In Too Deep (The Lovers Duet) (14 page)

I HATED WATCHING Linx leave and as I waved goodbye, the feeling finally hit me like a ton of bricks.

I was officially the old lady of a biker despite not ever wanting to be in that position and everything he was doing happened to be for my benefit.

The tears threatened and blurred my eye sight before Naomi and Gisela approached me.

“You’ve got unfinished business with Dizzy. Let’s go.”

Gisela walked beside us but said nothing at all. We all walked into the chapel while Gisela closed the doors behind her and I took a seat at the table closest to Dizzy.

He looked worn out but the middle-aged fucker was still extremely sexy for a man of his age and he ran the club with an iron fist, pretty boy looks and all. I hadn’t realized Bronaugh had joined our little pow wow until I observed her in the corner of the room, quietly smoking a cigarette and casually observing.

“Just so you know, Gisela is here on behalf of the family as our attorney and Naomi here is DEA so she would have every right to know what you know. We understand you don’t have a fucking clue where your parents and brother are but we also know you’ve been holdin’ out so spill.”

“Wait a minute…you mean to tell me you
know
Naomi is DEA?” I don’t know why this surprised me but it did.

Naomi bit her bottom lip with her teeth as she eyed Dizzy and he silently nodded at her. “I’m a rogue DEA agent. The moment I knew I was falling in love with Ronan, I couldn’t keep it from the club and yes, I am threatened with a bullet in the head every day by this motherfucker here but he can kill me much faster than the government can strip me of my job title and put me in jail so…I hedged my bets and came clean.”

I wasn’t a fool. How much nerve did it take to admit something like that? She’d basically given herself up because she’d fallen in love and was willing to put Ronan and his life—the Club—before her own interests. The woman had balls of steel and she instantly gained my respect.

“Since I’m an attorney for the Cox family and the Lucifer Saints motorcycle club, my job will be to ink out a deal where none of the members serve more than eighteen months for their involvement with the Aztecas Infierno. The DEA wants to bring down a major cartel and a motorcycle club to show they are tough on crime but it won’t be the MC my man is a part of so if there are any other moles, spill it now or get a bullet to the back of the head.”

I was a gambling woman too and hedged my bets by playing the only card I had left. “You do realize Trey loves me with all his heart, don’t you.”

Gisela sighed and her German resolve came out in full force. “What’s your point?”

I smiled though there was zero mirth in my expression as my arms folded against my breasts “If I die, it won’t go down good for the
Club
. He will destroy this place and we all know it so I’m not afraid about gettin’ a bullet in the back of the head but I’m concerned about what you fuckers want from me.”

Dizzy laughed out loud. “You’re just like your mother. My God, if you weren’t married and I could shave twenty years off my life, you’d be in my bed so fast, it would make the Concorde seem slow. But you have
his
eyes…and lassie, that is a dangerous combination. Just so you know, I realize how much Trey loves you. He left because he didn’t want to make any waves for you and because we knew he knew about the situation with your parents.

“This is all my fault because I had my son kidnapped to milk him for information but the son of a bitch wouldn’t budge. He isn’t a rat and he watched Keri die as a result of his stubborn pig-headedness. This isn’t a game and I need to know who else is watchin’ us, Trista. You know who that person is…so spill—”

“—or I will and make you look very fuckin’ bad.” Naomi placed her slim brown arms on the table and glared at me. “Don’t think just because we’ve had a few conversations, we’re friends.”

I squeezed my nails into my palms and I should have felt like shit. Clooney was an awful human being and he didn’t deserved to be saved. He’d stolen my innocence as a minor and although I took full responsibility for what I did, it certainly didn’t absolve him from his crimes. He was granted full and total immunity despite what he did while working undercover and that shit really pissed me off.

It was true, I’d never been in love with him but what he did to me would leave a scar on my soul for the rest of my life.

“Fine,” I bit out and straightened my hands before I rested them, palms down, on the table. “All I know is he’s a U.S. Marshall by the name of Marcus Hinton. He infiltrated the Demon’s Bastards almost three years ago and perhaps Jonesy knows somethin’ I don’t because he was a prospect for a very long time. Jonesy kept makin’ excuses and Trey was the one who sponsored him so it wasn’t because he didn’t trust Trey. Maybe he had a feeling about the prospect. He probably tried to dig and his record looked too perfect, too pat for the Club.

“The government isn’t stupid but they couldn’t exactly make him a felon if he was honorably discharged from the military. He stuck to his story and was finally patched in just before my parents and brother’s ‘accident.’ Oh yeah, he’s also dating your daughter, Misty.”

Dizzy glared at me like I’d spit in his drink. “How long have you known?”

“I found out on the same trip Linx and I decided to get married. Before then, I was clueless. I dated the man and fucked him, Dizzy. How do you think it makes me feel when I found out everything we had was a lie? I didn’t know about my parents either. I knew fuck all until everything went down and I was brought in—briefly—before my parents and Tristan were going to disappear. They wanted me to go with them but I refused. I would have rather taken my chances with Linx than end up alone again.”

