by Paula Cox
“Yeah, I’m going to be real good to you, squeal real loud after you just threatened to kill me. Fuck you say,” Hendricks said, and spat on the floor.
Janis moved fast and strong. She clapped her estranged husband in the temple with a heavy book. A Bible, in fact, something she’d picked up while Tex wasn’t looking. “It’s not them you need to be afraid of, John,” she said, her voice low and angry. “I buried my baby boy, and you didn’t even have the grace to come back and own that it was your fucking fault.”
For the first time in their unpleasant acquaintance, Tex saw fear flash through John “Smokey” Hendricks’s drug-addled eyes. He leaned back; Janis was apparently going to take care of this just fine.
Chapter Twenty Three
Jessie made it most of the way up the stairs before she sank down, her knees weak, cradling her aching hand. She’d thought at the last minute that if she hit the wall with an open palm, it wouldn’t hurt like it would if she punched it. She’d been incredibly, painfully wrong about that. The heel of her hand burned like it was on fire, and the fleshy pads under each finger were already swelling.
She could hear the angry voices snapping back and forth down in the living room. The house wasn’t so big that she’d be able to get away from them, no matter where she went. She’d thought about storming out of the house, but what was she going to do then, call a cab? Walk back to her apartment? There wasn’t a good solution.
So she sat on the stairs, leaned her head back on the wall, and closed her eyes again. She wasn’t going to go to sleep; her heart was clenched far too tightly for that. But she could just try and let it all go for a little while. That would be enough.
Goddamn Tex Brewer for ever bringing her father back into her life. Nothing, nothing that came after this could possibly be worth it.
***
Tex stepped away from the brutalized man and swallowed hard against the sick bile that tried to rise up his throat. John “Smokey” Hendricks was lax in the chair that Sergeant Eduardo Pedroza had strapped him to. He wasn’t unconscious, but he wasn’t far from it. His blood coated Tex’s knuckles, dried and sticky. Between his career in the military and his life, working up through the ranks of the Sons of Chaos motorcycle club to be the president, he’d earned a reputation for being willing to perpetuate extreme violence. He’d never cared for it, though. It was why he’d gotten out of the military instead of re-upping and going back for another tour. He believed the peace work he did was good work, that it helped people. He was able to sleep at night after the violence happened. But he hated it, all the same.
He’d never intended to put his fist to another person’s face after he walked away from his fatigues, but Hendricks hadn’t left him much choice. He’d insisted, over and over, that he had no idea who had come after his family almost fifteen years ago, running his teenaged son and Tex’s childhood best friend down in the street. But there had been a sneer to his lip and a weasel-like look in his eyes when he’d sworn everything, over and over again. Tex didn’t believe him. He was impressed at Hendricks’s ability to hold back the information. He’d seen firsthand that torture didn’t reveal accurate information, but at the same time, most men would have started spouting anything by now, just to get the pain to stop.
The truth, shitty as it might be, was that he didn’t mind hitting Smokey as much as he’d disliked hitting other men. Maybe it was because he’d seen the flinch in Jessie’s eyes every now and again when her father had come up in conversation, or when their plans had glanced too close to mention of the man. Maybe it was because if the bastard had just been able to run his business properly without dipping in to his own product, his best friend, Jessie’s brother, might still be alive.
But he also knew there was only so much he could say about all of it. The truth was that if Danny hadn’t died that day, he had no idea what his life would have been like. They might have grown apart in high school, or college, or after, and he and Jessie might have been way too young to make their relationship work.
But he would have liked the chance to try, the experience of going through all of those things with his friend next to him, instead of dead in the ground.
He needed to step away. His knuckle had split when he’d misjudged and hit Hendricks in the jaw. It rattled his brain a little too much, and had left him limp with pain and disorientation. He needed to clean up, offer the man some water, and then see where they were. Maybe he’d finally be ready to talk, ready to own what he’d done, and what he’d put everyone through. Tex nodded to Eddie, and Eddie stepped between the two of them. Tex retreated to the kitchen, pressing his cut hand against his shirt so blood wouldn’t drip down onto the floor. He wasn’t worried about forensics so much as he was trying to keep Janis from needing to take care of a mess. He’d call the guys later, actually, ask them to come out and make sure everything was shipshape.
Once the rest of this was done.
In the kitchen, he carefully lifted the faucet handle with his elbow, tapping it towards the warmer side, and running his hands under the flow. The water stung where his skin had broken, and his breath hissed out with the pain.
“He always did have a hard head,” he heard behind him. For one moment, he wanted to believe it was Jessie, but God wasn’t that good to him. Her voice sounded very much like her mother’s, now that he wasn’t looking right at the older woman.
He glanced over his shoulder and gave her a small smile. “Sorry about the mess.”
She shrugged. “Blood washes out.”
“That’s not exactly what I meant. I didn’t intend to bring this to your doorstep at all. I didn’t even really mean for Jessie to find out what was going on.”
“But here we are.”
