Reparation

by Kristin Harte

  Thankfully, I had extensive training in such a thing.

  Muscle memory took over, years of repetition moving my arms into position. I fixed my grip on the bastard’s throat—left hand gripping my right bicep, right hand gripping the back of his head—before arching my body. And then I counted.

  Five seconds until the lack of blood flow to the brain caused Pistol’s movements to grow slower and clumsier.

  Ten seconds until he lost consciousness and hung heavy in my arms.

  If I’d been a good man, I’d have stopped. If I’d been a good man, I’d have called the authorities to take him to jail on kidnapping charges for the girl. If I’d been a good man, I wouldn’t have tightened my hold, continuing to count down as his brain died a quick death.

  I’d long since stopped considering myself a good man.

  One final jerk at the minute mark and I finally released him. Pistol dropped like a rag to the floor. Not breathing. Dead.

  And I would never ever feel guilty about that.

  I walked out to find Deacon standing in the living room with bloodied towels at his feet and the girl wrapped in a blanket on the couch. He must have taken care of the damage Pistol had done to her back while I’d been taking care of Pistol. Good.

  She shot a fear-filled glance my way, looking less like Shye now that the beast inside of me had been quieted. She was a witness to what we’d done, though. Something which we’d need to handle. But first…

  “We’ll put him in the garage with the other two, and then we burn it. Burn it all down. We’re done here.”

  Chapter Seven

  The girl proved to be more of a problem than we’d expected.

  “But I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  I brushed past her, tossing another bag in the back of the truck. We were loading up to ship out—just Deacon and me. “We’re taking you home. That’s where you’ll go.”

  “She doesn’t have one,” Deacon said, suddenly standing in my way. He’d spent more time with her than I had, so the seriousness of his expression shouldn’t have been unexpected. “She has no home and no family. She grew up in another club, one just like the Soul Suckers. You know what that means.”

  I did. They probably had treated her like a servant girl—she had to cook for them, clean for them, and, more than likely, spread her legs for them. Not the sort of life anyone deserved to be forced into. “Where are you from, girl?”

  Night had fallen hard, but even in the darkness I could see her. With her pale skin and light hair, she practically glowed. She looked so small and scared as she stood on the cracked concrete in her bare feet, but she answered, “Nowhere. I’m from nowhere. The guys who took me had me stay in a room over their clubhouse before they brought me here.”

  Well, fuck. “We’re sure as shit not going to drop her off at their clubhouse.”

  Deacon moved in closer, lowering his voice to almost a whisper. “The Soul Suckers won her in a card game with another club, man. That’s how she ended up here and why they were giving her to Pistol. She’s expendable to them. And when the club realizes Pistol and his two guards are dead? They’ll pin it on her. She’s not a Soul Sucker, so they’ll call it her fault—sound familiar?”

  “They said the death of Shye’s dad was her fault.”

  “Exactly, and she was known to those men. They have no respect for anyone outside the club. If we leave the girl here? She’s dead. They’ll kill her for what we did.”

  Yeah, they would. The Soul Suckers didn’t seem to give a fuck who they hurt. The girl was the perfect example of that. Won her in a card game. That level of depravity would never not surprise me. I took a good, hard look at the girl, at the way she held herself, at the slump of her shoulders and how her eyes kept darting around as if waiting for someone to jump her. At the fear practically radiating off her slim shoulders.

  The hair, the build, the haunted eyes…she looked so much like my Shye. We couldn’t leave her.

  “What’s your name?”

  Hands twisted together and voice wobbly, she murmured, “Jinx. Jinx Reid, sir.”

  Deacon’s smirk at my being called sir by this tiny girl should have gotten him punched. I pointed a finger at him. “Don’t you say anything.”

  He put his hands up and slowly shook his head. “I wasn’t planning on it. Sir.”

