The Hunting Town (Brothers Book 1)

by Elizabeth Stephens

  “Can it wait?”

  “I mean, this is pretty big, D. Where the hell are you?” Charlie says guilelessly. It’s that guilelessness that keeps me from lying.

  “I’m still at the club,” I grumble.

  “At the club? You were there last time I called.”

  “I know.”

  “What’s the deal?”

  “No deal. Just one of the girls.”

  There’s a pause on the other end of the line and I can feel the weight of judgment pass through the silence between us. “Wow. Can’t say I’m not a little surprised. We’ll give you the low down when you get back to the crib. That’s where we’re heading now. Warning you, even bringing the uhh…thing back to the house is a decision. One we’re making without you since you aren’t rocking up.”

  The line goes quiet and for a moment I don’t say anything. I’m cold. Frozen through to the marrow despite the sweat beading along the back of my neck.

  “Dixon?”

  “Fine.” The word comes up from my lungs with all the consistency of gravel. I grip the sides of my phone so hard I hear something in it crack. “Just handle it.”

  “We’re on…” I don’t let him finish, but hang up.

  The second I turn around, Ollie’s voice calls, “Everything okay, boss?”

  I shrug, shake my head, cross my arms. “The guys found something,” I spit through clenched teeth.

  He licks his lips and leans forward eagerly. “The Russian guys?” The kid’s always been scrawny, but his face has been gaunt ever since his attack. He’s wasting away and it makes him look pathetic.

  “I don’t know, maybe.” I click my tongue against the back of my teeth and hiss, “Get out of here, Ollie. You don’t work here and the bar is closed.”

  He starts but doesn’t move. Instead, he does the opposite and shuffles another foot forward. I open my mouth to tell him to fuck off, but I’m quieted by the curtain to my left opening beneath my outstretched hand. In her flat shoes now, I am reminded of how short she is. Not as short as Mer, but certainly not over five eight, a good six inches shorter than I am.

  She’s bundled in a sweatshirt layered with a down vest. It’s deep blue and her hair looks bright white against it. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her in so many clothes and I can’t say I don’t prefer it this way. Prefer it, but also hate it. Somehow in more clothes, it makes me want to rip them off of her because I know what all that unflattering cloth is hiding: something incandescent. I want her.

  I lick my lips and bite my front teeth together. My gut is a storm raging and the muscles in my thighs, fire. All thoughts of Ollie and Charlie and whatever it is that the boys found are gone. Poof. Carried away on a breeze that tastes like cinnamon and an autumn that is over now.

  “Can I take something?” I say, gesturing to the oversized purse she has draped over one shoulder. She carries a backpack in her other hand.

  “What?”

  “Your things. I’m assuming you’re ready to leave.”

  She meets my gaze hesitantly, looking flustered and afraid. “I was going to ask Marcel to walk me to my car.” She points absently in Marcel’s direction and I feel heat rise up in my chest that warps the way I speak.

  “I’m taking you home in my car.” Not up for discussion and the hell Marcel or anyone else is coming anywhere near you – all things I just manage not to speak.

  “You’re…what?” she says slowly, as if caught in a daze which only reaffirms that I will be taking her home – not just for her benefit – but to slake my own need to do something for her.

  “I don’t want you driving that bucket of rust this late. You’ve had a long day.”

  She backs up when I lean in towards her and I get the distinct and harrowing impression that she’s afraid of me. I had wanted her to be…once. Should she be now? My mind says yes, but is contradicted by the sudden pain in my gut. Bile rises in my throat and I swallow hard to keep it down and to keep myself from hitting something.

  “But my car. I’ll need it in the morning.”

  If I didn’t sound like a mad man offering to come and drive her around like an Uber, I would have suggested it. “Ollie,” I call, voice too loud because Ollie’s still standing there just six feet from us, invading our privacy. I growl, “Can you drive?”

  “Well enough,” he says brandishing his black cast.

