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Eventually, Grath looked me over, seeing I was doing much better, had taken a few sips of iced tea and appeared fairly normal again. So he figured I was ready for the next hard hitter. “One last thing before we go, Ells. Gotta know, why didn’t you tell Jack about these suspicions of yours, about Brian maybe being Keith’s killer? Why didn’t you ever go to the cops, way back when? Seems like a lot of this could have been dealt with last year. What could possibly have held you back?”
Was this the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question? I didn’t have a good, easy answer. All I had was my truth, which I gave him, best as I could.
“Keith told me about his brother one night at the bar when we were just shooting the shit back and forth. Said Jack was the best. He talked about the MC a little—didn’t go into any detail, just about how he loved to ride, got involved with an MC, that you were all like family. He was a big, tough guy, but he got a happy look on his face when he talked about you all.
“But Jack—he said he worried about Jack, that Jack took business and family things dead seriously, and believed in an eye for an eye, everything in black and white. Even though Keith was younger, he said he felt really protective of Jack—funny, because he also said that Jack would say exactly the same thing, being protective of Keith. But that when he was a kid, growing up, Jack had always had his back, and always went after anyone who was even thinking about giving Keith a rough time.
“When I heard about what happened to Keith, I was horrified. I was scared. I didn’t want to believe that what I thought might be…I didn’t want to believe it to be true. I didn’t want to know it to be true. I just wanted to get as far away from all of it as possible, as fast as I could.
“I knew there was no point in going to another new place—Brian had already followed me to the one place that was so opposite of Portland, I thought he never would have come down here. But he did, and then Keith was gone, and I was pregnant and I had no one else, there didn’t seem any point in my staying here.
“I packed up right quick and went back to Portland. I have a friends there, and my mom and a bunch of ‘uncles’…” I shrugged, hoping that was enough of an explanation.
Steph wasn’t buying it. “There’s more to it, Ellie. Spit it out.”
He was right. “I guess, in my way, I wanted to protect Jack, too. Keith can’t anymore. But I didn’t want to tell Jack about my suspicions about Brian, then have Jack go off half-cocked to take out Brian and end up behind bars for the rest of his life after exacting some kind of eye-for-an-eye revenge. I mean, who could blame him? But for his own life’s sake, and for Peter…I want Jack around. I don’t want him behind bars. That’s why I didn’t say anything, earlier. That’s why I still don’t want to tell him. I don’t know how to do that. How do I stop him from killing Brian? Because I’m pretty sure that’s what he’s going to want to do.”
“Honey, we all want to kill McAfee,” Grath averred. Steph made a quick, sharp tsss sound and shot his big man a look that might kill, just by itself.
“Do not ever say that in front of me again, you ass. You know better. No matter how true it is.”
Grath grinned at Steph, then beamed it at me. “I love it when he gets all formal cop on me. Turns me on.”
Steph leaned over and swatted at Grath’s ass, and we all cracked up. The tension had finally broken.
Grath got up, pulled me to my feet, and bear hugged me one more time. “I get why you didn’t tell him, but Jack, more than anyone, deserves to know all of this. He’ll be really hurt it didn’t come from you. You know that, right? But I gotta agree, he’s gonna be so pissed off, it might take three or four of us to hold him down until he processes it and slows himself down.
“Tell you what. I’ll get the MC to call church—what we call our meetings, for all the brothers—and I’ll tell him and everyone else there, together. Might be safest.”
“Thank you, Grath. You don’t know how grateful I am.”
“Yeah, well, hold onto that gratitude. I gotta feeling Jack is going to be mighty pissed off about it, and some of that is pretty likely to come flying in your direction. Try to keep in mind that he’s gonna need some time to process, to get to grips with all this. But it will be okay. All right?”
