“We have an address where the Hilux stopped five minutes ago.” Jared rattles off a residence in the south of Sydney. “We’re ten minutes out. You?”
We’re maybe fifteen minutes at the least. Casey and I share a mutual glance before he accelerates further.
“We’re right behind you,” I tell him.
“Jake, I—”
“Don’t. Let’s just focus on getting Mac and Evie out safe.”
Jared huffs a shaky breath. “Right.”
I end the call and drop back in my seat. My hands are shaking. I fist them and rest them on my knees.
“She’s going to be fine.”
“I know,” I tell him, but I don’t. He doesn’t either. I can tell by the tone in his voice.
Mac is a loose cannon. There’s no telling what she’ll do in any given situation. But if anything, she’ll fight with every breath she has. Mac was forged in fire. She’ll give him hell.
I check my watch. Ten minutes out. Why has time slowed to a snail’s pace? It’s unbearable.
“Jake …” Casey begins and then stops as though he’s thinking about how to say what he wants to say. Whenever there’s a pause like that, it’s never good. I brace. “You can’t tell Mac that you know.”
“What?”
“About what happened. With the car accident. And the … baby.”
Is he serious? I shoot Casey an angry glare. “Why not?”
“We don’t know what she’s been through tonight. If you tell Mac what really happened, it will put a huge wedge between her and her brothers. She’ll shut them out in an instant, which is not what she needs right now. She’s going to need her family, Jake.”
My teeth clamp together as his advice sinks in. I come to the same realisation—one I would never have reached without him pointing it out.
“Fuck!” I yell, slamming a fist on the dash in front of me. “This is bullshit. Damn you, Casey.”
His voice is low. “I’m sorry.”
But he’s right. We both know it.
“So I have to keep being the bad guy.”
“You’re not the bad guy,” Casey tells me.
“I’ve always been the bad guy,” I mutter, frustration making my chest tight. I glance at my watch again. Seven minutes out. Time has slowed further.
We’re almost there, Princess. Please be okay.
“If you were the bad guy, you wouldn’t be in this car right now. You wouldn’t be fighting like you are. You would have given up.”
“I can’t give up.”
“And Mac will see that. When the time is right, you can tell her and she’ll see that you were always there fighting when a lesser man would never have tried.”
“I hope to god you’re right, Casey.”
He shrugs, forcing a grin that doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’m always right.”
“Except when you’re wrong.”
A light chuckle escapes him. He nods his head. “Except when I’m wrong.”
Five minutes out.
Three minutes out.
I stare out the window, focused on breathing.
“I love her, you know.”
Casey’s voice is soft. “I know.”
I swipe a hand across my face, exhausted and on edge. My cheeks are scratchy with five days of beard. Mac likes the facial hair but when it gets to the point of being itchy, I always get the shits and shave it off. Maybe this time I’ll keep it.
“How do you know?” I eventually ask, wondering how Casey sees it when no one else does.
“Because you stand up to her in a way no one else does. And she lets you.”
Two minutes out.
“I never noticed that.”
“I did.”
“You notice a lot of shit, Daniels.”
“I do.”
“Do you think what Mac’s brothers did was right? You knew and you never said anything.”
Casey shakes his head, downshifting gears as we turn a sharp corner. “I think they were so blinded in their duty to protect Mac that they didn’t think about how much damage it would cause. Travis feels a lot of guilt. He told me. And Jared still struggles with the knowledge of what he did. It was an accident, Jake. A stupid, horrible accident, but the fallout was huge.”
“Damn straight it was huge.”
“You have to let them put things right.”
One minute out.
“Maybe in some other lifetime,” I mutter.
Thirty seconds.
Casey floors it around another corner, fishtailing onto the street of the address we were given. We can both see the house we’re aiming for. It’s white weatherboard. A dilapidated, rundown heap of shit set in a neighbourhood you wouldn’t send your worst enemy. Three cars are out front. The one in the drive is an old Mazda hatchback. Parked on an angle in front of it is Evie’s bright blue Hilux. Right in the middle of the street sits a souped-up black Subaru WRX, both doors wide open. Black tyre tread marks the road behind it. The car belongs to Travis.
“The glove compartment,” Casey barks urgently.
I seize the handle, ripping it open. Two handguns rest inside. I take them out and check both with practised efficiency before handing one to Casey.
He brings the Porsche to a screaming halt in the street. I’m out of the car and running without missing a beat, my heart in my throat. I vault the porch stairs and tear through the front door, my gun in both hands, breathing out of control from panic. Casey comes up behind me. We’re moving quietly through the front section of the house when I hear the sweetest sound of my life. It rings out loud and clear.
“Goddamn asshead!”
My legs almost give out beneath me. I can’t lock the emotion down. I’m not trained for this shit.
“Thank Jesus,” Casey mutters from my right.
Jared yells in response. And Travis. But I hear nothing from Evie.
We abandon all stealth and run through a large archway toward the back of the house. I come to a dead stop, absorbing the scene before me in a single second.
Jimmy is on the ground, a bullet in the middle of his forehead and blood pooling beneath him. Across from him lies Evie, flat on the floor. Both Jared and Travis are kneeling on either side of her. Both shirts are off and pressing against Evie’s chest. She’s covered in blood. It’s splattered across her face and chest, her hands, her legs. It’s everywhere.
“Fuck!” Jared’s agonised roar fills the room. “Where are the fucking paramedics?”
My gaze finds Mac. She’s strapped to a wooden chair with clear plastic cable ties. Blood drips down the side of her face from a split brow, her right eye is almost swollen shut, and her wrists and ankles are bleeding and raw.
The pretty cream-coloured blouse she paired with dark jeans for the concert is torn and filthy, covered with grime and sweat and blood.
Her eyes are on Evie, but they shift to me when we come in the room. “Jake,” she mouths, her jaw trembling. She clamps it tight, holding herself together.
I tuck the gun in the back of my jeans and move quickly.
“Nice of you to show up,” she mumbles as I crouch in front of her.
“We got here as fast as we could, Princess,” I reply as I check the ties that bind her hands to the arms of the chair. She flinches at my ministrations. Her skin is a bloodied mess from where they cut in to her.
“Well, I had the situation handled, just so you know.”
“Of course you did.” My voice is muffled as I shift lower to inspect her ankles. “I need a—”
Casey waves a pocketknife in my face.