Hard as You Can (34 page)

Had she left it in the truck?

All at once, the image of the spilled contents of her purse on the floor of Bruno’s office flashed into her mind’s eye.

She gasped a hard breath, and goose bumps ripped across her skin. “Oh, no. No, no, no.” Crystal couldn’t be that unlucky, could she? She couldn’t have done something that led to
this.
But the more she thought about it, the more she worried she had—the more she
knew
she had. A sob tore up her throat, and Crystal smothered it with her hand, feeling streams of wetness on her face.

Footsteps.

Crystal’s gaze flew to the apartment door, still open a few inches from when she’d come in, her hands too full to close it.

Whispered voices. More footsteps. Multiple people. Coming closer.

Had Bruno been watching for her truck? Waiting for her to come home? Had he returned to finish what he’d started?

Crystal lunged toward the door just as movement passed behind it. With all her might, she slammed it closed, but something kept it from latching—a body pressing from the other side.

She cried out and dug her feet into the floor, pushing harder. The minute she let up, her opponent would come flying in. He’d be right on top of her.

“Crystal. Crystal? It’s Shane.”

The words drilled through the loud buzz in her ears. “Shane?
Shane?
” Heart thundering, she let go of the door and stepped back.

He was right there. With four other men, all of them armed, weapons drawn, expressions wary, braced for battle. His arms around her were too strong, too tight, absolutely perfect. “Jesus,” he said, pulling her to the side so the rest of the men could enter.

A sob ripped out of her, smothered against his chest. Movement and voices came from behind her, but Crystal couldn’t think about any of that. Shane’s heat, his scent, the cotton of his button-down against her face—that was the universe of information she could handle in that moment.

Jenna.

Crystal wrenched back. “Jenna’s gone,” she said, her voice warped by tears and fear and grief. “I think Bruno has her.”

Something terrifying appeared in Shane’s steel gray eyes. Sympathy. Regret. Confirmation. “He does,” Shane said in a low, cautious voice.

Confusion scattered her thoughts. “Wait,” she said. “How—”

“Clear,” came a male voice from the back of the apartment.

“Clear,” another man said.

“Clear,” came a third. “Apartment’s empty.”

“Wait!” she yelled as the men spoke.

Five pairs of male eyes swung to her, and the room went silent.

Shaking her head, Crystal met Shane’s gaze. “How do you know? How do you
know
he has her?” Shane heaved a breath and his shoulders fell. “
How do you know?
”

“I bugged your apartment. That first night I was here.”

The words came to her as if through a tunnel, distant and tinny. “What?” He’d been spying on her? She retreated a step, pulling herself away from his touch. Shane spied on her . . . just like Bruno. “You . . .” She shook her head again, her mind so badly wanting to reject what he’d said.

“This damage wasn’t quiet. A neighbor has got to have called the police,” the huge man said, looking from Shane to a dark-haired man she hadn’t met. Crystal couldn’t remember the big guy’s name, though they’d met at Confessions. “We should relocate this conversation.”

She pushed on like the man hadn’t spoken. “Why would you do that? I helped you. I risked myself for you. I risked Jenna.” Static roared inside her head and white-hot rage filled her chest. Lunging, she swung her fists at Shane. “It’s your fault this happened!”

“Crystal. Stop. I’m sorry,” he said, taking her blows. “I know. Just stop, you’re gonna hurt yourself.” His voice was tight, sad, desperate as he caught her wrists in his hands.

“I thought I could trust you,” she said, not meaning to voice the thought but not regretting it one bit when Shane flinched.

“You can. I promise.”

“Oh, you
promise
? Well, then.” She threw up her arms, her heart breaking twice over. First, for the loss of Jenna, and second for the loss of the
idea
she’d had of Shane. How stupid she’d been. How reckless. And now the only person in the world she loved—and who loved her—had been kidnapped . . . and who knew what else. Tears squeezed her throat until it was hard to breathe. “I did everything you asked of me. You didn’t have to make me . . .”
Fall in love with you.

“I will explain. Later.” Shane grasped her by the arms and looked her dead in the eyes. “I know I fucked up, but those bugs were here in part so I could help if something like this happened. We heard Bruno bust his way in here. That’s how we knew. We tried to get here in time to save Jenna.” He swallowed hard, like failing to do so cut him. Deep. “We tried. But right now, we have to get you out of here.”

