Eleven

 

JAGGER

 

We had just secured the compound as the sun started coming up. I was fucking exhausted and so far beyond pissed, I was still shaking. They had come after my woman, right under my fucking nose. They’d also taken down five members of the MC who had been patrolling the area and manning the gates. Five brothers who’d been killed by a bunch of perverted fuckers.

Preacher wasn’t doing well, still. The fact that Kyle could have been killed and would never have known the truth about him was eating away at him.

“You need to tell her,” I repeated for what felt like the millionth time.

“Now isn’t the time,” he snapped, pacing back and forth. We’d been over this again and again, but he still refused to call her in. If now wasn’t the time to tell her the truth, then when was?

“He’s right,” Duke barked. He was as done with this shit, as I was.

“Look, I know you fuckers think you know everything, but now isn’t…”

“It’s never been the time,” I interrupted him, shouting over his rant. “You’ve had so many opportunities to come clean, instead we’re sitting here like assholes with it eating away at us more and more every day. Just fucking tell Kyle the truth,” I roared, not hearing the door open behind me.

“What truth?” Her voice broke through the ringing in my ears, all of our heads snapping in her direction. “What truth?” She repeated.

Neither Duke nor I answered, instead, turning back to look at Preacher who was looking gray.

“Kyle,” he started, and then stopped.

My control snapped. “Preacher hasn’t been honest with you, have you, Preacher?” I turned to glare at him. “The shit your mother told you was just that – bullshit. When she killed herself, it was because he threatened to make her disappear hours earlier when she told him that she was going to kill you.”

On the outside, her expression never changed as she absorbed what I’d said, but I saw a quick flicker in her eyes that passed as quickly as it came before she looked at Preacher and waited for him to explain it further.

He walked slowly over to a chair and sank down into it. “Your mother,” his voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “She was difficult. She…took drugs and tried to start a war between us and another MC.” He stopped realizing that he was getting off track from what was most important. “I didn’t know what she was doing to you. If I had, I’d have made sure that she never touched you again. I swear!” Her eyes flicked to me, a look of anger in them as she realized that I’d broken her trust. Fuuuuck! “The day she killed herself…she told me she was going to kill you. I told her that if she touched you that I’d make sure she fucking disappeared. You were…” he swallowed heavily, “you are, my world. I would never have let anyone or anything hurt you.”

It wasn’t the in-depth explanation that she needed, but hopefully it would explain things enough to her for her to appreciate the truth.

As the silence wore on, I couldn’t read the expression on her face, but I just knew deep down in my gut that it wasn’t going to be good. Any of the hope that I’d had moments earlier, evaporated.

“Say something,” I whispered, not daring to speak too loudly. I wanted to know what she was thinking, but I didn’t at the same time because I didn’t want her to say out loud what I knew she was feeling.

Looking at the three men who had betrayed her trust, she walked to the door, turning back to throw the final grenade of the day at us; this one the most explosive so far.

“Don’t contact me, don’t come near me and for all of your sakes, heed me on this.” She spoke in monotone which matched the blank expression on her face, before walking out and slamming the door behind her.

I went to follow her, but Duke got to me before I could open the door.

“Give her time,” he growled. I knew he was as pissed off with the situation as I was, after all he’d been the one to look after her all of these years and he’d earned her trust and had kept her safe. Knowing that he’d broken it now was gutting him as much as it was me.

“I love her,” I croaked out feeling like my heart was in my throat.

“Yeah, that’s why you’re gonna do what she asks,” he snapped, giving me a quick shake before letting me go.

Both of us turned back to look at Preacher who was sitting looking the furthest from the fearless President that I’ve always known him as. The man sitting at the table had tears in his eyes and looked like he’d just lost his world. I knew that was what he looked like, because I had no doubt that I looked the same. And I had just lost my world.

 

Six Weeks Later…

 

I was going crazy not knowing how she was. I knew from Duke that shortly after leaving here, she’d gone out to the Middle East to do something with the military. Since then, he said there had been radio silence from her. His exact words.

