Ring of Fire

by Taylor Lee

  Nate studied Jeb for a long moment, then drilled him with a hard glare.

  “Jeb, you referred to Erin a minute ago. Hear me and hear me well. I swear to God and on everything that is holy, if you or any of your sub-human pieces of road kill go near her, or hurt her in any way, I’ll hunt you down like a dog. I’ll chop you in so many pieces, Jeb, you’ll fit in a junior sized tackle box with room to spare. You got that?”

  Jeb rose unsteadily to his feet and made a feeble attempt at copying Nate’s harsh stare.

  “You threatenin’ me, Nate?”

  Nate grinned at him.

  “Damn straight.”

  Nate glanced at his partner. “I think we got what we came for, don’t you, Sam?”

  Sam nodded. Like Nate’s, Sam’s smile didn’t reach his eyes.

  “We most certainly did, Nate.”

  Jeb’s voice was cloaked in bravado, but the quaver gave him away.

  “What exactly was it you came to get, Nate?”

  Nate hooked his thumbs on his jeans’ pockets and said casually, “Why that’s simple, Jeb. We came to size you up. Came to see how easy it was going to be to take you down.” He grinned at Sam. “Whadda you think?”

  Sam chuckled. “Piece of cake, man, piece of cake.”

  They walked across the patio together without a backward glance. When they got to the corner, Nate turned and held Jeb with his gaze. His voice was low, soft, shrouded in danger—but loud enough for his old friend to hear.

  “This isn’t high school, Jeb. It ain’t basketball. A dunk or a hook shot isn’t gonna win this game. Nope, this is life and death, bro. There’s only gonna be one winner. One man left standing. And, Jeb? You’re looking at him.”

  Chapter 6

  “I gotta tell you, I don’t know what I enjoyed more. Jeb practically throwing a temper tantrum he was so pissed; or Hollywood here, laying one insult after another on the racist prick—and Sam never lost his smile.”

  Nate raised his bottle of beer and saluted Sam. All the others joined in with a hearty cheer. Nate tipped his bottle to Annika, Sam’s Scandinavian sweetheart.

  “I’m telling you, girl, you would have been bursting with pride. Your guy put that White Alliance asshole in so deep a hole, I’m not sure when he’ll crawl out. I’m betting he’s thanking whatever perverted gods he believes in that none of his imbecilic followers were there. Talk about getting schooled.”

  Annika smiled up at Sam but her concern was apparent. Her sparkling blue eyes glinted with anger.

  “I’m sure I would have been proud, Nate. But I hate it all the same. Sam is just a nicer person than I am. If I’d been there I would have kneed that asshole in the balls and then backhanded him across the face with my Walther! And then bootkicked his ass across the floor!”

  Mama D interrupted the cheers from the group following Annika’s colorful threat.

  “I don’t know how you ‘bootkick’ someone, Annika, and I have to say, I’m still surprised that a nice Swedish girl who looks like you knows how to do such things.”

  Mama D held up her hands, her cheeks flushing at the chorus of boos from the crowd of firefighter and cops surrounding her.

  “No, wait. I didn’t mean you shouldn’t do that, or that nice girls shouldn’t know how to do things like that. In fact I wish I’d known things like that when Nate and Luke were boys and running around with that dreadful troublemaker. I would have loved to bootkick him if that meant stripping him naked first!”

  The crowd roared and Nate grabbed the diminutive dark-haired hoyden and swung her in a big circle.

  “Damn, Mama D, Jeb was scared shitless of you twenty-five years ago and he’d be more scared of you now. Hell, when you came tearing out of the house swinging that rolling pin of yours over your head, I don’t know who ran faster, Jeb, Cougar, Luke or me. You terrified us then just like you do now.”

  Mama D scoffed. “Nathan, you know darned well I don’t scare you now and I didn’t then. But maybe if I’d known how to bootkick someone’s ass….”

  Chief Roberts had been standing to the side. The tall distinguished man laughed along with the others but Nate recognized his underlying concern. With his military short grey hair and powerful muscular body, the Chief looked every bit the commander of a full sized army regiment—as he once was. But today, he settled with being the toughest police chief in the country whose scowl could turn veteran police officers into blithering idiots.

