Talon (Uncompromising #1)(65)

“I didn’t need it until you dropped to the ground and retreated.” He grabbed my vest off the ground and threw it and his machine gun in the bed of his truck.

“You callin’ me a pussy?”

“Yes. She’s with the son.” Neil inclined his head to where Randy had been standing.

I turned and looked. The sight gutted me more than the shots I took. Silent tears streaming down her face, Siren kneeled over his prone body.

I walked to her side and leaned down to check Carter for a pulse.

Fuck.

Gripping his hand, she looked up at me but she already knew. “He’s dead.”

I hated him. I’d wanted Randy Carter dead. But never, until that very second, had I considered the ramifications of him dying by my hand. His chest riddled with bullet wounds, I couldn’t even be sure my shots had killed him but it didn’t matter. I saw the look in her eyes before she’d turned back to his body.

This was my fault.

Neil stepped up beside me. “André is on his way.”

All I could do was nod.

“Use the truck. Take her home. I’ll wait for André.”

“I’ve got the bike.” Part of me wanted to pull Siren into my arms and comfort her but the other part didn’t want anything to do with having her on my bike right now.

“I’ll ride it back.”

Neil hated rice rockets. He’d told me when I’d bought it that they were for short fucks with small dicks. When I’d reminded him I was six-two and hung like a motherfucker, he’d only repeated himself. I didn’t know why I was thinking about all this when Siren was lying over her dead ex, but I was. “C’mon, Siren.”

“I’m…” Her voice cracked. “I’m not leaving him.”

I reached for her arm. “He wouldn’t want you here when the cops show up.” I didn’t know what the fuck he’d want and I didn’t care but I threw it out there anyway.

She let me pull her to her feet. “What’s going to happen to him?”

Morgue, autopsy, box, ground. It was death. No words made it pretty. “Nothin’ you can do for him now, c’mon.” I ushered her to the passenger side.

“I shouldn’t leave him. He wouldn’t leave me.”

Inhaling, I swallowed everything down and said the only nonconfrontational thing I could think to say. “Neil’s here. He’ll handle it.”

Her watery eyes looked up at me. “I didn’t want him to die.”

Something I thought was beyond breaking, broke. “I know.”

“He was…he was the…” A sob escaped from her chest and she covered her face with her hands.

I put her in the truck, threw her bag in the bed and walked around to the driver side. Seeing all the bullet holes, it was a fucking miracle I wasn’t dead. I got behind the wheel and felt shit shutting down. Three tours in Afghanistan, countless deaths, dismemberments and more gunshot wounds than I ever thought I’d see in my lifetime, it had an effect. You shut down or you lost your goddamn mind. That shutdown, the part of my mind where every injury became clinical, it wasn’t something I was proud of. And it wasn’t what Siren needed right now but in that moment, it was all I fucking had.





I DROVE AS SILENT TEARS fell down Siren’s face. I didn’t even give a shit she was mourning him. Maybe he’d been her Leigh. Maybe he’d been good to her once. I didn’t know. I didn’t know shit about her or her past or what the fuck Stone had been talking about.

My arm throbbing, my chest feeling like a I’d gone three rounds with a heavyweight and lost, all I was focused on was that she’d fucking sold me out to Carter when she’d said I’d help him.

I pulled into my driveway and remembered Kendall. “Fuck.” I grabbed my phone.

Siren jumped, looking behind us.

“Just forgot somethin’.” No compassion in my tone, I dialed Neil.

He answered on the first ring. “Ja?”

I heard voices in the background. “I forgot Kendall.”

“Busy.”

“How long before you can go get her?”

He switched to Danish. “Knee-deep in shit with local. They’re trying to connect your mess at the apartment building to this.”

“Goddamn it. André there?”

“Ja.”

“He’s got friends on the force here. He should be able to smooth it over.” I glanced at my watch.

“He is covering our tracks but even he has his limits.”

Fuck. “They figure out it’s my bike yet?” I knew I shouldn’t have taken his truck.

“Ja.”

I sighed. “How long before black and white’s on my doorstep?”