Chapter 30 Jagger
JAGGER
Vigo sat in the driver’s seat of the G-Wagon, bouncing a rubber ball off the windshield. “Sometimes I think we spend more time waiting than doing anything else.”
I kept my gaze trained on the dingy little house across the street from where we were parked, its front yard littered with plastic toys and a couple of plastic lawn chairs. “Yeah but the rest of the time is enough fun to make up for it.”
The house’s peeling white paint and cracked concrete porch didn’t stand out in this part of Carlton where most of the houses had seen better days.
“Easy for you to say after fucking around with Cassie the other night,” Vigo said.
As soon as he said it an image of her flashed in my mind: Cassie naked on my bed, her fiery hair spread out on my pillow, hands bound, eyes covered with the blindfold, her pussy wet and on display right in front of my face.
It had only been a couple of hours since she’d left for the coffee shop and I was already excited to see her back at the house later.
“You were in her pants the first night,” I pointed out.
I wasn’t surprised Hawk was quiet in the back seat. He’d tried to play it off when he found Cassie in my bed the morning after I’d eaten her pussy but it had been obvious he was pissed.
“Yeah, but you got to eat her pussy,” Vigo said. “Plus you let her come. I was trying to be a team player and make her wait.”
“You should’ve talked to us,” Hawk finally said. “She lost the Hunt to all of us.”
“Fuck off,” I said. “Nobody’s stopping you from taking a taste.”
As much as I wanted to believe Cassie was all in for me, it was clear from the way she’d responded to the blindfold and the wheel that she was down to play.
Rule number one: You can say no.
Rule number two: You have to mean it.
She wouldn’t have said no to Hawk. Not once he’d started in on her.
“Fuck you,” he said calmly.
“It’s true and you know it,” I said. “You’re just too fucking scared to get too close.”
“The fuck I am.”
I laughed, “Deny it all you want but we all know if Cassie wasn’t a virgin you’d have smashed it already.”
Hawk knew it was a big deal, knew we owed something to Cassie. We weren’t obligated to make it meaningful — she was a Hunt girl living with us to do Hunt-girl things — but whether we liked it or not, we owed it to her to make her first time really fucking good.
And that wasn’t all there was to it. I’d seen the way Hawk looked at her, the way you looked more closely at the walls when you thought you heard a mouse scratching from inside. You couldn’t see what was in there, but you knew it was something.
It was the same way I felt when I was around Cassie. Fuck, even when I wasn’t around her. I wanted to stare at her, figure out why she made me want to rail her and protect her at the same time. Because I’d wanted to rail plenty of girls but the urge to protect had never reared its ugly head.
“She’s coming out,” Vigo said.
I followed his gaze to the little house where a young woman not much older than Cassie emerged with a baby on her hip, her brown hair in a ponytail.
“She leaving?” Hawk asked from the back.
“I think so,” I said as the woman turned toward the car in the driveway, an older sedan in need of a paint job.
She reached the car, put the baby in a car seat in the back seat, and climbed into the driver’s seat.
We watched as she reversed, then disappeared down the narrow street.
Hawk grabbed his mask off the back seat and opened the door of the G-Wagon. “Let’s do this.”
Vigo and I joined him on the street, all of us holding our Hunt masks. We crossed to the white house and waited to put on our masks until we were headed up the cracked concrete walkway.
No reason to scare the shit out of the neighbors, or worse, bring out the cops.
We stepped onto the porch with Hawk at the front. He didn’t even slow down as he approached the door, just pulled open the screen and took out the door with one vicious kick.
We stepped into the house after him and found ourselves in a small living room with faded blue carpet and mismatched furniture, a giant TV dominating the room.
A skinny guy with stringy brown hair jumped up from the sofa holding a bong, his eyes wide as we advanced into the room.
“What the…?”
Hawk grabbed him by the neck and drove him back against the living room wall. “Tell us about the accident on Old Mountain Road.”
“What… what are you…?”
Hawk looked at me, but Vigo punched the guy in the face before I got the chance.
I glared at him. “Stay in your fucking lane. Fuck.”
Fucking Vigo.
Blood dripped from Travis Dorsey’s nose and mouth, eyes wide.
“Tell us about the time you drove that couple and their son off the road!” Hawk roared. “You’re only going to get so many chances.”
It was weird to hear Hawk refer to Bram Montgomery as someone’s son. He loomed large in Blackwall Falls, the boogeyman everyone pretended didn’t exist but needed to keep around to keep things running.
But I knew now that Bram was more than that. He’d been a kid once, a teenager. Someone’s son.
Cassie’s brother.
“It was an accident!” Dorsey said.
“Bullshit,” Hawk roared.
I slammed his jaw with my fist before Vigo could beat me to it a second time.
Dorsey’s head snapped back against the wall, then hung forward over his chest, blood dripping onto his stained white T-shirt.
It felt good to hit him after what he’d done to Cassie’s family.
That was different for me.