“I’m not—”

“Crystal, you don’t have a choice. Bruno will come back. But where we live is safe. And we can figure out how to get Jenna back.”

Get Jenna . . . back? They could do that?

For the first time in long minutes, the chaos in her mind subsided. The rage dulled. The hurt faded away. A new image flashed into Crystal’s mind—Shane and the dark-haired man hauling the injured blond guy up the steps and out of Confessions. “How?”

His thumbs rubbed gently over her arms where he held her. “I don’t know yet. That’s what we need to figure out. And we shouldn’t waste any time.”

Saving Jenna was all that mattered. Crystal nodded and followed Shane to the door, only darting back to retrieve her purse and her sister’s prescription.
Oh, God. She doesn’t have any medicine with her.
But Crystal couldn’t think on that long, because the five men circled tight around her and guided her out the door, down the steps, and a short distance across the lot to a big SUV.

Crystal ended up in the backseat between Shane and a big, athletic-looking man with dark brown skin and an absolutely lethal expression on his face. Edward. The one who had guarded Jenna the night she’d come to the club.

When he caught her looking, he met her gaze, and his brown eyes were fierce. “We will do
everything
we can to get Jenna,” he said, as the truck tore across the lot, the sound of the engine like a freight train.

The vow kept the worst of the panic at bay, but not all of it. Because she’d been held against her will by the Church gang. She knew what most of the worst-case scenarios looked like. Saw the reminder of it every day in the mirror. And her soul bled at the idea that she and Jenna would have any of that in common.

All her work. All her precautions. All the sacrifices Crystal had made to keep this very thing from happening. None of it had mattered. In the end, she hadn’t kept Jenna safe. She hadn’t kept her promise to their father.

The rough ride jostled her in the seat. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t hold it together. A whimper caught in her throat, and hot lines of tears spilled from her eyes.

“Come here,” Shane said in a low voice, lifting his arm around her shoulders and tilting her chin toward him with his other hand. “It’s not okay right now. I know it’s not. But it will be.”

“We have to get her, Shane. We
have
to.” She heard the pleading in her words and felt it pouring out of her eyes, and she wasn’t ashamed to beg. Not for Jenna’s life. “Please. I wouldn’t be able to live if anything happened to her.”

Shane nodded, and his expression was equal parts enraged and heartbroken, just like she felt. “I know,” he said.

As the world raced by outside the windows of the SUV, his words rekindled her anger. “No, you don’t. You
don’t
know. You
can’t
know what it’s like to have your sister ripped away from you, and to have that be your fault!”

Shane grimaced like she’d punched him. An odd tension Crystal didn’t understand filled the truck’s cabin.

“Yeah, I do. I know exactly what that feels like.” His soft declaration ratcheted the tension further. Crystal looked around at the other men, trying to figure it out, but they’d all turned away.

With deft flicks of his fingers, Shane unbuttoned the top of his shirt and tugged the left half to the side. His actions revealed the tattoo she’d asked about that night in his truck, the one she hadn’t been able to make out and he’d said represented a sad memory. Crystal’s stomach rolled as her gaze traced over the image of a winged broken heart stabbed through by a dagger.

Grief rolled into Shane’s gaze. “When I was thirteen, my eight-year-old sister Molly disappeared from our house while I was babysitting her. I’d told her to leave me alone. The police searched actively for about three weeks, but the false leads that broke and rebroke my mother’s heart went on for years. We never saw Molly again.” Grasping Crystal’s hand, he brought it against the warm, hard skin of his chest over his broken heart. “I understand,” he said in a strangled voice, his eyes glassy.

“Oh,” she said, his pain washing over her until it was hard to breathe—and harder to restrain herself from comforting him. “I’m sorry.” Crystal threw her arms around Shane’s neck and scrabbled into his lap. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“So am I,” he said against her hair. “But you have to know. I would lay down my life to make sure we get Jenna back.”

