He intended to find out.
Pulling into the marina’s nearly full parking lot, Brogan wasn’t in the least surprised to see the three men leaning against Natches’s black-on-black Mercedes Roadster, waiting for him.
They didn’t look too damned happy with him either. Especially Dawg. Brogan was guessing Eve had gone to her brother for advice while he was gone. Not that he could blame her. It wasn’t as though Brogan had been there for her, or had given her reason to believe he would return.
Pulling the Harley in behind the expensive little Roadster, he inhaled for strength. For a man who prided himself on never asking anyone for a damned thing personally, he was about to ask the Mackays for a hell of a favor.
Stepping from the bike, he moved the slight distance to the three men and stared back at them without so much as a hint of the nervousness he could feel in his gut. His nerves were on edge, a sense of foreboding that made no sense filling his gut.
As he stepped to them, the three men watched him with narrow-eyed suspicion.
“Dawg, Natches, Rowdy.” He nodded in an attempt at politeness. “Before we take care of business, I need to ask a favor.”
Dawg’s gaze sparked with anger as the other two watched him with cool suspicion.
“Seen Eve since you got back?” Dawg actually showed his teeth.
Brogan turned his gaze to Rowdy, usually the tolerant one of the group. There would be no hope there.
“Dawg, could you stop . . .” being an ass, he wanted to say.
“Have you stopped breaking her heart? Because once was too damned many times to hold my sister while she cried over your worthless ass.”
“I still say, get the papers we need, then tie his feet to cement blocks and dump him in the middle of the lake,” Natches grunted.
Brogan forcibly controlled his grin as he turned back to Dawg. As he started to speak, the door to the marina offices opened and Ray Mackay stood in the doorway. Dawg might be Eve’s brother, but Ray was the acknowledged patriarch of the clan.
“Brogan, son, is Dawg giving you problems?” Ray shot Dawg a warning look.
“Sir, I’ve been trying to ask Dawg to accept my request to marry his sister Eve, but he doesn’t seem too inclined to let me get the words out.”
Even Ray appeared completely shocked by the request.
“You’re joking,” Dawg said, the look in his eyes nearly dazed as he stared back at Brogan.
“And you’re trying to piss me off,” Brogan decided. “Now, while I’m away from her, I’d like to go to the bank and take my grandmother’s ring out of the safe-deposit box I have there. But it will do no damned good if you refuse the request.”
“Why?” Dawg was still staring at Brogan as though uncertain whether he should believe him.
Brogan shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans to keep them away from Dawg’s throat.
It would be simpler, easier to explain what he wanted, further, he decided.
“My grandmother left me her engagement ring and her and my grandfather’s wedding bands,” he gritted out in irritation. “But I can give them to my fiancée only if a male relative gives permission for her to marry me.”
Dawg frowned. “She won’t like wearing a ring your first fiancée wore.”
Yeah, Dawg was just trying to piss him off; that was all it could be.
“Candy never wore my grandmother’s ring,” he snapped. “No other woman has even seen it since my grandmother’s death. Candy had no male relatives to ask, so I couldn’t have done it even if she had known about it.”
“There are ways around that.” Natches grinned. “You could still have given it to her.”
“Dammit, I didn’t want to give it to her,” Brogan snapped furiously before turning back to Dawg. “Yes or no, dammit. And if you say no, I’ll show her the rings and tell her you’re the reason she can’t have them.”
Dawg’s eyes widened in mocking innocence. “I never said such a thing as no, Brogan.”
“You didn’t say yes, either.”
Dawg grinned. “Hell, I didn’t. Did I?”
Brogan took a step toward him, intent on cracking the other man’s jaw on his fist.
“How bad do you want that compensatory package, Dawg?” he asked instead.
“Pretty damned bad.” Dawg’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
“I’ll take that as a yes then. . . .”
“Well, now, I don’t know about that. . . .”
“Hell, you have my permission to marry her,” Ray snapped, glaring at Dawg. “You want to see her cry again, moron?” he asked with more playful affection than true anger.
“I was going to give him permission,” Dawg growled as he propped his hands on his hips and stared at his uncle with a fierce frown. “There was no damned sense in making it easy on him.”
Brogan snorted at the smirk that curled Dawg’s lips then as Brogan glared back at him.
As Brogan opened his lips to say something particularly insulting, Dawg’s expression suddenly creased into one of concern a second before a blaring horn had the rest of them turning quickly. The two-year-old bright blue BMW barreled toward them quickly.
“Samantha,” Brogan shouted her name, sprinting toward the vehicle as it suddenly slammed into another parked car. Racing to the driver’s side, his heart in his throat, he jerked the door open, only just barely catching his baby sister as she toppled from the vehicle.
Mackays were cursing as Brogan caught her in his arms, the sight of her blood matting her hair from a jagged gash in her scalp, a deep puncture to her shoulder, and a slice across the side of her neck that only narrowly missed her jugular. Glimpsed, but not ignored by Brogan was the sight of her partner, Kraig, in the passenger seat staring unseeingly into the window, half his face blown away.
Brogan felt his insides freeze to jagged chips of ice inside his soul as he heard Dawg ordering an ambulance to the marina.
“Brogan,” Samantha sobbed weakly, her normally tanned skin paper white. “They have her; he betrayed me, Brogan. He betrayed both of us.”
“Who, Samantha, who do they have? Who betrayed you?”
“Kraig,” she sobbed weakly as he tore the bottom of his shirt before folding it to apply pressure to the wound at her neck, where she was losing more blood than she could afford. “I think I killed Kraig, Brogan.” She stared up at him, her gaze feverish and dazed. “I killed him, but he let them take her, I’m so sorry.”
“Who?” he wheezed, but he knew. He knew who had been taken even before she whispered the information. Samantha stared up at him miserably.
“Eve, I’m so sorry, Brogan, I tried to stop them but they took Eve,” she sobbed. “She was going into the grocery store when we pulled in. Judge Kiser’s big white truck pulled up and his foreman jumped out and grabbed her. I tried to get out of the car and save her, but then Kraig pulled a knife on me. He sliced me pretty good until I could get a shot off. My phone got damaged in the fight—thank God you told me you were meeting Dawg here,” she whispered hoarsely as Brogan stared down at her and felt a darkness unlike anything he had ever known before fill his soul.
Brogan could hear Ray, Dawg, Rowdy, and Natches as they contacted Alex Jansen, John Walker, and Sheriff Zeke Mayes, and ordered them to the marina.
“Forgive me, Brogan,” Samantha cried weakly. “Please forgive me.”
“It’s not your fault, Samantha, I promise, I don’t blame you,” he managed to say through the awful buzzing that filled his mind.
“Samantha. Samantha, sweetie.” Dawg knelt beside them as he tore his own shirt from his back, folded it, and pressed it to her head wound. “Did Kraig say anything?”
“He said you and Brogan would know why.” She stared back at Brogan painfully. “He said I would be dead, but you would know why.”