  When Nate was six years old and his mother finally o.d.’d on heroin, his aunt, Mama D, and her husband Marcus had taken him in. As much as they loved him and made him a part of their family, Nate’s anger ran too deep. It would have destroyed him and taken the rest of the family down with him. But the Chief had stepped in. He said later he saw a good kid about to follow after some very bad ones and hauled him back. Nate always said he did it because Nate was the only one who could beat the big man at basketball. But deep down Nate knew different. As a kid he’d been afraid of Roberts… but respected and, yes, loved him like a father. The Chief had returned the favor. Over the years they’d grown closer than most fathers and sons could hope to be.

  At that moment Sam said in his modest, understated way, “Listen, folks, the real hero today was our own Detective Stryker. Nate put the fear of god in that racist asshole. Jeb was hanging on the back of his chair when we left. He couldn’t stand on his own if he’d tried.”

  Nate guffawed. “Think it might have been the four beers he drank in less than an hour, not my threat to cut him in pieces if he so much as went near Erin or any of the rest of you?”

  Sam smiled. “Yes, that was quite an imaginative threat, Nate. But no, it was more than that. Jeb knows you will take him down—unless he gets to you first.”

  Nate let the meaning of Sam’s accurate assessment settle over the room and then addressed the danger.

  “Sam’s right. As good as Sam was today, and yeah, I did my part, we only confirmed what we already knew. Jeb is as dangerous a man as we’ve ever dealt with.”

  He glanced over to the Chief. “We also got evidence that Jeb’s come into some big money in the last year. Bigger than any of us realized, Chief. And at least on the surface, we established that the split between Jeb and Cougar is real. I won’t know for sure until I hear it from Cougar. He never could keep his thoughts to himself and he always was the tag-along. Jeb was the leader.”

  The Chief shook his head in disagreement. “Actually, you were the leader, Nate, with Luke a close second. That made Jeb even angrier than he already was. His goal was to pull you into the dirt with him. He captured Cougar early on and was determined to get you and Luke if he could.”

  “Damn, I was lucky, Chief. You figured both him and Cougar out and somehow you got it through my thick head that I’d rather be like you than them. Hell, I’m glad I decided I wanted to be a true asshole, not just some wannabe.”

  The Chief’s lip quirked up at the joke but his expression quickly firmed into a grim frown.

  “I really did try to work with both of those boys, but they were irredeemable.” Glancing at the others, the Chief’s voice was strained. “As Nate can tell you once I get on your ass I don’t let up. But Cougar and especially Jeb were a special case. They were more determined to be bad than I had the power to turn them around. Damn I tried. More than anything for your sake, Nate. I knew Mama D and Marcus could keep Luke on track, but you were almost as determined as Jeb was to be a badass.”

  The Chief scowled but couldn’t hide the twinkle in his eye.

  “Damn good thing you had that killer fade away jumper, Nate, or I would’ve kicked your ass to the curb and let you rot with Jeb.”

  Nate threw his arm around the older man’s shoulder.

  “Who do you think taught me that fade away shot, Chief? And you gotta admit I did listen to you. Eventually.”

  The Chief growled and flicked his hand at Nate’s collar length sun-streaked hair. “Like hell you did. Look at your damn hair. How many times do I have to t
ell you, Stryker, to get your hair cut! You look like one of those fuckin’ surfer boys.”

  Everyone laughed when Nate hollered back his teenaged tested response, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  ~~~

  When Erin insisted that she needed to help Mama D and Annika in the kitchen, Nate reluctantly let her go. As she walked away she twitched her heart-shaped ass from side to side and gave him a saucy smile over her shoulder.

  “I won’t be gone too long, Detective. I’ll come out every so often so you don’t get lonely or think that I’ve run off or been kidnapped.”

  Nate made a grab for her. He jerked her up close and whispered in her ear.

  “It’s okay, baby, I don’t mind letting your chain out a little so that you can help the womenfolk in the kitchen while we men tend to important business.”

  Erin gave an outraged shriek and tried to pull away but Nate held her tight. With a soft murmur he slid his hand up under her thigh-high skirt and pinched the soft skin on her inner thigh.

  Erin jumped back. “Nate, for God’s sake! Mama D’s—”

  Nate pressed a finger against her lips.