  “Fuck.” I hadn’t intended to take in a runaway, hadn’t seen that coming at all. But Deacon was right—the Soul Suckers would likely pin Pistol’s death on her. She needed to hide away until the shit blew over, but without a home to go to, that was pretty impossible. There wasn’t any place safe from them right now, maybe not even Justice. But at least with us, she’d have someone watching out for her. She’d have a town to back her up.

  Deacon must have been thinking the same thing. “We’ll put her up at my motel. Give her a chance at a life away from these fuckers. They’ve been using her as a scullery maid since she was still a kid—she has no shot at any sort of life around here. Just like your woman.”

  I hated him using my Shye as an example, though he wasn’t wrong. “And if she’s on their side in all this?”

  “She won’t be.” He blanched when I stared him down. “She’s not, but if she is—if I’m wrong—I’ll take care of that myself.”

  A lie. Deacon would never be able to take care of that. He had a heart bigger than the horizon and a soft spot for damsels in distress. Unless this Jinx turned out to be a danger to Justice, there would be no taking care of anything. “She’s your responsibility.”

  “Done.” He grinned and looked past me. “Load up, Jinx. You’re coming with us.”

  Jinx’s face lit up with a smile so bright, it actually made my heart hurt. “Thank you. Oh, thank you so much. Hey…you know you’ve got a little something on your forehead?”

  Deacon looked ready to kill me as I grinned. “Yeah. I know. Thanks.”

  “Yeah, sure. I just…I want to help. I’ll do anything to get away from here. And I’m not lazy—I know how to earn my keep.”

  That phrase punched me square in the chest and reverberated through my mind. Shye had said it a time or two—after she’d moved in with me, when I would come home to her having worked all day cleaning up after me. She’d always say how she felt the need to earn her keep.

  Because she’d always had to.

  She’d learned to cook, to take care of the men in her family, before her mom had died when she was just nine years old. She’d earned her keep all the way up until the Soul Suckers had burned down her trailer and threatened her life. This Jinx more than just looked like my Shye.

  And Christ, did I want to go home.

  “Make sure we’ve got everything and the house is clear,” I said to Deacon. “Once we’re locked and loaded, we’ll set the fire in the garage. I want to be the fuck out of town before it really starts to blaze.”

  “You got it.” He grinned, and I knew what was coming before he even said the word. “Sir.”

  Fires were relatively easy to set. Houses and garages tended to be dry and filled with things that flames liked to eat. Wood, paper, books, fabric, petroleum-based products—all food for the beast. You needed to be patient, though. When disposing of evidence, you wanted that fire to burn long and hot, which meant a slow buildup until it spread deep enough into the structure and far enough along the perimeter to be almost unstoppable. A little accelerant, a spark, and a slow burn through all that fuel. The fire did the work for you.

  Like the one set at Camden’s house a few months ago. We’d come almost full circle.

  Deacon handled the setting of the fires. Yes, plural. He started two—one in the garage and one in the house—making sure the bodies were doused in gasoline so they’d burn nice and hot. So the heat and the flames would destroy as much evidence as possible. And when we were sure the fires were solidly in place and sure to burn unhindered, we got the hell out of Dodge.

  “She asleep?” Deacon asked from the driver’s seat. I glanced into the back wh
ere, indeed, Jinx slept.

  “Looks like it.”

  “You see the scars on her arms?”

  Her arms, her wrists, her back, her hips, her ankles. The girl was a walking billboard for abuse—both inflicted on her and by her. “Yeah.”

  Deacon drove on, quiet for a long time, staring out at the road as it passed. Finally, he asked, “Shye got scars like those?”

  Every muscle in my body locked down at the very thought.

  “Not like those, no.” Similar enough…at least, some of them. But the rest? I couldn’t even imagine. I’d mapped every inch of my girl’s body, had touched and tasted every part of her. I’d seen the results of what Pistol had done to her with my own eyes. But she wasn’t like Jinx. “No restraint marks. And, uh…she doesn’t—” I swallowed hard, my throat tight at the image of my girl hurting herself. “She’s not a cutter.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  Was it? Because Shye’s back was covered in scars—the same ones Pistol had added to Jinx's skin—and she bore the marks from that to this day. Always would. I’d kissed that mottled flesh a thousand times, and still, she pulled away from me whenever I tried to touch her back. Hid herself under shirts and behind towels when I might be able to see them. Those marks may not hurt her skin anymore, but the burn of them—the searing pain—was embedded in her mind.

