Page 14 of Lone Star

“He was real broken up when Dad died.”

Candy nodded, frowning.

“But I’ve never seen him like this. He feels like this was his fault somehow. He’s got all this guilt – and he’s scared, too.” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen him scared, not even when he should have been – maybe especially not when he should have been.”

“And I’m guessing he told you not to worry about it,” Candy said.

“You guessed right. But what was I gonna do? I see my brother on the news and I’m just supposed to shrug and say ‘oh well?’” She threw up her hands with a sigh of frustration. “He’s a stubborn old dumbass. But you knew that. Wouldn’t tell me anything.

“I hate just dropping by like this – and at your place, too.” She gestured toward the door, and the sprawling, raucous bar beyond it. “I went by the clubhouse, and Jinx said you were here.”

She’d gone to the clubhouse first. A fact which did not bother Michelle. Nope, nope, not one bit.

“The place is jumping, by the way. Congrats.”

Candy shrugged. “I wanted the place out of nostalgia. Chelle’s the reason it’s a success.” He sent another warm look her way.

It shouldn’t have left her feeling as good as it did.

“Yeah?” Melanie kept her gaze on Candy. “That’s wild. I was never any good with numbers.

“But. Der.” Somber again. “Please tell me you know what’s going on here. Who the hell would want to come after Pace and his boys? They’re harmless.”

“I don’t know anything yet,” Candy said with regret. “I’ve got some feelers out. Made a few calls. And so far, the feds aren’t so busy trying to pen it onmycrew that they might actually get some real work done. But I don’t have any idea, yet.”

“Damn.” She raked a hand through her hair, and sagged a little, and looking at her profile, the sleepless circles under her eyes that Michelle hadn’t noticed out at the hostess station, Michelle wanted to kick herself.

She’d spent the past twenty minutes wrestling with her own selfish emotions, left reeling and stupid and downright bitchy in the wake of meeting her very loving, very attentive husband’s ex-girlfriend.

And here was Melanie, who, while a little more brash and Texas and friendly than Michelle herself, was worried about a brother who’d just lost three close friends. Who was so worried about that brother that she’d come looking for a friend who might be able to help.

Because Pacer’s boys had been staked out hand and foot, murdered, and left for the vultures.

Her stomach turned as she thought of it, and she swallowed down a wave of nausea. God, she was being anidiot.

“Melanie.” Her tone – her real tone, the one she used with friends, and club insiders – pulled Melanie’s attention, finally, and held it. “Whoever’s done this awful thing, Candy and the boys will find them, and nothing like it will happen again.”

It was the sort of hopeful lie that police officers and rescue workers told to shaken victims, an offer of hope to keep their spirits up. But, in this case, she knew Candywouldfind the bastards, and that they wouldn’t be alive very long after that.

Melanie stared at her a moment, tired and worried, and then she blinked and a slow smile formed. “Listen to you.” Her gaze cut toward Candy. “Yeah, you found one just as ruthless as you, huh?” She chuckled weakly. “Congrats to you both. A killer needs another killer, huh?”

Michelle sat back, idly wondering what the hell the other woman had seen in her gaze to come out withkiller.

Whatever it was, she decided she was glad for it.

Eight

Prior to what Jenny – and a few state patrol officers who’d had the pleasure of shoving him in the back of a car in his younger, wilder years – said, Candyman Snow was not an idiot.

Though he’d kept in touch with Pacer before and after his stint in New York, the last he’d seen of Melanie Menendez, she’d been looking at him big-eyed and sympathetic, the wind snatching her sunkissed hair over her shoulder and across her face as she walked backward toward the car of the man she’d left him for. Some plain-faced nothing special guy with too much gel in his hair, and a shiny, generic silver import coupe covered in Texas dust he’d no doubt wash off with a sour expression and a handful of curses later.I’m sorry,Der, she’d said, but there had been no tears; no regret. She’d made up her mind, and the only sorry she was was for him. Almost pitying; a gut-punch. Like he was some poor thing about to need tissues and chocolate.

He hadn’t mourned losing her. Really, he’d known the split was coming long before it happened. He couldn’t even dredge up a proper amount of hatred for the plain-faced import-driver. Melanie had been attracted to the superficial aspects of the club early on: the leather, the bikes, the scars, the glint of too-many rings on busted knuckles. It was a thrill for a lot of women, he’d learned over the years. The cliché bad boy charm – and hewascharming, more than most of his brothers, even. But she hadn’t liked the uncertainty of it. The waiting, the worrying; the dinners out called off because a truckload of guns needed running. The secrets she wasn’t privy to. She’d always been a digger, Mel. Digging at him for intel, wanting to be let in on the club secrets that, on paper, women weren’t supposed to know, but which all the old ladies learned during the hushed, pillow talk confessionals with their lovers.

“Don’t go confiding in that one,” Crockett had said once, early on, and Candy had nodded, and not protested, because he’dknown. The way her gaze went narrow and probing, the little frown that tugged at her mouth when he talked about “the guys” – she didn’t accept the club. And then she’d gone and asked him to leave it; like shrugging out of his cut, blacking his tattoos, and selling his bike was a thing he could do, and not the wildest possibility ever suggested to him.

He’d let her go when it was time, and wished her well, because he wasn’t an idiot.

And because he wasn’t an idiot, he knew that her showing up tonight had bothered Michelle. His wife; his old lady; the woman with just as much club in her DNA as him, who had only been spared a cut by a chromosomal roll of the dice.

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