Deadline to Damnation (Sons of Templar MC 7)

Caroline smiled back. “I’ve read her stuff. She’s talented. I hope I get to meet her one day.”

Something about the way she said that hit Jagger. Was she planning on staying? Even in the middle of all this?

“Oh, you will,” Rosie reassured her. Rosie said it as if she knew something everyone else didn’t. And she knew what everyone else didn’t about most shit, but not about this.

“We’ve got you to thank for getting us out,” Caroline continued.

Rosie nodded. “I’ve got connections. And, as Jagger was just saying, I’m awesome. I’m like Kim Kardashian, serving justice all over the damn place, with a great ass to boot.” She looked to Swiss. “Dude, I was so fucking sure you’d have an outstanding warrant in at least five states. But nothing. You disappoint me.”

He grinned. “I bury my bodies deep, darlin’.”

She rolled her eyes.

“How did you know they were here? And how did you get them out?” Hansen asked.

“I know because I know things. I got them out because I know people. And because from the shit we’ve been finding, we knew Mr. Crappy Suit was on the payroll. I only came to say hello, meet Caroline.” She glanced to her phone. “I didn’t exactly tell my husband I was going on a road trip. And he’s got the baby so he can’t exactly chase me this time. Children come in handy.”

She opened her car door, giving Hansen a more serious look. “Shit’s gonna get real soon.”

He raised his brow. “Shit is already real.”

She nodded. “You’re not wrong.” She eyed Caroline again. “We’ll see you soon for a drink, or a car bomb or whatever.”

And then she closed the door and drove off.

“I like her,” Caroline declared.

Jagger chuckled, someone finding it to be easy and real, tugging her into his shoulder.

“Let’s go home,” she murmured into his cut.

Home.

Fuck.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Jagger

He knew something was wrong when he walked in.

Really fucking wrong.

He’d felt it in the pit of his stomach since Caroline had said she wanted to go ‘home’ yesterday. He felt joy so strong that it turned to acid. Because he wasn’t deserving of that shit. Caroline wasn’t. She shouldn’t be in the middle of it. She was. She didn’t resent him for it. Or for the last fucking fifteen years. She didn’t run, or act like she was a captive anymore. She called what he thought was her prison her fucking home.

And that soured inside him, even as he rode with her pressed to his back. Even as he fucked her hard all night, held her in his arms as she fell asleep and fucked her again this morning.

He’d left her with coffee and her laptop, she had stories to submit. Not this story, they’d stopped talking about that.

Hansen had called him into church.

Just him.

He felt the sour crawl up his throat.

It was time for it all to fall apart, because he’d just gotten everything he wanted back together.

“What?” he demanded, eyes on the way Hansen was holding himself, the way his hand shook ever so slightly as he reached for the bottle of Jack in front of him at the head of the table.

“They hit another club,” he said after a long gulp. “Likely while we were distracted trying to get Swiss and Caroline out. Fucking diversion tactic.”

Jagger swallowed acid. “Who?”

“Nevada.”

He took the bottle his president handed him. Took a long gulp himself. “How many?”

“All of them.”

He’d expected as much. But even expecting the death blow, it didn’t stop how it killed.

He took another swig.

Handed the bottle back to Hansen.

Neither of them spoke for a long time.

There was nothing to say.

Words were weak and useless in the face of something like this. The only thing that worked were bullets and blood.

“He’s trying to send a message. Show us we can’t beat him in a war,” Jagger said finally.

Hansen nodded once. “That’s what he’s tryin’ to do. But we’re gonna prove that we can win any war.”

Jagger clenched his fists. “We fight him, we’re gonna lose more brothers. Forgone conclusion.”

Hansen nodded again.

“We might not walk away from this.”

He spoke the truth that was already written all over his brother’s face. This life, they knew every time they shrugged on their cut it could be the last time. It was something they accepted, it was the price they paid.

But this was different. It wasn’t a question of if a Son was gonna die, it was a question of who. Death didn’t discriminate just because you were wearing a cut, a wedding ring, because you had kids at home. That didn’t mean shit.

It cooled Jagger’s blood, that certainty. Any brother in the ground was a hit. Was a travesty. But the brothers who had finally gotten some kind of taste of sweet after choking down bitter for all these years…they were at risk of dying bitter. Whether that be a grave for themselves or for their families.