“It was Elena.” Jason’s eyes were bright and clear. “Elena did it and wanted to pin the murder on you. Isaac stepped in to protect you.”
I’d barely moved this morning, had maybe walked thirty steps, but I found I couldn’t catch my breath. “How is . . .? I don’t understand.”
Jason gave me a quick kiss, encouraged me to return my head to its prior resting place, and told me the story of his drive with Isaac the morning after The Event. Even by the end of the story, I still couldn’t believe it. We were quiet for a long time after he finished. I soaked in the details, my heart lifting and sinking and lifting again while I sorted through every implication.
“Isaac wanted to protect me.” Goodness, what a relief! This part felt like the best news. He hadn’t killed his father. He’d been there to save me, not kill Kip.
“That’s right.” Jason gave me a little squeeze.
“But I’m still the main suspect? Because they can’t find the gun and they don’t believe my story?”
“Correct. For now. The fingerprints on the car are a problem. They think they’re yours, but they can’t prove it. It’s a good thing you haven’t been back to work much, and you should stay home as long as you can. Don’t go out in public and don’t touch anything they might be able to lift a print off of.”
I swallowed around new fears. This whole time, I’d been so scared for Isaac. Now the fear I felt was for myself. “What am I going to do?”
Jason leaned away, gently gathered my face in both hands, and looked at me in the eyes. “Diane, we’re getting through this. One way or the other, I will not let you go to jail. Do you understand? You will not go to prison for this.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. Diane, I have money stored away. I can have new identities almost ready—driver’s licenses, passports, credit history, college transcripts, bank accounts, credit cards—whenever you’re ready. I’ll be ready.”
He—what? “I—I can’t do that.” Could I do that? Could I just leave everything behind? The Lodge, my daughter, my son, the town, all my friends, everything? Sure, I’d been planning to leave and travel after Jennifer’s wedding, but not like this.
“I’m not pressuring you.” Jason threaded his fingers into my hair, kissing my lips once, twice, three times, like it was an impulse he’d been fighting. “I didn’t tell you this to give you more to fret over. I’m telling you to give you less to worry about. If or when you decide you want to leave, it will be easy. I will make it easy.”
“It won’t be easy, Jason.” I encircled his wrists with my fingers and held on. “And I’m not talking about having no money or being on the run. I’m talking about leaving my daughter. And my son. I love them.”
“I know. I know that’ll be hard.” He seemed to be at war with himself, like he wanted to tell me something and yet held himself back. “Gorgeous, that’s why I wanted you to know. I don’t think it’ll be necessary, but you don’t have to worry about how to disappear if it comes to that.”
I believed him, and I was grateful, so I nodded, though I felt numb. And when he kissed me again, I kissed him back with everything I had, feeling less numb. And when he touched me, I was so grateful for the distraction and the warmth of feeling. I needed him. I needed his heavy body over mine. I needed his hands on my bare skin, making me hot, making me breathless, making me forget.
But when he held me after, and day turned to night, and he had to leave me, the fear crept back in like a thief.
I was so scared.
Chapter Twenty
*Jason*
“I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
I returned the next day to see Diane. Instead of a cruiser, a big surveillance van—feds from the look of it—sat on the side of the road, pulled off just before her driveway, not making any effort to disguise their intentions. They were obviously staking out Diane’s house and property, listening in, watching who came and went, and that made no damn sense.
Wanting to punch something or someone, I sped on by and returned to the Dragon, my mind racing. I considered sneaking into her house, going around the back. I didn’t dare risk it, not until I could figure out where their eyes and ears were pointed. The last thing either of us needed were the feds knowing about us.
Mood dark, patience thin, I pulled into the bar’s parking lot and whipped off my helmet, cursing under my breath. I walked past a small group of my brethren towards bar entrance, unable to figure why the feds would be parked outside of Diane Donner’s house. This wasn’t a federal issue. This was the murder of one man in a small town.
“Hey, Repo,” one of the group called over. “Wolf is—”
“Wolf can go fuck himself,” I growled, not sparing the mixed gathering a glare as I made a sharp left. I didn’t want to go in through the bar while my head brimmed with violence and frustration. I was liable to put my fist through a face instead of a wall.
The whole day had been shit.
After leaving Diane’s place the night before, I couldn’t stop thinking about the blackmail note from Miller. Chances were good Miller was bluffing.
However, there existed a small chance that Miller had put Diane’s prints on the gun, and he wasn’t bluffing. Jethro Winston had done this very thing once under my orders, giving the police hard evidence on a biker in a rival club. We needed the man gone, out of the way, but we couldn’t afford to make him disappear. If he disappeared, suspicion would turn our way and we’d have a war on our hands. Neither Jethro nor I wanted that.
The man had been guilty of the crime, but the police lacked the necessary non-circumstantial evidence. Jethro placed the prints on the murder weapon and left a tip with the police where to find it.
We’d used the police, we’d avoided a war, and the man was now serving life in prison for a murder he’d committed.
I knew lifting prints and placing them on a weapon was entirely possible, and this possibility—that Miller’s letter wasn’t a bluff—was enough to make me want to find Miller and force him give me that weapon.
The other fantastic news of the day had come from my identity and papers guy in Texas early this morning. More paranoid than the Unabomber and less social, which never bothered me any, Ivan checked out folks he did favors for prior to sending the final product. Then he triple checked and checked again.
Ivan had the papers ready for Diane and me. That was the good news. Even though Diane didn’t want to go, didn’t want to leave her children, I would rest easier if we had the new identities.
But he wouldn’t send them.
When he’d been checking out Diane, he’d also checked out her children and discovered Isaac Sylvester was D-E-fucking-A. Drug Enforcement Administration. Isaac was a goddamn fed! Loaned out to the FBI and now—obviously—working undercover here, with us.