“So you love the woman you let other men screw for money?” Brogan ignored the protest.
“I love her,” Donny snapped, meeting his gaze directly. “And she’s no whore. Sandi screws no man but me. I know what she does. She flirts and she teases a little. Then she gives them a few sleeping pills while I steal their money. She doesn’t screw them.”
“You endanger her in whatever moneymaking schemes you can come up with. That’s not love.”
“I love her.”
Brogan whispered the next accusation sneeringly. “You use her; you don’t want to die for her.”
“I love her.” Donny’s voice cracked in misery. “I love her.”
Son of a bitch, go figure.
“Donny?”
“What?” He sniffed, swallowing tightly.
“Do you want to live another day with the woman you love?”
Donny nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“Then listen to me carefully.” Brogan hardened his voice. “If either of you, at any time—tomorrow, next week, next year, f**king next lifetime,” he snarled, “should verbally or physically or through someone else strike out at Eve Mackay again, I won’t give you a choice; I’ll just come after your woman.”
Donny’s eyes widened in shock.
“If you so much as breathe Eve’s air, brush against her, or even think to insult her, her family, her friends, hell, her f**king enemies, then I’ll come after your lover. When I do, I’ll make what happened to those rabbits seem humane. You read me, ass**le?”
“I hear.” He snarled as Brogan nicked his neck with the blade.
“If Eve Mackay or Brogan Campbell learns anyone was here tonight, learns you were threatened in any way, coerced to act decent, then I’ll come for her,” he whispered insidiously. “And if I hear so much as a breath that you have information concerning thieves and traitors and didn’t tell me, then I’m coming after her. Read me.”
“I hear you.” Donny’s voice was barely a whisper now.
“If I find out you heard any of the above and you didn’t contact me, I’ll bathe in her blood. You got it?”
“How?” Donny swallowed tightly. “Contact you how?”
“You left your cell phone in the kitchen,” Brogan reminded him. “There’s a new number in it. Now I’ll ask you one more time: Do you know anything?”
Donny and Sandi stared at each other for long moments. Nodding to Eli, Brogan watched as he pulled the long, wickedly sharp knife from the sheath at his thigh and laid it against Sandi’s neck.
“Wait. Wait,” Donny whispered.
Eli lifted the knife marginally from Sandi’s throat—just enough that it wasn’t touching her skin.
“Come on, Donny,” Brogan urged him. “What do you know?”
“The thieves are part of the touring club,” he revealed. “Some say it’s Brogan Campbell.”
“Is it?” Brogan asked.
Fear flickered in Donny’s eyes. “I don’t think so. I think it’s someone else, but I don’t know who. Someone who used to be in that group with Chandler and Dayle Mackay.”
“The Freedom League?” Brogan asked, his gaze flickering to Eli. This was the first they had heard this.
“Yeah, that Freedom League.” Donny swallowed again, obviously terrified, but more terrified of losing his lover.
Luck was with him tonight, Brogan thought. He’d never imagined that coming here to beat the shit out of the little bastard over some rabbits would end up with information on the very investigation he’d been working for two and a half years now.
“You know something else, Donny,” Brogan stated smoothly, confidently.
He could see it in the other man’s eyes every time his gaze met his lover’s.
“Just talk, that’s all,” Donny wheezed. “There’s talk that the files Brogan Campbell stole are really important. They have coordinates in them for something. Something that the League wants.”
“And where did you hear this talk?”
“I was outside at the bar one night, snortin’ a little somethin’—somethin’,” he said nervously.
“I don’t care what you were doing,” Brogan stated softly. “What did you hear?”
“Some dude was takin’ a call.” Donny’s voice lowered as though he were afraid others might hear him. “I don’t know who it was. He was pissed; he said Brogan had to be behind it because they were searching for the same thing. He said he knew it was Brogan Campbell. That only Campbell had a reason to want those files or the information in them.”
Sandi was still crying, though not as hard.
“What’s Brogan Campbell searching for?” he asked as though he didn’t know.
Desperation filled Donny’s gaze now. “I don’t know,” he rasped. “I swear to God, I don’t know.”
“What have you heard, then?” Brogan asked.
Donny licked his lips nervously, his gaze seeking Sandi’s again. Sandi gave the barest nod.
“Come on, Donny; don’t make my friend over there hurt her, okay? Neither you nor Sandi would like it.”
Donny’s gaze flickered nervously. “When Brogan showed up he got real interested in this motorcycle touring club we have. The dude said who they were lookin’ for was there. They just don’t know who he is. But he can read some files they have, and they think Brogan has the other files. He said Brogan was the only one with the background and experience to steal them, too. He said this dude they want can read them. Then, when I was in Fort Knox a few weeks later, there were these dudes at the bar I went to, they was talkin’ ’bout Dawg and Eve’s daddy. They said there was talk circulatin’ heavy that there were files their daddy worked on while he was in some federal agency he worked for that hid the location on somethin’, and those files were stolen. Talk was maybe Dawg would know what that somethin’ was, and the only way to find out would be to use his sisters to scare him, but no one can go after a Mackay, ’cause if they did, then whoever that dude is that can read those files also has lots of information on that Freedom League and if any Mackay, or anyone that any Mackay loves is threatened, then he’s gonna talk. And he’s gonna tell all these secrets he has on that Freedom League. And they don’t want him talkin’ ’cause word is, he knows everything. Who wasn’t caught, who’s still hidin’, and lots of other stuff.”