Page 35 of Blue-Eyed Jacks (Destroyers MC: Skilletsville PA #1)

“Ten to one, it’s locked.” Zoe strode off to find a tree to squat behind. We’d learned a lot in our almost two month-long exile.

It was. Tina complained the whole time she searched for a spot like Zoe had found.

I followed Zoe, mostly to get away for a moment or two.

“Why did you do this, Mom?”

I had reasons that I couldn’t easily explain to her. The nearest sentiment was, “I’ve been in their shoes,” which I relayed to her. The crunch of Cara’s footsteps stopped me from saying more.

Her features were in shadows cast by the lot’s lighting. Something about the way she held herself made me push Zoe behind me.

“What is it?” I asked.

She stepped forward, and the moonlight glinted off the object in her hand. In a split second, I knew it was a gun. “I need you both to lose any trackers you got.”

I stuck a hand in my pocket, which made her bring the gun higher. “Slow.”

My heart picked up pace as I carefully withdrew the GPS unit Bear shoved into the lining this morning. “That’s it.”

“Nothing on the kid? I doubt it. Zoe, I will shoot your mom if you lie like she just did. I need you to get rid of anything you can be traced by.”

Zoe slipped off her shoe and pulled out the little disc that was only good for RFID scanning. She held it out. I took it from her hand and tossed it at Cara’s feet.

“Happy?” I put extra grit in my tone. We’d find a way to contact Jackson. Nothing Cara could do would change that.

Except maybe shooting us . But why ditch the trackers?

Tina approached noisily. “That was disgusting. I need a shower, a manicure soak, and probably tetanus shots.” She gagged to further illustrate her distaste.

In a move almost too quick to track, Cara turned and shot her at nearly point-blank distance.

The report echoed against the hillside and trees, then returned from the valley as a ghostly distortion of the original sound.

Zoe cried out. I pulled her close. Belatedly, I thought I should have shoved her away and told her to run. But I wasn’t thinking right. I couldn’t believe what I’d witnessed.

“Why did you do that?”

“She’s a traitor. Four years ago, she was planted at Skilletsville to feed Shock information.

Yesterday, she came back, ratting you both out.

” Cara rummaged through Tina’s bag and pulled out a tracker.

“I knew she had one on her. Let’s go. Someone probably heard that.

” The point of gun flicked back to the vehicle.

This time, Cara rode next to me, with the gun pointed at me as she directed us to the suburbs north of Pittsburgh.

“You don’t need to hold that on me.” I told her.

“Just follow directions. Okay?”

As she dictated each turn, I began to have a horrible suspicion that I could predict her next order as we crossed the Hulton Bridge.

“What did you do to survive all these years?” I kept my tone as neutrally normal as I could.

“I did what I could. It wasn’t all bad.”

With Shock? Ick . I could argue with that, but I needed to keep her talking. “Why didn’t you go home?”

She laughed bitterly. She laughed bitterly. “Home? To what? The shelter? Or a man who wanted me dead?”

Death was sometimes better than decades of torment.

“Besides, I couldn’t. Shock set me up.”

That was easy to believe. He had a knack for blackmail. He enjoyed that more than anything else, even hurting women. “How?”

Cara glanced at the road. “Turn left at that stoplight.”

After I did as she asked, she answered my question. “He killed my ex right after he was released from prison. But Shock made it look like I did it.”

Oh . “That’s terrible.”

“I don’t know; it was kind of sweet in some ways. I hated that bastard. Turn right.”

I’d already flicked the blinker on. It was habit. “Did you spend the entire time with Shock?” I was guessing she hadn’t.

Her smile was audible. “No. He set me up with one of his business associates. I had a good life for years .” She stressed the last word.

We climbed the slope, and the city dissolved into a mishmash of rural and suburban charm that was either worn or immaculate, depending on which end of the economic spectrum you fell.

“But he died, didn’t he? Murdered?” I checked the mirrors. The traffic was almost non-existent.

She stared at me, the gun unwavering from its fixation on my chest. “How do you know that?”

I debated on whether I should be honest with her. But truly? What did I have to lose? “A month ago, Shock sent me clippings of my father’s murder. He was gunned down outside his law office. Did you get the house?”

“Fat lot of good it did me. I can’t pay the taxes.” With her words, the gun lowered to her lap. “I need you to open his safe for me. I never got the combination. With the paperwork in there, I can sell the place and disappear.”

“He might have changed the combination.” There were two safes. One was the wall safe in his home office where he kept the records he wasn’t afraid of losing. The other one was set in the wall of the closet of my bedroom. If Cara knew there were two, it wasn’t evident.

“I doubt he did. He never wanted to change anything. Renovating the kitchen was a battle. So, we’ll see, won’t we?”

I sighed. Being in my hometown and so close to Shock’s headquarters put me on the edge of a panic attack, but seeing my home? What would happen then?

Would I finally snap?

Worse? Zoe was with me to witness it.