Chapter 30
Bear
“ I ’m staying home. KC won’t want me there.”
Rose’s words echoed in my head. She was wrong, dead wrong. When I showed up to the Friday mid-day funeral alone, KC noticed. His haunted eyes tracked the empty space to my right.
Finally , he worked up the nerve to ask me about her. “ Was it your idea or hers?”
“ Hers ,” I said bitterly. She cared more about other people’s feelings than mine. Sprout’s , Smoke’s …even KC got more consideration than I did.
He chewed on his lip. “ Sorry , man.”
I snaked an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close. “ Don’t fucking be sorry. Fish was your bro. If anyone’s got reason to be sorry, it’s fucking Carl . He’s going to regret this.” And he’d get to that state. I vowed it.
KC leaned in and slapped my side to tap out of the PDA . “ When you get that figured out, I want in.”
“ Absolutely .”
He shuffled his feet and looked at the carpet. “ That is, if you’ll hang with me?”
His reluctance confused me. “ What are you saying?”
KC glanced around. There were several people in dress clothes, the discount store version, but much more “formal” than we were in our Destroyers vests. They didn’t understand that us wearing that symbol to Fish’s funeral was an honor of the highest order.
“ I might pull my membership.”
I smacked the back of his head. The action causing several people to gape and whisper about us. I flipped the finger at the worst offenders, who quickly pretended they hadn’t been nosy. “ What the fuck are you talking about?” I tugged him close. “ You need brothers now more than ever.”
A hitch caught his breath, and he shook his head. “ I don’t think I can handle it. I just… This is fucked up.”
No shit .
“ The lawyer get back to you?”
He nodded. “ They’ve cleared me completely.”
I squeezed his shoulder. “ Get drunk. Really fucking drunk. Don’t worry about that shit, and just grieve. Okay ?”
KC wasn’t listening. He stared at the casket sitting all by itself on the other side of the room. It was as if no one had the balls to approach Fish’s corpse. I tugged on his shirt and pulled him to the casket. I laid a hand on the wood and knocked three times. For luck ?
The noise triggered a gasp from the bystanders. The room quieted and I swear some of them held their breath.
I waited long enough to let the silence get uncomfortable. “ See ? Dead . He ain’t Jesus folks.”
KC snorted. “ You asshole.” His laughter quickly turned into sobs. I held him up as he draped over Fish’s coffin and poured out his pain. To everyone else, I shot the evil eye. If any one of those dicks got too close, I shifted a foot and clenched my fist. Even going as far as raising it once.
When KC finally got his shit together, he used his bandana to wipe his face and blow his nose hard. “ I needed that.”
He slapped my side, letting me know we were good.
After the funeral I rode with him to the club, poured him a glass of my private stock and left the bottle on the bar beside it.
Brothers approached him one at a time. Each one taking time to sit next to him. Offer an ear, slap his patch, or pour a fresh glass.
The mood was somber for a Friday . On everyone’s mind was the upcoming meeting, but not a single person mentioned it. The clock was ticking, though.
I turned to Wolf . “ I gotta go pick up Rose .”
“ You got two hours. Don’t be late.”
I laughed. “ Don’t start without me.” The humor died too quickly. “ You know? We don’t have to do this tonight. I can wait.”
“ The club can’t. It needs to get done.”
I shook my head and looked at Fish . “ Bad timing.”
He scratched the scruff on his face and then gestured around the room.
Plastic spiders hung from webbing the women had strung around each rafter.
Orange and black streamers decorated the shelves of the bar.
There were carved Jack -o-lanterns everywhere.
Even decorated gourds and a random turnip troll or five. Rose’s doing.
“ It’s Halloween night. The perfect time for you to take your rightful place.”
My spine tingled. Tomorrow Carl would demand I give Rose back.
And for demanding that, I’d kill him.
“ I think it should wait.” I had a murder to plan. One that could take the club down if I was an officer. The cops sometimes looked no further than the source when it was just a member, but as a decision-maker? That was a fast escalation to RICO charges.
Wolf shook his head. “ Get your woman. This isn’t waiting.”
It took at least ten minutes to get out the door. Everyone wanted a piece of me today. My phone buzzed so often, I’d silenced it. I scrolled through the messages.
One number stood out. I’d memorized it almost a month ago, but I’d never dialed it.
“ What’s up?”
“ Can we meet? I’m ready to talk.”
