And that same light had gone off in Tate’s eyes as I’m sure had when he’d seen that girl being raped by the gang members.
“Goddammit,” I rumbled, standing up and putting my hands on my head. “How long is he in for?”
“He got eight years, but due to his…errm…circumstances, he got a lighter sentence. Something much lower than he could’ve gotten for beating two teenagers to death. He has the possibility for parole in three years. My guess is that he’ll get it.”
I looked at Travis, knowing that he knew more than the rest of us. But I didn’t press. If he wanted to share, he would have. Whatever he knew, it must’ve been big, because the guys in this office were a bunch of gossips. You couldn’t keep a secret in this place to save your life.
“Well, fuck,” I said. “That fucking sucks.”
“I’m open for suggestions on hires if y’all have any,” Travis groaned. “Goddammit, I’m tired. This shit is for the birds. Dante used to handle this part of the operation. All I had to do was drive a truck when I was needed and do the fucking taxes on time.”
I thought about people that I knew who were up for the crazy, and sometimes life threatening, job of an auto recovery agent, and I could only come up with one man.
“I know one man. He’s here for the next six months for some operation—which I’m not privy to so don’t fucking ask—and then he’ll be gone. But he used to be in the Army with me, and he’s a good man.”
“Who?” Travis asked.
“The dark, creepy motherfucker who I’ve seen hanging around the club lately?” Reed questioned, perking up at hearing someone that someone was around to help out, which would give him more time to visit his lady who was hours away where his other brother, Tobias, lived now.
I grinned. “That’s him.”
“Ask him,” Travis ordered immediately. “As long as the two jobs don’t interfere with each other, that’s perfectly fuckin’ fine.”
“I know a SEAL…well, an ex-SEAL…named Brock,” Baylor started. “I might have to dig him out of the bottle first, but he’s around.”
“Ask him,” Travis said. “I’m not being picky at this point. I’d ask Mom and Dad to get some fuckin’ sleep at night at this point.”
I snorted.
Travis grinned.
Tobias and Baylor started to laugh.
Kennedy looked at me in confusion.
“Travis’ parents are the sweetest, kindest people in the world. They fronted Dante the money to start this business fifteen years ago—when he was just twenty-five—but they’d never be able to take someone’s car away from them,” I explained to her.
“Ahhh,” she nodded in understanding. “Got it.”
I winked at her.
“Who is this Brock guy?” I asked Lincoln. “I saw someone at the diner the other day. He ordered a beer with his breakfast, and I think he was the only other person in the entire place who could take some of the heat off of me the entire time I was there.”
Baylor nodded. “Was with me in the SEALs. Something happened. Something bad. He was looking for somewhere to go and I offered him up Hostel. He’s staying in an apartment in Jefferson, though. The rent’s cheaper there.”
“All right, then ask those two. We will see how the workload lightens up and go from there,” Travis scratched his head. “Did we go over the numbers for last month?”
“No,” all of us said.
The numbers from last month were pretty much made up from what we pulled in with repossessions. Usually, there was a running count to see who could get the biggest payout, but I guessed that it’d taken a back burner when Dante’s family had been killed.
And my guess was confirmed moments later when Baylor spoke.
“No point,” Baylor sighed, his head tilting forward as he stretched out his neck. “I’m exhausted, and the faster I can get home, the faster I can get to fuckin’ sleep.”
Before Travis could reply to this, his phone rang, and he halted everything to answer it.
I understood why he’d done that moments later when he stood up like he had somewhere to be.
Which, I might add, he sure as hell did.
“Hannah’s in labor. Gotta go.” He paused at the door and looked at Baylor. “Assign that to whomever wants it and get to the hospital.”
Baylor had already been halfway to standing when he got the directive.
“10-4,” Baylor grumbled. “I’ll be there. Good luck, brother.”
Travis visibly shook himself and then he was gone.
“This his first kid?” Kennedy asked in surprise.
“No,” everyone around the table answered at once.
The single word was said so abruptly, and with so much anger, that Kennedy shrank back in surprise.
“I think I sense a story,” she murmured, this time for only me to hear. “But tell me later.”
Baylor grunted, and Kennedy’s faced flushed with the realization that she hadn’t whispered quite as low as she thought she had.
“There really is nobody to give this to but you, man,” Baylor handed off the file folder by sliding it across the table. “We gotta get to the hospital…just be smart, yeah?”
I lifted my lip in a silent snarl.
“I’ll be smart,” I lied.
I wouldn’t be smart.
This was the ticket that I’d been waiting for. The entrance to the private Montes compound that had security that rivaled Fort Knox. The place that housed one of the two men who’d been responsible for leaving me to rot in that shit hole for four years.
Yeah, I wasn’t going to be smart. I was going to kill that motherfucker with my goddamn bare hands.
And I had a good damn reason to be there.
Fuck. Yeah.
With the rest of the group leaving, it left Kennedy staring at me in anticipation.
