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Knox held the door open for me. The bar was purposefully busy, and all six members of the Devil’s Luck were integrated somewhere among the patrons.
I caught Jackson’s gaze immediately from where he was at the bar with Sam. None of the women were present. Probably stashed away somewhere safe. Sam was there only for pretense.
“Hey,” Jackson said shortly.
Knox gave a ‘sup nod. “Hey. Mason and Jameson on duty?”
“Yeah. You called the cops?”
“Yes,” I reported.
Jackson looked at me like he was disgusted that I answered. I honestly didn’t care. He could hate me all he wanted. We just needed to work together to finish this job—to finish Walter Bates’s reign of terror.
“Hi, Knox. Hi, Caroline.” Sam was far friendlier, both hands on her belly. She didn’t look cheery, though. She was worried about her baby daddy risking his life yet again, and for a plan this dangerous.
“Time to get out of here, babe,” Jackson said, getting to his feet and helping Sam up.
She stood but didn’t leave. Her lip wobbled. “Keep your head on and be safe, soldier,” she whispered. “Come back alive. For me. For them.” Sam took Jackson’s hand and rested it on her belly.
Emotion hit my chest like a truck. This mission had a lot riding on it. But the fact that one of them was the prospect of a baby losing a parent because of my father?
It dragged an ugly memory to the surface.
I couldn’t have been older than ten when he decided to teach me a lesson. He had picked me up from school to find that I had fallen during recess. He was not happy to see me still red-eyed from crying.
He snatched my wrists and dragged me to the car, pushing me inside. “You want to lead one day? You are my heir. Lose those fucking tears. A crying woman’s a weakness. A crying girl’s a liability.”
Then he slammed the door, and we didn’t speak the rest of the day.
I didn’t cry—not until after I was sent to bed. Even then, I did it quietly. My face pressed into my pillow, holding my breath like my life depended on it.
Because it did.
That was the day Walter taught me that softness created distraction. That family was only useful if it was heartless.
Now, watching Jackson press a kiss to Sam’s stomach?
I turned my head. Not because I was intruding on a personal moment.
But because it hurt to look at something I never got a chance to experience.
CHAPTER 31
KNOX
I would rather spend the next month in a nice hotel with Caroline than see my brothers beat the shit out of each other for the plan. To think I could be ruining her with just a few licks or thrusts… Instead, we were staging a bar fight to make our grief look real and bait the Wolverines’ mole in the department into tipping off Bates.
Little did I know that Mason and Grant would take it to a personal level.
Caroline tucked her hair up in a baseball cap to hide it and slouched at the bar next to Tex. They pretended the other didn’t exist, picking at already cold food. They had regular patrons on either side of them, helping them to blend in.
Abel and Brody played cards with some tipsy bikers at one of the tables. Jackson was going around to each table like a general manager, gruffly talking up customers, mostly answering the same question, Where’d Sam just go?
Jackson just forced a smile, which, in his case, was more of a grimace, and said, “She just needed the day off. Swollen feet.”
One of the guys, a grizzled old biker named Earl, grunted like Jackson told him to sniff glue. “Shit like that’s why I thank God every day I was born with balls.”
His friend beside him, another regular nicknamed Buzz, nudged his arm with an elbow. “Too bad you were born with three of them, Earl. We call you ET, for extra testicle.”