Move the Sun (Signal Bend Series) (19 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Dumbstruck, Lilli didn’t answer Isaac right away. He knew Hobson? How did she not know that? She briefly considered lying, but decided against it—and it was too late anyway. Isaac’s question had caught her flat-footed, so she’d already given the answer away, simply by standing there, stunned.

But Jesus, she couldn’t tell him. And if he knew Hobson, fuck. Would he try to get in her way? She didn’t know what to do. Normally, she thought quickly on her feet, adapted to the situation before her. But now, her brain just . . .
skipped
. Without answering, she turned and headed back toward the house. She had no idea why she did that—it wasn’t like there was any chance at all that Isaac was going to turn around and ride away, or let the subject drop. She wasn’t avoiding anything. And yet, it took a force of will to keep her legs from speeding into a run.

She was panicking. She didn’t panic. Ever.

Sure enough, she heard him coming up behind her, and he grabbed her arm—not roughly, but firmly. He stepped up to face her and grabbed her other arm as well. “Lilli, no fucking way. We are talking this out. The secret ends now.”

She fought him. More than anything else, that was a testament to her panic. She broke his hold with a violent swing of her arms, then hit him hard in the chest with the
heels of her hands. Winded, he fell back a few steps, and she bolted, thinking to get into the house and lock him out.

None of what she was doing made any fucking sense. Running would not get her clear of this problem. Running was making it worse. But her body would not listen to her brain. She
heard him coming up behind her, surprisingly fast, and she felt his hands reaching just before they grabbed her. She spun as he got hold, and they went down, Isaac landing hard on top of her. They were face to face, on the ground, both of them winded.

“
What the fuck, Lilli?”

She fought to out from under him, but he was determined, strong, and probably 100 pounds heavier than she. He grabbed her wrists and forced them to the ground on either side of her head.
There was a fire in his eyes that bode an entirely different kind of passion from the kind he usually had for her. He was enraged.

“Why are you fighting me? Did you fucking know Hobson is connected to the Horde? Is that why the secrets?”

She didn’t know why she was fighting. She didn’t know why she couldn’t stop, but she was still trying to find a way to get free of him. Focused on that, she didn’t answer his question. He yanked her arms roughly over her head and manacled both wrists in one of his large, rough hands. With his other hand, he grabbed her jaw. She could feel the tension of his anger in his fingers digging into her cheek. “Lilli, goddammit. You talk to me.
Did you know?
”

“No! I didn’t know!” His hold on her face slackened instantly, and he let her arms go.
Just like that, he believed her. She pushed on his shoulders, but he still wouldn’t move off of her.

“Fuck, Sport.
Fuck. We
have
to talk. You see that, right?”

The familiar pressure of
Isaac’s body on hers was beginning to calm her, and her brain kicked back into gear. She could feel the jangly edge of the panic receding, and she realized that it had fed itself. She took a breath, as deep as she could with his weight on her chest, and nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” He pushed back to his knees and then stood and held his hand for her. She took it, and he pulled her up and then to his chest, folding her in his arms. Surprised, she didn’t return his embrace at first, but she could feel the calm in his body. Responding to it, she relaxed against him and clutched his kutte in her hands.

He kissed her temple. “No lies, baby. It’s time to come clean. Fuck the risk. Looks like our lines are gettin’ tangled up.
We gotta try to get them straight.”

Lilli’s brain was turning fast, trying to catch up and recover from her freakout. If Hobson was one of Isaac’s brothers, then this was a fucking calamity. He was right. Everything had to be out in the open between them. Her head still pressed to his chest, tucked into his kutte, she nodded.

“That’s my girl.” He shrugged back from her and raised her head. “I love you. Let’s work this out.”

She nodded again and took his hand. Time to sit down and talk.

When they got inside, she went straight to the kitchen and got them each a beer. She glanced at the digital clock on the range: 12:15pm. Good enough. She considered getting the tequila out instead, but she didn’t think getting drunk would improve the situation much. At least not yet.

Isaac was already sitting on the couch, his kutte off and folded over the back of an armchair. He’d sat in a corner, his arm stretched over the back of the couch. Lilli handed him a beer and sat facing him,
kicking off her shoes and tucking one leg under her ass.

He took a long swallow from his bottle and said, “Tell me why you’re gunnin’ for Ray.”

Not yet. She shook her head. A hard look crossed Isaac’s eyes, and he opened his mouth to protest, but she put her hand up. “You first. I’m sure my story is longer. Is he one of the Horde?”

“Not a patch. A patch’s brother. Wyatt. I don’t think you met him yet.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“Not exactly. I know why he’s gon
e and about when he’ll be back. But you’re not gettin’ that until I hear your story. Talk, Sport.”

What Lilli heard first and foremost was that Hobson was still local. She didn’t have to leave. That lightened her heart so dramatically that for a brief second she almost forgot that her plan to kill the cocksucker had just had an enormous wrench thrown in it. What would she do if Isaac and the Night Horde got in her way?

Fight one fire at a time. She told Isaac the story of the day she disobeyed a direct order, the day a whole squad was wiped out and she was blamed for it.

He never interrupted her, and she never stopped until the story was told. Her beer had gone warm in her hand. She told it the way she’d told it to Colonel Corbett on the day it happened, the way she told it to the review board, which
ruled to discharge her, allowing her the dignity of an honorable discharge and retaining her rank only to keep a lid on the story. They didn’t want cable news to get wind of the hotshot female combat pilot who lost her nerve.