Face-to-face, they held each other, whispering words of comfort and apology. Crystal had been so right and so wrong. Even if he’d done something he shouldn’t have in bugging her apartment—and that still stung, Shane
was
a good man. She hadn’t read him wrong. But Bruno Ashe? He was an evil piece of shit. “I didn’t mean what I said,” she rasped, needing him to know, to believe. “It’s not your fault . . .”

Shane shook his head. “You were right that I invaded your privacy. And I’m sorry,” he said, stroking her hair and wiping a tear with his thumb. “But I was so afraid for you that I justified what I did as being for your own good. I understand if you can’t forgive me or trust me, but you have to at least know that I never meant any harm.”

“I know,” she said. “I believe you.” Crystal buried her face in his neck and breathed him in. His scent, his heat, his strength grounded her, gave her what hope there was in this hopeless situation.

No, she had to believe there
was
hope. She simply refused to accept any other outcome.

Jenna had wanted to pack up and leave this morning. Crystal had been the one to urge caution. Thinking back to that conversation nearly broke her heart. They could’ve been gone by now, and Jenna would’ve been safe. So if she lost Jenna—when it was her carelessness in Bruno’s office that had set off this whole chain of events, she knew one thing for sure.

Crystal would never, ever forgive herself.

S
OUL-DEEP RELIEF FLOWED
through Shane’s blood as he held Crystal in his arms. She was a slight little thing, and soft. And her presence went a long way toward quieting the ancient grief and guilt always stalking around at the back of his mind.

Less than an hour before, terror that he’d never feel this with her again had gripped him all the way into his DNA.

The drive to her place had been sheer torture. His sprint across the parking lot and into her building had felt like wading through wet concrete. But the minute he’d seen her dart behind the door, knowing it was her because she’d worn the same shirt as earlier, Shane had been able to breathe again.

It was an incomplete relief. A hollow victory. Because they hadn’t reached Jenna in time.

And now she was gone.

But Shane meant what he’d said to Crystal. If giving his life would restore Jenna’s, he would make that sacrifice. He refused to let Crystal suffer what he had all these years.

Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that.

A bone-jarring rattle as they crossed railroad tracks at a fast clip. “I haven’t seen a tail, have you?” Nick asked.

Beckett shook his head. “We’re clean as a whistle.”

Peering out the window of the SUV, Shane recognized the run-down landmarks of Hard Ink’s neighborhood. They were almost home. Which was good, because the team needed to make plans, and he and Crystal needed some alone time to finish their conversation.

He hadn’t thought twice about discussing his tragedy in front of the guys. She’d needed to believe in his ability to understand what she was going through, and he’d been willing to do what it took to earn that belief. Simple as.

But Shane had more to say—a lot more. He hadn’t said he’d understood just because he’d once been through the same thing. He’d said it because Crystal’s pain was his pain, too.

Apparently, that was what happened when you fell in love.

Beckett guided the truck through the fence and into Hard Ink’s lot. “We’re here,” Shane said.

“Okay,” Crystal said, her voice weary and weak. Shane kissed her hair, willing to do anything to make this better for her.

“We’ve got company,” Marz said from the front seat. Shane braced, peering over his friends’ shoulders through the windshield. The biker dude who worked at Hard Ink had just stepped out the back door, helmet in hand.

“It’s only Ike,” Nick said.

“I know,” Marz said, as Beckett pulled into a spot not far from Ike’s Harley. “Just wish we knew more about what his club was into. I know you and Jeremy think he’s fine, and he probably is. But I’d feel better confirming that he and his brothers aren’t in bed with Church.” Made sense to Shane. Everything they’d learned so far made it clear how far Church’s reach extended around this city. It’d be close to a miracle if they weren’t connected somehow. And they’d been damn short on miracles so far. The last hour proved that.

Nick looked from Marz over his shoulder to Easy and Shane. “Known the man for a while. Maybe I should just talk to him. See what I can find out.” Given how tight they were on time, that was probably the path of least resistance. Besides, Nick’s gut was usually spot on.

“Agreed,” Shane said.

Marz shrugged. “Your call, hoss.”

They spilled out of Beckett’s truck and congregated at the rear just as Ike neared. The man’s smile and greeting died on the vine as his gaze landed on the holstered piece on Beckett’s side he hadn’t tried to hide. Then Ike’s brown eyes went stone cold.