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He stood, and Luke stood too, placing his own beer on the coffee table in front of him.
Peter held out his hand. “I’m not asking you to agree here, just asking you to understand, let Laurie get another form of protection. Can’t hurt, can it?”
Looking back, Luke wished he’d done fucking anything other than take Peter’s hand in his and say, “No, guess not.”
But wishing didn’t do shit.
So there he was, across from the same man, years later, telling him the news that not only had Bull been unable to protect her from the world’s true ugliness, but that he was the reason for her having to not only see it but have it eat her alive. They’d been hopeful when he’d first told them she was missing, because they were hopeful people.
He’d never thought he’d be wishing to be peeling a wrecked corpse off the side of the road.
He did now.
Peter didn’t swear, yell, go for the gun that Luke knew he kept in a lockbox in his garage. Instead, he kissed his quietly sobbing wife on the head, pausing a moment to close his eyes and stay there, maybe dance with the notion that none of this was real. Then he let her go and focused his clear, dry gaze on Luke, who was having a hard time keeping his gaze anything but.
“The boy, how is he?” he asked.
Luke didn’t answer straightaway because he wasn’t quite sure if he was hearing him right. He couldn’t be hearing him right.
“The boy?” he repeated, voice rougher than he’d like.
Peter nodded. “Bull.”
Luke clenched his fists where they were lying atop his knees. Peter, the man who’d just learned that he’d never walk his daughter down the aisle, never be a grandfather, never see her smile again, was asking if the man responsible for this was okay?
At first, Luke didn’t trust himself to speak, so the silence between Peter’s words and his response was yawning and awkward. The only sound was Christine’s muffled sobs.
When Luke trusted himself enough to meet the grieving man’s eyes and not show an ounce of his own fury, he did so. It was fucking difficult, but he did so. “Yes, sir,” he said, his voice gratingly flat. “He has his men around him. His family.”
It cost Luke a lot to say that. But the price of comforting a good man who’d just lost his daughter was never going to be too high for Luke.
Peter nodded again, face entirely too lucid and yet too far away at the same time. He stood.
So did Luke.
He held out his hand.
Luke took it.
Peter looked him straight in the eye. “Thank you, son.”
It cost Luke every fucking thing to look back at him and say, “You’re welcome, sir.”
The man was thanking him. Him. Who’d failed in his most basic job of protecting the innocent, prosecuting the club before this could happen.
Just as much blame rested on Luke’s shoulders as it did Bull’s.
Luke barely remembered driving to the Sons of Templar compound. He vaguely recollected wondering about the sheer lack of bikes or signs of life as he pulled in. He hadn’t pondered on that for too long.
But he was completely lucid as he pulled out his gun and rested the barrel on the back of Cade’s head, who was sitting in front of the bar, one bottle of whisky in front of him.
He didn’t flinch.
Nor did he even turn.
“Expected you might come,” he said calmly, and clearly, despite the bottle being almost entirely empty. “Didn’t think you’d be using your weapon. My money was on the handcuffs.”
Luke’s grip tightened on his gun. “Don’t have anything to arrest you for. In the eyes of the law, you’re innocent.” He spat the word at him.
Cade turned, clearly not minding that when he did so, the barrel of the gun now rested comfortably between his eyes. He met Luke’s gaze with icy determination, a snatch of sorrow dancing in those cruel eyes, something that he didn’t try to disguise.
“And in your eyes, we’re not,” Cade said.
Luke tried not to let the sheer depth of Cade’s obvious suffering get to them. “My eyes, God’s eyes,” he gritted out.
Cade raised his brow. “After everything. After….” He was unable to continue for a moment, taking a long and unhurried swig from the whisky. “After what happened to Laurie, you think there’s a man up in the sky protecting the innocent, punishing the guilty?”
Luke’s hand danced on the trigger. “No, I don’t think there is. Which is where I come in.”
Cade gazed at him thoughtfully. “You gonna shoot me, then?” he asked calmly. “Thought that would go against your ironclad morals.”
“Nothing’s ironclad after what I saw today. After telling Peter and Christine that their little girl was never coming home.”
Cade flinched. Actually flinched.
Luke’s grip on the trigger softened.
Cade took another swallow. “Do it, then,” he invited. “Shoot me. I sure as fuck deserve it. We sure as fuck deserve it. We never would’ve laid a fucking hand on that girl. Each and every single one of us would’ve fucking died to prevent her from getting a goddamn hangnail. Wasn’t our hands, but that doesn’t mean the blame doesn’t lie firmly with us.”