  “Good. You’ll trail us in Sara’s car. Sara, give Ollie your keys.” Her mouth is twisted though the rest of her face is open enough to peer straight through. Now, it’s as if I can read her soul. “You don’t have to be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you.” Her caution makes me proud more than it wounds me, though it does a bit of both. What does she know of me but my capacity to deprave other depraved souls?

  “I…I…” She tries to tell me something that will somehow get her out of this situation, but for as much as I want her to trust me, I want her to yield to me now.

  “Do you need to pick up Brant?”

  She shakes her head softly. “No. Tonight he’s staying at a friend’s. I wasn’t sure how late this would go.”

  I nod once. “Good. Give Ollie your keys and we’ll get you home.”

  She nods, but like a puppy that’s just learned how to shake, it’s as if she has no idea what she’s agreeing to. She produces her keys and I take them from her without asking and toss them to Ollie, who catches them with his left hand. “You mind?”

  He stares between us and manages to look just as surprised as Sara does. “No. Not at all.”

  “Good.”

  Ollie goes ahead of us while I take her bags. She doesn’t exactly give them to me, but she doesn’t protest either when I grab them. I guide her to the Audi parked at an angle in the back of the lot. She seems hesitant to get inside when I place her things in the trunk and open the passenger’s side door. After a short pause, however, she slides in.

  I turn on the radio, but every channel plays the same series of top 40s songs we do at the club. It used to sound like white noise to me, but now I find it aggressive and grating. I turn the radio off. The blue lights in the doors near the floor cast an unnatural glow over everything in a way I think is meant to be soothing, but her anxiety counteracts that. I can feel it wedged between her hands, which are laced together tightly enough that she’s white around the knuckles. Her knees are pressed together just as firmly and she stares at them or out of the window. The entire ride, she only looks at me twice.

  “It’s a left up here,” she says. I take the turn, glancing in my rearview to make sure Ollie’s still behind us. “I know it isn’t the nicest place, but I had to move out of student housing when I was blessed with baby Brant,” she explains, though I neither asked for nor needed an explanation. I need nothing from her. Nothing but everything.

  I snort. “Most people in your situation would be resentful.”

  Her nose crinkles up and her eyes do too. Her make up is slightly smeared beneath her lower eyelids, but it doesn’t succeed in making her look any less beautiful. “How could I resent something perfect?” She shakes her head and tells me where to park. As I do, she hesitates a moment before reaching for her stuff. “I love my son more than anything in this world. I just wish I could do better for him. I know this is none of your business and I am so sorry that I unloaded my problems onto you earlier. I can do the job. I don’t want you to think I can’t.”

  I glance over at her and with the little yellow light illuminated between us and the darkness of the outside world pressing against the glass, I want to touch her. So instead, I clench the steering wheel with both hands.

  “I know you can.”

  She sniffles, pausing before she says, “So you won’t fire me?”

  “No.” As if that had been among one of the thoughts on my mind.

  “Thank you.”

  I open my car door when she doesn’t and step out onto the cracked asphalt of her visitor’s lot. I need her gone before I
reach across the car and aggress her like so many others have tonight. I’m no better than they are. No, I’m much worse. Where they lust, I need, like an addict before their addiction.

  Ollie’s pulling in just now and I focus on him to have somewhere else to look. The air is cold and I’m grateful for it, even though I can taste rain on the horizon. Always hated rain and grey skies. Always hated mothers and women since that very first conscious memory I have of foster mom number one stroking my four year old body. I hated them all, until this one…

  She moves to the trunk of the car and I’m drawn back to the present and to the delicate way the strands of her white blonde hair lift away from her shoulders and sweep her face. I remove her things before she can and tell her to lead the way. As I walk, I toss Ollie the keys to my car and tell him to wait.

