Reaper's Stand (Reapers MC, #4)(82)

“This is getting off track,” Horse muttered. “Pic, hold it in. We gotta figure out the situation, then you can deal with her, bro. Hear me?”

“I hear you,” Reese said. He let go of my hair abruptly, which scared the hell out of me because the sudden release pushed my throat deeper into the knife. Then the knife pulled away, and his hand wrapped around my throat instead, big fingers catching me under the jaw and pushing my head back into his shoulder.

Now I felt the full length of his body behind me, cradled in his embrace. How could this be the same man who’d held me before? I’d felt so safe in his arms. Now all I felt was terror.

Terror and unholy lust.

“So what does this mean in terms of them holdin’ Jessica?” Bam Bam asked, his voice tight. “She need special drugs or somethin’?”

“No,” I whispered. “But she’s really vulnerable to infection and head trauma. That shunt gets damaged, it’ll take her out fast. She can’t be handled rough, it’s too dangerous. I did what they said. I searched as much of the house as I could, although I didn’t find anything.”

“We know,” Reese told me, tightening his hold until I could hardly breathe. “We watched you.”

I closed my eyes tightly. God. I’d been so stupid.

“You knew all along?”

“Not all the details,” Gage said, his voice soft. “But we knew you were working for them. That’s why you had Puck on you.”

“I guess that’s not a huge surprise,” I admitted. “It all felt wrong—I kept thinking you knew. Not that it matters. I couldn’t find anything for them, and then they called me again today. I talked to Jessica, and then I watched them throw her down on a concrete floor. She hit her head and started having a seizure. He told me I have to kill Reese or she’ll die. If he dies, they’ll dump her at an ER. So I tried to kill him.”

“Did you ever see their faces on the video?” Reese asked, his voice like ice.

“No, they only let me see Jess.”

“Where did you get the gun?”

“They gave me an address and I drove there using the GPS on my phone. Up north of Hayden. It turned out to be the middle of a field, and a man met me there. He showed me how to use the gun. I didn’t learn his name or anything.”

“What then?”

“Then I went to Nate.”

The air in the room changed. Sudden menace radiated from Reese, and his hand tightened so hard on my throat that I couldn’t breathe and my vision started to swim with black dots.

“Let her go,” Horse said suddenly. “You’re gonna hurt her, Pic.”

I squirmed, desperate for air.

“Fuck,” Bam Bam said, his voice urgent. “Pic, let her the f*ck go. You don’t wanna do this, bro. Believe me.”


Reese let me go, stepping away as I collapsed down in the handcuffs. I gasped for oxygen, vision hazy as Reese stalked around me, tossing his knife back and forth between his hands. He wasn’t looking at me, though. No, he stared down his club brothers like a force of nature.

“Get the f*ck out,” Reese said, the words soft and calm and more terrifying than anything I’d ever heard before in my life. “Or I’ll kill you.”

“Fuck, bro—” Gage started. Reese shook his head slowly.

“Not playin’ games,” he told them. “Get out. My woman, my business.”

Horse cocked his head, eyes assessing. Then he gave a sharp nod and left the room. Bam Bam followed, smacking his hand hard on the wall as he passed through the door. Gage stayed, studying us.

“Don’t kill her,” he said. “You’ll regret it. Walk away.”

“Last chance,” Reese said, the words quiet and cold. Gage sighed and gave a sharp nod.

Then he walked out, leaving me alone with a madman.

He turned and our eyes met. I searched his, trying to identify what I saw there. Hate? Anger? Maybe rage or betrayal?

None of those words were strong enough to describe the air of cold menace filling the space between us. Menace, but also a flicker of awareness. There was something broken in my libido, I decided. I shouldn’t be turned on by this. Not even a little bit. He started stalking toward me, lifting the knife and touching the side of the blade to one cheek.

“You went to Nate.”

I closed my eyes and swallowed.

“I didn’t want to kill you,” I whispered. “It’d gone too far. Looking for papers is one thing, but shooting a man is another.”

“Yet you pointed a gun at me and pulled the trigger.”

“That’s because of Nate,” I replied. He lowered the knife and raised his hand, brushing a finger down my cheek. Then he caught a strand of my hair and slowly wound it around his fingers, until it pulled and I couldn’t move my head. He leaned forward, brushing his nose against my cheek and whispering in my ear.

“Did you f*ck him?”

The hot touch of his breath sent a thrill through me, some sort of twisted lust mixed up with fear and adrenaline, and a sick, savage pleasure that he wanted to know, ’cause nothing f*cked up about that, right?

“No,” I said, the word hoarse. “I met him at a diner. I told him what was happening, and what they were trying to get me to do. Then he said he knew all about it and that he’s the one that blew up my house.”