Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
HUNTER
“You want to tell me where the hell we’re going?” Bryce asked, once again buckled into the passenger seat of my truck.
“Just sit there and be quiet,” I grunted as I turned onto a road that took us higher into the mountains. “As I recall, I didn’t invite you in the first damn place.”
He might have been a brother to me, but that didn’t mean he didn’t give me a headache on a daily basis. With a nosey streak that rivaled that of the blue hairs in our small town, Bryce could gossip with the best of them.
I’d come back to Alpha Omega just long enough to do a quick search on Cyrus Whitlock, coming up not only with his address, but his criminal history as well.
There were several charges of criminal mischief, harassment, and even one for domestic abuse that was dropped when his wife recanted her statement.
The last one was for endangerment of a child.
How the prick managed to skate by the legal system, his punishments the bare minimum, blew my mind. The man never even saw the inside of a prison cell for his crimes. Each time he walked away with a few fines and a couple slaps on the wrist.
I was loathe to admit it, but Serenity had been right. If that kid didn’t get out from under his father’s thumb, he’d never stand a goddamn chance.
After I got the information I needed, I started back out, telling Roxanne I’d be working remotely for the rest of the day and to call my cell if something came up that I needed to know about.
Just as soon as I’d clicked my seatbelt into place, Bryce was throwing open my passenger door and climbing in beside me.
“Well, no, you didn’t invite me because you’re a curmudgeon-y dick who’d rather be alone than spend time in my fantastic company.”
I took my eyes off the steep, tree-lined road just long enough to cut him a sidelong glower, not that it did much good. Bryce Dixon, notoriously happy, notoriously a pain in my ass, wasn’t fazed by my threatening glares in the slightest.
“But if I hadn’t come, you might have had some fun without me. Plus, I wouldn’t have had the chance to ask you what’s going on between you and Stella’s sister.”
“There’s nothing going on between us,” I said way too fast.
From the corner of my eye, I caught him looking at me like he thought I was full of shit.
“We’re just friends,” I added when his silence began to gnaw at me. “That’s all.”
“Sure, you are,” he deadpanned. “That why you ran out of the office like your ass was on fire when you got word there was trouble at the bar?”
“Bryce,” I said in a warning tone he didn’t bother to heed.
“Or why you beelined right to her and acted like she was the only one who existed once we got there?”
A growl worked its way from my throat, and I clenched the steering wheel in a death grip, making the leather creak. “Drop it. Before I pull over and kick your ass out of my truck so you have to walk back to town.”
“Christ, Hunt. It’s not like it would be the end of the world if you did have feelings for her, man. She’s a good woman.”
“I’m very aware of that, man.” More than aware.
I knew exactly how good she was, and it was better than the likes of me deserved.
She was sunshine. I was darkness. The two didn’t belong together.
She was just trying to start a new life for herself.
She didn’t need my bullshit baggage weighing her down. “Now let it go.”
He let out a gravelly huff, and I knew him well enough to know he desperately wanted to keep going, wanted to pound his logic into my head until it finally stuck.
However, we both knew that wasn’t going to happen.
The rest of the ride to Whitlock’s place was made in blessed silence.
A few minutes later, I took the turn onto a poorly maintained path.
If I hadn’t been looking for it, I would have missed it completely.
It was more mud than gravel, ruddy and covered in potholes that were big enough to rip the undercarriage off a smaller car.
No Trespassing signs were hung on every other tree, the verbiage growing increasingly more threatening the farther along we drove.
“What is this place?” Bryce asked, leaning forward in his seat. “Some sort of hillbilly hell?”
He wasn’t too far off the mark, but before I could answer, the lane came to an end just before a large cluster of mobile houses and RVs. This was some sort of ramshackle compound formed by the offshoot of the prepper community up here in the mountains, the ones known for causing trouble.
I knew from my research that Cyrus lived in the single wide trailer that was in such bad shape, it looked like a stiff breeze—or not even so stiff—would send the whole thing crashing to the ground.
There was a dog chained to a dead tree in the dirt patch acting as a pitiful front yard, his snarled, foaming barks surprisingly vicious given the fact I could count every one of his ribs from thirty yards away.
“Jesus Christ, I was right,” Bryce said under his breath.
“This place is hillbilly hell. Where the fuck are—?” He clamped his mouth shut, realization dawning.
“Have you lost your mind?” he barked, whipping around in his seat to look at me.
“You were going to come out here alone? Are you fucking crazy? You know what these doomsday nut jobs are like.”
I was fully aware.
I pulled to a stop closest to the house I was looking for and threw my truck into park, twisting my neck to look at Bryce. “You want to sit here bitching at me, or you want to have my back while I take care of something?”
“What the hell could you possibly have to handle out here? I haven’t heard of a single case coming through AO that deals with these people.”
“This isn’t work. This is personal.”
His brows shot up. “For who?”
