Zoey shook her head. “And it wasn’t your fault either.”

“What are we looking at then?” Doogan ran his hands over his face, the look of rage and pain in his eyes causing Zoey’s chest to clench in regret.

“Jack won’t be able to keep my friends from hearing about the attack today, either,” Zoey injected. “If I don’t meet with them soon, then you’ll be invaded by bikers again. Pissed-off bikers. And I don’t want that.”

And there she was. Zoey stood strong and proud in front of them. She didn’t have to raise her voice and she didn’t have to force her point across. She was Witchy. Everyone listened.

Everyone but the one man determined to see her destroyed.

SEVENTEEN

Witchy.

He’d called her his witch, but Doogan assured himself he hadn’t suspected who she was, and he knew that next night he’d been lying to himself.

He’d known the night he asked her to dance, and he’d known she belonged to him. He’d been in Somerset that summer to identify the woman known only as Witchy. He’d had no description, no way of knowing who she was, but when he met Zoey’s gaze across the room, he’d stopped looking for her. He hadn’t searched for her since. He’d sent messages to her, read hers in reply, but he hadn’t accepted what he knew inside.

He also pretty much figured out that Eli had known who she was all along as well. The younger man had kept her secrets, watched over her, worried and took the weight of those secrets with silent acceptance.

How in the hell she’d kept a secret like that, he wasn’t entirely certain. He was just amazed it had taken this long for someone to figure out a way to strike out at her. Whoever orchestrated it, he rather doubted it was Luther Jennings. The background he now had on Johnny Grace’s son showed a rather ineffectual little bastard with barely enough intelligence to stay out of Kentucky and out from beneath the Mackays’ circle of knowledge.

Jennings just wasn’t smart enough to put something like this together. That impression was confirmed after Doogan got off the phone with yet another contact he had reached out to for information. Luther Jennings dreamed of glory but had very little drive to attain it.

He was a coward, just as his father was, just as his grandfather was. And he was always blaming someone else for that cowardice.

“You have to do something about this,” Dawg hissed as he stepped into the garage where Doogan was working on the racing bike rather than dealing with her family, who refused to leave.

“And what do you suggest I do?” Looking up from the finishing touches he was making to the motor, he arched his brow curiously. “I’ve worked with Witchy for five years now, Dawg, albeit long distance. She’s damned good at what she does.”

“Damned good at what she does?” Dawg plowed both hands through his hair, stomped to the metal doors, then back again. “At dealing with cutthroats, drug runners, and murderers?”

If ever a man wanted to hit something out of pure rage, then it was Dawg.

“Dammit, even Rowdy kept this from me.” The note of anger in his voice had Doogan shaking his head.

He was damned if he wanted to play therapist to the Mackays. Where the hell was Timothy when he was needed?

“Rowdy’s a little smarter at some things than you and Natches are.” He shrugged. “You could learn from him.”

“Learn how to let our daughters jump from the frying pan into the fire?” The other man’s voice was strangled with outrage.

“This is about your daughters?” Doogan asked, rather surprised. “I thought it was about Zoey. But I guess the same advice could apply.” Bending to access a mounting bolt, he tightened it carefully. “They’re not children all their lives. Zoey grew up.”

“Has nothing to do with it,” Dawg countered furiously.

Straightening, Doogan stared at the other man thoughtfully as he cleaned the ratchet he’d gotten oil on and placed it carefully in its designated slot in the case.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Dawg looked at the case, then to Doogan. “Are you fucking cleaning your tools?”

Surprised, Doogan looked at the case and back to Dawg. “You don’t clean the oil from yours?”

Dawg glared at him. “It’s oil. Keeps them from rusting.”

Doogan looked at the tools carefully. They were rather old, and he’d used them quite often actually. “Mine aren’t rusted.” He shrugged. “As to Zoey and your daughter, I suggest you take a few nerve pills a day and let them live their own lives. All of you will be happier for it.”

“What the fuck do you know about it? You don’t have kids,” Dawg snapped.

But he’d had a child. A perfect, beautiful little girl with dark eyes and an angel’s smile. So delicate he’d been terrified to hold her, certain if he breathed the wrong way she’d break.

“I guess I don’t,” Doogan had to admit bitterly, grief welling inside him. “What the bloody fuck do I know? And why the hell am I even trying to talk to you? Why don’t you just rant and rave and I’ll do as everyone else does, nod and agree with you and then do as I fucking please when your back’s turned?”

Snapping the lid of the tool case closed with a force that slammed it in place, Doogan clipped the locks, grabbed the handle, and all but threw it in the backseat as the image of his daughter taunted him, shadowed him.

“Why don’t you get the fuck upstairs, Mackay, and out of my damned face?” He slammed the truck door, anger surging inside him. “It’s more than apparent you already know everything you need to know, so I can’t tell you anything that would help you. Correct?”

Dawg tipped his head to the side for a minute, his gaze curiously haunted. “I’m sorry, Doogan,” he said simply, the words and the tone sincere.

“For what? Being a fuckin’ bastard where your sister’s concerned?” Yeah, he should apologize for that one. To Zoey.

“For your loss,” Dawg stated instead.

His loss. Doogan froze.

“And where do you get that?” Doogan knew he hadn’t said anything.

A shrug of heavy shoulders and Dawg swallowed tightly. “You have the same look on your face that I felt in my gut when I learned Christa lost our first child.”

“That is not a discussion we’re having,” Doogan warned him softly. “Not now, not ever. We clear?”

Laying his forearms across the top of the truck bed, he stared back at Dawg.

“We’re clear,” Dawg agreed. “But you ever need an understanding ear . . .”

“You can’t keep doing this to Zoey,” he stated reasonably, ignoring the offer. “She’ll be the one that hates you for it. Of all your sisters, she’ll not forgive what you take from her.”

Dawg looked away. “I can’t help it. If something happened, and I knew I could have stopped it somehow . . .”

“It will break off your soul, it will rip your guts to a thousand shreds,” Doogan finished when Dawg couldn’t. “But you’ll know you didn’t fail her, Dawg. You didn’t make her play with Barbies when she wanted to learn how to throw a ball when she was three. You’ll know that when she wanted to learn to ride a bike at four, you didn’t buy her a Big Wheel instead.” His throat felt tight, strangled. “You’ll know you let her be who she wanted to be, who she needed to be, even if it was Witchy, when she was killed because her mother promised her a bike if she would go to the park with her. Then the bitch let her run across a busy street when she became frightened of the man whose car her mother tried to force her into. Because if she had trusted me to let her ride that goddamned bike, maybe she wouldn’t have gone with her mother when she knew she wasn’t supposed to.” He all but yelled the words back at Dawg, his fingers curled into fists, rage eating at his soul. “Stop worrying about your own fucking comfort level all the time, Mackay. Let them ride their goddamned bikes.”