Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Bloodhound
She passes out before I pull the trigger.
Maybe that's a mercy.
Maybe it's better she doesn't see what I'm about to become.
Her eyes roll back, her body goes limp against the wall, and for one terrible second I think she's dead.
That he killed her and I was too late and everything I've done to get here was for nothing.
But her chest rises. Falls. Rises again.
She's alive.
My wife is alive. My child is alive.
And the man who hurt them is about to learn what that costs.
I don't aim for Virgil's head.
That would be too quick.
Too merciful, and mercy is something I left on the highway about thirty miles back, somewhere between the motel where he wasn't and the compound where my wife should have been safe.
The shot tears through his right knee, shattering bone and cartilage, and he goes down screaming.
The sound is high and raw and beautiful—the first note in a symphony I'm going to conduct with my bare hands.
He crashes to the filthy floor, clutching his ruined leg, blood already pooling beneath him.
His face is a mask of agony and disbelief, like he can't quite understand how he ended up here.
How the hunter became the prey.
Behind me, I hear Ruger and Coin push through the wreckage of the wall I made.
Their boots crunch on broken glass and splintered wood, and I feel them take positions at my shoulders.
Flanking me. Guarding me. Bearing witness.
"Jesus Christ." Coin's voice is barely a whisper. He's seen Vanna. Seen the bruises blooming across her face, the blood matted in her hair, the way her clothes are torn. "Garrett..."
"I know." I don't take my eyes off Virgil. "Get Maddox in here. Have him take her to Ruby. Call Leah—tell her to meet them at the ER. Tell her..." My voice catches. "Tell her to be ready."
Ruger moves to the hole in the wall, calls out orders.
I hear Maddox's heavy footsteps a moment later, hear his sharp intake of breath when he sees Vanna.
"Careful with her," I say.
"I know, brother." Maddox's voice is gentle in a way I've never heard from him before.
He's our enforcer, built like a grizzly bear, hands that can crush a man's skull.
But he gathers my wife like she's made of glass, cradling her against his chest like she weighs nothing at all.
Because she does.
She's fought so hard during this pregnancy being clean, stress eating away at her, and now...
Now she's broken. And I'm going to break the man who did it.
Maddox carries her out, and I wait.
I listen to his footsteps fade across the gravel.
I listen to the motorcycle engine roar to life.
I listen until the sound disappears into the distance, carrying Vanna toward safety.
Toward Leah. Toward help. Toward the life I'm going to make sure she gets to live.
Then I turn back to Virgil.
He's trying to crawl away, dragging himself across the floor with his hands, leaving a thick smear of blood behind him.
His ruined knee trails uselessly, bone grinding against bone with every movement.
He's whimpering, cursing, praying—all at once, words tumbling over each other in a desperate stream.
Pathetic.
A snake with a broken back, still trying to slither into the shadows.
"Where do you think you're going?" I ask.
He freezes at my voice.
Slowly, painfully, he rolls onto his back and looks up at me.
His eyes are wild, pupils blown wide with pain and fear.
Sweat pours down his face, mixing with the blood from his broken nose—Vanna's work, I realize with a surge of fierce pride.
My wife fought back.
Even here, even like this, she fought.
Good girl.
"Listen, man." Virgil's voice is strained, cracking. "Listen, we can work something out. I got money. Lots of money. I got connections—people who owe me favors. Whatever you want, whatever it takes—"
"I want my wife back the way she was an hour ago." I crouch down beside him, letting the muzzle of my gun rest against his forehead.
The metal must be cold against his skin.
I hope it is. I hope he feels it all the way down to his soul. "Can you give me that?"
He doesn't answer.
His mouth opens and closes, but no words come out.
"I want to erase what you did to her." I press the gun harder, watching his eyes bulge. "Can you give me that?"
"I—I didn't—she's fine—I barely—"
"Don't." The word comes out like a whip crack, sharp enough to make him flinch. "Don't you dare lie to me. I saw her. I saw what you did."
I stand up, holstering the gun.
I don't need it anymore.
What comes next requires something more personal.
Ruger and Coin move closer.
I feel them at my back, solid and steady, and something in my chest loosens.
I'm not alone in this.
Whatever I become in the next hour, my brothers will be here to see it.
To understand it. To help me carry it afterward.
"Take your time," Ruger says quietly. "We're not in a hurry."
