Goddamned loves.
In her current situation, the only thing that could keep her alive was the wishes of Marcus Sloan.
Or a Sebring.
No. Not the wishes of a Sebring.
The wishes of Olivia who would never want her dead.
Fuck, Liv was alive.
This was Sebring.
She looked down at Gill and felt the dry sting her eyes.
It was all Sebring.
She looked back to Valenzuela to see his smile had died.
“Unfortunately,” he kept going, “that doesn’t work for me.”
One of his men started moving toward her. She felt another approaching from behind.
She opened her mouth to shout.
She got not a sound out.
Fifteen minutes later, beaten bloody and bullet-ridden, Georgia Shade bled out five feet away from Gill Harkin’s body.
She was found with the gun that murdered her man in her hand, powder residue on her fingers. His fingers were curled around the gun that had the clip that had been emptied into her body.
It looked like a lovers’ spat gone terribly wrong in a ratty twenty-dollar-a-night motel in the middle of nowhere between two criminals desperate and on the run.
And the House of Shade was no more.
* * * * *
Eric
Eric Turner prowled out of the motel room, phone to his ear.
He heard the connect and got the clipped greeting, “This number is only for emergencies. Please, fuck, do not tell me you’re calling with the score of the goddamned Broncos game like last time. I’m in Tennessee, not on the moon, and we got fuckin’ DIRECTV with Sunday Ticket. I get the scores same as you do.”
“I’m not callin’ ’cause a’ that. I’m callin’, askin’ you to please tell me that bloodbath is not you,” he clipped back.
There was a beat of silence before Nick asked, “What bloodbath?”
Turner gave him short, curt details.
“Fuck,” Nick muttered.
Turner relaxed.
It wasn’t Nick.
“Well, the good news is, Denver is gonna be a lot more quiet, Valenzuela won his war against the House of Shade. No more explosions. No more dead bodies,” Eric noted.
“No more war,” Nick concurred.
They were both silent.
Turner drew in breath.
“She’s resting easy now, man,” he said quietly.
For another beat, Nick didn’t answer.
And the one word was weighty with meaning when he finally said it.
“Yeah.”
Hettie was avenged. The bad guys got their due. Not how Turner would have played it, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen all the same.
Moving them out of that heavy, he observed, “Now all we gotta do is sit and wait to see how Kane Allen and his Chaos crew deal with Valenzuela’s shit.”
“That MC is solid, Turner, so I hope there are no more bodies. Least not ones from the wrong side,” Nick replied.
“I hope that too. Though I’ll have to get it through the grapevine.” He glanced back at the open door to the motel room, now teeming with local cops and not-local Feds, feeling the twist of disgust pull at his mouth. “Done with this shit.”
Nick sounded stunned. “You retiring early?”
“Job offer. Better money. And what I’m gonna be doing, likely not gonna end up in some tatty motel miles from home starin’ at a man with no face.”
“Christ,” Nick muttered.
“Not to mention, I got unfinished business I can’t take care of inside. That snake’s still in the garden, Nick, and I gotta get hold of the resources I need to deal with it. Those resources not bein’ in the FBI. One of my team got dead because of that. Nearly two. She’s avenged. But the job isn’t done.”
Even with Tucker and Sylvie Creed’s best efforts, they still didn’t know who’d turned on his team.
Eric Turner intended to find out.
“You need anything, you obviously got my number,” Nick offered.
In the new world where he’d be dwelling, that would be a number Eric could use for a variety of reasons.
And he would.
“Headed to LA,” Turner shared.
There was another beat of silence before he heard Nick Sebring bust a gut laughing.
That pissed Eric off.
So he said not a word and hung up.
Half an hour later, free to do it now, Nick called him back from his old cell.
And the asshole was still laughing.
* * * * *
Olivia
Hands to the deck railing, I stared at the trees.
“That wasn’t what I wanted to happen, Livvie,” Nick whispered in my ear, his front to my back, his hands at the railing beside mine moving to cover them, instantly warming them against the cold.
“I know,” I replied to the trees.
“Valenzuela dismantled her operations. She was expanding too fast. Getting cocky. Making deals. She owed people money. She was screwing with Valenzuela every chance she could get. They were on the run. I communicated I wanted her shut down. Way the scene read, Harkin turned on her. Witnesses say—”
I shifted a hand and laced my fingers through his.
Nick quit talking.
“Valenzuela would have eventually made his moves. He was stronger. She had no chance.” I was still talking to the trees.
“What I pulled expedited—”
I twisted my neck to look at him. He lifted his head and caught my eyes.
“She made her decisions,” I said, soft but firm. “You made yours. I made mine. I knew precisely what would happen if I got on that plane, Nick. I knew. It came faster than I expected, but I knew. I made my decision and got on that plane. It still doesn’t make what happened my fault. It also isn’t yours. It’s the life she chose. Neither of us should feel guilt because my sister decided to resurrect the family business not with sound investments but by building drug labs.”