was working not to panic. Her breathing came too fast, but she listened. That mattered.
“Why the fuck did you call my wife Kaitlyn?”
Mac’s mouth moved in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “You always were quicker than people gave you credit for.”
That was enough.
No misunderstanding. No explanation I had missed.
Mac.
Sal’s man. One of the men closest to him. A bastard I wouldn’t have thought twice about turning my back on five minutes ago.
And he had come here for Fiona.
“Sylvia?” I asked.
“She wants Steele’s daughter.”
“She ain’t Steele’s fuckin’ daughter.”
A flicker crossed his face before he hid it.
He hadn’t known.
That realization lodged somewhere in the back of my head for later, assuming I could get Fiona away from him long enough for later to fucking matter.
Mac tightened his arm when she shifted, and Fiona’s face pinched.
“Don’t,” I warned.
“Gun, Romeo. On the fucking floor.”
I lowered the gun another inch. Fiona glanced down, just once, then looked at me again. Her gaze dipped toward Mac’s feet before returning to mine.
I knew what she was telling me.
I opened my fingers.
The pistol struck the floor with a heavy thud.
Mac looked down.
Fiona drove her heel onto his foot, and I launched myself at him.
Her scream ripped through the cabin when I hit them, sharp with shock as all three of us went sideways.
I caught Fiona around the middle before we crashed and twisted hard enough to throw her away from Mac.
She hit the floor near the couch and rolled while Mac and I went through the small table beside it.
Wood cracked beneath our weight, and his gun skidded away across the floor.
“Move, Fiona!”
I saw her scrambling away before Mac’s fist caught me across the mouth. My head snapped sideways, and blood filled my mouth almost instantly. I drove my elbow into his ribs, felt him grunt beneath me, and tried to get on top before he could recover.
Mac knew exactly how to stop me.
His knee drove into my side hard enough to empty my lungs.
He used the opening to roll us, and my back slammed into the floor with him above me.
His fist connected with my cheek, then clipped the side of my head before I caught his wrist on the third swing.
I yanked him forward and drove my forehead into his face.
He reeled just enough for me to throw him off.
We came up together.
I had never expected Mac to be easy. Men didn’t rise as high as he had in the Mob because they were good at standing behind somebody else. He came at me before my balance had fully returned, and we hit the kitchen counter hard enough to send a mug crashing to the floor.
Fiona gasped somewhere behind me, but my focus never left the man in front of me.
Mac grabbed my shirt and swung again. I got my arm up in time to take most of it, but his knuckles still clipped my temple. Light flashed behind my eyes. I answered with a punch beneath his ribs, another to his stomach, then caught his jaw hard enough to send his head snapping back.
He staggered.
I stayed on him.
“How long?”
Mac wiped blood from his mouth and looked at what came away on his hand. Then the bastard smiled.
That response pissed me off worse than anything he could have said.
He came forward again, and I met him halfway.
We hit the wall shoulder-first, too close for either of us to get clean punches.
Mac forced his forearm against my throat and leaned his weight into it.
Pressure built fast, but I drove my fist into his side again and again until his hold loosened enough for me to hook my leg behind his.
We hit the floor hard.
This time I landed on top.
He blocked the first punch. The second got through. So did the third.