  “Honey, I gotta ask. You decide to wear a skirt that’s only six inches below your curvy ass and don’t expect that some horny guy is going to try to see what color panties you’re wearing?”

  Erin shoved his hand away and snapped.

  “In case you forgot, Detective, you bought this skirt for me.”

  Nate chuckled. “Um. So I did. And it looks just as sexy on you as I knew it would.”

  He swatted her butt.

  “Run along now, Erin, or I’ll haul you up to my old bedroom and do to you what I only dreamed about doing when I was a randy teenage boy.”

  Mama D poked her head out of the doorway at the same time that the Chief appeared from the back yard.

  Mama D went first.

  “Erin, you come in here right now. You know what Nate is like when he’s riding high from one of his many victories.”

  Nate and the Chief shared a surprised look then both roared in laughter.

  Nate managed to control himself then shook his head and marveled, “Jesus, Mama, you’re scarin’ me. I thought only big bad dogs like the Chief and me knew the relationship between testosterone and adrenalin.”

  Mama D sniffed.

  “You boys think we women, especially your Mamas, don’t know anything. I can tell you that after all my years with you and Luke and even Connor, it’s not as though I just fell off the turnip truck!”

  Mama D tossed her head and grabbed Erin’s hand. “C’mon, honey, let’s go finish making dinner so that the ‘boys’ can argue among themselves about important things. Like which is better, whisky or beer, or who has the biggest gun in their collections.”

  Ignoring Nate and the Chiefs shouts of laughter, Erin allowed a ruffled Mama D to drag her toward the kitchen but not before she directed a pointed look at the slight bulge in Nate’s jeans and winked.

  “By the way, Detective? The answer is red.”

  At his frown she flicked up the back of her skirt and displayed a flash of color.

  Both Nate and the Chief shouted with laughter as Mama D closed the door in their faces.

  The Chief wiped at the tears of laughter in his eyes and gave an appreciative sigh.

  “That is some woman you have there, Nate. I’m happy as hell for you, Son.”

  “Yeah, I’m a lucky son of a bitch and don’t think I don’t know it.”

  Nate stood for a moment staring at the closed door then turned to the Chief with a look of wonder.

  “But damn, Chief… Mama D?”

  The grey-haired man nodded in amused agreement.

  “Scary, isn’t she?”

  ~~~

  The banter at the dinner table was filled with one outrageous story after another from Nate’s growing-up years. Egged on by Connor and the Chief, Nate had to suffer through retelling every embarrassing escapade from his young life. Erin noted with a smile, that there were a lot of them. Sam chipped in with stories from his own youth. He told how he’d done everything he could to embarrass his important father, one outrageous thing after another, determined to prove how bad he was. He admitted he eventually gave in and became the bright outstanding superstar he’d been programmed to be.

  At one point, Sam glanced over at Nate with an apologetic smile.

  “Not that I want to pile on, Nate, but I learned something today about you that I wouldn’t have believed in a hundred years.”

  At the shouts of ‘do tell’, ‘c’mon, Sam, tell us’, Sam put up his hands in mock surrender.

  “Okay, since you’re forcing me. I learned from Jeb that the Big Dog was the Sophomore Homecoming King! Can you believe it? Damn, Nate, what kind of a badass cop was once in the homecoming court?”

  At the chorus of laughter, Mama D broke in with an excited smile.

  “Oh, just wait until I get my photograph albums. You won’t believe how handsome Nate was in his tuxedo. And Sarah Mueller? She was a beauty. Why, she was the prettiest girl in the whole school. Even so young. Their picture was on the front page of the Chicadia Falls Sentinel and it was a full page photo in the Sophomore class yearbook. Both of them were so blonde and so good-looking. Everyone was convinced—”

  Mama D stopped in the middle of her sentence when Nate interrupted. Trying for levity, he scoffed, “Admit it Mama D, everyone was convinced that I’d paid off the class so that I could win.”

  Mama D looked surprised, then as if seeing Erin’s troubled expression for the first time, rushed in. “Now, honey, don’t you look like that. If you’d been in that school you’d have been the Queen. You’re three times as pretty as Sarah ever was.”

  Nate put his arm around Erin and gently gave her a loud peck on the cheek.

  “You’re right about that, Mama D. No offense to any of the rest of you gorgeous women, but there isn’t a more beautiful woman in the world than the one sitting beside me. The only problem is I’m not sure how smart she is.”

  At the startled gasp from around the table, Nate grinned and tipped up Erin’s chin and looked into her eyes.

  “She did agree to marry me. You did, right, Erin?”

  Erin nodded and gave him a brave smile.

  “Yes I did, Nate. And even after everything that I’ve heard tonight, I’m holding you to it.”

  Amidst a round of applause, the Chief rose and raised his glass to Erin.

  “Thank you, Erin, for making my de facto son the happiest man in the world. He’s too much of a rascal to deserve you, but I’m glad that you are at least partially blind and are overlooking all of his faults. For that I thank you.”

  Erin felt the heat rise up in her face and she did her best to smile and thank everyone. She bit the inside of her lip to keep it from trembling. She didn’t want to hurt Mama D’s feelings or the Chief’s. She’d enjoyed listening to all the stories of Nate’s teenage years. But his successes, his ‘star’ status, reminded her where she was when she 16 years old. She’d been living on the street for two years supporting herself with money she made stripping—among other things.

