Bayou sighed.
“I’ll help. Just tell me how,” he grumbled.
He wasn’t nearly as pissed as he’d started out.
Mostly because he knew that what I was doing may be illegal, but morally, it was the right thing to do.
Sometimes the good guys had to do bad things to fix the shitty world that we lived in.
After shaking Bayou’s hand, I drove to my office a few towns over, rolling into the strip joint about half an hour later.
Bruno met me at the door with a frown on his face.
“Finally got the name of a guy out of an acquaintance of the mayor,” he said. “This guy isn’t a big player, though. He knows one of ‘em, however. I think that he needs your brand of expertise, because the fucker ain’t talkin’.”
What started me out down this dark and gloomy road was the knowledge of a sex trafficking ring right in my own goddamn back yard.
At first, I’d only heard a few rumors here and there.
Those rumors had turned into full fledge knowledge when I’d happened upon a guy that’d been trying to transport a bus load of underage girls through my city.
After finding the bus and freeing the girls, I’d gotten the name of one man from nearly all of the girls.
The former mother fucking mayor of Kilgore.
The most charismatic guy that lived in three counties.
Honestly, I’d never liked the guy. He’d always struck me as ‘wrong.’
But I’d never been able to put my finger on why.
Not until I’d heard from those girls who’d been lured into a fate worse than death.
From that moment on, I’d decided that I was going to fuck Dave Jackson’s life up completely.
But first, I had to find every single player in his game and make him pay. Once that was done, I would retire from the politician life and go back to doing what I did best.
Whatever the fuck I wanted.
But first, I had to catch a couple of bad guys. And to do that, I had to get a team in place.
That team, hopefully, would be coming in a few short months.
“I set him up at your usual spot,” Bruno said.
My usual spot was a slab of concrete in the middle of Souls Chapel, Texas. Deep in the woods that was surrounded by hundreds of acres of nothing.
It was my retreat. My paradise. Other people’s hell.
“You going with me?” I asked, looking around the club and wondering if I should even bother going up to my office.
“No,” he said. “I have a few people to track down for you.”
I nodded once.
“Okay then,” I said as I headed toward my bike. “I’ll just go take care of this now.”
In my early days, I learned a lot from one of my most favorite people—an old Army medic that specialized in getting information out of people that didn’t want to give it.
I’d been at an impressionable age, and he’d taught me that everyone had a breaking point.
It’d taken me years to get to where I was today, able to get things out of people while extending very little effort.
Honestly, this was the fun part of my job. Getting what I wanted, making people realize that I’d do whatever I had to do, even kill them, to get it.
Remounting my bike, I grinned like a motherfucker and headed out, riding like the hounds of hell were at my heels the entire way.
• • •
I arrived at my on-again off-again home away from home in the middle of Souls Chapel, Texas an hour and forty-eight minutes later.
Arriving, I wasn’t surprised to find Laric, the very first man that I’d recruited for this operation, already there.
He was standing at the gate, a dog at his heels, looking at me as if he had no emotions at all.
We both knew that to be a lie.
Laric Mason had spent six years in prison for beating a man to death with his bare hands. Even now, on parole two years later, he was forced to attend bi-annually mandatory anger management classes.
Needless to say, Laric was a fairly angry person.
So, for him to be completely blank was telling.
He did not like this guy that he was guarding in the least.
“How’s it going?” I asked, parking beside his bike.
“It’s going,” he grumbled.
The dog fell into step beside him, and I looked down to see him curling his lip up at me and my closeness.
“New dog?” I asked curiously.
“New dog,” he confirmed. “Just came in last night from the sandbox.”
The sandbox being Afghanistan or Iraq. I wasn’t sure which.
“Anything major wrong with him?” I wondered.
“Hearing loss,” he said. “Some vision loss in his right eye. That’s why he doesn’t like you being on his right. He can’t see you.”
I moved to the opposite side of Laric, and the dog settled down.
“Tell me about our guest,” I ordered.
“Haven’t been able to get shit out of him,” Laric said. “Bruno was out here and told me to try. Guy’s not listening. He knows who you are, though.”
I smiled. “Oh yeah?”
Walking up to the circle where we did all of our business, or I did mine anyway, I started to remove my cuff links.
The guy looked up, spotted me, and immediately blanched.
“J-Joker,” he stuttered, looking at me with eyes full of fear.
I grinned at that.
I went by a lot of names. Lynn. Joker. Black Jack. Bonus. Whatever and whoever I needed to be that day chose my name. And today, apparently, I needed to be the bad guy. Joker it was.
“I see that you’ve met your concierge,” I drawled. “How’s your stay at Hotel Windsor been so far today?”
The little fucker looked at me with trepidation.
“Uh, great,” he lied.
I popped my fingers, then pulled a pair of brass knuckles out of my pocket. “Good.”
CHAPTER 5
Make America drunk again.
-Beer Mug
SIX
“Are you sure it’s okay with everyone that I go?” I asked curiously. “I know that you’re usually okay with it, but I don’t want to overstep.”