I was struggling to sleep at night and had found myself going into her room just to feel close to her so that I could get a couple of hours. I spent most of my time helping fix up the Compound again after the attack, the first area being where she had been and where they’d focused their attention. Every time I saw the damage and thought of what could have happened, I felt sick. Preacher wasn’t doing much better and Duke was a foul, tempered son of a bitch.

I had just rolled out of her bed and was headed towards my room when Duke came running up to me with Preacher behind him.

“Get your shit together, we’re leaving in five,” Duke barked as he ran past me in the direction of his room.

“What the fuck?”

It was Preacher who stopped and I noticed that his hands were shaking. “Kyle’s hurt!”

Those two words made the bottom drop out of my world. What the fuck had happened?

 

KYLE

 

There are moments you never forget for good reasons, and moments that are so awful that they become living nightmares. In all of my time doing the jobs I did, I’d never lost a member of my team, and now I was lying on a stretcher staring at the pine boxes holding the bodies of three of them.

How the fuck had it gone so badly wrong? It had been a routine recce in an area that we’d been in two days before. We hadn’t known we were going there until we got into the helicopter. Normally, I’d have been the one flying, but since the shit had gone down, I spent more time burning my anger off taking part in the recces. By the time I got home after them, I was too hot and exhausted to think or feel, and I needed the numbness. The one time that I hadn’t had it, I’d done something I hadn’t done in so long and had cried and no way was I doing that again.

Yesterday, we’d been fine. Data had sent me out a new signal interceptor because I’d noticed that normally calm areas were becoming hostile for no reason, even areas with nothing around them were now hot. I had a hunch and had wanted confirmation of it before I acted, so I’d had him send me out one of his gadgets.

We were hunkered down having a drink when the device had gone off and I saw that a message had been sent from around us, with our current coordinates. Looking around, I did a head count and realized that we were down one person just as the first explosion hit beside us. The rest had landed in quick succession; we’d never stood a chance.

As I was wheeled onto the plane, I grabbed the hand of the Camp’s GA who had been standing signing over the bodies to the crew of the plane, and had pulled him down to me. I wouldn’t have said it loudly anyway, but the injuries that I had made it impossible to talk louder than a whisper.

“Jared.” That one word, one name. As he lifted his head to look at me, I knew he understood what I was telling him. I also made it clear in the expression on my face that I was going to make sure that I was the one that delivered his retribution.

He’d been shopping us to them the whole time, the whole fucking time!

Feeling the wheels of the plane hit the tarmac of home soil, I closed my eyes and begged myself not to cry. I would not dishonor my men by crying!

I heard the back of the plane lower, and watched as the uniformed soldiers boarded to carry the heroes coffins out. I didn’t even know it was going to happen, until the first sob left me. These men had been fighting beside me hours before, talking about going home to their loved ones, their kids for Christ’s sake. I had let them down and now there were children who were going to grow up not having these men teach them about life; they’d never know the heroes that their fathers actually were.

The sound of feet across the tarmac and the music that led their coffins away started to fade and then more soldiers boarded to wheel the gurneys out. Five men were on life support, more than should have been on that plane at once really, but it was vital that they got the treatment that they needed. Normally, we would have been flown to Germany, but given what we did for a living, we were kept under radar from most and had all signed waivers to be flown the extra hours back to the USA instead, when we started each mission.

The daylight hurt my eyes as I was wheeled off the plane, and if it hadn’t been for the revving of the engines, I wouldn’t have even known that they were there. We were halfway across the ground when the sound of motorbike engines started, so many that you could feel the vibrations.

“I think they’re here for you,” one of the young soldiers pushing me said and moved his hand in front of me, pointing to my left.

Looking over, I saw the sun bouncing off the chrome of all of the bikes parked in a row behind the fence. I couldn’t make out the faces of the people sitting on them, but I saw three bodies standing by the fence in front of them before the dark took over.