I look around the room, really look at it, and my stomach turns.
A filthy mattress on the floor, stained with things I don't want to identify.
Scattered syringes, some with traces of brown liquid still in them.
The smell of sex and blood and fear, ground into the walls like decades of bad decisions.
This is where he brought her. This is where he...
I can't finish the thought.
If I finish it, I'll lose what little control I have left, and I need that control.
I need to be precise. Methodical.
I need Virgil to understand exactly why he's dying, and that requires clarity.
My eyes land on a duffle bag in the corner, half-open, contents spilling onto the floor.
Something catches the light.
I walk to the bag, keeping one eye on Virgil.
He doesn't try to move.
The fight's gone out of him—he knows there's no escape.
He's just waiting now, the way a rabbit waits when the hawk's talons are already closing around its throat.
I crouch beside the bag and pull it open.
Cash. Bricks of it, rubber-banded together. Enough to buy a house, maybe two.
Drugs. Heroin, pills, white powder in little baggies.
A gun. Chrome-plated, probably worth more than it's accurate.
And a jewelry box.
My hand freezes over it.
I know that box.
I know it because I watched my mother keep it beside her bed.
I know it because I used to sneak into my parents' room as a kid just to look at it, to trace the delicate inlay with my fingers while Mom laughed and told me about it.
I know it because it was one of the only things that survived the fire.
One of the only pieces of my mother we had left.
And I know it because Leah cried for three days straight when she realized Vanna had stolen it.
Cried until she couldn't cry anymore, until her eyes were so swollen she could barely see, and I held her and promised her I'd get it back.
I never did.
Because Vanna had already traded it.
For product. For poison. For the disease that's been eating her alive since before I understood what addiction really meant.
And this piece of shit kept it.
All these years. He kept it like a trophy.
"Where did you get this?" My voice is barely recognizable. Something has gone very still inside me, very cold, very quiet.
Virgil's eyes dart to the box, then back to me.
I watch him calculate, watch him try to figure out which lie might save him.
"I—your wife—she traded it for—"
"I know what she did." I stand, the jewelry box in my hand. It's lighter than I remember. Or maybe I'm just stronger now. "She stole it from my sister. From my family. And you kept it. All these years. You kept it like it meant something to you."
"I can give it back! I'm giving it back right now! Take it, man, just take it and let me go—"
"Let you go." I tuck the jewelry box into my jacket, settling it against my chest, close to my heart. Where it belongs. Where it should have been all along. "You think this is about the jewelry?"
I turn back to him, and whatever he sees in my face makes him scramble backward, clawing at the floor, keening like a wounded animal.
"You think I rode all the way out here for a box with my mother's necklace inside?" I advance on him slowly, deliberately. "You think I put together a war party—you think I called my brothers away from their families, their lives, everything they care about—for jewelry?"
"Please—"
"This is about my fuckin’ wife." I grab him by the collar and haul him upright, ignoring his screams as his ruined knee takes his weight. "This is about my child. This is about every single thing you've ever taken from people who couldn't fight back."
I slam him against the wall, and his head cracks against the wood hard enough to leave a dent.
Blood trickles down the back of his neck.
"Ruger." I don't look away from Virgil's face. I want to see every flicker of fear, every moment of realization as he understands what's coming. "You carrying a blade?"
A pause.
Then the sound of leather against metal as Ruger reaches into his boot and draws out his hunting knife.
The blade is maybe six inches, serrated on one edge, sharp enough to shave with.
We all carry them.
Part of the life.
He hands it to me without a word.
Virgil's eyes go so wide I can see the whites all the way around. "No—no, wait—please—I know people—I can disappear—you'll never see me again, I swear to God—"
"That's exactly right." I test the blade's edge against my thumb, watching a thin line of blood well up. Sharp. Good. "I'll never see you again."
"Please, man, please—"
"Did she say please?" I ask, genuinely curious. The coldness has spread through my whole body now, numbing everything except my hands and my eyes.
I feel like I'm watching myself from a distance, seeing myself the way Ruger and Coin must be seeing me.
A stranger. A monster.
Something that wears my face but isn't really me anymore.
"When you were doing what you did to her," I continued, "did Vanna say please? Did she beg you to stop?"
His mouth opens and closes.
His breath comes in short, sharp gasps.
He's hyperventilating, his body going into shock even before I've really started.
"I asked you a question."
"She—she—"