“Brogan, I’m okay,” I reassured him.
He didn’t stop checking. Not until he’d looked me over twice more.
Sheriff Raines hauled a bleeding, barely conscious Trent to his feet and cuffed him. “Attempted kidnapping, assault, and property damage. All while he was out on bail. He’s not walking out of jail this time.”
Brogan barely glanced at them. His focus stayed locked on me.
Only when the sheriff had taken Trent outside and most of the brothers had stepped out to secure the perimeter did the mask slip. We were alone in the wrecked living room when I felt the faint tremor in his hands as they framed my face again.
I covered his fingers with mine.
Brogan’s eyes were still furious as he leaned in until his forehead rested against mine. “From now on, where I go, you go. Never out of my reach.”
I didn’t hesitate to agree. “Sounds good to me. That’s what I want too.”
Something in his shoulders finally loosened, and the tremor in his hands eased under my touch. I felt a completelyinappropriate feminine thrill at the knowledge that my acceptance was the only thing that could steady him right now.
17
STRYKER
The living room looked like a firefight had moved through it by the time Sheriff Raines come back in and finished taking statements. Broken glass glittered across the hardwood beneath the shattered front window, a bullet had chewed through the wall beside the staircase, and the overturned coffee table remained where Trent’s body had struck it after I threw him across the room.
Raines stood near the broken window with his hat tucked beneath one arm, watching the pulsing red and blue lights as a cruiser turned down the driveway with Wade’s barely conscious son slumped behind the glass. When the taillights disappeared beyond the gate, the sheriff released a slow breath, scanned the room to make sure his deputies were occupied, and stepped close enough that his next words only belonged to Judge and me.
“I probably shouldn’t say this while I’m standing in a house full of evidence and Black Crowns.” The dry edge in his voice doing little to hide the exhaustion beneath it. “But I’m damn glad you boys got involved.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That so?”
Raines stared at the blood drying over my hands before his gaze returned to mine.
“I wear a badge, which means there are things I can’t tell you, men I can’t touch without a judge signing off, and days I have to watch a bastard I know is dirty drive home because knowing isn’t enough to put him in a cell.” His jaw shifted while he glanced toward Judge. “You gave me more usable evidence in the last week than I managed to pull together in months, and tonight Wade finally got impatient enough to hand me something I can build on.”
“He sent armed men onto her property, tried to drag her out of her own house, and left his son behind.” Judge’s voice carried the rough edge of a biker rather than a lawyer. “That’s more than impatience. That’s a fucking gift.”
“A gift wrapped in attempted kidnapping, assault, arson, property damage, and enough weapons charges to keep the county attorney entertained.” Grim satisfaction tightened Raines’s mouth as he settled his hat back on his head. “Trent committed all of it while out on bail, and one of the other men is sitting in my holding cells deciding whether loyalty to Wade is worth the next twenty years.”
The pressure had finally landed where Wade had spent years making sure it never reached. Trent could try to protect his father, but self-preservation had a way of eating through family loyalty once a cell door closed and a prosecutor started discussing consecutive sentences.
“I’ll build the legal case,” Raines continued, his weathered eyes hardening when they shifted toward the doorway where Jacqueline had disappeared with one of the female deputies earlier. “I can’t promise where it ends yet, but Wade made his first critical mistake tonight. Men like him rarely stop at one once they realize control is slipping.”
“They don’t,” I agreed. “And we’ll be there when he makes the next.”
Raines studied me for a moment. He knew better than to ask for an explanation neither of us intended to put on paper, so he only tugged the brim of his hat lower and headed toward the front door. “Try not to make me arrest half your club before this is over.”
Ghost, who had been helping Wraith move a ruined chair away from the wall, released a short bark of laughter.
I glanced at the sheriff as he stepped onto the porch. “Talk to Wade about improving those odds.”
The corner of Raines’s mouth twitched before he walked away.
After I watched the last patrol car pull through the gate, I lowered my gaze to my hands to inspect where dried blood streaked the skin and four knuckles were split.
“Sit down, Brogan.”
Jacqueline stood several feet behind me with the first-aid kit tucked beneath one arm, her loose braid falling over the shoulder of one of my black T-shirts. The sight of my clothes wrapped around her soothed some savage place inside me that had remained ready to tear the world apart since I saw Trent’s hand on her arm. She looked exhausted, her blue eyes swollen from tears and adrenaline, but she was still so damn beautiful.
“I’m fine.” I flexed my fingers enough to prove they still worked.