“Here we are.” He let the water run as he scrubbed. Janis came past him and squirted some soap into his palms, and the suds foamed up in a reddish brown slurry between his hands. He hoped to hell the hepatitis vaccine the military had given him worked. Who knew what Hendricks had picked up over the years. “Is she okay?” He pointed with his chin up the stairs. He’d heard Jessie stomp away. The fact that she’d stayed in the house instead of slamming away gave him hope, but not enough.
“She will be,” Janis said. “She always is, in the end.”
“Did you know he was in town?” He pulled the lever back down to shut off the flow of water, and Janis was already there with a towel.
She shrugged as she carefully patted his hands dry, paying extra attention to his knuckles. She reached for a gauze pad and some medical tape, but he waved her off. The bleeding had nearly stopped already. He pressed the towel down to staunch the last of the flow. “I’d heard a few things. Conversations that ended when I got too close, especially near people that John and I used to run with in high school. But I wasn’t sure.” She heaved a sigh. “I didn’t want to think that he might be back. I know Jessie was hurt when Danny died, but I think her father not showing up to help her feel better was the part she couldn’t ever forgive.”
“Not—” he cut the words off before he could get them out. They weren’t fair.
She understood them anyway. “Not that you weren’t there? No. She understood. Later on, she was angry about that, angry that your parents had taken you away when you were the one person who understood what she’d lost. But she got that you were a kid, and probably hadn’t had a choice in the matter. Her father, though…”
“Not so generous.”
“Do you think she should be?” There was a dare in her question, almost too easy to recognize.
He shook his head. “No, of course not. I think it’s a miracle she’s willing to have me in her life. I can’t imagine how I could forgive him either, if he were my parent.”
“And what about your parents? How are they these days?”
The question poked an old wound that he didn’t think about when he could help it. “Last I knew, they were doing well.”
When they’d all been kids, they’d considered Janis nearly psychic for
the way she could cut to the heart of any conversation easily. She’d noticed any evasion, even the slightest prevarication, and heaven help all of them if they dared to lie. She hadn’t lost her touch. “Last you knew? When did you last talk to them?”
“Before I shipped for basic when I was 18.”
She winced a little, shaking her head.
“Don’t give me the speech about how I’ll miss them when they’re gone. I know all that.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she said. “I was always of the opinion that parents need to earn their children’s respect, just as much as the other way around. I’m sad they’re not seeing what a fine young man you’re growing up to be, but that’s their loss.”
It was a refreshing thing to hear. Granted, he didn’t get a lot of ‘call your mother’ when hanging around with a gang of misfits, outlaws, and social rejects, but it wasn’t like none of his patched members had dear old mothers and fathers that they loved and missed. He didn’t miss his parents. He didn’t think about going back to them and having some kind of grand reunion with tears and apologies. If they wanted him, they knew where to find him. He’d sent the occasional message on holidays and birthdays. Never any kind of response.
“Are you going to get Danny some justice, finally, after all these years?”
He nodded. “Or die trying.”
“And you’ll keep my girl safe?”
“I will.” Whether it was by his side or away from it, he would keep Jessie safe if it was the last thing he did. He owed that to all of them.
“Okay,” she said.
There was a sharp rap on the wooden doorframe. He looked up to see Eddie standing in the doorway, his face pale and his eyes serious. “He’s talking,” he said. “He’s got names.”
Chapter Twenty Four
Jessie never fell asleep, exactly, curled up in the hallway above her childhood living room, but she drifted for a while. She heard the sick thumps of flesh on flesh, and the soft cries of a man she’d called Daddy – once upon a time. She heard soft voices, threatening words, and realized that the growling demands Tex made during sex, the kind that were made with his lips half curled into a smile, were used at other times, as well. That was the part where her stomach finally flipped over, but she wasn’t sick.
She pushed herself up to her hands and knees, and then to her feet. Her mother’s small Cape Cod home was arranged so all the living areas were downstairs and the bedrooms were all upstairs. Shortly after she’d moved out, Janis had redecorated Jessie’s room, turning it into a combination of a crafting nook and exercise room. That was the door directly in front of her; another door to her left was kept firmly closed. She hadn’t entered it in fifteen years. But now, it almost called out to her, inviting her to go inside.
The funny thing, she thought, as she twisted the doorknob, is that Danny had barely ever let me in his room when he was alive, too. Being barred from entry after his death shouldn’t have felt like having a door closed on her childhood. But it had. If she’d told her mother that she needed to go in there to say goodbye, she was sure Janis would have let her, but without that…it just wasn’t a conversation she’d been equipped to have, and by the time she’d thought of it, it had been too long, and it didn’t feel the same.
But now, she wanted to see.
She wasn’t sure what she expected. A perfectly preserved room, completely with rock star posters and the baseball he’d had signed the one time they made it to Los Angeles? Or an office where Janis kept her computer and her writing desk?