She told it flat, without emotion. She had to. The emotion was too big,
even now, to let loose.

When she’d got that far, she stopped and drained her warm beer. She knew she wasn’t done, but the rest was something she hadn’t told to anyone who wasn’t part of this mission. And now she was about to break that seal.

Isaac spoke up during her pause. “Christ, Lilli. That’s awful. But I don’t understand why you’re after Ray.”

“Because he fucked with my ride.
He got those men killed. And he got away with it.”

Isaac stared, his eyes hot. Lilli wished she could know his thoughts. “That’s a fucked up accusation. You better know it’s true.”

“I know it’s true. I didn’t know it then, but I know it now.” She stood. “Fuck the beer. I need tequila. You?” Isaac nodded slowly, and she took their empty bottles and went into the kitchen to pour a couple of tall glasses of Patrón. She came back, handed him his glass and sat down exactly as she had before. Isaac hadn’t moved.

After a sip from her glass, she started again. “Lopez, my crew chief
, told me that he’d seen Hobson around my copter a couple of times shortly before the mission. He said he’d mentioned it in his testimony, but Hobson must have had some reason queued up, because it didn’t make any waves. But a few months after I was stateside, Lopez got in touch. This was before I was fully into this gig, so getting in touch wasn’t so hard. He’d just rotated out, and Hobson got wasted at the party and
confessed
to Lopez that he’d sabotaged my engine and then fixed it before the Chief got to it. Would’ve been easy to undo what he’d done. He knew he’d be in charge of the investigation—he was senior pilot after me, so he’d be OIC.”

For the first time, Isaac interrupted. “OIC?”

“Office in Charge. The perfect fucking crime. In charge of the investigation, in charge of the report.”

“Why didn’t Lopez report what Ray told him?”

Their glasses were empty. Lilli got up and brought the tequila in from the kitchen and refilled them. “A drunk utterance about a closed file? A confession that would tear the battalion apart? It would go nowhere but up Lopez’s ass. He did the right thing. The only way for justice to work here is off the books.”

“Lilli, you’re telling me that Ray let a whole squad
of men die because he didn’t like you. That’s a special kind of crazy. I know this man.”

“I don’t think he expected the mission to be so dire when he fucked with Donna. I don’t even know if he was trying to ruin my career so spectacularly. For all I know, he was just fucking with me. His favorite pastime. Doesn’t matter
. What he did got men killed. He doesn’t walk away from that.” The story told, she had a moment to understand something. “Are you saying you don’t believe me?”

He didn’t hesitate. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m trying to get my head around what you’ve told me, though. I need to make
the pieces fit.”

“No, you don’t. This is my thing, not yours.”

“You’re wrong, Lilli. This is someone I’ve known most of my life. This is my brother’s brother. A friend of the club. Baby, he’s under club protection. You understand what I’m saying to you?”

She thought she did, and it broke her heart. She stood and took his glass from him. “You’re saying you’re my enemy now. Get out, Isaac.” She turned and walked into the kitchen and put the empty glasses in the sink.

Then he was behind her, his hand on her shoulder, turning her roughly around. “No. You got it wrong. I’m not your enemy. That’s the last fuckin’ thing I want. But I have to take this to the club.” He lifted her onto the counter before she had a chance to resist.

The tequila was stirring
her sadness and anger into a particular kind of heat, and she could feel her hands shaking with it. She needed Isaac to get out of here. “Then we
are
enemies. That’s a confidence you can’t break, Isaac. I’ll kill you before I let you. It’s not just me on the line here.”

He wrapped his hand around her ponytail until his fist was against the back of her head. She swung at him, but he caught her fist in his other hand. “You need to trust me, Lilli. You need to let me work this. If you kill Ray while he’s under our protection, the club will kill you. I won’t be able to stop that. Let me work this. Let me figure it out. Let me help you.”

Isaac was panting, his face only inches from hers; Lilli could feel his breath against her cheek and ear. She was furious, but she was also wet and almost writhing with need. She pushed at him with her free hand, trying to make room to get her leg up and kick him, but he sensed her intent and knocked her leg away, spreading her wide and settling his hips against hers.
Oh, fuck.
He pulled hard on her hair, forcing her head back, and then his lips were on her throat, sucking. Gasping, she thrust against him, not even sure herself if she was trying to push him off or just grind on him. She was trying to remember that he was fucking everything up and threatening to put people who trusted her at risk, but the scent of him. The feel of his denim-clad legs against her bare ones, his hands holding her forcefully . . . fucking tequila.

“Let go of me.”

She knew Isaac wasn’t feeling the booze the way she was; she’d seen plenty of evidence of his impressive tolerance. But something was on him. His gaze was all but scorching her. “Fight me.”

“What?”

“I want you to fight me. C’mon, Sport. You’ve been trying to hit me since I got here. Fight me now.”

They weren’t done. They were in big trouble. Everything they’d found together was in jeopardy. Hell, it was probably already over. There was a good chance that one of them would kill the other soon.
And he wanted a rough fuck?

But Lilli could feel the hot steel of his erection against her
pelvis. Her heart was pounding in her head, and the crotch of her shorts was soaked.