Free Long Way Down (Fallen Angels MC) by Laura Day Page B

“Call the cops,” she said. “We’ll turn over everything we’ve found, we’ll tell them what Jack found out.”
     
    He was already shaking his head. “We’ve been over this, Caro. Cops in a sleepy little New England town aren’t going to look further than the obvious guy.”
     
    “You’re a war hero.”
     
    He snorted. “I’m a soldier. There’s a big difference.” He sighed, took her hands and lifted them to his lips, kissed each and every one of her knuckles, and then placed an extra on each wrist. “I have to do this my way, Caro. I’m going to go now, and if I can, I’ll come back to you. I’ll always come for you.”
     
    “You know, in the movies? That didn’t work out so well for the guy.”
     
    He shrugged, and her heart stilled. “You’ll just have to find the six-fingered man, then.”
     
    “Now who’s mixing metaphors?”
     
    He kissed her, hard and fast, and she could feel the good-bye in it, knew that he didn’t think he’d ever see her again. She kissed him back just as hard, opening his mouth with his tongue, giving him her urgency, her desperation, begging him to come back to her. Begging him to survive.
     
    And then he stepped back, pressed one more delicate, close-mouthed kiss to her lips, and was gone.
     
    After that, everything kind of stopped for a while.

     
    CHAPTER FIFTEEN
     
    When Caroline lifted her head from her hands, it was getting dark outside. Her eyes ached from crying, and she was nauseated from the intensity of emotion, the surety that he was gone, and that she had never been willing to say she was starting to fall in love with him. She called herself every crappy name she could think of, coward and chicken and wuss and baby. She still couldn’t get up off the edge of the bed.
     
    He was right. What was she really going to do? The cops weren’t going to look past the illegal doings of the club long enough to call him a soft drug dealer instead of a hard one. That wasn’t the cops’ job. And even if he somehow cut a deal, if that worked like it did on TV, he was still going to lose all the contacts and trust he had in the community, probably even the legitimate ones. There’d be nothing left for him, nothing at all.
     
    Except for her. But what did they have, really? A couple of red-hot encounters, and a fondness for the same books. What else? Nothing proven; nothing but instinct that they got along well. It wasn’t enough to base a life on. Not enough to give up everything he’d worked for in his life. He needed more than that. And she couldn’t give it to him. Not at all.
     
    He’d left everything in the kitchen, all of the check stubs, the books, the bills she’d carefully gone through. It confused her at first, but she suspected that he felt that there was no evidence that would convince these guys of anything. No matter what, it was going to be his word against Declan’s. Still, she tried to consider it a positive sign. He was going to come back. He’d left everything here. She was going to get the chance to figure out if this thing was a thing worth investigating.
     
    The bell for her front door rang, followed quickly by fast, hard knock. Her heart raced—had Mason come back? Already? She forced herself to walk to the door, even though her feet wanted to run, more than anything. She didn’t look through the peephole before opening the door.
     
    It took a second for her brain to recognize that it wasn’t him. She saw the leather jacket and smiled before she saw him. His dark hair was shorn close to his head. His eyes were dark as well, but cold, colder than a January deep freeze. She could see tattoos climbing up his neck from the collar of his white t-shirt, and the patches on his leather jacket seemed darker, bloodier, and more menacing. “Hi there,” he said. “You have something of mine. And I’d like it back now.”
     
    She tried to run, but he was fast, catching her arm in his hand and yanking her against his body, even