  Her apartment complex is composed of four separate housing units, each hosting about sixteen apartments. New low-income housing, but low-income all the same. Made out of cheap materials, the walls are thin and I can hear inside of each apartment that we pass. A couple shouting at one another, somebody playing video games, kids shrieking, a couple’s quiet conversation. A party in the apartment right next to hers makes my teeth ache. Mostly men, and they’re rowdy. The scent of weed has flooded the entire hallway. I want to throw Sara over my shoulder and back into my car, but I manage to contain the compulsion and hand her back her stuff.

  “Thanks,” she murmurs as she cracks her apartment door. Number 313. The gold font has been painted on and matches the looping script of the welcome mat, though every other apartment has the same boiler plate black and white plaque and none have doormats. She’s tried to make this place a home. She’s also trying to get rid of me.

  “And thanks for the ride home.” She steps inside and bars the way in with her body.

  I nod but I don’t leave right away. I’m standing in front of the door that’s just barely caging the party. The wolf pack sleeping so close to the lamb.

  “Give me your phone.” She doesn’t answer or react in any way and when I glance at her, she’s got her lips pursed together. “Your phone,” I repeat.

  She looks down and begins rifling through her purse. “I know that I just begged you not to fire me and that I’ll probably end up begging again before the night’s over, but I’d really prefer it, Dixon, if you didn’t talk to me like that.”

  The girl could have just as easily flattened me with an eighteen wheeler as she has with her words. “Excuse me?” Nobody talks to me like that. Nobody questions my authority. Not even pretty girls who jack up my pulse and make me want to commit murder.

  Against the light she flips on beside the door, her cheeks take on a cherry glow. She swallows hard, licks her lips, then hands over her phone. She’s trying to stand her ground but she can’t because I have all the power and she has no weapon but the one in my gut that she hasn’t yet realized she’s laid claim to.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “Nevermind.”

  “Say it. I won’t fire you.”

  She lifts her gaze and beneath the smeared makeup, there are bags under her eyes. She’s tired and I’m standing out here wasting her time as I dream of what it might be like if she asked me inside. An outlandish fantasy.

  “You might ask for my permission to do things, rather than just order me to do them. You’re my boss inside Camelot, but that doesn’t entitle you to anything else.”

  And that’s when I see it – a resurgence of the fear she’d shown me earlier. It’s a residual side effect from what happened to her tonight in the bar. At least, that’s what I tell myself. Because the alternative is that she really does see me as she does the rest of the disgusting degenerates that pay for her time because that’s the only way to get it. Maybe worse, because in her eyes, I control her son’s fate.

  Rage hits me all at once and though my torso jerks forward I keep my feet planted. The beast and the gentleman rage within. She sucks in a hard breath through her teeth and straightens, but doesn’t close the door when I expect her to. Is it shock?

  “So this is what you think of me? That I’d force you to do something against your will?” We both hear the unspoken question I ask: does she think I’m the kind of man capable of rape?

  “That isn’t what I meant,” she says breathily. “I just meant with the phone and the car and stuff. Little stuff…”

  “I wanted your phone to give you my number so you can call me if you ever have trouble in your building with people like this,” I sneer, jerking my thumb towards the apartment next to hers.

  “Well I didn’t know that. If you’d said that…” She’s flustered and tired and the distance between us has all but disappeared. I’m standing right at her door, hands gripping the lintel.

  I cut her off a second time. “I didn’t explain myself so that was your first thought? That I wanted to hurt you? Maybe force myself inside your house? Why bother with all that? Why not just rape you in my car? That’s why I asked to drive you home, isn’t it?”

  “No!” Her voice is a shout, but that isn’t what shocks me. She hasn’t moved away from the door. “That’s the last thing I think! I feel safe around you. Safer around you than anyone. Why do you think I freaked out at the club? It was because you left! I like when you watch me strip. I was scared before but when I saw you watching I felt better. And with those guys who were touching – you stopped them – and then you helped me in the room even though I know that some of the other girls do that. I asked.” She makes wild and frantic gestures with her hands, pushes them through her hair, crosses her arms, uncrosses them. “I was only trying to tell you that you could be nicer when you talk to me. You can be crass and rude and you don’t ever thank the people around you.”