“It’s fine, I swear,” she said. “Me and my father’s old partner share it. They’re never here. They’re always working. And you know that you’re always welcome. Always.”
I looked longingly at the trail that would lead to a spring-fed pond, then said, “Okay. Thanks, Wyett.”
Wyett was a friend that’d gone to boarding school with me. She’d grown up in the same area as me, but we’d never met each other until our junior year of high school.
Wyett, like me, grew up privileged. Or as privileged as you could get when you were completely ignored by your family.
Though, where my parent doing the ignoring was my father, the parent doing the ignoring for her was her aunt.
“What’s your story? What will I tell your dad when he inevitably calls?” she asked. “Why are you leaving today?”
I grumbled under my breath. “I just need a break. I’m taking my camping shit, my portable charger, Kindle and my newly downloaded audiobooks and I’m going to disappear for a few days. Don’t expect a phone call from me, either. I’m turning my phone onto airplane mode so the battery lasts a bit longer.”
She sighed. “I hate when you do this to me.”
“I hate when your aunt calls me crying in the middle of the night because she needs to bitch and can’t get ahold of you,” I shot back. “Tit for tit, remember?”
We’d been fielding each other’s calls for a long fucking time.
Today’s desire to disappear wasn’t unusual for either one of us. Sometimes we used each other as distractions when we wanted to unplug from our family.
Today was no different.
“You’re right. It’s about time that she’ll start calling again anyway. This idea of giving each other’s phone numbers to our fami
ly was a great idea.”
I snickered.
We’d done that when we’d finally moved out and gotten a place to share.
When dad had come by looking for me because I’d changed my number and moved out of his house, I’d had a stroke of genius and given Wyett’s number to him. When she’d found out what I’d done, she’d given her aunt my number, and they’d started calling each other’s number ever since.
“Hey, is it okay if I take that old logging road that leads down the backside of the property?” I questioned.
“Go for it,” she said. “It’s not used all that much, so I’m not sure of the integrity of it at this point. But feel free to do whatever. Nobody will care.”
The property that Wyett co-owned with her father’s old friend was in the back hills of nowhere, Texas.
Actually, more accurately, it was known as Souls Chapel.
Souls Chapel, Texas was a small town. The population was a little over eleven hundred souls. There wasn’t even a traffic light or a stop sign in the town. There was, however, a convenience store that sold damn good hamburgers.
In fact, now that I was thinking about their hamburgers, I knew that I’d be stopping there for lunch before I went on my hike.
“Ohhh,” I groaned. “Thinking about one of Crockett’s hamburgers is making my mouth water.”
There was silence on the other end, and then Wyett said, “You’re such a bitch.”
I giggled.
“Love you, Wy-Wy. I’ll talk to you in a few days, okay? If I don’t post anything on FB or Instagram in the next couple of days, you might want to send out a search party. Love you.” I hung up before she could say anything, knowing that she was mad at me now for bringing up her favorite hamburger joint.
Wyett didn’t get out here much. She just didn’t have time due to her job and schooling.
However, I’d be sure to bring her a burger home.
That would make her happy, wouldn’t it?
Thinking about my next few days and what I would need to grab, I packed a backpack, loaded it up with some snacks and a small first aid kit, my video equipment, and then loaded my Land Rover up with my camping supplies.
Once I was ready to go, I hopped into the SUV and headed toward Souls Chapel.
It took me over an hour to get there, which was about normal for someone that actually went the speed limit because she couldn’t afford another ticket or she’d lose her license.
Yes, you could say that I was a bit of a rebel.
But seriously, why the fuck was there a speed limit anyway? Nobody followed it unless they were old or like me and couldn’t afford to get another ticket.
I pulled up outside of Crockett’s Corner store and got out, actually freakin’ giddy about the food that I was about to ingest.
When walked inside, it was to find a very large, very intimidating man with a very big dog at his side. And when I say big, I mean, take my face off in just one lunge big.
“Oh, excuse me.” I smiled.
Or tried to.
The smile didn’t reach my eyes because I was afraid of his dog.
Dogs, for the most part, didn’t bother me. I wasn’t a dog person.
Yes, I knew that made me part serial killer for not liking dogs, but I just couldn’t help it. They were cute, but they had gross amounts of hair, had bad breath, and slobbered.
All of them separately, I could handle. Together? Nope.
I guess that’s probably why I didn’t really hate it when my father told me no on a dog when I was eleven.
However, cats? Cats I fucking loved.
Cats were my jam.
I had two at home. Two that liked me when they liked me and could do without me when they were feeling ambivalent.
Which worked for me because I loved to pet them, I loved to snuggle them, and I loved when they went and did their own thing.
I had a Selkirk Rex, a type of cat that had curly hair. My Selkirk Rex was named T-Rex, Tee for short.
I also had a Highlander. He’s pretty much a normal looking shorthair cat with ears that curl backward. Scotty, the Highlander, had six toes on each foot and was very affectionate and playful… to everyone else that wasn’t me.
