Deadline to Damnation: Sons of Templar #7 Read online

  Deadline to Damnation

  Sons of Templar #7

  Anne Malcom

  Copyright © 2019 by Anne Malcom

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Anne Malcom

  To everyone who has been here since Making the Cut. Thank you for making my dreams come true.

  Chapter One

  “Do you trust me?” he asked, holding out his hand.

  I took it without hesitation. Everything I did with Liam was without hesitation.

  He grinned, teeth white and straight, smile melting my heart the exact same way it had in the halls of Castle Springs High School two years ago.

  He glanced down at the twinkling water below us, then back to me, his eyes carved emeralds. They were brighter when he was happy. They almost glowed now. Especially when they run up and down my swimsuit-clad body.

  I blushed under the heat of his gaze. The knowing. And he did know my body. Every inch. Since he’d taken my virginity six months ago and treated it like a gift. Treated me like a gift. A treasure.

  “You want me to go first, wait for you below, or you want to take the leap with me?”

  Again, there was no hesitation. “I want to take the leap with you.”

  Something moved in his eyes, they brightened, with the mischievous glint that he was known for as a teenage boy. But something else, something that belonged on the face of a man. Which was what he was turning into. His lean muscles were bulking up. His face was getting sharper, more straight edges. And then there was the way he made me feel like a woman. Only a man could do that.

  His grip tightened on my hand as he yanked me in, kissing me brutally and beautifully. I melted in his arms.

  His eyes were dark when he pulled back, dark with a man’s desire. He glanced down to my bikini again. With hunger.

  My stomach flipped. And it had nothing to do with the cliff we were about to hurl ourselves off of.

  “Ready?” he murmured.

  “Always,” I whispered back.

  Then we jumped.

  Together.

  * * *

  “Why are you doing this?” I demanded, ripping myself from his arms. Something I’d never done before, his arms were the place I’d live forever if I could.

  Where I’d planned to live forever.

  Until he told me his plans.

  Plans that he’d made without telling me. While promising us a future. While we talked about our marriage, made a blueprint for an entire lifetime. He was making those promises to me while making life-changing decisions without me.

  Decisions that would take him to a war half a world away, without a promise of return.

  “Because it’s something I have to do, babe,” he said, voice hard. I’d never heard it like that before. “You know that.”

  “No, I don’t know anything!” I screamed. I’d never screamed at him before. “I thought I knew you. Knew us. And now you want to take yourself away from everything to fight in a war that isn’t even yours?”

  Those hard edges I’d noticed in the softness of today sharpened even more. Sharp enough to cut. There was no boy from today left. “It is my war,” he replied. “And yours.” He paused, running his hands through his hair as he did when he was frustrated. It was silky, long. I loved to run my fingers through it. It’d be short, gone like the boy of today when the army shaved off his hair and his youth. I took it all in. The hair. The emerald eyes, his handsome, breathtaking face. The one that stole all the girl’s hearts at school, but the one who’d only been focused on me.

  And he’d never looked at me like this before. With this hardness. With something missing. He was detaching himself from me. Already. The decision was made. Cold terror washed over me. I’d been so confident of the control I had over my life, blissfully happy, wandering around town with a small but heavy diamond on my finger and love in my heart. I’d never had a reason to guard my happiness, I’d grown up in a good family who nurtured me, I hadn’t experienced hardship or real tragedy. I saw it, on TV, in other people, so I knew it existed, but I was stupid enough to think it wasn’t going to happen to me. I was used to clear blue sky. I forgot that storms existed.

  “You knew I was going to enlist,” he said finally.

  I shook my head rapidly, calling up snatches of conversation where he’d mentioned the army casually, without any commitment. “No, I knew that you got into Harvard. Full scholarship. I knew you’re the smartest person in the room, and that you’re going to be somebody. I knew we had plans to go to colleges close together, to live together when we were done. Take on the world. I didn’t know you were going to throw it all away.” I paused, tears prickling the backs of my eyes. “I didn’t know you were going to throw us away,” I choked out.

  The naïve happiness of our day was a faint memory and I felt like I’d never be happy again like I had been in that moment. When the future was as cloudless as the sky above us and as clear as the water we’d jumped into.

  Together.

  Liam crossed the room in two long strides, framing my face with his hands. “I’m never going to throw us away,” he promised. “You don’t throw away a treasure when you find it. And that’s what you are.” Something moved in his face. Something still soft and kind. I wondered how long it would be there. How long that fleeting hardness would take to become permanent. “Unless you won’t wait for me.” Uncertainty, vulnerability saturated his tone, his face.