“I have so many questions!”
I started to laugh as I pulled her up from her chair.
Once we got outside, I opened the truck door, but she waved it away.
“No, let’s go over there and get some candy.”
“Candy?”
“Candy!” She said, then started across the street to the gas station.
I followed behind her, eyes on her ass, and almost missed the woman who pushed out of the gas station at the same time Kennedy pushed in.
“I’m sorry.” Kennedy apologized.
I looked up at the same time that I saw the vet staring at me accusingly.
“Dog stealer.”
I gritted my teeth.
“What are you talking about?” Kennedy questioned Layne.
Layne turned her angry gaze to Kennedy.
“He didn’t tell you that he stole my dog?”
Kennedy’s eyes turned understanding.
“From what I hear, he didn’t steal the dog. You were housing the dog, and he had a signed contract.” Kennedy corrected her.
Layne didn’t have anything to say to that. She flipped us both off and left, walking out of the gas station parking lot and next door to her clinic.
But she’d done the damage that she’d set out to accomplish. How, you ask? The town gossips had been standing in the middle of the parking lot next to a large Suburban. Three women, six kids, and two fathers that also helped coach the team that my nephew was on. All of the adults were staring at us with various degrees of disgust on their face.
Just fucking perfect.
“Let’s go.” I ordered, grabbing Kennedy’s hand.
She tugged it away from me and went into the store. I stayed where I was, torn between following her and standing my ground.
I decided to stay and stare the group down, but two of the women were already on their phones, texting.
Just fucking great.
“Ready.”
I looked down at the bag that Kennedy was holding.
She didn’t have just a candy bar. She had six. Two half gallons
of ice cream—Rocky Road and vanilla. And a huge rainbow popsicle the size of a 6-cell Maglite.
And as we walked away, she was sure to glare at each of the adults that she passed. Grabbing onto my hand and holding on for dear life as we made it back to my truck.
Chapter 20
Like a good neighbor, stay over there.
-Kennedy’s secret thoughts
Kennedy
I rolled over in the bed, stared at the dented pillow, and frowned.
What had woken me up? Was it Evander leaving? Was he coming back? He said he was going to stay…
I threw the covers off, knowing that my mind wouldn’t shut off until I knew for certain if he was in the house, and started out the door of my bedroom—without, might I add, putting on pants.
Which was my first mistake.
My second mistake was assuming that Evander was the only one in my house.
I heard murmuring from somewhere in the living room/kitchen area and assumed that either he’d gotten a call or he’d needed to make a call.
My guess was he’d gotten a call.
He got calls a lot.
I was surprised to know how many people had Evander’s number.
At first, it was only the guys from work calling him, or the dispatcher calling with a pick-up for him to do.
Then, Evander explained, as his feelers started coming back and word got out that he was back, the low-life citizens of Hostel had started to call to give him tips. I wasn’t quite sure why he was gathering the little snippets of information or what he was going to use it all for until he’d explained it to me.
Now that everyone in town knew he was back in the area, all the people who used to act as his informants—telling him, for a fee, where he could find the people he was looking for and when—were calling with leads, hoping to restart their previous relationships. He needed these people who knew things that Evander couldn’t find out on his own without immersing himself in that world. A world, he’d explained, he didn’t want any part of if it meant that his parole could be broken and he’d be sent back to jail.
My third mistake of the night was walking right into the living room without pausing to first make sure that the front freakin’ door wasn’t open.
At first, they didn’t notice me.
At first, I didn’t think about the chill of the cool night air hitting my skin where they should have been covered by my pants.
Why?
Because there was a large man covered in head-to-toe black—black jeans, black motorcycle boots, black t-shirt, and a black ball cap covering his black hair—and he was arguing with Evander.
“I can’t do this for you,” the man stated vehemently.
“You mean, you won’t do it for me,” Evander countered the man’s obviously emotional refusal.
The man shrugged.
“I won’t do this for you,” he amended. “But it’s not because I’m not willing to help. It’s because I don’t want to see you go back to jail all for some petty revenge that won’t serve any real purpose and will barely get the man at the top of the food chain a fucking slap on the wrist.”
Evander’s back straightened. “You don’t know that.”
The man nodded his head. “I do. It may not happen the way I think it will, but it definitely isn’t going to go the way you think it will, either.”
Evander growled and started to pace from side-to-side in the small entranceway.
“He stole four years of my life, Rafe.”
The anger and hurt in those words were enough to make my belly clinch.
“I know, man,” Rafe said. “But he’s going to steal more if you don’t watch what the fuck you’re doing.”
Fear started to curl into my belly.
What could he be doing that would have this man—an obviously badass, all-black-wearing kind of guy—telling him that what he had planned wasn’t smart? Evander wasn’t a dumb man, not at all. Everything he did was intentional. He was the type of man who stopped to think first—and did so carefully—before he acted.
He weighed the pros and cons of his actions, considering every possible outcome and scenario, before he did anything.
