3. Digger
3
DIGGER
The Hollow is where teenagers come to fuck around. Where men tired of life come to contemplate their future—or lack of it. It's the place you go to when you don't want to be disturbed, and I can't decide if that's a good or a bad thing.
Terry wouldn’t be seen dead here. It doesn’t have enough class. Enough illusions of wealth. Of power. Yet his son finds it adequate when he has information on our family. The lack of crossover has got to work in our favor.
The rumble and pop of our engines echo off the tall, skinny trunks of the trees lining the dirt access road. Old Wives’ Hollow was originally named Harvester's Hollow. But after decades of nefarious shit going down on the lush pasture nestled in a clearing, the town renamed it due to the amount of cautionary tales mothers would tell their kids about the nature spot.
On any other day, I'd find peace in the beautiful scenery, but when the sun has long set, and the shadows from our headlights stretch long and distorted along the uneven road, I could think of a thousand better places to be.
Rae holds tight to Tyke, jostled about on the back of his bike as he coasts toward the clearing ahead of me. The tension lines her shoulders, the rapid left and right of her helmeted head as she scans the undergrowth for any sign of my niece.
I get it because I do it too.
Fresh tire tracks slip in and out of view as my light coasts across the ground—evidence that somebody is here if not Connor. There’s only one set, which is reassuring—although not as much as the weight of my weapon snug against my spine.
The rusted gate heralding the clearing beyond comes into view. We idle up to the obstruction and ditch the bikes, killing the engines as we dismount. There's still no sign of Connor's ride; the tire tracks smear off to the left, crushing long grass and mud into a broken trail.
The sudden silence is jarring, the lack of anything else—anything living.
No owls. No rodents. Nothing.
Just the occasional rustle of the breeze as it catches the leaves turned darker shades of orange and brown, ready for winter.
"I ain't goin' blind, am I?" Tyke mutters, hanging his helmet on the bars. "The fucker ain't in sight, is he?"
"Nope." I position Rae between us and sweep the area. "Don't like how this feels."
“Come on.” Rae steps out from between us, unperturbed, and strides toward the gate. The rusted hinges creak as she pushes a gap wide enough to slip through, the metal bars swinging shut in her wake.
I jog to catch up, holding the gate for Tyke as we lengthen our strides to match her haste.
"Where you headed?" Tyke whisper-yells.
She glances over her shoulder without slowing her pace. "Have you two never been here?" she seems genuinely perplexed.
"Not for a while." Tyke catches my eye with a dry smile. "What do you know of the area?" he asks her.
"Never knew what it was called," she says, "but Connor brought me here the second week we 'dated.'" She says the last word as though the idea is a fucking farce.
It boosts my pride somewhat to know she thinks that little of her time with him.
“I thought you guys would have come here a lot when you were younger?”
“Didn’t grow up in Red River,” I admit. “Nearby, but not close enough to know the hype about this patch.”
"What about you?" She looks behind herself again, long enough to catch Tyke's eye.
“Wasn’t too popular with the ladies in school.”
She stops walking at his admission. “Real?”
“Surprise you?” he teases with a smack to her ass as he keeps walking.
“A little.” Rae jogs to catch up.
I trail behind again, fingertips splayed at my side to catch the tips of the overgrown grass. Anything to distract from the bitter knives sliding in my chest at the sight of them together.
They look so—right.
Do we look the same? Her and I?
"There." Rae jogs ahead a few steps, arm outstretched to point to a giant black hole in the trees.
As we near the shadow, I recognize the outline of a building—a little hut, basic square-ish construction with narrow windows on either side of a door small enough that Tyke and I will need to stoop to get through. "What is this place?"
A spark, then a flame. A flash of orange highlighting a face I’d rather not lay eyes on if I could avoid it. “Took you long enough,” Connor bitches as he rises to his feet.
He continues to flick the flame, reigniting it over and over. Pointless dramatics.
“She’s here. So, talk,” Tyke snaps, crowding the insolent little shit.
Connor takes a pointed step sideways to escape Tyke's influence and approaches Rae.
I rest my hand on the gun at my back.
“Hate that this is what it took to get close to you again,” he offers her. “But can’t say I regret that it brought us here, now.” He reaches out to run a hand down the side of her arm, yet she recoils from his touch. Exactly.
“What’d you do, you fuck?” Tyke reads the same insinuation in Connor’s words that I do: that this is all some sick game of Connor’s to get Rae back.