There wasn’t a chance in hell that I would tell him the actual truth. That Serenity had clutched onto me, that jasmine filling my nose and those worried sea-colored eyes gripping my insides as she asked me to do this.
Not. A. Chance.
“That kid from the bar,” I started to explain. “This is his father’s place. If you can call that piece of shit a father. I’m just paying him a friendly visit to stress the point that he needs to stay up here on his mountain and the fuck away from the kid and my town.”
“Fucking hell,” he tucked his chin and massaged his forehead.
It took him a few seconds, but just like I expected, he got on board.
“All right, fine. But I swear to God, if this goes south, I’m getting my revenge in the form of babysitting duty.
That means you’re responsible for feeding and dirty diapers, and your eyelid will be the one that’s pulled back so he can scream into it. ”
Bryce and Tessa’s son, Dillon, was about eight months old now, and while I loved the kid and thought he was the shit, I had no desire to deal with any of the things Bryce had just mentioned.
“Let’s just get this over with so you can get home to your eye-screaming kiddo, yeah?”
I killed the engine, and the two of us climbed out of the truck.
Our drive up the lane hadn’t gone unnoticed.
Doors had opened and people had started pouring out onto front stoops.
But it wasn’t until my boots were on the ground and I slammed my truck’s door that the man I’d come here for opened his door and stepped onto the rotted and warped boards that made up a dilapidated front porch.
The man looked to be somewhere in his fifties. He was of average height with a stocky build that had my teeth grinding together and my fists clenching so tight my knuckles turned white. His gut spoke to drinking too much booze, but the rest of him was solid, from his shoulders to his legs.
This guy had serious height and weight on Serenity. Too fucking much. If he’d wanted to, he could have done some serious damage to a small thing like her. I suddenly had the desire to wring her smooth, delicate neck for putting herself in such a dangerous situation.
“This is private land. You’ve got no right bein’ here.”
I was sure the man was packing. If it wasn’t on his person, odds were, it was right inside the door, at easy reach. Knowing that didn’t stop me, but I kept my steps measured and calm.
“This’ll only take a minute, then we’ll be on our way. We just have a message to deliver.”
Bryce stayed at the base of the steps as I climbed them—careful to keep the hitch in my step from the prosthesis from showing—to face off with the man.
He crossed his arms over his barrel chest as he eyed me up and down. I didn’t miss the way his throat worked on a thick swallow. He might have been big enough to do some damage to Serenity, but I was a whole different story. I could crush this fucker like a bug.
“Don’t see how you got anything to say I wanna hear.”
I stopped with only about a foot between us and spoke through gritted teeth. “Oh, you’ll want to hear this. And you’ll want to take my words to heart. Believe me.”
The man’s eyes narrowed, nothing but dark, fathomless hatred in their dull depths. This was a man who woke up mad at the world every morning and went to bed every night blaming it for his shortcomings. He was a miserable fuck who would never be happy with anything.
He jerked his chin up in a failed attempt to intimidate. “Think it’d be smart to get the fuck off my land. Or we’ll move you off ourselves.”
My lips pulled up, the humorless smirk on my face more intimidating than his pathetic chin jerk, and I knew that by the way the color slowly leached from his ruddy cheeks.
“Close confines like this, I can promise you won’t get to that gun you got stashed behind the door before my knife’s out of the sheath tucked at my back and the blade’s pressed against your throat.
But if you want to try it, be my guest.”
He blinked.
“And before you think any of your piece-of-shit hillbilly brothers can save you, my boy back there’s a much faster draw and a hell of a better shot. Pretty sure you’re smart enough to know who we are, so you also know I’m not lying.”
Cyrus cast his eyes to something or someone over my shoulder, giving the person an almost imperceptible shake of the head.
“Smart choice. I got word you were in my town today, causing a scene and stirring up trouble.”
“What I do with my boy ain’t got nothin’ to do with you. I suggest you mind your own business.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong. Your boy lives in my town, that means he’s got us looking out for him.
As far as you’re concerned, that kid’s no longer on your radar, and Hope Valley’s nothing more than a memory.
I catch wind you’ve set foot in my town or even so much as breathed that foul, sour-rot breath of yours in that boy’s direction, I’m going to come back here, and my next visit won’t be near as civilized. ”
His arrogance and narcissism wouldn’t allow him to back down or cower, even though he knew he didn’t stand a chance. His Adam’s apple bobbed in a telltale show of fear. “You threatening me?”
“Goddamn right I am. And you don’t want me to have to come out and do it again.” I took a single step back. “Now, nod your head to tell me you understand what I’m saying so I can get the fuck out of this hellhole.”
His jaw worked back and forth, and I could actually hear his teeth grind. We continued to stare at one another. I kept my eyes pinned to his but caught the way his fists clenched and flexed at his sides.
Unlike him, I was a patient man. I could out-wait him. However, it didn’t take long for him to give in, and he finally nodded.
I didn’t bother hanging around for another second. I simply turned my back on the asshole and walked back to my truck. He wasn’t worth turning back for.