Acting impulsively wasn’t in Evander’s nature, and if this man, Rafe, was thinking he was being impulsive, he was wrong. Whatever he had planned, it had been thought out thoroughly.
Whatever it was, though, it was obviously something bad.
I bit my lip and shifted my hip so I could get a better look, which caused the man in the door to look up and stare at me.
“She’s up.”
Evander stopped pacing and turned to look at me, eyes wide and wild.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Kennedy,” he growled low in his throat and started to stalk toward me. “You’re not wearing any goddamn clothes!”
I looked down at my pantless state, and then frowned, reaching for the afghan that was on the couch.
Before I could get it up, Evander was there, shrugging off his shirt and then pulling it on over my tank top, smoothing it until it covered me from mid-forearm to right above my knees.
“What are you doing awake?” he snapped.
I blinked.
Evander snapping—at me or even just in general—was foreign to me. I wasn’t sure I’d ever actually seen him angry.
But this man, the one standing in front of me right this very moment, wasn’t the same man I was used to. This man was angry, vindictive. This man was unforgiving.
“I woke up, and you weren’t there,” I whispered, tears automatically forming in my eyes.
And just like that, all the anger and annoyance drained out of Evander. In its place was a man who looked practically defeated.
“Head back to the bedroom. I’ll be there in a minute.”
I would’ve argued. Really, I would have. But the look on Evander’s face brooked no room for argument from me. At all.
I could tell that with just one glance in his eyes.
“Okay,” I finally murmured. “I’ll just go do that.”
Then I started backing away, watching as Evander watched me, until I hit the mouth of the hall.
The moment that I was out of sight, I turned and walked back down the hallway.
The murmuring didn’t start up again, and that was either due to them going outside so I couldn’t accidentally overhear their conversation again or the departure of Mr. Mysterious, the all-black-wearing, midnight visitor.
But while I waited, I quickly realized that something was very, very wrong here.
Evander was worried.
And I only had to listen to him twenty minutes later as he explained why, exactly, he should be.
Once he was through explaining everything to me, I was worried, too.
***
Evander
I saluted my former squad member—the man who had my back when Gertie wasn’t there to do it—and closed the door quietly.
I shouldn’t have bothered.
I knew that she was still awake, and likely on the edge of her seat waiting for her answers.
Answers that I didn’t want to give—not yet at least, and, if I had my choice, not ever.
But I was a man who knew when his woman wasn’t going to be appeased by some bullshit explanation.
I knew that she wouldn’t stop until she got the answers she sought.
So I chose to share the details with her on the man who we’d gotten the repossession notice for earlier at the club.
I wasn’t surprised to find her wide awake and waiting for me as I walked through her bedroom door.
I also wasn’t surprised to see Gertie in the bed with her, legs sprawled out and his face in her lap. Kennedy’s dog was also in the bed with them, stretched out by her feet and chewing on a piece of rawhide.
If anything good had come from all of the shit that happened and that was now my life, it was what I had in this woman.
Would I have met her had I
not gone to prison? Would I be standing here, staring at her in this bed as she was petting my dog, if the nightmare I went through had not happened?
No, I didn’t think so.
And it was tearing me apart inside.
On one hand, I wanted vengeance. I wanted Balthazar and the chief of police to fucking suffer. I wanted them to die, and I wanted them to die slowly. Painfully. Agonizingly.
I wanted them to feel it, every single second, as they died.
I wanted them to realize that I was not someone they could shit on and not give a second thought to. I was an opponent who was going to just roll over and let them play their stupid fucking games.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” she whispered.
Instead of sitting on the bed, I took the chair that she had piles of clothes sitting in, shoving them backwards so I was on the edge of the seat.
“Do you know who that was?” I asked.
She had to have seen him around town.
This wasn’t a big town. Plus, I’d mentioned him while we were at the meeting today, and the types of places that he liked to frequent.
She nodded.
“Rafe?”
I confirmed with a nod of my head. “The one and only.”
“Okay,” she hesitated. “Then why was he here in the middle of the night, and what was he refusing to help you with?”
I paused, considering my words very carefully.
“The job that Travis gave us before he left today. I was asking Rafe for the help and offering him the job if he wanted it.”
“And did he take it?”
I shrugged. “Yes, for a while, anyway.”
“Then what was the problem?”
“He didn’t want to help me catch Balthazar.” I refused to keep her in the dark about what I was going to do in the next week. She deserved to know that I might fuck this up—just like Rafe said. “He wasn’t refusing to help do the job as much as he was refusing to help me do the job.”
She waited, eyebrows raised in question, for me to elaborate.
“Balthazar is the man who lives down the street from me,” I said. “The one who didn’t take kindly to me threatening him with the police. The one who’s responsible for my four-year prison sentence.”
The moment she realized who he was to me, and it sank in, her face fell.
Hail No (Hail Raisers Book 1) Page 15