"Calm your tits, old man." The kid lifts a hand. "Maddie's disappearance ain't my doing." He seems genuine as he says, "I like Maddie. I wouldn't do a fucking thing to hurt her." But then again, it's fucking near pitch black, and I'm reading the slight shifts of his posture rather than the details of his face.
“Where. The fuck. Is she?” My brother advances on the cocky asshole, forcing Connor to step back to keep any distance between them.
Tyke doesn't stop until he has Terry's son backed up against the splintered wall of the shack, and even then, he continues until his chest pushes the kid flat, restricting his movement.
Trapping his knives. Smart.
“Get the fuck off me.” Connor lifts his hands and shoves at Tyke, my brother immovable.
“Talk.”
“Fuck’s sake.” Connor manages to lift a knee between their bodies, pushing against Tyke’s leg to get him to relent. “This what won you over, Rae? Fuckin’ assholes forcin’ themselves on you?”
“Not like it would’ve been anything new, right?” she seethes.
I grind my molars tight.
“Fuck.” Connor brushes his shirt off now that my brother stands at a respectable distance for conversation. “To be honest, it fucking surprises me that you’re all here, demanding names as though you seriously can’t figure it out for yourself.”
“You think we’d suffer through your snivelin’ shit,” I say, “if we didn’t have to?”
“You really don’t know.” The fucker manages to hold back a laugh.
“Your old man got her?” Tyke clips, patience wearing thin.
“No.” Connor snorts the reply. “He’s arrogant, but he’s not suicidal.” He sighs, the slight turn of his head telling me he surveys how we crowd him in. One word leaves his lips. One word that has my blood lava before the final consonant sounds. “Fox. Fox has her.”
Tyke rears back as though slapped with the words. "How do you know this?"
“Remember how I told you it was a Reaper who told us about Tom?” he addresses Rae.
She nods. “Yeah.”
“That’s who it was.”
“He ain’t a Reaper anymore,” Tyke growls as Connor continues.
“My old man has dealt with his traitorous ass since before he left Red River,” Connor drops as though it’s the name of some fucking recipe we just asked for. “Your brother,” he says, flicking his lighter again, “seems to think walking away from your little after-school club put his life in danger. He wanted assurances. In surances.”
"And your fuckin' father couldn't help himself," Tyke says with a sigh.
“The man offered my father insider information on a fucking silver platter, and all for a few hundred bucks a week spent on muscle to follow your jilted sibling around.” He shrugs. “Men have paid more to get whores in the bed of their enemy. It was a bargain.”
I should have shot the asshole when I had the chance.
Tyke paces to the cabin and slams a firm hand against the siding, the timber creaking and rattling under the force. “He wearin’ a patch when he meet with your old man?”
“What does that matter?”
“It fucking matters!” Tyke spins with such ferocity that, to my surprise, Rae steps between the two men.
Can’t guarantee he wasn’t about to throttle the kid, either.
I scan our surroundings again, catalog the shadows, the shapes of the trees, and the lay of the land. For all I know, the stop-start, erratic flicker of Connor's lighter is morse code.
“He wore it a few times, yeah.” Connor shrugs. “I wasn’t there for all of them.”
Stripped of words, Tyke spins and walks away with a stunted sigh. His boots eat up the overgrown grass, his strides quick. I can imagine most of what runs through his head, none of it good.
He was the one who ex-communicated our big brother.
And he was the one who let it go when Fox refused to turn in his patch. Using it for unsanctioned club business, hell, using it in any way that gives the impression he's still under our banner, gives the fucker the death penalty.
“Where is he now?” I ask Connor.
Terry's son glances at Rae and then at my brother's back. "I want to set terms."
“Are you fucking serious!” Tyke marches back to our little huddle.
"Hey." Hands before him, Connor nods at the ornate hilts protruding beside his ribs. "Let's not get to that, huh?"
"I will put a goddamn bullet in your fuckin’ head before you get the chance to twitch your motherfuckin' fingers, you bottle-fed waste of space!" Spit flies from my brother's mouth, given the way Connor leans away from his verbal assault. “Try me again, you shithead. Fuckin’ make my day better.”
“Location, for one hour with Rae.”
The sounds of mayhem echo off the surrounding stadium of trees—a crack of flesh on flesh, the rustle of boots sliding through grass. Tyke has Connor against the building, hand to his throat and gun at his temple, while Rae screams at them to stop. It's the inch of Connor's hand upward that has me step into the fray.