I blurted out an address between the club and my house. It was for the park where I’d first seen Rose standing on that pier. But the last pylon was gone now. I pulled up next to John’s truck. He’d parked in almost the same spot Rose had parked Carl’s sports car.
I barely recognized John .
The last time I’d seen him, he was in a clean button-down dress shirt and khakis. Today , he wore dirty jeans caked in drywall dust and an insulated flannel overshirt that might have been brightly-colored at one point, but was almost as weathered as his jeans.
He approached my bike with a tired grin and a pending handshake.
“ I got places to be, man,” I ignored his outstretched hand.
“ This is important. It’s about Rose’s past.”
Fuck . I needed this information two weeks ago. My girl was cagey enough to keep her secrets quiet.
“ What prompted the change of heart?” I shut my bike off and balanced it between my legs.
“ Beth was moved to the ICU last night.”
The shadows under his eyes told me he hadn’t slept. “ Your wife’s in intensive care, and you went to work?”
He frowned. “ Had to. I’ve used up my leave. And they’re being assholes about it.”
With four mouths to feed and a terminally ill wife, that wasn’t the word I’d use. But I wasn’t here for his sob story. “ I have a half an hour, max. Get cracking.”
John glanced around. “ Some of this is pretty bad. Fair warning.”
My fingertips drumming on my new flush mount gas cap filled the pause.
He glanced down and noted my visible impatience. “ Right . Back before I met Beth , I think it was even before Rose and Beth knew each other, the church needed farmland to build their planned mega church on.
“ They put the call out to the membership for donations. One family, Rose’s , was pretty committed to making a name for themselves, and put up the family farm.”
That was news. I knew her parents were out of the picture, but I could finally see where the seeds for the split got planted.
“ But it wasn’t theirs.”
“ Lemme guess, it was Rose’s ?”
John grimaced. “ Not exactly. The land was her grandmother’s property. Her ‘amma’ wasn’t keen on selling. So , she went to a lawyer to move the land into a trust for Rose if she died.”
That was a smart move on her part.
“ But it didn’t work.” He held up a hand to stop my interruption. “ I don’t know the particulars, but Rose’s grandmother died about a week later, and no one mentioned that she’d filed the paperwork. So , the deed transfer went on. And the church jumped on ground-breaking almost immediately.
“ Then it went to court.” John’s disgust was evident. “ That’s when it got complicated. Rose was way too young to make decisions, and she was influenced by her parents and the people of the church. I think that’s how it all started. But it got worse.”
Of course it did . “ I don’t have all day. What was this it that got started?”
“ I’ll explain, but you need to know this part because what happened after is related.
The church board covered up their knowledge of the trust even though her lawyer went to the church’s board.
And since Rose’s parents weren’t fighting it, the lawyers for both parties swept it under the rug.
And that became a habit.” He made a face that was part disgust and part concern.
“ To influence Rose , her parents put her in special classes with one of the deacons who helped with the cover-up. He used their crime of stealing Rose’s inheritance to keep them quiet about his… proclivities.”
My stomach twisted. “ Proclivities ?”
John was solemn. “ He singled out Rose . Groomed her.”
The sourness churning in my gut intensified. I didn’t want to know this part. I really didn’t.
“ Rose and Beth were friends by that point, and Beth suspected something was wrong. She went to her parents.”
“ And ?”
John shrugged. “ I don’t know. Beth doesn’t know why either, but she says the abuse didn’t stop. I knew both of them by this point, and while Rose was odd, she was, for the most part, nice, kind. The type of girl who didn’t make trouble. But Beth wouldn’t let it go. She went to her brother.”
Carl ?
He must have seen the disbelief on my face.
“ He helped, I guess. He …” John made a noise that wasn’t natural. “ Carl convinced Rose to videotape it.”
Everything I knew about Carl tracked with that. “ Lemme guess, he got to see it first.”
John rolled his eyes. “ I wouldn’t bet against you on that.”
He shook his head and continued.
“ The evidence went to court. But since it wasn’t clear that Rose didn’t instigate it, the deacon got probation.”
“ You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. How old was she?”
There was fear in John’s eyes. He studied my clenched fists.
Eventually , he found his balls and stumbled on.
“ Twelve . Because of that, Carl and Rose got— I wouldn’t say, ‘close’ because it was really twisted.
But they were as thick as thieves for a while.
And , uh… within a year they’d gathered enough additional evidence and ammunition to quite literally bury her abuser. ”
“ Literally ?” I scoffed at his word choice.