Chapter 2
Two
Crackheads never say “I can’t go today I’m broke.” They always find a way. Don’t let a crackhead out hustle you.
—Apollo to Romeo
Romeo
“How’s it going?” Apollo, my brother-in-law, asked.
“About as good as to be expected,” I grumbled. “Fuckin’ cold.”
Apollo laughed. “I hear it’s pretty mild there for this time of year.”
He was right. At least, from what I’d heard some of the guys on my crew tell me.
It was early February, and there wasn’t snow in the forecast for at least twelve more hours.
Tomorrow it was supposed to hammer us, though.
Before I went to prison, I spent my entire life outside.
I was a logger in North Texas and spent the majority of my time cutting down thousands and thousands of trees a year. I’d never in my life done it in the middle of a foot of snow, though.
Everything about living in Montana was different.
Like, for instance, using lakes to travel across because they were frozen fucking solid.
Never in my life had I seen an eighteen-wheeler loaded down with trees cross a frozen lake before, but I found that it was a common occurrence here.
“It is,” I grumbled. “Everyone keeps telling me we’re in for a Nor’easter soon, but I guess I’ll just be happy it hasn’t happened yet.”
Not that I knew what the fuck a Nor’easter was.
I was sure I’d find out, though.
I’d been living in Montana for six months now, free from the prison life for seven.
In the beginning, it was really fucking great.
Montana was breathtaking.
Who wouldn’t like looking at the Crazy Mountains for the rest of their life.
The only problem was that the mountains came with snow, and I was a Texas boy through and through.
Though, anything was better than being locked up…
Dog, the mountain of a dog that’d been dumped at the mouth of my property, nudged my leg.
I absently dropped my hand and scratched the dog behind his ears.
Months ago when he’d shown up, I’d never intended to keep him.
I’d asked my nearest neighbor, Rebecca, to share him on social media in hopes of finding his owner—because no fuckin’ way a beast as well fed and groomed as Dog didn’t belong to someone—but so far we’d had no luck.
So, for now, he was my ward.
He was good company, though.
Whoever he belonged to had taught him manners, and he was the best house guest I ever had.
“Is your Texas blood going to make it?”
“Probably not,” I answered Apollo. “My guess, you’ll have to come search for my frozen body come spring.”
“Sure.” He chuckled. “Heard from the others?”
The “others” were six other men that’d done the prison break thing with me.
Weaver, Gentry, Creed, King, Courtland, and Odin.
Though those weren’t the names that they’d broken out of prison with. They were what they were called now, though.
I was the only one to really keep my name.
I went by Meo—a childhood nickname—with a very select few, or just Rome most of the time at work. But Romeo was still listed on my license.
My last name was different.
Haynes.
So basic and boring.
But if it kept police off my tail…
“They’re good,” I answered. “All of them meet up once a month with me at the bar and we make sure we’re still doing okay. I see a few of them around town, but we act like we don’t know each other.”
The seven of us had spread around the Crazy Mountains, not holing up in the same town, so seven men with no pasts didn’t draw attention.
Only Gentry, Weaver, and I were in Sawtooth.
The rest of them were spread out in the surrounding towns.
Weaver was a lineman that worked for the local electric company. Courtland drives trucks for the sawmill, and Gentry is actually a Sawtooth police officer.
Like me, they spent quite a bit of their time outside freezing their ass off.
“Odin keeping his nose clean?”
I snorted. “Odin is a full-grown adult that does what he wants. I have no control over him.”
Odin was by far the surliest of us all. He was also the one with the biggest chip on his shoulder, and his “fuck the world” attitude was slowly killing him.
It’d get him in trouble one day, I was sure.
Luckily, all of our DNA and paper trails were erased from the system. And for several of us, our previous homes, A.K.A. Huntsville Penitentiary in East Texas, thought we were dead. They wouldn’t ever be looking for us.
Apollo had literally deleted us off the face of the earth.
The only people that would miss us were those that were in the know. And so far, there were only five people total that were in the know. Apollo, my sister, Shasha Semyinov, and Apollo’s club president, Webber, and another friend of Apollo’s, Jasper.
There was no one else that knew to look for us, and hopefully it stayed like that forever.
Because the idea of going back to prison sounded worse than death.
I was slowly dying inside those four walls.
I was desperate for the smell of pine in my lungs, and the only thing I got out of East Texas was nostrils covered in dirt.
“Maybe I’ll check on him,” Apollo muttered mostly to himself. “What’s your plan for this weekend?”
I knew he wasn’t asking because he wanted me to come to him.
I would never be showing my face in Texas ever again.
Which fucking sucked.
I had a whole ass family down there that I was missing like crazy.
