Bloody Love (Lilah Love Book 6)

Kane is not dead. He’s not fucking dead.

I say those words over and over as I pull Kane’s Mercedes out of the airport and punch the accelerator, on my way to see the man behind Kane’s chopper being forced into an emergency landing. I know Pocher tried to kill Kane. And I also know that when you let evil live, it erodes everything good around it.

It destroys.

It takes.

It manipulates you. And it makes you do bad things.

But I’m not going to do a bad thing today. Killing Pocher is not a bad thing. It’s a good thing and it’s past due. He hurts and manipulates people. And he, possibly in support of my father’s wishes, which really hurts, was behind my mother’s chopper crash and murder. And I know, I just know, he’s behind Kane’s now, too. He’s that bold. He’s that damn blatant. He thinks we killed his brother, not the Umbrella Man. And he’s not wrong but that’s not the point.

I know he did this.

My cellphone starts ringing and I snap it up from my lap to find Jay on the caller ID. I consider ignoring him, but he’s one of Kane’s men and still my personal bodyguard, despite me saving him from the Umbrella Man, instead of the opposite, a few weeks back. He risks his life for me, and to me that means, I owe him respect. And besides, he could have news about Kane.

“What?” I answer.

“Stop now, Lilah. Do not go after Pocher and we both know that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

“Give me a reason to stop.”

“It’s what Kane would want,” he argues.

“You know very little about what Kane would want.”

“I know damn sure he doesn’t want you in jail.”

“I’m not going to jail.”

“Tell me how walking into Pocher’s house and shooting him doesn’t land you in jail?”

I hang up on him and his logic. Logic is not what I need right now.

He calls back, but this time, I ignore him. I dial Kit, the person I would call Kane’s bodyguard and confidant. He doesn’t answer. I don’t even try to call Kane. His phone isn’t pinging. I know this from Tic Tac, my tech guy. He wouldn’t get this wrong, not something this big. Kane won’t answer if I call. I glance in my rearview and it’s all clear. I took Jay by surprise when I left the airport. By the time he would have gotten into his vehicle, it would have been too late for him to stop me from leaving. He won’t catch up with me.

Five minutes later, I’m on the main highway. In another ten minutes, I turn onto Pocher’s street. As for how I’m going to kill Pocher and not go to jail, it’s not a question I have to answer today. Because my fucking brother is parked across from Pocher’s drive. He’s also standing outside in the cold-ass weather, leaning against his driver’s side door, one booted foot over the other. Cocky bastard in his puke tan uniform and jacket. I want to pull right up on top of him and scare the cocky right out of him, but I decide to save the good stuff for Pocher. I park close but not too close, and get out of the vehicle, rounding the hood to step in front of him.

It’s colder now in all kinds of ways, an icy feel to the air, cold as death. Andrew straightens and says, “He’s not home.”

“Where is he?”

“I have no idea. What do you think this achieves, Lilah?”

He’s still the chief of police. He has his oath to protect and serve and all that bullshit but I don’t like it right now. It sure didn’t matter when he helped Kane get rid of Roger’s body after I’d killed him. It was necessary. Ex-mentor or not, Roger was a serial killer who’d attacked Kane and obsessed over me. I’d been left no choice. It was by all legal and ethical means justifiable, even if stabbing him quite as many times as I did might have, okay definitively would have, appeared excessive. Thus, the buried body, which in the aftermath, Andrew handled that about as badly as a drunken sailor trying to walk a straight line to impress a girl. Badly. He’s drowning in his own guilt and bullshit.

“What do you think this achieves, Lilah,” Andrew repeats.

“Relief for the entire fucking world. I’m going to kill him. And then he’ll be gone. He can’t hurt anyone else. Easy peasy. I’m the girl who can truly proclaim your satisfaction is guaranteed. But you can pretend I told you I was simply going to talk to him, Chief Love. I won’t tell otherwise if you don’t.”

“Don’t say shit like that to me, Lilah.”

I scowl and snap back. “Don’t say shit like that to me right now, Andrew. Mom and now Kane and—”

“I know,” he grinds out. “But if anyone comes back from this, it’s Kane.”

