43. Come With Us
Come With Us
Jacob
The girls are out, Summer is safe, and Christ, it feels good. Not perfect. Not anything close to normal. But good.
The parking lot is crowded now, women wrapped in blankets and oversized jackets while Black's men move quietly between them checking injuries and handing out water.
Some of them are crying so hard they can't stand.
Others sit on curbs and truck tailgates staring past the floodlights into the dark, like their minds haven't caught up with the rest of them yet.
I know that look. Shock. The kind that comes after surviving something you never once believed you'd survive.
Pain pulses steadily through me while I lean against the hood of my truck.
Now the adrenaline's draining off, the exhaustion is settling into my bones properly.
Every breath hurts. The bandages around my chest feel tighter than they did an hour ago, and there's a sticky warmth spreading where fresh blood's coming through.
Worth it. Every fucking second of it.
Because Summer is alive and I kept my promise.
My eyes find her through the crowd. The way they always do.
She's twenty feet away, wrapped in my jacket, talking quietly to one of the younger ones.
The kid can't be more than nineteen. She's still got that blanket clutched against her chest, and every few seconds she wipes her face with the back of her hand while Summer keeps talking to her like there's nowhere else in the world she needs to be.
The sight does something dangerous to my chest.
Because after everything Jackson took from her—after Vince, after Brenda, after every hour in that house—she's standing in a freight yard at four thirty in the morning holding somebody else together.
Black appears beside me with a cigarette between his fingers. He doesn't light it. Probably because this whole lot already smells like blood and smoke and gunpowder.
He studies me, then his eyes drift toward Summer.
"What about Moore?"
The question settles heavy between us. Not because I haven't thought about it.
Because I haven't stopped.
Every time I shut my eyes, I see Summer tied down in that house.
I see the women inside that building. I see Groves strapped upright in a chair with a hole between his eyes.
I see Hayes. Vance. Calder, twenty-three years old, laid out at the edge of a clearing with somebody's flashlight on him.
I see Reyes in a hospital bed three towns over, still not out of the woods.
Body bags. Ruined lives. Years of it.
And every single road leads back to the same man.
I look out across the lot. Bruised faces. Swollen eyes. Sarah sitting beside her father with her head on his shoulder. Summer under the floodlights in my jacket.
Every person standing in this parking lot has been hurt by Jackson Moore.
Every one of them.
So the question isn't whether he deserves to die.
The question is who's earned the right to be there when he does.
Black must catch something moving across my face, because he lowers the cigarette. "What?"
I keep looking at them. The women. The lives that man took apart and never thought about again.
And the idea settles into place. Cold. Simple. Right.
"I've got an idea."
The moment the words come out of my mouth I know there's no walking it back.
Black studies me. Then his eyes narrow. "Oh, I know that look."
I push off the truck, and the pain tears through my shoulder hard enough to blur my vision. I grit my teeth and keep moving. Metal groans under my boots as I climb onto the hood.
The lot goes quiet in stages. Women stop talking. Black's men stop moving.
Every face turns up toward me. Waiting.
I take a slow breath. Then another.
And when I speak, my voice carries the length of that parking lot.
"You've all been through hell tonight." The silence is absolute. Some of them lower their heads. Others start crying again. "And some of you have been living in it a lot longer than that."
One woman wraps both arms around herself like she's physically holding herself together.
"But you survived it."
The words hang there, heavy and real, because I don't think some of them have ever heard anyone say it out loud.
"I know some of you want to go home. Some of you want a hospital. Some of you never want to hear Jackson Moore's name again as long as you live."
A few nod straight away. One begins shaking hard enough that the woman beside her reaches over and takes her hand.
"And that's okay."
I mean it. God knows they've earned the right.
But my eyes keep moving across the crowd. Across every bruise. Every scar. Every hollowed-out expression.
"Jackson Moore is alive."
The reaction goes through them like a current. Heads snap up. Somebody makes a small sound. Fear moves across the whole group at once.
"He's chained to a chair, guarded by one of my best deputies. He can't run. He can't reach any of you. He can't hurt another living soul."