I lunge forward and pin his hand against the siding, disarming him of his blades and handing them off to Rae.
She stares down at the oxide in her palms, mesmerized by the weapons that no doubt held her prisoner on more than one occasion.
“Give us the location, or walkin’ under the power of your own two legs is a fast-fadin’ memory,” Tyke warns.
Connor hesitates, head still, as he no doubt attempts to read the severity of my brother's threat. The nudge of the gun tipping his head off balance should give him the details he misses in the dark.
“I could say anything,” Connor states, eerily level, “and you’d have no idea if it’s the truth or a lie until you’re a hundred miles away and I’m using these fucking legs to run back home.” He pauses. “How do you trust what I say is the truth?”
I catch Rae's slight movement in my periphery but pay her no mind, glued to the interaction between her ex and my brother. That is, until she steps into the line of sight, one blade held firm in her fist.
"His legs aren't what matters most to him," she says softly, moving to stand beside me, directly in front of the arm I still pin to the building. "It's his hands."
The whites of Connor’s eyes reflect the pithy moonlight. “Baby…”
His head jerks again with another warning shunt of Tyke’s gun.
"Which one makes it easier to throw your knives, Connor?” She lifts the tip of the blade to tap each splayed finger in succession, pricking the point of the blade against the fleshy pads.
He carefully curls his fist, avoiding the sharp edge and protecting his assets. “You wouldn’t.”
“Want to show them the scar where I did before?” Her shoulder brushes against me.
It takes all my self-control not to replace his arm with her against the wall, jerk those fucking jeans of hers down far enough to show her what this display of bravery does to me.
“You were scared,” Connor hisses. “You knifed me that night in a blind panic.” He drops a derisive laugh. “You couldn’t do it now. Conscious and aware. Premeditated.” He sneers the last word, leaning his head closer to her.
Tyke's gun tracks the movement, pressed flush against his temple. "You sure about that?" He turns his head and regards the beauty between us. "Strange things happen to people when you hurt them one too many times, Connor. Things like developing a thirst for revenge." He utters the last words at Connor.
“That what this is?” Kid has no idea. “Revenge?”
"Depending on what's happened to Maddie while you've been fucking us about," Rae utters. "It could be justice." She lines the tip of the blade with the side of his index finger. A silent but clear message. I can take it off, even in a fist.
“Fine.” Connor’s head hits the wall as he slams it back. “Fuck, fine.” His voice cracks. “He’s holed up with her at our Kenley Road property.”
“Kenley Road,” Tyke repeats. “You fuckin’ bought them out too?”
“Dad did. Yeah.”
The Kenley's have farmed grain since—fuck—as long as I can remember. Their fields were always a captivating study on the changing seasons during the bus ride to and from school back in the day. Five generations, if I remember right, and all it took was two dry seasons and a devil with no conscience for the hard work of their forefathers for all that to mean shit.
"Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to leave," Connor states. "Without injury. No better way for the old man to start asking questions than have me arrive home with a missing finger missing, right?"
Fucker has a point, but still. “How do we know he’s not lying?”
“I can tell,” Rae whispers, backing away to retrieve the knife she’d dropped on the ground. “He’s telling you the truth.”
“Kenley’s makes sense,” Tyke affirms, shoving off the guy hard enough that Connor chokes from the pressure on his throat.
My brother strides along the tree line, jerking his phone from his pocket and bringing it to his ear. The word will spread, and brothers will be at the property before the hour is up. I note how Tyke scrubs his free hand over his head, shoulders hunched inward. It’ll hurt him, not being the first person she sees, but the club is closer to where they hold her. It makes sense for one of the others to be her hero, to be the one who rescues Maddie, even if that means a missed opportunity to show his girl how important she is to him.
“You better be telling us the truth,” I hiss at Connor as he rubs his sore throat.
“Fucking am, asshole.” He swallows, wincing. “But I was fucking serious, too. I want my time with Rae.”
"You'd be lucky to get an hour," I grit, stepping close enough to force him back against the building.
“I’ll give you time, Connor,” Rae says, setting a hand on my arm. “But on my terms.”
“Name them.” He’s a man desperate for a meal, and I fucking know how he feels watching her stand there, blades weighed in her palm.
“You come to the Reapers’ compound. I want to meet you where I feel safe. And …" she stresses before Connor can speak. "We talk with one goal in mind."
“Which is?”
“To fucking end this thing between you and me.”