Beard in Hiding, page 21
Isaac stared at me, assessing, giving nothing of his thoughts away. Even if he had been giving his thoughts away, I was too tired to do anything with them. I didn’t need his approval.
I just needed him to drive back to the Dragon.
“Your mother is, and from this point forward always will be, my first and only priority. That’s who I am now. So, turn this fucking car around right fucking now and take me back to the Dragon so I can get some damn sleep.”
Chapter Nineteen
*Diane*
“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
“Where is that darn sugar?” I mumbled to no one, twisting at the waist and blinking around the kitchen. I thought perhaps I’d make an attempt at normalcy and bake something, but I couldn’t find the sugar. I needed sugar to bake something.
Unable to locate the sugar, I began to cry.
Covering my face with both hands, I slid down the cabinets to the floor, pulled my knees up, and cried and cried and cried. Sugar was just another final straw after a long series of final straws. I was living in a nightmare, I couldn’t seem to wake up, and—I was ashamed to admit it, but—I had no idea how much time had elapsed since the event.
I’d taken to calling that night The Event since I couldn’t very well think of it as “the night my son committed patricide during my daughter’s engagement party.” That would never do.
And then, of course, there was the other event.
A few days after The Event, I’d received a note in my mailbox, black marker on a white piece of paper, and it had read,
I have the murder weapon with your fingerprints. Turn over those cows to Farmer Miller or go to jail for the murder of Kip Sylvester.
It had been unsigned, but it didn’t take a genius to know who’d sent it. What the hell was I supposed to do with it other than be terrified? I’d never been blackmailed before. I had no one to talk to, no one to tell.
Jason had been MIA since he’d dropped me off at the lodge and he hadn’t texted or contacted me either. I didn’t know for certain why he’d decided to keep his distance; I wanted to trust he had a good reason; but I missed him. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted him to hold me. I needed him. I felt like I was going crazy.
The one time I’d tried going into work, people I’d known for decades had looked at me like I was guilty of murder. Or maybe it was my imagination. Or maybe I was off my rocker. Regardless, I’d stopped driving into work since The Event. Just the thought of driving anywhere felt overwhelming.
That first morning after The Event, Jeffrey James brought me in for questioning and Jason’s lawyer had been a life-saver. Afterward, Jennifer and Cletus had picked me up from the sheriff’s station and taken me home. Jennifer knew something was wrong beyond just the circumstances of the situation. How could she not? But what could I say? I saw your brother kill your daddy and now I might go to prison for it. Could you please help me locate the sugar?
There was simply nothing to say other than sticking to my story. I would sit tight until there was a reason not to sit tight, such as Isaac coming under suspicion. Most of my internal deliberations were guilty half-thoughts, incomplete tails of wishful thinking, and remorseful musings about how I should’ve left Kip earlier.
The only complete thought I’d been able to manage since The Event was this: if they suspect Isaac, I will confess.
Sniffling and all cried-out, I wiped under my eyes with the back of my hand and stared unseeingly at nothing in particular. Where could that sugar be? I’d looked everywhere and it wasn’t like it had sprouted legs and strolled out of my house. On the other hand, with the way my luck was going, perhaps my sugar container had gained sentience and fled the pantry, likely taking the vanilla with it since I couldn’t find any of that either.
And speaking of missing essential ingredients, where the hell was Jason?!
I shook my head, inhaling deeply, and wondering if I should take another shower. I’d taken lots of showers since The Event. I was pretty sure I’d taken one earlier in the day . . . unless that was yesterday?
A foreign sound coming from somewhere down the hall sharpened my fuzzy focus and I peered through the kitchen doorway. Is that . . . what is that?
I pushed myself to standing and stared down the dim hall. My mind was slow to work, but the noise had sounded like something sliding against something else, like a window being opened. Or am I imaging things?
“Diane?” came a whispered voice and I flinched, holding my breath.
My Jennifer and her Cletus had been checking in, but they always used the front door, obviously. I couldn’t think who would be coming in through my—
“Jason?” I whispered back just as the answer dawned, gaining a hesitant step forward.
Then he was there, emerging from my bedroom and into the hall. I sucked in air made of pure emotion and—you guessed it—I cried.
He rushed forward into the kitchen and scooped me up in his arms. He held me tightly against the cool leather of his jacket and the warm, familiar, soothing scent of his body.
“Am I awake?” I asked between hiccupping sobs. “Am I dreaming this?” I think I must’ve been clawing at his jacket. Instinct told me to grab on and not let go. If I touched him, then he was real, then he couldn’t run off like my sugar and vanilla had.
I felt him fit a palm against my cheek and tilt my head back, promptly pressing kisses to my forehead, cheeks, and lips. “I’m here, I’m here. I got you.”
I supposed it was a lucky thing I’d cried before he’d arrived because I didn’t have many tears left. Soon we were swaying together in the middle of the kitchen; my ear against his solid chest, listing to the steady rhythm of his heart; him holding me while I caught my breath.
“I came as soon as I could,” he said softly. “You’ve had police and sheriff cars driving by every hour or so. I needed to learn their routine before I could sneak in.”
