Demons (Georgia Smoke #5)

• Prologue •

thatcher

Nine Years Ago

This wasn’t because I was harboring any guilt or regret. Nothing in me required I find redemption for my actions. Those were pointless emotions that I’d never experienced. I hadn’t come here, looking for her, in hopes of finding vindication either. I was just fucking curious. I mean, she was the trigger that had caused me to kill a guy who’d not done shit to me. Normally, when I took a life, it was family stuff. Something I’d been told to do. But the day I’d snapped Beauden Redd’s neck had been because of her.

Wavy honey-blonde hair hung free down her back as her laughter drifted across the parking lot. As I watched her, I was too far away to see the gray color of her eyes. But I remembered them. She’d changed over the past five years. Grown up, although she was still petite and too damn fragile-looking. Her glasses were gone, and I’d bet her braces were too. The preppy, Bible-toting prick who was smiling down at her like the sun rose and set at her feet led me to believe the girl had become a looker.

I inhaled one last time before taking the cigarette from my teeth and dropping it onto the pavement. I’d assumed seeing her from a distance would be enough, but I wasn’t so sure now. She was an anomaly for me. I couldn’t put my finger on why either. Thus my current location—a church parking lot. Not a place I frequented.

My gaze drifted down to her ass, which, in the jeans she was wearing, appeared round and toned. For a tiny thing, she had some long legs. Her high waist made them longer than most girls her size. Her bare arms were tanned. I doubted that golden skin color came from a tanning bed, but rather a lot of time outdoors.

Another laugh. I was annoyed, and I couldn’t put my finger on why. My gaze shifted to the blond guy talking to her, and I scowled. He was as fucking pedestrian as you could get. Squinting, I took in how smooth his arms were. Did the fucker shave them?

I reached in my back pocket and pulled out another cigarette, then clamped it between my teeth. She could do better than that. I mean, there had to be guys who liked the innocent, sweet shit she had going on that didn’t look like they’d bore a room full of Grannys.

Flicking my lighter, I continued to study her as I lit my next smoke. Her head turned in my direction as if I’d called her name. I lowered my hand and puffed at my cigarette before sliding my lighter back into my pocket. Holding her gaze, I watched as she tilted her head slightly to the left, and those gray eyes dropped to my mouth, then came back to meet mine. A soft smile touched her face as if she knew me and was pleased to see me, although I suspected she didn’t remember me. We’d never really spoken.

The braces were indeed gone. Those lips, which used to stick out like a damn duck because of the metal in her mouth, were now perfect. Her arched brows, full and perky cheeks, and heart-shaped face seemed to all fit together with that mouth of hers. It worked.

She swung her attention back to the guy in front of her. Shifting my gaze to his, I found him glaring this way. Smirking, I took the cigarette from my teeth and held it between my fingers as I leaned back on the bed of my truck and crossed my arms over my chest. I hadn’t come to cause her any problems, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope that fucker would walk over here. The threat in his gaze made me want to laugh.

“Don’t be stupid, little boy,” I muttered before taking another pull from my cigarette.

He swung his gaze back to her and was talking now with more intensity than I liked. Was he correcting her? I felt a nudge against my chest that I fought to push back. Not my problem.

“Excuse me, but there is no smoking on church grounds,” an uptight feminine voice said, and I flicked my gaze over to my right, where an older lady stood, frowning at me.

The helmet hair of hers barely moved in the breeze as she narrowed her eyes. There were few cars here, but then it was a Thursday. I wasn’t a churchgoer, but I knew the folks here seemed to fill up the parking lot on Sundays, not Thursdays. Someone’s granny must have stopped by to pray or feed the needy. Hell, I didn’t know what went on inside. Whoever she belonged to, they needed to come get her. She didn’t know when to keep her mouth shut and mind her own fucking business.

I started to turn my focus back on the girl I was here to see when the old woman clapped her hands. The granny clapped her motherfucking hands. Was she serious?

“Did you hear me? Put that out!” She raised her voice.

Reaching up, I took it from my lips but held on to it. I wasn’t wasting a perfectly good smoke because she seemed to think she owned the parking lot.

“There you are,” a soft, melodious voice said, drawing my attention away from the bitch with the dried-up cunt, who had probably never been fucked properly a day in her life. “I’m sorry I didn’t see you arrive,” the girl said with a glint in her gray eyes that eased whatever annoyance the granny had caused me.

What was she doing?

She gave me a smile that I hadn’t been prepared for. I wasn’t sure any man could be ready for that. Fuck me, it had a punch. Her entire face seemed to glow.

“You know this man?” the old woman asked with disbelief in her tone.

The girl laughed then, and I was intrigued. When was the last time I’d been intrigued with anything?