You should’ve seen when Wyett walked into the room. You would think that Scotty was her cat and not mine.
Speaking of cats, an adorable little kitten walked up at my feet just then.
I gasped, thinking that the dog was about to go fuckin’ nuts and eat its cute little face off, but the dog just looked down at it with a small wave of its tail.
I placed my hand over my heart and thanked my lucky stars that the dog didn’t decide to have a snack right in front of me.
“Oh, thank God,” I said softly.
The man in front of me rumbled with laughter.
“Kookie won’t hurt you.” The man’s deep voice rattled in his chest.
I looked up to find him staring at me with curiosity.
“I didn’t think he’d hurt me,” I admitted. “I kind of thought he might be having himself a little snack with the cat, though.”
“The cat is actually mine,” he said. “He came with the dog.”
I snickered. He didn’t sound very excited about that.
“Cute little thing.” I bent down and scratched behind the cat’s ears. “What’s his name?”
“She is named Cat,” the man replied. “The dog is named Kookie.”
“You should name the cat Wookie,” I murmured, looking at the brown fluff ball. “That way you have a Kookie and a Wookie.” I stood up. “The cat kind of resembles a Wookie, too.”
The man’s beautiful, hypnotic eyes turned down to look at the cat, and his mouth twitched.
“I’d rather not,” he said. “It’s bad enough that the dog won’t let me get rid of the cat without going fuckin’ nutso.”
I tilted my head and started to snicker, covering my face with my hand. “So Kookie has an emotional support cat named Wookie?”
The man did not, under any circumstances, look amused.
“Have a good day,” he said, bending down to pick the cat up.
Wookie was so small, and the man’s hands were so big, that the cat was all but swallowed. The only thing I could see was his puffy head poking out of one end and his little tail coming out of the other.
It was so cute that I pulled my phone out and took a picture.
“This one is going on Instagram,” I declared. “Nice tattoos, by the way. Where’d you get them done?”
When I looked back up the man’s eyes were once again on me. Jesus, they were a startling shade of green. They almost looked like they glowed.
“The State of Texas Penitentiary.”
With that, he walked right out of the store and didn’t look back.
He got onto a fucking bike then, one of those ones that has that little side car that a person could ride in and gestured for the dog to get inside.
The dog did, jumping right in like he’d done it a thousand times before. Then, he unceremoniously dropped the kitten in there with the dog, and the dog’s mouth lolled open.
And right before my eyes, the man mounted his bike, started it up, and drove away without a backward glance.
I was left standing there with my mouth hanging open.
“He was kind of intense, wasn’t he?”
Crockett’s voice.
I closed my mouth, but my eyes were still just as wide as they’d been earlier.
“Yes!” I said. “And his eyes. Holy shit!”
“They were like alien green,” she agreed with a flourish. “Holy shit. And his voice.”
That, too.
That man was the totally complete package. Hot body. Beautiful hair. Tattooed. Muscular. Great eyes. Rumbly voice.
However, he didn’t do it for me.
Not once did I get the ‘I want to plant my vagina on your face’ vibe from him.
Not like I got when I looked at Mister Prim and Proper Stuck-up Suit Mayor.
Now that man? I’d plant my vagina on his face for hours if he’d only give me the signal.
“When he walked in with that cat and his dog, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But he got a burger, a twenty-ounce Dr. Pepper, and drank and ate them both while standing up at my counter. I didn’t even have the heart to ask him to pay first.”
“You poor thing,” I snickered. “Speaking of burgers, that’s why I’m here. For one of your beautiful hamburgers.”
She rolled her eyes. “Always for my burgers, never for my company. How have you been?”
We walked together to the back of the store where her diner area was.
She went behind the counter and started to wash her hands while I took a seat on the opposite side of the counter.
“I’m doing good,” I said. “I got that ‘itch.’ So I asked Wyett if I could come out here.”
“How’s the latest documentary?” she asked. “I watched it and thought it was really good.”
I was a videographer that mainly followed wildlife and nature. I’d been all over the world, doing what I loved. The documentary that she was speaking of was actually my latest on river dolphins.
“It went really well,” I admitted. “Much better than I anticipated, but I think that’s due to my Instagram following. They’re loving the new wildlife series that I’m doing through my stories.”
I’d discovered Instagram late last year—yes, I know, I’m late to the game. So sue me.
Once people found me, more people found me. And more. And more. And more. Until I had over a million followers now.
It was honestly quite surprising because I would’ve never, ever in a million years thought that this many people would want to see my animal videos.
“I saw that the little previews you were giving of it on Instagram were going through the roof. How’d you get that little baby dolphin to stay so still?” she asked.
I laughed then.
“I didn’t,” I admitted. “Actually, that was me following her through the water.”
We spoke for a couple minutes more on what I had to go through to get those shots, then moved on to how she’d been doing.
“I’m doing good,” she sighed. “Murphy is still doing poorly. I don’t think that I’ll be returning to work anytime soon.”
Repeat Offender Page 3