  ~~~

  Connor’s three sisters had joined them at the dinner table. As everyone stood to leave, Amy, the oldest, wormed her way next to Nate. As the noisy conversation continued around them, Amy touched his arm. When he looked at her questioningly, she flushed and lowered her voice.

  “Nate, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure, honey, what’s up? One of the twenty or more guys who are after you forget who your cousin is? Whose ass do I need to kick now? Damn, when is that pack of hound dogs gonna learn that I’ve got you in quarantine until you’re at least thirty-five?”

  When Amy didn’t smile, Nate got serious.

  “C’mon, Amy, let’s you and I go out back and bring in some of those dishes for your mom.”

  When they were alone, he asked. “Okay, honey. Spit it out. What’s up?”

  Amy sighed.

 
“Nate, it’s about Melanie. Melanie Jones.”

  Nate pushed at the cold dread inching its way up his spine.

  “What about her?”

  Amy’s pretty face twisted in a frown. Nate gave her a reassuring smile and waited for her to continue.

  “I know… that you and Melanie are close, Nate. You mean the world to her. She is always bragging about the fact that Detective Nate Stryker is her godfather. Melanie and I are in a lot of the same classes at the college and we’ve become friends.”

  When she hesitated, Nate gave her an encouraging nod.

  Amy took a deep breath then continued. “It’s like this, Nate. Melanie has told me about some of the things her father is doing.”

  Nate stiffened. “To her?”

  Amy quickly shook her head.

  “No. He leaves her alone. At… at least like that. No, I mean about the other things he does. The drugs… the meth… and all the bad men in that awful group. Melanie stays away from him as much as she can but I know she is afraid of him.”

  Nate was quiet letting her talk at her own pace.

  Amy sighed. “This is going to sound weird, Nate. But Melanie seems truly happy for the first time since we’ve been friends.”

  “I don’t get it. Why is that a problem, Amy?”

  “Well, because… because I think it’s because she has a boyfriend.”

  Nate hooked his thumbs in his jeans and quirked a questioning brow. “Hmm. I see, And?”

  Amy continued in a rush. “Because… well, because Melanie’s told me a bunch of times that her father warned her that if he ever caught her going out with some guy, he’d kill him.”

  “Oh, honey, fathers say that a lot.”

  Nate gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile but he couldn’t squash the anxiety he felt.

  Amy shook her head.

  “But Nate, her dad seems like the kinda guy who would really do that. Melanie as much as said that her mother has warned her, begged her not to go out with this guy. But Melanie doesn’t seem to care. She… she thinks she’s in love.”

  Seeing the genuinely troubled expression on Amy’s face, Nate hugged her.

  “Tell you what. I’ll speak with Melanie. She and I talk a lot. I’ll see what’s going on. And honey, don’t worry. I’m not minimizing your concerns. They’re legitimate. Jeb Stuart Jones is a bad man. But I’ve got him in my sights. And Amy, I have Melanie there too. I’m not gonna let that asshole do anything to hurt her. Okay?”