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Stumbling, collapsing against Doogan now, Zoey fought to breathe, to let the memories just pour in. As though they belonged to someone else, not her, she let them spill over her. She would be angry later. She would cry later when she could deal with it. For now, she just wanted the truth.
She hadn’t killed Harley, but she was terribly afraid they might have. They planned to. They knew where he was and they were going after him next. After they dumped Zoey on her sister’s patio for Sam Bryce to find.
So she could confess to killing Harley, and Sam would have to arrest her. When she did, the Mackays and all their friends would lose favor with Homeland Security and lose the protection they’d gained over the years. As well as the power base they’d built not just in Kentucky but within the law enforcement agencies as well. And once that was done, not just the Mackays would be taken care of, but Doogan as well. She hadn’t known then who Doogan was or why it would affect him.
“Killing you won’t hurt Doogan near as bad as destroying you. You, your family, his power base. Too bad he let the wrong person see how much he cared, isn’t it? Now, Doogan and the Mackays all lose when they lose you. . . .” The words filtered through the agony, through the images of blood and death flashing through her mind.
“Too bad . . .” another voice echoed through her head. “Too bad you had to choose the wrong man. . . . Too bad . . .”
Jarring, horrifying, the pain dug into her head, breaking the words off, shattering the memories as she felt herself collapsing into Doogan’s hold, her strength stolen by the slicing pain saturating her head.
“They were so confident,” she whispered, as she found herself cradled in Doogan’s arms, his back propped against a tree as Jack Clay crouched beside them. “One, he had green eyes, like Natches. He’s Johnny Grace’s son. He said Natches would pop my head like a little grape, just like his father, Johnny. I couldn’t go to my family; I had to confess to Sam, because he said Natches would kill me. His partner called him Luther. But I’ve seen him before. His eye color was different.” They were aqua before. The aqua eyes had thrown her off. She’d seen his face, seen him somewhere. “The other, he worked at Natches’s garage for a while. Scar, cold blue eyes. Luther called him Rigsby.”
“Tom Rigsby. He’s actually former DHS. He worked in interrogation, which explains how he knew about that drug. Luther Jennings would be Johnny’s boy, I guess,” Clay said softly. “Tom was driving the car that chased you and Billy. I recognized him. He and Luther hooked up a few years ago when Tom was kicked out of DHS for failing to pass a polygraph. And you’re right, Luther’s eyes were aqua when he was here in Somerset a few years ago.”
“He stayed at the inn.” Zoey held her head; the pain was bad, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been. “He was always trying to flirt with me. Creeped me out.”
It was the way he looked at her. His gaze hadn’t been hateful or mean, but something had lurked behind his smile and in the eyes that seemed far too calculating.
“Did you catch Rigsby?” D
oogan asked.
Zoey stared at Clay, praying, oh God she prayed they’d caught both men.
Instead, Clay shook his head slowly. “Rigsby was killed by one of my boys. The shooter with him was a two-bit hired bully out of Louisville.” Concern filled his eyes. “Luther won’t be happy to learn his buddies are dead. And if Luther’s anything like Johnny, then he’s as mean and cunning as a damned rattler.”
“We have to tell Dawg,” Zoey groaned, laying her head on Doogan’s chest as she felt him tense. “Oh God, that’s going to be so bad.”
“So bad doesn’t describe it.” Moving to his feet, Doogan helped her to rise, keeping his arm around her as they stared around the sheltering forest before turning his gaze back to Clay. “I need wheels. We have to get back to the apartment and I have to make some calls first.”
“Take my bike.” Clay nodded to the Harley parked on the dirt lane cutting through the valley. “I have a call out to Sam and she’ll take care of everything here. Let me know when the Mackays are coming to call if you want me there.” He didn’t sound so eager to be there, though. Not that Zoey could blame him. Hell, she didn’t think she wanted to be there. Doogan kept his arm around her, holding her close to his side. And it was a damned good thing, because Zoey didn’t think her knees were strong enough to hold her up yet. She could feel herself shaking from the inside out and she hated it. She hated it to the point that her teeth were clenched, her muscles tight with the effort to hold back the shudders.
“What do you have to do and what kind of calls do you have to make?” Zoey asked him as he helped her onto the back of the cycle. “Why did a former agent help Johnny Grace’s son try to convince me I’d killed Harley?” When he didn’t answer, she grabbed his arm before he could turn from her. “Talk to me, Doogan. Tell me what’s going on.”
“That’s why I have to make some calls, Zoey. Hell, I didn’t even know Grace had a son or that Rigsby was involved in this. If I had, I might have been able to stop this before it started.” He handed her the helmet before straddling the Harley himself and starting the ignition.
“Hold on, baby,” he warned her through the helmet headset.
Gripping his waist, Zoey held on as he sped back to town, the Harley eating up the miles. She could feel the tension in his body, feel the anger pouring through him, and wondered, when it was over, where it would leave her in his life.
SIXTEEN
Doogan drew the Harley to a slow crawl as he started up the lane to Zoey’s apartment, his eyes narrowing on the sheer number of vehicles parked in front of it.
“We might have a problem, Zoey,” he murmured into the Bluetooth headset. “A big one.”
She snorted at the understatement. “Ya think, Doogan?” she asked. The sarcasm in her voice would have made him grin at any other time. But her brother, Dawg, and cousins Natches and Rowdy were waiting at the head of the group, their glares trained on him.
Damn. This was going to get dicey. He could feel it, like an itch at the back of his neck.
“Zoey, don’t let them pull you away from me. We don’t know what the hell’s going on yet.” And they would try. He could see it in their set expressions. “And I’ll be damned if I’ll watch them drag you off and lock you down tighter than Fort Knox.”
“They look really pissed,” she muttered.
Pissed wasn’t even close. It wasn’t just her brother and cousins either. Her brothers-in-law, Graham, Brogan, and Jed, stood behind them while Timothy Cranston leaned against his truck and glared at the motorcycle as it inched up the drive.
“Dawg looks really mad, Doogan,” she pointed out.