But not even for them would I ever get close to that prison again.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I found your dog’s owner,” he said. “Some chick that’s been scouring the internet trying to find him.”
A sudden rush of disappointment assaulted me, and I almost wished that I hadn’t asked Apollo to look into it.
But looking down at the big brute, I remembered why I’d asked.
Because someone was missing him.
I would never take away someone’s happiness.
“Who is it?” I asked. “Is the person worthy of getting him back?”
“I’d say so,” he said. “Some heavy equipment operator. She drives a backhoe for a living.”
I pictured some six-foot tall, strong woman that bench-pressed small cars.
“That doesn’t scream ‘I’m missing my dog’ to me.”
“She’s posted in every single group in a two-hundred-mile radius,” he explained. “She posted missing dog flyers on every single pole in Sawtooth.”
“I guess I should’ve thought to look there.”
“She’s got no speeding tickets. Parking tickets.
Nothing. She’s never been in trouble with the law.
Has some credit issues, but what American doesn’t?
Oh, and she’s been showing dogs at dog shows since she was a young kid,” he expounded.
“She and her father have been breeding them for a while. Though the dog, Brawny, was a dog she rescued from a bad situation. Puppy mill or something. He’s micro-chipped.
Which you would know if you’d taken him in like I told you. ”
I wrinkled my nose. “That would require me to go into town, and I try not to do that very often.”
Though I knew that I would never be looked for, thanks to Apollo matching the dead man’s DNA to “my” DNA that was now on file, it was still a really hard habit to break.
Apollo had done that for all of us he’d broken out of prison.
He’d given us new names and identities. He’d made it to where no one would ever look for us again.
Hell, for Odin, he’d even gone as far as to get the man plastic surgery to remove a few distinguishing facial features.
He’d found us a town run by bikers that had vouched that we’d been there for years—though I hadn’t joined the club like the others had. Too much authority gave me hives, and I’d never give anyone else control over anything I said or did ever again.
“But you’ll go to that stupid country club?” he asked.
I scoffed. “The only reason I go there is because I got that free membership with work. And they’re discreet. I get four free beers a week. Plus, they leave me the hell alone.”
Plus, the club was owned by one of the Dixie Wardens MC club members. I knew it was safe to be there, even if I hadn’t joined their club.
“Good choice going there,” he mused. “They’re bound by a hundred bylaws. Plus, Jawbone is where all the rich, hoity-toity people come to ski, and that country club you like to frequent is only a couple of miles away if you ski there. Did you know the president came there to play golf this year?”
Actually, I had.
I’d heard about his plans, and I’d been very careful about staying out of town for the week leading up to his arrival, and the week after.
I wouldn’t look the same as I had when I’d gone into prison. My face was darker. My hair had gone from a buzz to longer and “Very Uncle Jessie” according to my sister. My beard, however, was the newest addition to hide my identity.
Which I fucking hated.
I was not a fan of a beard.
Goatee? Yes. Mustache? Also yes.
Beard? No.
I felt like I was playing dress-up.
“Yeah, I knew,” I said. “Only went to work and home for a month. I was living off the Beanie Weenies you stocked my pantry with last year.”
He chuckled. “That was a gag. Your sister said you hated them.”
I grunted. “I used to. I thought they were the worst meal that you could ever be fed, but then I went to prison for years, and I realized that there are a lot worse things.”
Apollo grunted. “I’m going to text this lady’s information. You want me to contact her, or do you think you can handle that?”
I grunted again. “I’ll do it.”
“Look at you, growing up so fast,” Apollo drawled.
“Fuck off, man.” I paused. “How’s my sister?”
Apollo’s voice changed when he talked about Dru.
I was happy that Dru found someone who loved her the way that she deserved.
If anyone deserved that kind of love, it would be her.
She’d spent her life always second best to my other sister, Daniella.
Our parents had always chosen Daniella over either one of us. But it was Dru who had to put up with her shit on her own after I was incarcerated.
“She’s great, man,” he said. “Currently napping on the couch.”
“She’s drooling, isn’t she?”
“I’ll never tell.”
I laughed. “The fact that you said I’ll never tell and not no means she’s drooling up a storm. Send me a picture.”
“She’ll kill me.”
I chuckled. “You’ll make it up to her.”
Apollo’s loaded drawl made me want to hurl. “Oh, I’ll always make it up to her.”
“Thanks, Apollo.”
That “thanks” was for a lot of things, which he knew.
He’d done a lot for me.
He’d broken me out of prison and given me a life again, yes.
But seeing my sister drooling on a couch with a small smile on her face? That was what I really wanted to see.
Her happy.
That was all that mattered.