“Why didn’t you go with them?” Bronaugh stepped from the shadows and sat down at the table before she lit another Marlboro, dragged on it deeply, inhaled and then blew the smoke in my direction.

“I
couldn’t
go with them. I’d married Linx and he couldn’t just disappear. He’s in a rock band for Christ’s sake.”

“Yes, but you’d just married him on a whim and you two barely knew one another.” Gisela looked up from paperwork in front of her. “You’d only met him when you moved to L.A. If that isn’t a whirlwind romance then I don’t know what is. This was your mother and father…your brother and your future sister-in-law. Why wouldn’t you just flee?”

The tears threatened my eyelids and I blinked them away. “I just knew…not when Linx and I met but afterwards. We were friends,
genuine
friends. We talked to one another for hours and hung out all the time. There was absolutely no sex involved. In fact he married me because he didn’t think he would be worthy to make love to me otherwise.”

I paused and tried to swallow past the large lump in my throat. “I know you all think I am stupid because I’m not yet twenty but for the first time in my life, I was in love. I’m not crazy—neither is Linx—but we knew what we felt for each other went deeper and was more than we’d ever felt for anyone else in our life. Leaving my husband wasn’t an option and I didn’t want to enter Witsec. I knew if I did that, I would never see my husband again.”

“Is there something you’re
not
telling us?” Dizzy glared at me though his blue eyes softened a bit and he seemed to understand my reasoning, which was a lot more than I could say about Bronaugh, Gisela and Naomi who all looked at me like I’d escaped from an insane asylum.

“Yes. Marcus—aka Clooney—is connected. If he so much as gets a whiff he’s been found out, he will ruin my life because I’m the only one who could have told you. He’s threatened me in so many words and I…I can’t trust him. I don’t trust him. If you do decide to take care of him…can you make sure Linx and I are long gone? And please make it look like an accident. Set something up with the White Knights and let them pull the trigger but this cannot be traced back to the Bastards or the Saints MC. The government will come down hard to shut you down if one of your men pulls the trigger.”

“That goes without sayin’.” Naomi stood and walked out of the room.

Suddenly as the double doors shut again, I felt like I’d been caught in a tomb and I couldn’t breathe. The room was claustrophobic and I had to get out of this place and out of the club.

Gisela rose and glared down at me. “I think Dizzy and Bronaugh need some time alone. Come on, we’ll go into town and get a drink together at the bar. We still need to discuss some important issues, young lady.”

“Thanks, Sela.” Dizzy smiled at his future daughter-in-law.

“No problem.”

I stood and walked out of the room. I was heading towards a full on panic attack and the only thing that would help me now were my precious pills. I needed a Xanax badly.

“I have to go upstairs to get my purse and then I’ll be ready to go.”

I didn’t wait for a response before I ran up the stairs and entered the bedroom I’d shared with Linx just a few hours ago. Like that, he was gone and I could only pray to a God I didn’t believe in he’d come home safe.

My bag was where I’d left it. The Coach hobo bag was understated and I reached inside and grabbed a two milligram Xanax tablet before I swallowed it with leftover Jack Daniels in a bottle next to the bed. The bitter taste left behind was so disgusting but I took another swig for fortitude before I closed the door on my way out.

As I walked down the stairs, I found Gisela speaking to Cillian. Obviously, he’d just gotten back from the airport. Their conversation looked intimate before he shook his head and called for another Club member—Bookie, due to his love of novels and his clean-cut looks—who walked over and the three of them had a conversation.

“We’re just going to O’Branaughs, Cillian. It’s a club hangout for fuck’s sake. Is all this security necessary?” Gisela wondered out loud before she crossed her arms against an expensive midnight blue cashmere sweater she wore. She looked casual and certainly not biker chic in a pair of black boot cut jeans and a four-inch pair of black shoe-booties, which judging by their red soles, were a pair of Christian Louboutins.

“Babe, we’re on lockdown. You’re lucky I’m lettin’ you leave this motherfuckin’ compound with that uncontrollable little bitch. But Bookie and I will accompany you. I don’t care whether we’re in Birch Creek or not—you’re not leaving this compound alone and unsupervised.”

I allowed a strangled breath to release from my pent-up body. I couldn’t exactly say I was upset they were coming along for the ride. I knew all about lock downs and if the threat was real enough, nothing was above the WKs, including entering Saints territory and doing damage to anyone who had access to the club.

“You ready?” Gisela turned toward me with cold amber eyes as she turned her back on me and started walking towards the door.

“We takin’ the Harleys, Cillian?” Bookie wondered in a thick Irish accent.

“Yep. If anything goes down, I want to be able to get out of there quickly.”

I followed them out and climbed onto the back of Bookie’s Harley before he handed me a helmet, which I accepted and slid on easily before securing the strap under my chin.

We followed Cillian and Gisela, seated on his Harley, out of the parking lot through remote control gates with electric currents and barbed wire along the top of the thick barrier.

I held on to Bookie by his waist and enjoyed the thrill of the bike underneath me. I hadn’t been on a ride since I’d gone out with Trey. The thrill of being on a Harley couldn’t be underestimated. All that power and glistening chrome while the sound of the engine was like music to my ears.