Carry You Home (Carry Your Heart #2) (20 page)

"I guess I shouldn't have been surprised she told you about this place," Becca's hoarse voice called out to me from the floor.

"No," I told her as I slipped the first glove over my left hand. "You shouldn't have been. I'm pretty sure any loyalty she had to you died the night you showed up at my house last week and forced her hand."

Her eyes followed my movements, watching me wearily as I slid on the right glove and then untucked my own Glock from underneath the back of my jeans. If I was really going to have to do this, I would use my own piece. That's just the way it had to be. Her eyes clouded over as she silently observed me dip into the duffel bag one last time for that second silencer I'd packed away in there just in case this very thing happened.

"Just make it quick," she whispered.

My eyes lifted to her for just a second as I screwed the silencer on over my barrel.

"You know, I have a lot of regrets, Caleb," Becca called out to me again and I stilled where I stood, letting the hand gripping my Glock fall down to my side for the time being. I knew this part well too. This was the part where they made their peace with their life, where they confessed to whatever sin they'd been holding on to, where they made their last mark on this life for whatever it was worth.

"Yeah?"

I'd play along, let her say whatever she needed to say.

"I wish I'd never met Eli."

I lifted a shoulder. "Yeah, I guess I can see that."

"I wish I'd never brought Isabelle to the clubhouse."

My eyes shot up from my gloved hands to find her staring me down defiantly, challenging me to say otherwise.

"I'd wish I'd never brought her around you people," Becca pressed on from her spot on the floor. "I wish
I'd
never been around you people. All you care about is yourselves, keeping yourselves safe, yourselves out of prison. You don't care about anyone else. And then I do the exact same thing and I get tossed out with the trash."

I shot a hard glare her way. "Maybe. I'll give ya that. But you had every opportunity to go to someone for help and you didn't. You chose to sell your best friend out hoping you'd get something good enough to save yourself. Think about that for one of the three minutes you have left and tell me you aren't just as selfish as the rest of us."

Becca just shook her head, sniffling a little as a lone tear trailed down her face. "You know, one of these days, Isabelle's gonna realize what you really are. She's got you up on this pedestal like you're some kind of Superman," she laughed mirthlessly. "Being with her doesn't make you a better person—it's just makes her a worse one. And sooner or later, she's gonna realize you're not the good guy she thinks you are and she's gonna hate you and she's gonna leave your ass in her dust. The only thing she'll ever want from you then is child support and if she's smart, she'll never let you anywhere near that baby."

She must've known she hit a nerve because her eyes, still streaked with tears, went wide with awareness. Her words had sliced right through the most tender spot in my conscience. That gaping black hole that just kept pulling me in, carrying me away, and eating its way through all my guilt, all my doubts, and all my fears. I tried to tell myself I had to be all about business. That this was protocol. That this was just how we handled situations like this.

But before, I hadn't had Isabelle in my life. I hadn't had any other priorities than the club. Things were different for me and they were changing in a way I didn't quite understand. Marcus had said to me once, a long time ago at Dom and Lex's wedding, that problems at home would mess with my priorities in the club. Assuming the club always had to come first. Assuming I always had to follow orders without questioning anyone's motives or calling anyone onto the carpet.

The longer I stared at Becca with my gun in the my hand, the more I just didn't recognize myself. I was about to kill my future wife's best friend. Somewhere along the way, I'd deluded myself into thinking this was the right choice. That putting the club first above everything else was
always
the right choice—it was what I'd been programmed to believe.

Tonight, though, I didn't really want to put the club first.

I looked down at the gun in my hand again and I wanted to vomit. Why was no one thinking about the fact that the ATF could be waiting outside this house right now, just waiting for us to carry out a dead body? It was so easy and even if setting this kind of trap hadn't been their plan all along, we'd handed them the opportunity right on a platter without even thinking twice.

If I pulled the trigger tonight, what were the odds that I'd find myself handcuffed minutes later and shoved into the back of a squad car with murder charges wrapped around my neck?

Why did no one else in the club seem to care about that?

The right thing to do tonight was to renege on protocol and follow my own instincts.

I didn't hesitate now. I tossed my gun back into the duffel bag and hauled Becca up to her feet.

"Wha—" she stammered.

"Shut up."

With a tight grip on her elbow, I pulled open the bathroom door to find Eli leaning against the wall with his head in his hands. When his face unearthed from his fingertips, he blinked back at me in shock.

"What are you doing?" he choked out hoarsely. "We have to—"

"We don't have to do shit," I growled. "You and I both know you don't really wanna see her in a hole somewhere. So this is what we're gonna do..."

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I pulled my truck into the precinct, jerked into a space, and shifted into park. Sure enough, just like I'd predicted, we had a sedan tailing us all the way back from Wilmington right up to the precinct's parking lot. If I'd gone through with this the way I was supposed to, I'd probably be sitting in holding right now, getting fingerprinted, and forced into a nine by nine cell until I could get sentenced for murder.

Come hell or high water, I'd made the right fucking decision.

With my eyes locked onto the double-doors in front of us, I shifted just enough to make sure she wouldn't bolt on me.

"You clear on what you have to do?" I asked her in a calm, even voice.

Becca swallowed tightly and wiped a stray tear from her cheek. "It's either this or you guys kill me right?"

I shot her a wary glance.

"I think I can live with this," she whispered.

"Me too," I exhaled.

"You're sure they won't—"

"They were blackmailing you, Becca," I cut in abruptly. "There's no way any judge would give you a maximum sentence after the way they played you. They made you feel like your back was against the wall, like you had no choice. So now, they've got nothing and you've gotta face the fallout."