  She’s breathing hard and I’ve stopped breathing altogether. “You never thanked me for not calling the police after you beat up those guys. One of them was in critical condition and I waited up at the hospital for almost six hours just to make sure that when I lied to the cops, it would just be to cover up for a beating and not a homicide. You don’t ever say please, or would you, or may I to anyone. Even to the people you talk to on the phone, or your colleagues, or the other strippers. You don’t smile. You just act like a really strict dad. You’re not a dad. You’re just a boss, and a brother, and I’m sure a friend to somebody somewhere but you’re also kind of mean. I was just asking you to be a little bit nice…”

  I reach for the doorknob and lean too much of my weight on it. Lurching forward a half step, that step places me inside her house without her permission. I want to go farther. Her words peel the skin off my flesh and incinerate it because she feels safe around me and I’m not a dad and I am mean and I don’t want to be any of those things but the first. And maybe one day the second. I remember when I’d told Knox otherwise, but I was lying.

  Words tangle in my throat, forming one solid mass. I’m surprised I don’t choke. I’m surprised I’m able to breathe. I’m surprised that she’s still standing there speechless, staring up at me with huge, moon eyes and that she hasn’t started to scream. I’m in her house, but I no longer have control over my body. She mouths my name in the same way she does a curse, but she doesn’t speak. I don’t give her that chance.

  I slip my right hand around the small of her lower back and with my left, I cup the back of her neck in the same way I had earlier this evening. With a slight pull, she stumbles into my body and Christ in heaven, her warmth feels good. I press my lips to her forehead and taste her sweet skin. She’s been dancing all night but she still smells like cinnamon and tastes like a Golden Delicious.

  “Thank you,” I say in the millimeters that separate us. My voice is husky and deep. “Forgive me.” I pull away from her in a rush and she sways forward, catching herself on the same knob I’d just used for support. This time I’m the one breathing hard and she’s holding her breath. “Sara,” I say and I don’t wait for her to respond. I can’t.

  I’ve reached the end of t
he hall and have just started down the stairwell when I hear her whisper my name back.

  Every step away from her, the thread is pulled another inch and by the time I make it to the parking lot, I’ve unraveled almost completely. I’m not conscious of the questions Ollie asks me as I drop him back at the bar, and the entire drive back to my house is a reel in matte black.

  I open the door to my home, walk into the living room and am shocked to find all four of the guys plus Mer seated around the coffee table made of gnarled petrified wood. Charlie stands, flipping his black hair back and though he’s Native and Mer is Mexican, they look for a moment like true siblings. I start to think that perhaps she’s part of the family more than I am when the thought is gratefully cut short by the sight of what’s spread open on the table: an open duffel bag and what looks like a good thirty to forty pounds of heroin wrapped neatly in clear plastic bags.

  Aiden stands in the corner with his hand on the trigger of his gun. It’s late now, but he’s still wearing his sling and I can see that everyone else in the house is also armed. To the teeth. I’m looking at Aiden as I say the only thing that comes to me: “Sh…”

  Part III

  The Bag

  Aiden

  I’ve been awake all night and most of the night before, so around three pm I try to get some sleep. I lie on my bed fully clothed, two guns within reach, covers tucked neatly beneath me. The lights are all on. Hate the dark, though I’ve never admitted that to anyone. Monsters lived in the dark when I was a boy. They still do. That I’m now one of them doesn’t change the fact that there are still others out there like me, and much worse.

  I force my eyelids shut and shift against the mattress. It’s hard as a rock and ordinarily, I wouldn’t let myself indulge in laying on it – opting instead for the chair in the corner so if I do manage to nod off, I sleep light – but I’m strung out tonight. Running too low on fuel. Sleep. Eat. Recharge. Kill. Can’t get through the first part though. Thoughts are racing back through the contents of last night. A night that sealed our fates. Our deaths.