  I knew Liam. Better than anyone. He was my best friend. Soulmate. I knew he was smart. He liked to take risks. Like jump off cliffs into water. But only when he knew the water was deep enough. He only jumped when he knew he would surface. I trusted him today. I trusted him yesterday. I had to trust him for tomorrow too.

  I glared at him. “I’ll wait for you, you ass. Forever if that’s what it takes.”

  It was the truth, that promise. Not made lightly. I was smart too. I knew that what was ahead was going to be hard. That we’d be living lives worlds away, with geography having nothing to do with it. I knew that war would change him. Like it had changed his dad. Harden him. Take away some of the boy I’d fallen in love with. But I loved him. I’d love him for who he was becoming, who he had been yesterday and who he’d have to turn into for tomorrow. It was that simple to me. We’d work because I’d make sure of it.

  His face changed. Melted. Then he kissed me, long and hard and almost enough to make me forget about everything.

  Almost.

  “It won’t be forever,” he murmured against my lips. “I promise.”

  Liam might’ve kept his pr
omises.

  But wars didn’t.

  * * *

  Sixteen Years Later

  Jagger

  It was chance that saved his life.

  Not fate.

  He didn’t believe in that bullshit.

  Fate was a notion held by people who didn’t have the courage to drive their own lives. He may have driven his life right into hell itself, but at least it was his foot on the gas pedal.

  So it wasn’t fate that saved him. Or even chance.

  It was routine.

  He was on a run.

  On Christmas.

  Because Grim, his president, the man who had sent him on these runs every year since he patched, knew that of all the things he could handle, he couldn’t handle fucking Christmas. He could see a man die in the most horrible and brutal of ways. He could kill a man in the most horrible and brutal of ways. He could withstand pain. Torture. He could give out pain. Torture another human being until they screamed, pissed themselves, cried and then passed out.

  He could dig a grave, drop a corpse inside it and bury a man he’d killed with his own two hands.

  He’d fight until his knuckles bled and until his opponent was on the ground, sometimes breathing, other times not.

  The cut on his back made it necessary for him to be able to handle all of these things and more.

  But he couldn’t handle one fucking day that was created for some false god and hyped up by big business to put people in more debt and give more people the excuse to eat more, work less and just be general assholes.

  To be with family.

  Jagger didn’t have a family.

  Not by blood, anyway.

  Though he’d shared blood with all the men in his chapter. Considered them brothers.

  And they were all dead.

  Every single one of them.

  His president. The one who was as hard as nails, who killed without hesitation, who had ruled one of the most dangerous chapters in the Sons of Templar for years. Who may have been a hard motherfucker who didn’t give mercy to enemies, but he gave Jagger the mercy of sending him away every Christmas.

  A mercy that ended up saving his life.

  Levi, who’d brought him into the fucking club. The old fuck had seen something in the broken kid with fresh scars and the devil at his heels.

  The fresh-eyed prospects who still smiled without stains on their souls. Fuck, even the club bitches. It wasn’t like he enjoyed anything meaningful with them, because he wasn’t capable of meaningful, but they were good women. In their own way. And they were fucking dead.

  Apart from Scarlett. She was the one that called him. She was the one that fucking found everyone. Voice not even shaking. Bitch was strong. He wasn’t surprised she survived. Glad as fuck she did. She was hard. Not an ounce of soft or sweet in her, apart from in the places a woman was soft and sweet. But she was a good person. A survivor.

  And Hansen and Macy. They survived.

  If his best friend and his fucking pregnant wife had been amongst the corpses of his family...he slammed down another shot, hoping the burn might chase that thought away.

  It didn’t.

  * * *

  Caroline

  Five Months Later

  I was making my list.

  I did it every morning.

  My therapist suggested it. Does anyone do anything like write the things that made them happy in a day without some kind of shrink telling them to do it? If you had to write down reasons you were happy, then it was a big sign that you weren’t happy.

  But I did it anyway. It was a visceral and actionable thing to do to control my state of mind. Or at least create the illusion that I could control something as unhinged and damaged as my mind.

  “I want you to write a minimum of three,” she said. “And there is no maximum. Some days it’ll be hard to get three. But others there will be days when you fill up a whole page.”

  I quirked my brow but didn’t say anything. What a load of bullshit, I thought.

