Give Me a Reason (Redemption Hills 1)

I was only supposed to prove some biker’s disloyalty to his father. No big deal. All I had to do was lure the son out and he’d set me free forever.

Buy me a diamond and a house and I’d be set.

So I’d seduced that man. Tricked him. Manipulated him.

Except at the last minute, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it.

They were going to kill him.

I had to stop it.

Only it spiraled. It spiraled and spiraled.

So much death.

My legs wobbled. My body swayed. I blinked. Tried to process. To understand.

Do you remember, Eden, six years ago when I came racing home, terrified for the life of me and my baby after I’d betrayed all of them? Do you remember when all that money went missing from the church treasury? I’d taken it because I was going to disappear.

Do you remember how Aaron caught me as I was sneaking out?

No.

No. No. No.

My eyes blurred and sickness raged.

He’d begged me to stop before he got in his car.

He chased me, Eden.

I ran a red light.

So did he.

But he didn’t make it through to the other side.

Do you remember, Eden? Because I remember it all, and there is nothing I can do to take it back.

Harmony

I fell to my knees. Unable to stand. Unable to see. Images struck me from every side.

Knives and arrows.

Impaled and impaled.

She’d been responsible for Aaron.

Aaron.

Oh god.

I gasped, unable to stop the sob from ripping up my throat.

The biker.

The biker.

Gage climbed down beside me, that album in his hands.

The walls began to spin, and I tried to remain sitting up as bile lifted in my throat.

He giggled and pointed. “Look it, Miss Murphy, look it. That’s my mom. I got a picture of her at home with a bear she gave me when I was a baby and it said on the back of the picture that she loved me ’cept I don’t even know her because my dad says she lives far away. You wanna be my mom?”

Gage.

Gage.

Gage.

I recognized him then. Those eyes. That smile. The way my heart had pressed full the first time I’d seem him.

I felt the dismantling.

The crashing.

The falling away.

The walls. The ceiling. My heart.

My sister.

My sister.

Aaron.

Trent.

My cell rang on the floor beside me.

Jud.

I didn’t even know how I managed to answer it through the blur of tears and the clot in my throat. Through the ache and the questions and the pain. “Jud.”

Maybe part of it was his. This intonation that crashed through the line.

Agony.

His voice was hoarse. “Don’t have good news, Eden. Gage’s biological mother was found dead.” He hesitated, then said, “Trent was arrested at the scene for her murder.”

I couldn’t do anything but throw up right here on the floor.

Thirty-Five

Trent

Los Angeles, Six Years Ago

Wind whipped through the barren, broken streets of the city, and hazy lights burned down through the heavy clouds that sagged in the night.

Los Angeles.

A cesspool of greed and corruption and wickedness.

Trent wondered if he could really outrun it. Flee from it. Become someone better than the monster that roamed these streets.

His bike grumbled as he slowed and pulled into the deserted lot of the warehouse at the slummy end of the docks. He killed his bike, his eyes keen as he took in the vacancy. As he peered through the howl of the wind that gusted, kicking up debris and trash that tumbled along the pitted ground.

His heart rate accelerated a notch. Not that it didn’t every time he showed for a job.

An exchange.

An observer.

An executor if the need arose.

The life he hated.

One he was leaving behind.

His chest stretched tight with the thought. With the possibility. With something new. A chance he’d never thought he’d be given.

He figured that might have been why there was an extra dose of unease that thudded through his veins as he slipped through the chaotic quiet toward the double, sliding metal doors.

One last job.

One last job.

He stilled a fraction as he heard the roar of an engine come blazing down the deserted street. Felt the fear and the disorder that blistered through the air. A connection that stretched tight.

Pulling and pulling.

That bond that screamed.

He whirled around just as a motorcycle flew around the corner and into the lot.

Careless and reckless.

Nathan.

Trent’s entire being lurched. A compulsion to get in front of his twin.

Protect and provide and keep.

Nathan braked hard, and the back tire fishtailed as he skidded to a stop. He jumped off the bike, dumping it to its side, shouting as he ran across the lot toward Trent. “Trent! Stop! It’s a trap. A fucking trap. Juna. It was Juna and Dad. They set you up. He knows we’re leaving. He knows.”

Agony shredded through Trent.

His father.

That bitch.

That fucking bitch.

Trent started to run in Nathan’s direction to head him off. To stop him before he got in the middle of it.

He made it two steps before a hail of gunshots rang out from the blacked-out windows of the metal building.