And then commotion follows. Not fear anymore. Anger. Raw and ugly and years old, with nowhere left to go.
"As much as I want to kill that son of a bitch myself—"
I stop.
Because I do. God, I do. The thought of putting a round through Jackson Moore's skull is the only thing that's got me through some of the last few nights.
But standing on this hood looking down at them, I understand something I should have understood hours ago.
This isn't mine.
"I owe it to you." It comes out quietly. More honest than I intended. "The survivors. The women who stood face to face with that man and are still standing here."
Several of them start crying again. One covers her mouth with both hands. Another drops her head.
"So I'm giving you a choice." My eyes move slowly over the crowd. "You can walk away right now and never lay eyes on him again." I point toward the trucks. "You'll go to a hospital. You'll be safe. Nobody will ever ask you to say his name."
Nobody moves. Not yet.
"But if you want to face him one last time—" I let it sit. "If you want him to look at you and understand he doesn't own you. If you want him to know, before the end, that he lost—"
And I watch it happen. I actually watch it move through them. Hopelessness turning into something with an edge on it.
"Then come with us."
Silence.
Then a woman steps forward. Early twenties. Bruised cheek. Blanket round her shoulders.
"I want him to see his soul leave his body."
Her voice shakes on every word of it. She keeps walking anyway. Another follows. Then another.
One of the younger girls breaks down and shakes her head violently. "No. No—"
The survivor beside her wraps an arm around her shoulders. "It's okay."
Because it is. There isn't a wrong answer here. That's the whole point.
A middle-aged woman takes one step forward, stops dead, then turns and walks back to the curb and sits down. Not ready. Maybe never ready.
I don't blame her for one second.
Then Harris stands.
Sarah rises with him.
Both of them bruised. Both of them wrecked in ways they'll spend years working through. They step forward anyway, and the old man's chin is up.
I nod once. Nothing else needs saying.
I drop down off the hood, and pain detonates through my shoulder the second my boots hit the ground.
"Jesus Christ."
The world tilts sideways.
Then Summer's there. Her arms slide around my waist and she presses herself into my chest like she's checking I'm still real. Still here. Still breathing.
I close my eyes for a beat, because after tonight I need this. Need her.
"You really mean it?" she asks quietly.
"What?"
"The women." She searches my face. "You're really going to let them decide?"
I look back toward the trucks, where they're already gathering. "I think they deserve the choice. Deserve the closure."
Something works across her face. Not approval, exactly. Understanding—the kind that only comes from somebody who lived through the same thing and knows what it would mean to stand in that room.
Then she reaches up and kisses my jaw. "I love you."
It hits harder than the bullet did.
My hand slides into her hair. "I love you too. So fucking much."
The rest of it disappears. The blood. The bodies. All of it.
Until Black clears his throat. "Get a room."
I flip him off. He grins.
By the time we've finished counting, thirteen of them choose to come. Five stay behind—too exhausted, too frightened, too broken to stand in a room with him and not come apart. The rest went out in the first vans an hour ago, before I ever opened my mouth.
Constance volunteers to stay with the five, alongside one of Black's men, until the transport's arranged.
Nobody argues. She's probably the safest thing any of them could have standing between them and the world right now.
The trucks load quietly. Nobody talks much. The women sit wrapped in blankets, watching the windows or holding onto each other's hands.
And then we start the drive back toward Rivers Ridge.
The roads wind up through the mountains under a sky that's finally starting to go gray at the edge. My shoulder throbs with every mile of it. I can feel my pulse inside the wound now and I know that sooner or later somebody's going to put me in a hospital bed whether I agree to it or not.
Summer drives.
Neither of us says anything for a long while.
Then she reaches over and turns on the radio. Static crackles before the music finds its way through.
Three Little Birds.
A rough laugh gets out of me before I can stop it. Because after the blood and the bullets and everything this night has been, having Bob Marley gently insist that it's all going to work out feels absurd.
It also feels like the only thing anybody could possibly play right now.
Summer glances across at me. Then reaches over and squeezes my hand.
No words. Just warmth. Just proof she's still here.
And for tonight, that's enough.