Doc registers Lena’s reply and takes in the carnage of the room and Zeke’s multiple wounds with a low whistle as he fully realizes that Lena was the one who killed Zeke, not me or anyone else. “And here we were thinking you needed rescuing. We should have known you were going to find a way to rescue us,” he says proudly.
Lena offers the ghost of a smile, though the spark in her eyes isn’t there yet. I’m not surprised. She just killed a man. She took a life, even if the life was an evil man, the enemy. It still takes something from you. It irreparably changes you forever. The moment will haunt her, leave its mark; it isn’t something that can be easily erased. She’s been through too much—we all have. But I have to remain hopeful that we can bring her back to us one day.
A frown of concern flickers across Lena’s face. The moment of our reunion is not quite perfect, given the glaring absences. “Where’s Cole? Is he getting Mia?” she adds hopefully, a tremor in her voice giving away the fear that lies beneath.
“Yes, Mia and Cole are safe. They’ve gone ahead with the others.” A lie by omission, but I’m not sure she could handle hearing how grave Cole’s situation is right now. Not until we’re safely out of this place.
Our backup just arrived, the remaining Soaring Eagles who were fit enough to fight, and some who weren’t but came anyway. I feel assured that Mia and Cole have been taken to safety, that Cole is being rushed to the hospital as we speak, and that our men are handling the last of Zeke’s men. The nightmare is almost over.
Lena nods, her faith in me so great that she doesn’t question it. “Thank god they’re safe.” She breathes, her expression becoming far calmer. The relief is so overwhelming. She looks between us in wonderment. “I can’t believe you’re here, that you came for me instead of running after everything I did, everything he said.” Her voice is thick with emotion as tears fill her eyes. She doesn’t need to say Zeke’s name, she never needs to utter it again.
“Nothing could keep us away,” Doc replies.
“We’ll always come for you,” Judge adds.
“I thought that maybe you’d believed Zeke’s lies, believed them because I had to pretend they were true, that I didn’t care. I had to. If he knew the truth, he would have killed us all on the spot. It was the only way I could buy us time. I thought I’d lost you forever by trying to protect you.” She looks between us, her expression pleading for us to believe her.
“We know, we never doubted you,” Doc says. I’m grateful for my friend’s lie, that he isn’t telling her that I believed it all.
“We love you, Lena. I love you,” I tell her, finally embracing it. “Nothing could change that.”
“I love you too,’ she says, and my heart soars. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of hearing that. Lena looks at me with such sorrow that I don’t want to hear what she’s about to say next. I know that look. “But…”
She’s going to leave us. Despite everything, despite her love, she wants to go.
“I can’t stay in town, in the state, I have to take Mia and run, and I can’t expect you all to leave your home, or the Soaring Eagles, to come with me. I killed a man tonight in cold blood. I’ll go to jail for what I’ve done. I can’t abandon Mia to grow up without her mom.”
Relief floods me. Is that all she’s worried about? It isn’t because of us she wants to run. “Lena, it was self-defense,” I assure her.
She shakes her head firmly. “No one will see it that way. I planned it by bringing the knife with me. I wanted him to die, and I killed him. They’ll lock me up and throw away the key.”
“Rex is right, Zeke kidnapped you and your daughter, and us, he made you watch as he tortured us, and god knows whatelse he did to you. How could anyone convict you of murder for protecting yourself to try to escape?” Doc reasons.
“I could have stopped. After I stabbed him in the neck the first time, I could have gotten away, even when he grabbed me, I could have, but I didn’t. I wanted him dead for what he did.” Her eyes are cold and filled with the rage she must have felt during the attack.
Fear drops like a stone into the pit of my gut as Doc voices what I’m thinking. “Lena’s right. Sure, some people might see it our way as self-defense, but there’s bound to be others who don’t. It could easily go to trial, and if she got the wrong jury, that would be it.”
“Then we’ll run together, fuck everything else, you and Mia are all that matter to me,” I insist, taking Lena’s hands in mine, willing her to believe me.
Doc sighs. “We can’t leave our brothers behind. Cole and many others are in the hospital; the police are probably already asking questions. We can’t pretend we weren’t here.”
Lena’s face fills with worry at the news that our loved ones are injured. Her only concern is never for herself, always for others.
“Then we’ll say I was the one who killed him,” I insist.
“No way. I’m not letting you take the fall for what I did. If you tell the police it was you, so will I, the evidence will prove it was me,” Lena stubbornly declares, pulling away from me and folding her arms to punctuate her point.
“Then what do we do?” I ask exasperatedly. I refuse to accept this. I refuse to accept a world where Lena goes to prison because of Zeke, the monster who is still ruining her life even in death.
Judge, standing sentinel as he guarded the doorway this whole time, has, as always, been silently listening and taking everything in before voicing his opinion. “We blow this place sky high.”
We turn to look at him in disbelief, wondering how he proposes to pull this off. Before I even have a chance to ask, he presents his plan.
“I spotted in a room, just down the corridor, a homemade bomb that they’ve been making here, just like the one they used at our clubhouse. I say we drag Zeke’s body in there and rig the bomb to blow once we leave. The house is old, and there are old gas lines. This place will light up like a bonfire. It will look like a bomb went off by accident and hide a lot of evidence.”
Doc snaps his fingers and smiles. “You’re a genius, Judge, that just might work!”
I consider it for a moment, running through all of the possibilities in my mind. “I think you’re right. Even if there’s evidence of us here, we can say that we escaped when the bomb went off.”