  Jinx would likely be the same way, but she dealt with her hurt externally while Shye turned inside her own head. So fucking alike, and yet opposite. But Shye had me, and I wouldn’t let her go too deep. Jinx? She didn’t seem to have anyone.

  Except us. “What are we going to do with her?”

  Deacon shrugged, still focused on the road ahead. “Give her a place to stay and some work to do. See if she can adjust to life outside the club.”

  “And if she can’t?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  Yeah, I guessed we would. And really, there was no other answer. We couldn’t have left her to her fate with the Soul Suckers, and leaving her on the street somewhere wouldn’t have been much better. Deacon and I might have been the bad guys in the story of Pistol’s life, but we weren’t villains. We only did bad things for good reasons. Protecting Shye was a good reason, albeit a selfish one. Helping Jinx seemed truly altruistic.

  Deacon drove us all the way back to Justice, only stopping for gas and coffee once. Jinx woke up as we rolled into town, looking suddenly nervous. I could understand that—new town, new people, new life. That had to be overwhelming. Sadly, I didn’t have it in me to soothe her. I wanted to go home—to see my Shye girl and make sure she was safe. To curl up in her arms and forget all the bad things I’d done, while simply being grateful to have such an amazing woman in my life. To be lost in her for a few hours.

  Deacon had other plans. “I need you for a quick job,” he said as soon as he parked my truck. “The room for Jinx isn’t set up yet, and I can use a little help moving the furniture around.”

  “You’ve got me for five.” I stepped out of the truck, looking over the parking lot of the Jury Room. My blood going cold when I saw a motorcycle by the front door. “Deac.”

  He followed my gaze, zeroing in on the bike the same way I had. But he didn’t seem as pissed off or worried as I did.

  “That’s our friend’s bike. Fucker must be inside.” The look he gave me had weight to it, and it didn’t take me long to work out what he meant. The bike could only belong to one person. Parris, the former Marine who’d helped us gain information on the Soul Suckers over the past few months. Who had no reason to be in Justice. And though I’d trusted him to be an asset and an informant, he still wore club colors. Not Soul Suckers’ colors, but motorcycle club nonetheless. I couldn’t put my full faith in him because of that.

  “Let’s go see what he wants.” I tucked a pistol into the holster under my arm and slipped my leather jacket on over it. No sense in upsetting anyone who happened by. Not yet, at least. “And kick his ass out of town if we need to.”

  “What about me?” Jinx stood next to the truck, looking so damn small and scared. “I don’t want to be left alone out here.”

  Deacon shrugged. “Come on, then. I’ll show you the bar.”

  “Deac—”

  “It’ll be fine.” He shot me a grin. “And if it’s not, I’m pretty sure she’s seen worse.”

  “Probably,” Jinx said, her tone completely casual. As if threats and men with guns were completely normal.

  Hell, they probably were completely normal to her.

  “You’re going to be trouble, aren’t you?” I asked.

  Jinx shrugged. “Not intentionally, but I do tend to live up to my name.”

  Wonderful.

  The three of us headed inside, a sad, raggedy little troupe walking into a situation that could turn dangerous or even deadly. Deacon lead the way, and I followed behind Jinx. Making sure she had protection at both ends in case this was some sort of setup.

  The man in question sat at the bar wearing club colors and drinking a beer. As if he owned the damn place. He turned when we walked in, his eyes lingering on Jinx a second too long. “Been waiting for you two.”

  His perusal of the girl with us didn’t go unnoticed by me or her. Shoulders stiff and head up, Jinx crept closer to Deacon, looking both fierce and scared at the same time. Our weakest link exuding bravery. Smart girl.

