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I slowly reached toward her, and when she didn’t flinch away, I brushed her hair back off her face. She wasn’t really that much younger than me. Maybe only five or six years. But that still made her my little sister. Everything inside me screamed she needed my protection.
“Lie here a bit longer, okay? Hawk got the bleeding stopped, and he’s giving you some blood and fluids. Your color is already a lot better. I’d bet we can get you up for a shower and some food soon. If you want that?”
“I just want to leave. Please just let me.”
I squeezed her cold fingers. “You can’t, Kara. Where would you go?”
There was fear in her eyes. She didn’t know any of us, and her first introduction had been me pointing a gun at her, then burying a body. I couldn’t blame her for thinking we were bad people.
“We’re the good guys, Kara. I promise you that. I know they seem big and kinda terrifying, in a stupidly attractive way, but they won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt you. Ever.”
Kara lowered her voice. “They killed Hayden.”
I grimaced and glanced over at Fang and War, huddled together with their arms crossed over their chests while they watched us.
“Did you?” I asked them.
Fang didn’t answer. He dropped his gaze to the floor. War just walked away.
Fuck.
“Hayden wasn’t one of the good guys,” I tried explaining to her.
Her reaction was instant. “He was! He’s the only reason I’m alive right now. He cared for us when Caleb made him hold us hostage. Gave us beds. Clean clothes. He delivered my baby when Caleb wouldn’t let me go to the hospital. He was the one who called the ambulance to get us out of there when your guys were shooting up the place trying to get at him.”
“He put out a hit on War’s dad, Kara. Hired a hit man. He knew what he was doing when he did that. Things like that don’t go unpunished.”
She dug her fingers into my hand. “No! That was all Caleb. He admitted it, right in front of me.” She turned to War. “Hayden gave him the contact for the hit, but it was Caleb who wanted your father dead.”
War’s eyebrows furrowed together. “That’s not true. One of Hayden’s own men ratted him out.”
Kara shook her head. “Caleb paid him off. It was never Hayden or the Sinners behind any of that. It was all Caleb.”
War palmed the back of his neck. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would Caleb want my father dead?”
“You did steal his girl,” I offered.
War smiled at just the mention of Bliss. “True, but it doesn’t fit. My dad died before Bliss and I were anything. It can’t have been retaliation for that.”
Silence lapsed over us. It didn’t make sense. Caleb was a businessman. He didn’t run in the same circles as War’s biker father. There should have been no reason for one to even be aware of the other.
“The women in the house,” Kara said softly. “I was an afterthought, thrown in there only because Caleb needed someone to deal with me. But those other women had been held there for months. Picked up off the street, bound and gagged, taken against their will, or lured in with promises of more than their current lives. I think they were going to be sold.”
I widened my eyes. “To who?”
“War’s dad, maybe? Or maybe War’s dad was supposed to move them on to someone else but he reneged on the deal. That would give Caleb the perfect motivation to kill him, wouldn’t it? Caleb would kill someone just for going against his demands, but your dad would have known too much. He’d have known all of Caleb’s dirty little secrets. It would be something he could hold over Caleb’s head.”
“Caleb would hate that,” I murmured. “He doesn’t deal well with feeling powerless.”
War shook his head. “No. We aren’t angels. We’ve always had a foot in with guns and drugs, but we don’t run women.”
Kara pinned him with a glare. “Can you say that for sure? With complete and absolute certainty? Maybe you don’t know as much about your own father as you think you do.” She turned away. “I was blindsided by mine too, if it makes you feel any better.”
I bit my lip, wanting to ask her what she meant by that, but now wasn’t the time.
Kara struggled to sit up, and I helped by shoving cushions behind her back.
“It doesn’t matter now anyway, does it? Your dad is dead. Hayden is dead. My friends are probably all dead, full of bullet holes courtesy of your men.” She glared at War with fire in her eyes. “I hope you’re proud of yourself. The only person who should be dead is still wandering around, free as a bird to do whatever he wants, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.”