  That was four years ago.

  And I’d done it every single day since then.

  I have yet to fill up a page.

  One day I’d gotten up to the number seven.

  Most days I still struggled to get three. No, I battled to get three, and that was with the first one on the list being consistently the same since I started the damn thing.

  I am inhaling and exhaling.

  Yeah, most people wouldn’t consider the mere act of breathing as a reason to be happy. Because it wasn’t unique or special. Even people going through the worst shit a human being would ever have to face were still breathing. Inhaling and exhaling didn’t denote happiness. But I had to start somewhere. And I also had to remind myself that breathing wasn’t something to be taken for granted.

  2. My sister is finally pregnant after trying for two years.

  3. My paycheck is enough to cover my rent and bills and buy myself a coffee every day for the next month, plus those shoes that are on sale at Nordstrom.

  I chewed on the top of my pen.

  Three was all I had in me today.

  Plus, I had better things to do.

  I had a story to write. Well, I had a story to research. One that might leave me with more than enough money to buy half price designer sneakers and an overpriced coffee every day.

  The roar of motorcycles made me glance up as I watched a line of them pull into the parking lot of the Sons of Templar compound.

  An automatic gate with barbed wire at the top started to close as the bikes disappeared. Security cameras were mounted on the gate and pointed toward the street. I was parked down the road enough not to be caught in them.

  Their clubhouse was now a fortress.

  Or as close as it could get.

  It made sense since a handful of months ago almost every single member of the club was brutally murdered. The police had no leads.

  Because they were paid to have no leads.

  In a small town in the middle of New Mexico, one-percenter gangs could still pay off the underpaid local cops.

  Shit, they could do it anywhere. Money spoke louder than morals. Always.

  If I’d learned anything in my years of covering some of the most dangerous stories in the world, it was that. Even embedded in warzones throughout the planet, I saw what a handful of dollars could do. It could change a life. End one. Buy my entry. Buy my exit. Buy my safety. Or buy my pain.

  Much more than a handful of money was what bought wars. But they were always paid for in full and in cash, and so much more in pain.

  I might’ve been stateside once more, but I was in the middle of a warzone, no doubt about that. I’d done my research. As much as I could without getting myself on the Sons of Templar’s radar. And I knew about their sordid past. The Amber chapter in California was the most notable. Throughout the years they’d had rapes, murders, kidnappings, drive-bys, explosions, all of which somehow involved the women married to some of the most dangerous men in the country.

  But I also knew that despite all this, the Amber chapter was relatively legit. Well, as legit as a previous outlaw motorcycle club could be. There were some stories there for me.

  But not the story.

  The one that might blow up my career. In ways that my war coverage never could. Yeah, I was somewhat of a household name when people thought of conflict correspondents. But that was likely because I’d stayed alive longer than most of my contemporaries.

  And war was now the wallpaper to the newsroom.

  It wasn’t shocking.

  Nor was it even news.

  Because it was too common.

  Imagine living in a world where mass genocide and crimes against humanity were too common for people to care about.

  Worse, because we didn’t have to imagine that world.

  We lived in it.

  But I’d lived enough to know I couldn’t change it.

  I wasn’t noble enough to want to do that. People might’ve been tricked into thi
nking that because I risked my life to tell stories of suffering, but the truth was I did it to distract myself from my own. To live in outside horror, so I didn’t have to inhabit my interior one.

  I’d done it for the past twelve years, I’d collected all sorts of different horrors. Unthinkable brutality. Gruesome death. I found myself hungry for more. For something that would shock the American public back into being horrified again.

  Selfishly, I wanted the story.

  And it was inside the clubhouse I was staring at.

  Without hesitation, I opened my car door, put my heeled foot on the ground and started my journey toward the belly of the beast.

  * * *

  “You’re new,” someone slurred.

  Someone being a monster of a man in leather with the trademark Sons of Templar cut. He was younger than me. But he towered over me. I guessed he took steroids because there was no way a human got that jacked from the gym.

  Then again, most of the men in the room grew biceps from beating up gunrunners, collecting debt sheets from loan sharks, killing rival gangs and eradicating anyone dealing drugs within town limits.

  It had taken less than five minutes for me to be approached, despite the fact the room was pulsating with women, in varying degrees of undress and inebriation.

  It was exactly what I expected it to be.

  So very cliché.

  But underneath clichés were usually stories.

  Because I noted things in five minutes.