She drew in a deep breath, her eyes still focused on the precinct's double doors when they darted back to me. "Thank you."

"I didn't do this for you."

She nodded sadly, her eyes still shining with unshed tears. "I know."

I tipped my chin to her and held out my hand. Becca quickly slid her phone into my palm and that was all I needed from her. The last order of business where she was concerned was walking her into the precinct and sitting with her until a deputy escorted her into a holding room.

Prison was the right place for her now. A place she'd earned. But she didn't deserve to be in a hole in the ground, especially since she'd been right about us. We'd turned on her the second we found out about her drug habit. Instead of containing the issue, getting her ass out of town or at least offering some damn support and trust, we'd been immediately suspicious, immediately willing to throw her to the wolves to save ourselves, just like she'd said.

I was no better than the rest of them, but at least now, I'd saved someone's life instead of taking it.

This was the first time in my life I've ever blatantly disregarded orders or even blatantly
questioned
those orders and in going against the grain, I'd followed my gut and kept myself out of prison.

This was the first time in my life where I'd put myself before the club. Where I'd put my
own
family before the club. Right about now, I wasn't sure if any of them, save for Dom, even really understand what having a real family meant.

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.

When I finally pulled back into my driveway, I turned the ignition off as my eyes drifted to my duffel bag, the same one that contained the gloves, cleaning supplies, and silencers we would've used to get rid of Becca.
 

I scrubbed both hands over my face and pulled the driver's side door open to head inside the house. It was done. It was over. And I'd come out of it the other side with life as I knew it still intact.

Not that I'd expected anything less, but Marcus wasn't happy. We'd had orders and we'd disobeyed.
I
had disobeyed. I'd do it again if I had to and he knew it. For all the swearing and stomping in rage I heard from his end of the phone, the second the word
tail
had left my mouth we both knew he didn't have a leg to stand on. I'd made the right call, whether he liked it or not.

I shuffled through the kitchen and into the living room to find Dom and Isabelle sitting shoulder to shoulder against the wall across from me. The second Isabelle's eyes locked with mine, her entire face crumbled. She covered her face with one hand, her shoulders trembling with silent sobs, and Dom reached out to put his hand on her shoulder to give her what little comfort he could.

"Iz," I called out softly, but her shoulders just kept shaking. "Iz, look at me."

I waited just long enough for her eyes to fly back up to me before delivering the news, "She's fine."

Her eyes widened and Dom's mouth lobbed open a little in stunned silence.

"What?" Isabelle whispered, staring back at me like the words just didn't compute.

"Becca's okay," I told her as I headed for her.

Dom waited long enough until I slid down next to her before rising to his feet to give us some space. His job was done here anyway; it was on me to pick up the pieces now.

I pulled Isabelle's shaking body to my chest, holding her to me as tightly as I could, to give her as much as I could. "Long story short, babe, they tailed us all the way to Wilmington and were waiting for us to bring out a body. I figured it out before it was too late. It's over now, Iz."

Dom's eyes were still on me, digesting my words and then his eyes narrowed. "So what did you do?"

"I made her turn herself in at the precinct," I shrugged and tugged Isabelle a little closer to me. That seemed to be enough to appease him and he nodded before walking out the front door.

I leaned down to brush my lips against her forehead. "I couldn't exactly let her just walk away after what she did, but she didn't deserve what the club wanted to do to her either."

Her eyes glimmered with tears and she leaned into me, as if holding on for dear life. "You did the right thing. I'm so glad you did the right thing."

"Me too," I murmured.

"So Becca's gone?"

"I don't know exactly what they'll charge her with, but it's not gonna be the maximum sentence. Not after the stunt they pulled and gambling with her life like that. She'll do some time, get what she earned, and then if she's smart, she'll never step foot in this town again."

It wasn't until Isabelle had cried herself into exhaustion, whether it was from relief, grief, or both I still wasn't sure, and until I'd carried her to bed that I found myself back out in the garage and slid into my truck. I reached for Becca's phone before I could stop myself and carried it over to my tool bench, where the two black GPS tracking boxes sat waiting for me.

Now that it was in my hands, I wasn't sure what I wanted. Right up until this moment, I thought I'd known exactly how I would handle this, how I would feel. But now that I had it, now that the temptation was there, it would be easy to just press the home button to at least see if she had a passcode. If she did, all I'd have to do was ask Eli to jailbreak it and I could access anything she'd recorded without a problem.

There was a part of me, a shameful, deep-seated part, that needed to be 100 percent positive Isabelle hadn't fallen into the same trap that Becca had, that she'd remained loyal until the bitter end of this whole mess. The undertow of this temptation was just too strong and I knew I'd get carried away and drown if I fed into it.

My hands gripped a hammer a second later and then I gave it hell, pounding the shit out of Becca's phone until all that was left of it were tiny scraps of metal and dust. I needed to demolish it until all the temptation was gone.

Listening to that recording would be a violation of everything we were building together.

I chose to trust and to protect her instead.

And so, I carried the ashes of Becca's pulverized phone and Isabelle's handwritten directions to that beach house out to the makeshift fire pit in my backyard and burned every last scrap.

Isabelle

Becca's happy face smiled up at me and my heart knotted violently. I hit delete. Then I swiped my thumb to the next picture in my camera roll: one with Becca and me cheek to cheek and smiling brightly into the camera. I hit delete. I didn't know how many times I repeated that motion, but each time I did it, it was just as cathartic as it was agonizing. Each time I hit the delete button, the knife in my heart twisted a little more, but deep down, watching the pictures disappear was a relief.