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Resetting Poppy’s alarm, he left the house, locked the door behind him, and met the other members of the team where they waited on their bikes in the back drive.
“Hayes, you’re staying here,” he ordered, and pointed to Poppy’s house. “Don’t let anything happen to that woman. Understand me?”
Hayes glanced to Poppy’s house, then returned his gaze to Jack as he nodded. “Nothing will happen, boss.”
Swinging his leg over the Harley, Jack started it, put it in gear, and shot from the alley, the others following close behind him.
How the hell had anyone managed to strike at Candless’s team? They were careful, always armed, always prepared. Based on where they’d been hit, they’d been prepared to board their plane and head out. Why strike at them then?
But as the night passed by, it wasn’t Candless that filled his thoughts. It was Poppy.
“I’m not a side piece, or a whore, Jack, and I won’t be treated as such. If you want to claim me, then do so properly.”
Is that how she believed he saw her? Without enough worth to claim? That’s what he thought he’d been doing when he’d marked her: claiming her. Did other men think that just because he couldn’t constantly be at her side they could slip in on the only softness in his world?
But for eight years, despite the fact that he’d stayed away from her, she hadn’t allowed another man in her bed, another part of his brain argued. Other than that damned vibrator and her own fingers, nothing had touched her sweet flesh, especially some bastard who thought her sweetness was up for grabs.
She’d waited for him.
Despite that fact that he’d never indicated that he’d claim her, had shown no interest in doing so, still, she’d waited.
When he would have taken the blame for Trencher’s death, she’d refused to allow it. She’d demanded he hide the body instead. Get rid of it somehow. And when Mac had burst into that cabin and aimed that gun at Jack’s chest, she had jumped in front of him before he could stop her.
She had tried to save him when she was just seven years old, and because she’d cried when she’d learned he was in a juvenile facility until the authorities could figure out what had happened, her father had found a distant cousin to foster him. A retired Navy SEAL. A man who had taught Jack what honor was.
Because of Poppy.
And she felt that in payment, he was treating her as though she didn’t matter, as though the gifts she’d given him were of no value, because he didn’t stand by her side and claim her.
God help him. If she walked away from him after he did that, it would strip his soul from his body. He couldn’t imagine a hell greater than to have Poppy turn away from him after he showed the world that someone meant something to him after all.
What was he going to do when this was over? When she realized that lies of omission were still lies, and he had used her love to destroy her friends?
Friends who had been there when he hadn’t been through the years.
Would her hatred go as deep as her love then?
As he neared the location Ian had directed him to, he had to force those thoughts away. He had to let the ice back in when all he wanted to do was warm himself with the knowledge that Poppy loved him. That she needed to be claimed by him. Even if he couldn’t say the words, she needed him to show that she was of value.
As he and his men entered the valley Candless’s team had flown into, he eased the Harley to a stop just past the EMS vans and stared around the area, almost disbelieving.
He’d seen worse, but that was in the heat of battle, where he expected to see worse. Not here in this lush green valley, where scattered plane debris and body parts littered the field. In places, blood seemed to bedew the grass. Tattered remains of clothes and Mick’s men were like broken, disassembled toys thrown by a child’s careless hand.
The carnage showed that no mercy had been given when the explosion had occurred, however it had occurred.
Lowering the kickstand and turning off the engine, he dismounted slowly, wondering if there was even a chance of a survivor.
“Jack. Over here.” Ian stepped from behind the ambulance and waved him over imperatively.
There, lying on a gurney, its white sheets stained with too much blood, lay Candless. Shrapnel from the plane had buried itself in his legs, slicing at flesh, tearing it to the bone and ripping through veins.
He was conscious as the medics worked to stabilize the bleeding, his violet eyes burning in the bloodied, torn flesh of his face.
Several feet from him, medics worked to save his brother, Coye, though Jack was afraid it was in vain. A piece of metal had shoved itself into his chest, larger and thicker than the other debris that had flown into him.
He was unconscious, near death.
Jack stepped to Candless, staring down at him as the other man fought to swallow and speak.
