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He began talking to Erika, and after a few minutes Hank made his way over to talk to Lilith. Hayes remained at the bar, his gaze on the meeting between Jack and the Richardses.
Poppy knew they had arrived in Barboursville more than a month before and that local police had questioned them when Jimmy’s body had been found.
She, Lilith, Erika, Saige, and Sasha had gone to school with Jimmy. He’d been a year older, and he’d always wanted to be in law enforcement. The police believed Ian Richards was in town to negotiate with local gangs in the tristate area about cartel drugs. They believed Jimmy must have driven up on one of those gangs and ended up dead because of it.
She should have guessed the former disgraced SEAL would eventually reach out to the recently disgraced one.
“What is going on?” Erika whispered as she leaned closer to Poppy. “It’s hard to believe the Richardses are who the news suspects, but with everything that’s going on, it’s hard not to wonder.”
“I don’t know,” Poppy whispered back, sneaking another glance toward the group.
Jack did not look happy.
“He meets with them a lot,” Lilith pointed out worriedly.
“I’m getting scared for you, Poppy,” Erika said softly, and Poppy could hear that fear in her friend’s voice. “All of a sudden Jack’s home with those men, and now mercenaries are showing up and getting killed.”
It wouldn’t help for her to admit that today, she was kind of scared for herself.
He had burned his buddies.
Hell, he was the bad guy, right? Jack told himself. And Ian knew they were there, knew who they were, even if they weren’t aware of it. Covers had to be maintained, and sometimes that required being the bastard.
Jack had always excelled at being the bastard.
So, he stopped at the booth where his former teammates sat, stared down at them, and informed them their cover was blown, that they needed to get their asses out of town while Richards was in a good mood and willing to let them go.
“Fuck, Jack,” Garlin Sutton, a man who had called Jack his friend several times over the years, whispered in regret. “Man, I really didn’t believe it until now…”
“Believe what, Sutton? That I got tired of the bullshit? Trust me, it’s the truth,” he assured the other man.
“Be watching for us, Bridger,” Ward Baines, one of the few men in the world Jack really respected, snarled back at him.
“Always am,” Jack drawled. “Trust me on that. Always am.”
They rose from the booth, tossed some bills onto it, then strode from the bar. They might be waiting when he left, but he had no doubt Ian had already ensured they were ordered to stand down.
This was the really bad part about being the bad guy. Former friends, his lover, her friends. They believed the illusion. It was required.
He didn’t have enough friends to give a fuck, but the suspicion and hint of fear in Poppy’s eyes when he returned to the table did something to his chest.
Made it tight. Made it ache.
And he wondered if that was how it felt when the heart began to break.
Poppy rarely used Jack’s expression to determine what he was thinking or feeling. She went by his eyes. A mix of gray and blue, they could darken to nearly all blue or lighten to almost a pure gray.
She remembered the day when she’d found him in the cold, hiding behind their garbage bins. His eyes had been blue. Anger had filled his expression, pride, determination. And she’d seen every one of those emotions clearly on his face.
He didn’t carry the emotions on his face anymore. There was rarely any strong emotion on it at all. But it still showed in his eyes. And right now, they were almost as blue as they had been that cold winter day so long ago.
Anger, pride, determination.
She’d heard the exchange with the two men in the booth several feet away. They must have been SEALs he knew. And they were there to watch the Richardses.
He’d burned them, he said.
He must have told the Richardses who they were, but he’d stopped and warned them, she told herself desperately. He’d given them a chance to escape.