“Why are they watching me so closely? Do they think I’m going someplace?” I snuggled closer, already feeling better, stronger, less aimless. Suddenly, I had so many questions.
“I don’t know, but I’ll found out.” He placed another kiss on top of my head, and then—without warning—he scooped me up in his arms and we were moving toward the living room.
Jason walked us over to the couch and sat down, arranging me with my legs over his lap, his arm between my back and the end of the sofa. He encouraged me to rest my head on his shoulder, within the nook created by the curve of his neck.
“Before I ask how you’re doing, I have to tell you something.” He stroked the side of my face, his big palm then lowering to continue the movement over my arm, back and forth.
“Wait!” I jumped up from his lap and ran to my bedroom where I’d tucked away the threatening note from Mr. Miller.
When I returned, Jason was already standing near the sofa. He frowned between me and the paper I held in my hands. “What is this?”
I shoved it at him. “Read it.”
He took a moment, read it, scowled, read it again, and then crumpled it. “I’ll kill him.”
“No! Don’t do that. Just . . . just let it be. I didn’t touch any murder weapon.” It felt good to be the one calming someone else down. “I just though you should see it, know about it. Do think he could fake my prints on it? Do you think he could do that?” I couldn’t stop the tremble of worry in my voice any more than I could’ve halted my crying earlier.
“Come here.” Jason tossed the note to the coffee table and reached for me, sitting us back down on the couch and arranging me on his lap again. “Forget about Miller. Let me and Isaac deal with him.”
“Isaac?” I asked breathlessly, my heart jumping to my throat. “Is—are—” I couldn’t think, I could barely breathe.
“I have news.”
“Is it good news?” I asked, bracing for bad.
“I think it is.” He gave me the gentlest of smiles.
On pins and needles, I rested my temple on his shoulder and pressed my forehead to the side of his neck. “I could use some good news.”
“I spoke to your son, the day after—”
My head whipped up. “Let’s just call it The Event. You talked to Isaac?”
“I did. And, Diane, he did not kill your ex. Kip was already dead when he shot into the car.”
I shook my head. What? What in tarnation? Why would—and how—and why was—and—
“It was Elena.” Jason’s eyes were bright and clear. “Elena did it and wanted to pin the murder on you. Isaac stepped in to protect you.”
I’d barely moved this morning, had maybe walked thirty steps, but I found I couldn’t catch my breath. “How is . . .? I don’t understand.”
Jason gave me a quick kiss, encouraged me to return my head to its prior resting place, and told me the story of his drive with Isaac the morning after The Event. Even by the end of the story, I still couldn’t believe it. We were quiet for a long time after he finished. I soaked in the details, my heart lifting and sinking and lifting again while I sorted through every implication.
“Isaac wanted to protect me.” Goodness, what a relief! This part felt like the best news. He hadn’t killed his father. He’d been there to save me, not kill Kip.
“That’s right.” Jason gave me a little squeeze.
“But I’m still the main suspect? Because they can’t find the gun and they don’t believe my story?”
“Correct. For now. The fingerprints on the car are a problem. They think they’re yours, but they can’t prove it. It’s a good thing you haven’t been back to work much, and you should stay home as long as you can. Don’t go out in public and don’t touch anything they might be able to lift a print off of.”
I swallowed around new fears. This whole time, I’d been so scared for Isaac. Now the fear I felt was for myself. “What am I going to do?”
Jason leaned away, gently gathered my face in both hands, and looked at me in the eyes. “Diane, we’re getting through this. One way or the other, I will not let you go to jail. Do you understand? You will not go to prison for this.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. Diane, I have money stored away. I can have new identities almost ready—driver’s licenses, passports, credit history, college transcripts, bank accounts, credit cards—whenever you’re ready. I’ll be ready.”
He—what? “I—I can’t do that.” Could I do that? Could I just leave everything behind? The Lodge, my daughter, my son, the town, all my friends, everything? Sure, I’d been planning to leave and travel after Jennifer’s wedding, but not like this.
“I’m not pressuring you.” Jason threaded his fingers into my hair, kissing my lips once, twice, three times, like it was an impulse he’d been fighting. “I didn’t tell you this to give you more to fret over. I’m telling you to give you less to worry about. If or when you decide you want to leave, it will be easy. I will make it easy.”
“It won’t be easy, Jason.” I encircled his wrists with my fingers and held on. “And I’m not talking about having no money or being on the run. I’m talking about leaving my daughter. And my son. I love them.”
“I know. I know that’ll be hard.” He seemed to be at war with himself, like he wanted to tell me something and yet held himself back. “Gorgeous, that’s why I wanted you to know. I don’t think it’ll be necessary, but you don’t have to worry about how to disappear if it comes to that.”
I believed him, and I was grateful, so I nodded, though I felt numb. And when he kissed me again, I kissed him back with everything I had, feeling less numb. And when he touched me, I was so grateful for the distraction and the warmth of feeling. I needed him. I needed his heavy body over mine. I needed his hands on my bare skin, making me hot, making me breathless, making me forget.