  “I won’t bother asking how you got in here. Doesn’t really matter.” I shrugged out of my jacket, making sure our supposed friend got a good, long look at the fact that I was carrying. “Something you need?”

  “Not anymore, but I might have something you need.”

  “And what’s that?”

  He leaned back against the bar, spreading his arms wide. “Me.”

  “And why the fuck would I need you?”

  Parris grinned. “Because I know you took out the county sheriff.”

  Technically, Gage took out Sheriff Baker. Not that I needed to tell him that. “Have no clue what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, I figured that’s what you’d say. But see, a man in my position hears things. He also gets random text messages from your men. Or, rather, their women.”

  I shot a glance at Deacon, who seemed as taken off guard as I was. “I don’t follow.”

  Parris pulled out his phone, swiping a few times before reading, “‘Gage shot and there was an explosion. Hurry.’ That last part was in all caps. She really meant it.”

  Motherfucker. Katie’d sent that the night Sheriff Baker had attacked Gage’s place. The night Gage had killed the lying bastard. That text wasn’t detailed, but it could certainly lead to questions about things we didn’t want brought up.

  Time to bluff. “You remember any explosions, Deacon?”

  My brother-in-arms huffed. “Yeah. At the restaurant. Some sort of pressure cooker exploded.”

  “And what?” Parris said, sitting back and looking far too smug. “Gage got shot with cutlery?”

  I shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you. Wasn’t there.”

  “Maybe not.” Parris flicked his thumb against his phone screen before reading aloud again. “‘Baker gone. Justice at fault. Time to take them out. Bringing in the big prez.’”

  “The big prez? Like pretzel?” Deacon bumped Jinx with his elbow, nearly knocking the girl over. “I could go for one right about now. You hungry, kid?”

  “President,” Parris said, glaring at Deacon. “As in the president of the local Soul Suckers club is headed this way. And he’ll bring his entire crew with him. We’re not talking four or five guys—we’re talking a hundred bikers rolling into town at once.”

  That sounded like really bad news to me. “Why are you telling us this?”

  “I was just going to provide you information, but I’ve changed my mind.” He looked right at Jinx, cocking his head. “I’ve got a deal for you.”

  Something in the way he stared at the girl, at the expression on his face, brought out my protective side. I
stepped in front of her, knowing I’d made the right decision when Deacon joined me in blocking Jinx from him. “I’m not taking a deal from a biker. Let them come.”

  “You can’t win against them.”

  “You come here to threaten me?”

  “No, I came here to save your ass. You can’t win against them. But I can.” He rose to his feet and tossed a bill he’d pulled out of his pocket on the bar. “You sticking around for this shit, Jinx?”

  The world slowed down, and I turned to look down at the possible viper in our midst. “You know him?”

  She didn’t look too thrilled. “Unfortunately.”

  “Something we need to know?”

  Jinx lifted a shoulder, shooting an almost worried glance at Parris. “He used to be my jailer.”

  “I was your bodyguard.”

  “Didn’t do too well at that, did you?”

  Parris flinched, her words causing a physical reaction impossible to miss. “Yeah, well…I’m here now. And I’m staying.”

  “Staying?” I asked. “As in moving to Justice?”

  “Looks like it. Better change those Welcome to Justice signs, son. The population’s going up by one.”

  “Two,” Jinx said, her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes hard. “And unlike these guys, I know exactly what sort of men come from the clubs. Don’t you dare think of double-crossing them.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” He strolled across the room, keeping his eyes on hers even as he softened his tone. “I was on my way to Boulder.”

  I caught Deacon’s eye, seeing the same shock I felt reflected there, before checking out Jinx’s reaction. She looked…pissed.

  “Yeah, well…you were late.” She nodded toward Deacon and then me. “Don’t let them down.”

  “As you wish.” Parris nodded once before frowning at Deacon. “You’ve got a little something on your forehead.”