Chapter Eleven #2
"Reeves' people." Her voice shook, but she kept going, like she'd rehearsed this same confession the way I'd rehearsed mine two weeks earlier.
"I owed somebody money, from before I ever came to Ember Creek.
A payday loan situation that spiraled, then a man who bought the debt and wasn't interested in payment plans, the kind of debt that follows you no matter how far you run.
When I landed here two years ago, I thought I'd finally gotten far enough away that it wouldn't catch up.
I was wrong. About four months ago, somebody found me, told me the debt had transferred hands again, and that this time the new owner wanted something other than money. "
"Reeves."
"I didn't know that's who he was working for at first. I just knew a man started showing up at the diner where I used to wait tables, asking casual questions about Death Souls, about patrol schedules, about who came and went from the clubhouse and when.
I told myself at first it was small talk, nothing that would actually hurt anybody, harmless curiosity from a stranger.
By the time I understood what I was actually doing, feeding pieces of information to somebody clearly building a picture of your club's operations, I was already in too deep to see a way out that didn't involve somebody getting hurt, probably me.
" Her eyes filled, and she wiped at them roughly with the back of her hand, angry at her own tears.
"And then your father died, and I saw how badly Rourke was struggling, and some ugly, desperate part of me thought, if I could just make myself useful to him, needed by him, maybe that would matter more than the debt, maybe he'd protect me from all of it without me ever having to explain the mess I'd already made. "
"That's not an excuse for what you did to Marisol," I said, quieter than I meant to, though I needed her to hear it plainly regardless of how much sympathy the rest of her story deserved.
"I know isn't. I'm not offering it as one.
I'm just telling you the truth of how it started, because I think you deserve to understand it wasn't calculated cruelty toward her specifically.
It was desperation wearing the shape of something that looked, to me at the time, like it might finally be safety.
" She took a shaking breath. "The text I sent you two weeks ago, I was trying to warn you.
I panicked when I saw how serious they'd gotten, how specific their questions were getting about the Boneyard's schedule, and I thought, stupidly, that if I could just talk to you directly, we could figure something out together.
Then I got scared they'd find out I reached out, and I went dark instead, which I know now was exactly the wrong call. "
She wiped at her eyes again, steadying herself before she continued.
"They're planning something at the Boneyard, soon, within the next week I think, though I don't have an exact date.
Reeves wants to make a statement, something big enough to make Death Souls back off the southern route for good.
I heard him talking about it two nights ago, before I got the chance to run, which is the real reason I finally reached out again instead of staying hidden and hoping this would blow over without me. "
I felt something cold and clear settle over me, the particular focus that comes when fear finally organizes itself into something actionable. "You need protection. Real protection, not just hiding in an abandoned gas station."
"I know. That's the other reason I texted you. I don't have anywhere else to go that they wouldn't think to look, and I know I don't deserve to ask you for anything after what I did to you and Marisol, but I didn't know who else to call."
"You did the right thing calling," I told her, and meant it, watching some of the fear drain slightly from her face at hearing it.
"Whatever comes next with the club, whatever consequences you end up facing for the part you played in this, calling tonight instead of running further was the right call, and I want you to hold onto that, because I have a feeling the next few weeks are going to be hard enough without you carrying guilt over the one decision you actually got right. "
I looked at Dutch, who nodded once, already understanding what needed to happen next.
"We'll get you somewhere safe tonight," I told her.
"And then you're going to tell all of this to Deacon, the full table if it comes to it, because whatever debt you think you owe me personally, the debt you actually owe is to the people whose safety you put at risk, and the only way to start paying that back is by giving this club everything you know. "
She nodded, small and exhausted, and let Dutch lead her to his truck, and I stood alone in that abandoned lot for a moment before following, thinking about Marisol, about how I was going to tell her that the threat wasn't hypothetical anymore, that it had a timeline now, and that the woman who'd once slept in our bed was also, in her own complicated way, another casualty of choices I'd set in motion months ago and only now was beginning to fully understand the reach of.
I drove home that night instead of following Dutch straight to wherever he was taking Harlow, needing a few minutes alone before I had to make the next round of hard decisions, and sat in the driveway a long while, engine off, thinking about the whole shape of the day, the patch surrendered at the table, the woman I'd wronged found broken and terrified in an abandoned lot, the specific dread of knowing I now had to walk into Marisol's life the next morning and tell her the danger she'd feared was no longer some abstract possibility but a countdown with an actual number of days attached to it.
I thought, too, about my father's old warning, the one he used to give new prospects during their patch-in ceremony, about how this life would ask more of a man than he thought he had to give, over and over, in ways he couldn't always predict or prepare for.
I'd heard him say it a dozen times growing up and never fully understood it until that night, sitting alone in a dark driveway with a bare space on my cut where a rank used to sit, understanding that the hardest part of everything still lay ahead of me, not behind, and that the version of myself capable of meeting it was still, in real and uncomfortable ways, under construction.
I went inside eventually, sat at the kitchen table with a legal pad and started drafting exactly what I was going to say to Marisol the next morning, every fact laid plain, no softened edges, and somewhere around two in the morning I fell asleep with my head down on the table, pen still in hand, and woke a few hours later with a crick in my neck and the sinking certainty that the conversation waiting for me was going to be harder than anything the table had asked of me that night.