The door opened instead onto a very different scene. It was her brother’s room, in a very general way, but it was also soulless. It could pass as a guest room, even though it still had the same comforter, the same desk, and the same lamp on the night table. The posters were gone. The mess of books and video games on his desk, the general clutter of teenage-boy that had made the room Danny’s was gone.
It was a strange sort of loss. It was like looking at a family portrait. Everyone was there, all the moving pieces were accounted for, but they were awkwardly posed, too formal, stiff and uncomfortable. There was no soul to the picture. It was documentation, not record. Or something.
She closed the door without stepping into the room. She didn’t entirely know what she was looking for, but whatever it was, it didn’t lie in that room.
Things had gotten quiet downstairs. She dared to creep back down the stairs. She was still furious at Tex for choosing to…to interrogate that man instead of being there for her, but at the same time, she knew it had been an unfair demand. They’d been together for a little more than a week. He’d been chasing his best friend’s killer for more than a decade. He had a lead, and Sergeant Pedroza had said it was crucial. She should have known he would choose that over her. She would have done the same in his place. Hell, she wanted him to. The whole point was trusting his judgment, after all, and his judgment had gotten them this far towards finding out who had killed Danny and getting revenge.
She wasn’t sure where she was going to go once she got downstairs, but it ended up not mattering. As she got close to the bottom of the stairs, she heard quiet voices coming from the kitchen. It only took a moment to identify them as Tex and her mother. She didn’t exactly plan to listen, but, at the same time, it wasn’t like she had her fingers in her ears. It was hard to miss her mother telling Tex that she’d known — there was no word in her mind that fit who he was to her, and she glossed over the space where his name should be as quickly as she could — was in town. Because if Mama had known, and hadn’t told her…that was somehow even worse than Tex telling her he needed to talk to that man, even if it hurt her.
She’d thought she would go into the kitchen, put her arms around Tex’s waist, and let him apologize. Find out what was happening, what he needed her to do. Make a decision about how much of this she could handle.
Instead, she slipped the rest of the way down the staircase, then around the back hallway and out the back door. No one heard her. That was just fine. She didn’t have anything else to say to anyone here. Her phone was in her pocket, and she was going to walk for a while. Get her head sorted out before she tried to tell anyone anything at all.
Chapter Twenty Five
Before he could thumb the ignition on his motorcycle, Tex forced himself to take several long, slow breaths. He’d never seen a therapist after he came back from overseas, but he’d seen a character on TV told to recite street names from her childhood to deal with her flashbacks and panic attacks. It didn’t do much for him, but he said the names anyway.
Hendricks had been in a daze when he’d walked back into the living room, but Eddie was convinced he was telling the truth. He’d verified that Pedey was the one who’d run Danny down in the street, and verified that the actual order had been given by Ginger Mac. Fifteen years ago, Mac had been the Sergeant-At-Arms for the Racketeers, running their drug operations and managing their suppliers. He’d warned Hendricks about the lengths he’d be willing to go to if Smokey kept fucking up. And the little pissant hadn’t been able to stop using long enough to even consider what he was about to do to his family.
In his guts, he knew it wasn’t as simple as just stopping using. He’d seen plenty of guys come home and need something to make the hurting stop. It wasn’t the use he judged, not really, but he hated what Hendricks had done to his family with his use. He wished he knew a way to help the guy get clean, get healthy. Hell, he wished he knew how to get himself healthy. Maybe, with this shit in his past, he could finally find a way to get things right in his head.
If Jessie were still with him. If she weren’t with him, then — well, it was too much to say that there was no point. But he wasn’t sure what the point would be. He’d have his revenge, and he’d thought for a long time that would be enough. But now, no. He wanted her.
Before he walked out of the house, he’d gone upstairs, looking for her. She was gone. He checked all the rooms twice before he accepted that she’d slipped out without saying an
ything to him. After the argument they’d had, he wasn’t exactly surprised, but he’d still hoped it wouldn’t be true.
He had to push that awareness out of his mind. He had to focus. He was already jumping at shadows more than enough. He would fix things with Jessie when this was done, when he was a complete man again. When he’d finally chased away the ghosts.
He started the bike and put it into gear, then drove slowly out of the residential neighborhood. Eddie would follow him; Hendricks was taking a nap in the trunk of Eddie’s personal vehicle. It was strange how peaceful the man had looked when they’d injected him with whatever compound it was that Eddie had pulled out of his pocket. His face slack in chemical sleep, he’d looked younger than his daughter.
The man he’d become tonight frightened him. He’d always been aware, of course, that those dark impulses were buried, not destroyed. He’d been too well trained to ever really leave all of that behind. But it had come to the forefront so quickly, the knowledge of where to land his blows to maximize pain without threatening the man’s consciousness. The almost instinctive sense of how much would be too much. And how easily he’d maintained perfect control, until — until he didn’t, and he hit Hendricks too hard, splitting his knuckles open and unleashing the very darkest part of himself. The part that had given even his COs a minute of pause. Because the Army only wanted darkness that it could direct.