Hurting people and stealing things was usually about the euphoric release of it all. There was no vindication, no vengeance or justice in what we did.
It was just fun.
But this wasn’t fun. This was about Cassie, and I heard again the words she’d spoken through sobs that day in the kitchen.
Did you know that it took twelve hours for the rescue team to find the car? That Bram was trapped inside with our dead parents, wondering if he was going to die too?
And then the rest of it: that she was alone, that she couldn’t even talk to Bram because he was so fucked up about it.
I hit Travis Dorsey again without thinking and his head fell all the way forward, his eyes closed.
Lights out.
Hawk swore. “We’re trying to get information here.”
I held my finger against Dorsey’s neck and felt the erratic beat of his pulse. “He’ll wake up. Eventually.”
Vigo paced the room, spotted a baseball bat by the door, and picked it up.
He took a few practice swings, then crossed the room to where Hawk still had Dorsey pinned to the wall.
“Don’t be— ”
It was all Hawk got out before Vigo swung at Dorsey’s left knee.
His head snapped up, his mouth open in a scream of pain as his legs buckled.
He gasped for air, held up by nothing more than Hawk’s hand around his throat.
“Good news,” Vigo said. “He’s awake.”
I grabbed Dorsey by the hair and pulled his head back, forcing him to look at us. “We can do this all day. Or you can save your other knee — and quite possibly your teeth — by telling us what you were really doing on the mountain that night.”
He hesitated and Vigo lifted the bat, took another practice swing.
“Okay, okay!” Dorsey said. “Fuck! It was a long time ago. Just give me a minute.”
“You’re all out of minutes,” Hawk said. “Talk or we’re going to work on that other knee.”
“And the teeth,” Vigo reminded him. “Don’t forget about the teeth.”
“And the teeth.” Hawk glanced at Vigo. “Happy?”
“Just trying to be accurate,” Vigo said.
“What happened on the mountain?” I growled.
Bram took good care of Cassie. Had set her up in the coffee shop and the cute little apartment above it. But this was something we could do for her.
And by god we were going to do it.
Vigo lifted the bat, a maniacal shine in his eyes, one I knew all too well. It was a shine that said fuck it, let’s just tear this place — or this person — apart and see what happens.
“Okay, okay!” Travis said. “I was paid to do it.”
Vigo froze, the handle of the bat in one hand, the top of it in the other. “Paid by who?”
“I don’t know his name,” Dorsey said.
Vigo shrugged and moved to swing the bat again.
“Wait!” Travis begged. “I’m serious! He didn’t give me his name. But he had some kind of accent.”
“What kind of accent?” I asked.
“I don’t know… Fuck!” Travis said, his eyes on the bat still in Vigo’s hand. “Like… I don’t know maybe Russian or something. I’m not a fucking linguist.
I was surprised Dorsey even knew the word “linguist.”
“How did he find you?” Hawk asked.
“I don’t fucking know.” Dorsey’s eyes darted between Vigo and me, Hawk’s hand still pinning him to the wall by the neck. “I was running small-time drugs back then, doing all kinds of shit for money. He told me someone gave him my name, said I could do a job for him.”
I shook my head, disgusted. “Some fucking job.”
Hawk, Vigo, and I did a lot of things — a lot of things society at large considered bad — but we didn’t hurt innocent people.
“Why?” Hawk asked. “Why’d the guy want them dead?”
“I don’t fucking know!” Dorsey said. “He just said he wanted to shut them up.”
Hawk glanced at Vigo and me. Cassie had been right: her parents’ death hadn’t been an accident.
He let go of Dorsey’s neck and he dropped to the floor with a cry of pain.
I looked down at him and had to resist the urge to keep fucking him up just for the fun of it.
Hawk was right: we needed information.
“Why didn’t you tell the police when you were arrested?” I asked Dorsey. “About the guy who hired you.”
“He paid me a fuck-ton of money,” Dorsey said. “Said if I got pinched for the job and squealed, if I told anybody ever, I’d be the next one to go off the mountain.”
“What did he look like?” Hawk asked.
“Never saw him.” Dorsey whimpered as he tried to move his injured leg. “Only talked to him on the phone. That’s all I know. Fuck! I think you broke my knee.”
“We done here?” Vigo asked.
“We’re done.” Hawk looked down at Dorsey. “Tell anyone we were here and being run off the mountain will be the least of your problems.”
Terror was written all over his face as he stared up at us, and I remembered we were wearing our masks, wondered how we must have looked looming over him, staring at him from behind the silver hawk masks we wore to hunt and to work.
Dorsey’s eyes were locked on the bat as Vigo brought it down into his palm a couple of times, like he was testing its weight again.
“I think I’ll keep this. It’s got a nice feel to it. You don’t mind, do you?” he asked Travis.
“Take it!” Dorsey begged. “Just… take it and go before my girlfriend gets home.”
We turned away and headed for the broken door, hanging on its hinges from Hawk’s kick.
“That was nice of him,” Vigo said. “It’s a really nice bat.”