“Mom,” I hiss. “And now Kane. You should want him dead.”

His jaw sets. “What if he didn’t do it?”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Roger told me—”

“Roger was sick. How can you believe anything he said? What if—” He cuts his stare and then looks at me as he says, “Dad knows what happened to you. He knows Pocher had you attacked. What if—” He scrubs his jaw, and starts again. “Mom would never have gone along with Dad being Pocher’s little bitch. What if Dad—”

“Killed Mom and tried to kill Kane?” I supply. “All I can say to that is that you weren’t there when he and I talked about what they did to me. At the very least, he’s complicit. Do I think he was the mastermind? No. I don’t believe he’s capable of being that independent of Pocher. Pocher needs to die. He’s needed to die since before the bastard was even born.” I try to step around Andrew.

He steps into my path, his hands on my arms. I catch his forearm, brace my feet, and prepare to fight. “Hands off,” I warn, “or I swear to you, my knee will be your nightmare.”

“If you do this, you will go to jail,” he warns. “Then I’ll blame Kane for ever pulling you into his world. I’ll go after him and he’ll come after me and we’ll destroy each other. You won’t be able to stop it.” He releases me.

“God, you’d probably be that stupid.” I draw a breath. “And if he’s dead?” I dare, when I swore to myself I wouldn’t go there.

“Right now, you have to think about him coming home. You have to think about how what you do affects both of you. And do you really want to end up behind bars and find out you killed the wrong person? Let’s go have coffee and talk.”

“No coffee. None of your conversation. I’ll leave. I’m going back to the airport. But if anything happens to Kane, I’ll go through you to get to Pocher if I have to, Andrew.” I turn away from him, intent on walking to Kane’s car, when all of the sudden not one but four vehicles come into view, all charging toward us.

I pull my weapon and Andrew is instantly by my side doing the same, and just in time, too. We’re surrounded by those very same vehicles one minute, and the next, there’s a good half dozen guns pointed at us, and the only thing that checks my adrenaline is that one of them, the one directly in front of me, is held by a man I know. He’s Kane’s man. They’re all Kane’s men.

“Put the fucking gun down, Enrique,” I snap. “I’m not in the mood for this shit.”

“What is this, Lilah?” Andrew retorts tersely.

“You need to get in the car with me, Lilah,” Enrique orders, ignoring Andrew.

“What was that? I need to shoot you?” I ask. “Right. Okay. I really need to shoot someone right now. And we both know you’re not stupid enough to shoot me.”

“But I will shoot your brother,” Enrique counters. “Kane doesn’t give a fuck what happens to him.”

“Kane cares about what I care about, but if anything happens to Andrew, you’ll be too dead to find out what Kane will do to you.”

“Kit told us to keep you from doing something stupid,” he replies. “At all costs.”

I lower my weapon. “Has he talked to Kane?”

Enrique’s lips press together and he lowers his weapon, motioning for everyone to do the same. “If he has, he hasn’t told me. We’re supposed to take you to your house and keep you there until we hear more.”

“Yeah, fuck Kit,” I say. “And you, too, Enrique. Coming at me with guns was just plain dumb. And Andrew’s the chief of police, you idiot.”

“We were trying to keep you from doing something stupid.” He motions to Andrew. “He can appreciate that.”

“Get your bitch-ass men back in their cars,” I snap. I glance at Andrew, who’s still holding his weapon on Enrique. “Put it up, Andrew.”

His cellphone rings and his jaw clenches. He holsters his weapon and grabs his phone, answering with, “Chief Love.” He listens a moment and then says, “We’ll be right there.” He hangs up. “We have another murder right here in the Hamptons. Let’s go.”

Another murder.

He means what I can assume will be another dead bride. And the last thing I’m doing right now is standing over a dead bride when my future husband’s missing. “You’re the big bad police chief.” I motion to Enrique. “I just told him so. You can handle it on your own.”

“It’s not the bride this time. It’s the groom. If the dead brides were a message for you, Lilah, a dead groom at the same time Kane is missing seems a pretty clear invitation for you to join me.”