“Yes, he’s here to meet with Dad about the building project. I’ll make sure he gets to him. Thank you for bringing the casseroles. It will help feed all the Vacation Bible School volunteers. We are so grateful,” she replied.

Well, well, Little Miss Sunday School had just fucking lied. I had to bite my bottom lip to keep from cracking a smile.

“That cancer stick needs to be put out. We can’t have people working on the Lord’s house and smoking,” the old woman said in a less aggressive tone than she’d taken with me. “And of course, Capri, dear. I will always help in any way I can. You just let me know what else you need, and I can do it.”

Capri nodded her head. “Yes, Mrs. Gertrude, I will.”

I barely glanced at the old woman as she shot me one more hard stare before turning and walking away. My focus was right back on the girl. She was still doing that damn smile of hers as she looked up at me.

“Sorry about her. She’s a bit much, but she means well,” Capri said.

I didn’t believe that. Most of the religious folks I’d met in my life were hypocritical bastards. None of them meant well.

“And here I thought, lying was one of those sins y’all steered clear of,” I replied.

Her cheeks flushed, and she scrunched her nose before letting out a nervous laugh. “Yeah, well, I had to save you from her. It was the first thing that came to my mind, so I went with it.”

There was no reason for me to linger. I’d come to see her, and I’d done that. There was work I should be doing.

“You think I needed saving, huh? Might be a first,” I said instead of getting in the truck and leaving.

“What’s a first? Someone saving you?”

I nodded my head, enjoying her facial expressions. She had no fucking idea who I was, but she was curious. It was all there on that perfect face of hers. So was the innocence. I needed to leave.

“Yeah,” I replied. “It’s never me who needs saving,” I replied, then put my cigarette back between my teeth and straightened from my relaxed position against the truck. Time for me to go.

“Oh,” she said in a breathy voice. “I, uh, do I know you?”

That was a loaded question. Not one she would ever get the answer to.

“No, you don’t.”

I opened the truck door and turned to look back at her. Her brows were drawn together in a small frown that was real fucking adorable.

“And you don’t want to,” I added.

“I should get to decide that.”

Those eyes of hers said more than she needed to ever say to someone like me. The hopeful glint in them almost had me closing the door and staying here with her longer. Almost. As much as I liked the way she made me feel—less detached—I knew if she let me get too close, I’d destroy her.

“You’ll thank me,” I told her.

Climbing into the truck, I closed the door before she had time to say another word. The longer I stayed, the more damage would be done. But to which one of us, I wasn’t sure.

She stepped back when the engine roared to life. Wide-eyed, she stood there, watching me as I backed up.

Probably shouldn’t have come here. She’d ask questions about me. Find out who I was. Folks in town would tell her I was dangerous. I’d killed a guy and gotten away with it. Probably whisper about the things they knew about the Family, but weren’t sure how much was true.

All of it.

After that, she’d stay the fuck away. Which was for the best. I didn’t trust my reactions to her—or rather, my reactions to others who treated her poorly. It was unlikely it would happen again. She wasn’t that awkward, shy little girl whose mother dressed her anymore. But I wasn’t about to test that belief either.

I’d never felt the overpowering need to protect someone like I had with her. It was something that still bothered me.

Beauden Redd had been a bully. I went to high school with him, and I never once reacted to the shit he did or said to others. I had not once given a flying fuck. It didn’t concern me. He’d stayed clear of us.

Thinking back on that afternoon—when I’d been walking back to my truck from picking up a box of condoms in the pharmacy and heard a panicked, muffled cry, then followed it to find Beauden holding a girl up against the side of a dumpster—I still didn’t know what the fuck had happened. Everyone always acted as if I had no impulse control or I was unpredictable. I let them think it too. But the truth was, I always knew exactly what the fuck I was doing.

Except that day.

I’d stopped to consider doing something about the situation when big gray eyes looked over at me through ugly-ass, wide-framed glasses. When I stared at her terrified face, a switch flipped. Ice-cold rage exploded in my chest, and any sanity I had was snatched from me.

I then said his name. The threat in my voice made him step back and let her go. She looked at me, and I made the mistake of shifting my attention to her yet again. Her body was visibly shaking, and it only seemed to heighten the fury taking over me.

“Go home,” I’d told her, and she took off running.

Beauden backed away and started going in the opposite direction. I did my best to let him leave. Find some way to calm this thing inside me. But the vision of the girl and those eyes of hers kept taunting me. Fanning the flames of whatever demon inside me she’d unlocked.

When Beauden reached his car, parked behind the pizza place where he worked, he realized I’d been following him. His body tensed, and he turned around to look at me. For a moment, I wondered if he saw the evil clawing just beneath the surface where my soul should have been and realized this was it. His last breath.

Then, I’d snapped his neck.