But when he held me after, and day turned to night, and he had to leave me, the fear crept back in like a thief.
I was so scared.
Chapter Twenty
*Jason*
“I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
I returned the next day to see Diane. Instead of a cruiser, a big surveillance van—feds from the look of it—sat on the side of the road, pulled off just before her driveway, not making any effort to disguise their intentions. They were obviously staking out Diane’s house and property, listening in, watching who came and went, and that made no damn sense.
Wanting to punch something or someone, I sped on by and returned to the Dragon, my mind racing. I considered sneaking into her house, going around the back. I didn’t dare risk it, not until I could figure out where their eyes and ears were pointed. The last thing either of us needed were the feds knowing about us.
Mood dark, patience thin, I pulled into the bar’s parking lot and whipped off my helmet, cursing under my breath. I walked past a small group of my brethren towards bar entrance, unable to figure why the feds would be parked outside of Diane Donner’s house. This wasn’t a federal issue. This was the murder of one man in a small town.
“Hey, Repo,” one of the group called over. “Wolf is—”
“Wolf can go fuck himself,” I growled, not sparing the mixed gathering a glare as I made a sharp left. I didn’t want to go in through the bar while my head brimmed with violence and frustration. I was liable to put my fist through a face instead of a wall.
The whole day had been shit.
After leaving Diane’s place the night before, I couldn’t stop thinking about the blackmail note from Miller. Chances were good Miller was bluffing.
However, there existed a small chance that Miller had put Diane’s prints on the gun, and he wasn’t bluffing. Jethro Winston had done this very thing once under my orders, giving the police hard evidence on a biker in a rival club. We needed the man gone, out of the way, but we couldn’t afford to make him disappear. If he disappeared, suspicion would turn our way and we’d have a war on our hands. Neither Jethro nor I wanted that.
The man had been guilty of the crime, but the police lacked the necessary non-circumstantial evidence. Jethro placed the prints on the murder weapon and left a tip with the police where to find it.
We’d used the police, we’d avoided a war, and the man was now serving life in prison for a murder he’d committed.
I knew lifting prints and placing them on a weapon was entirely possible, and this possibility—that Miller’s letter wasn’t a bluff—was enough to make me want to find Miller and force him give me that weapon.
The other fantastic news of the day had come from my identity and papers guy in Texas early this morning. More paranoid than the Unabomber and less social, which never bothered me any, Ivan checked out folks he did favors for prior to sending the final product. Then he triple checked and checked again.
Ivan had the papers ready for Diane and me. That was the good news. Even though Diane didn’t want to go, didn’t want to leave her children, I would rest easier if we had the new identities.
But he wouldn’t send them.
When he’d been checking out Diane, he’d also checked out her children and discovered Isaac Sylvester was D-E-fucking-A. Drug Enforcement Administration. Isaac was a goddamn fed! Loaned out to the FBI and now—obviously—working undercover here, with us.
And the feds were outside Diane’s house. This smelled too much like horseshit to be a coincidence.
Throwing open one of the back doors, I marched to my office, paying no mind to anyone I shoved past on the way.
I needed to prove to my anti-social, paranoid ID guy in Texas that my request wasn’t a trap, I was telling the truth, and Diane wasn’t bait. Ivan needed to be convinced he wasn’t a big fish the feds were hoping to catch through me. The delay and new hoops to jump through were frustrating, yes. But learning of Isaac’s undercover status? And he was giving me shit for breaking a promise?
Stomping down that hall, I swung a left then a right. If I’d discovered this information last year, I would have—
Done nothing.
More muttered curses seethed out of me. I would’ve done nothing to Isaac, but I probably would’ve disappeared, taking my stockpile of cash with me. Even before Diane and I decided to give things a try, even last year, maybe even for the past several years, my loyalty to Razor and Romeo, to my brothers, to this place, it had worn threadbare.
We’d always operated outside of the law, absolutely, and I had no problem with that. But evil is evil, and the more prevalent it had become from members other than just Razor, the less I gave a shit about the Iron Wraiths.
Turning the last corner, I yanked off my gloves and stuffed them in the jacket pocket, pausing when I found my office door cracked a sliver. In no mood for bullshit, I pushed it open, prepared to lay into whoever had deigned to enter without permission, but stopped short at the sight of a blond head, sitting in one of the chairs facing my desk, his back to me.
Isaac.
I shut the door behind me, locked it, and didn’t bother pulling off my jacket. I doubted we’d be here for long.
“What do you want?” I asked, rounding the desk.
He met my glare, held it, and said like he was the one giving orders, “She needs to leave. As soon as possible, she needs to leave.”
“I don’t accept that. We’re going to prove her innocence.” Diane didn’t want to leave. I wanted whatever she wanted, and I would make it happen.
“Repo . . .” Isaac leaned forward in the chair, his movements meticulous and purposeful, like a predator.
I couldn’t believe how blind I’d been. This kid was no brother; he was no biker. He was too polished, too schooled and proper and way too fucking smart. How had I not seen this before now?
