Chapter Twelve #3
Roth’s breathing picked up. “What kind of choice?”
General nodded toward the table. A pistol lay there. Unloaded now. A knife rested beside it.
I heard General speak in a low, measured voice.
“We can do this for you. You sit. We stand. You take whatever final words you need into the dark and we finish. Or you handle the last act yourself. You tell me who walks over there, loads the gun, places the weapon in your hand while you can still hold onto something. Maybe you prefer the blade instead, so we leave and give you ten minutes alone.”
Roth’s eyes widened as he processed the options.
“You’d leave me here?” he whispered, disbelief coloring every word.
“We’ll cut you loose,” General said. “We’ll lock the door behind us. Nobody else comes down. However you decide to end this, it’s between you and whatever you believe in.”
Roth let out a shaky breath. “You’re insane.”
“Probably,” General said. “You’re not getting out of this alive. That part’s not up for debate. Have some say in how it goes.”
Roth looked at the table. At the pistol. At the knife. “Cut me loose,” he said.
Spade stood without a word and moved behind the chair. He popped the cuffs on Roth’s wrists, then stepped back fast.
Roth flexed his fingers, wincing.
General put the pistol on the table in front of him. Then the knife. He stepped away.
Roth stared between them. His fingers trembled as he reached out and closed around the knife handle.
“The gun feels too… clean,” he said. “Too easy.”
Spade muttered, “Nobody here disagrees.”
Roth exhaled slowly. “I’m ready. “
Atilla gave a single nod. “May God forgive you.”
“No one else will,” Roth answered.
We filed out together. The heavy door closed with a dull thud.
Spade turned the lock and pressed his palm against the cold concrete wall, as though sensing the man beyond.
“Ten minutes,” Atilla announced. “After which someone needs to verify completion.”
“I’ll go,” I said.
Atilla studied my face. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I need to see it closed. For her.”
He nodded. “Ten minutes,” he repeated.
We climbed the stairs.
Outside, the morning had brightened. Birds called from the trees. Somewhere near the fence, a kid laughed, the sound faint on the air. Life, right on top of death.
I checked my watch. Nine minutes. Ten.
I went back. The air in the cellar felt heavier. The chair sat empty. Roth lay on the floor beside it. The knife lay near his hand. Blood pooled around his body, dark and sticky, seeping into the concrete. He’d gone for the throat. Quick and clean, far as these things ever went.
Roth’s eyes stared at the ceiling, wide with surprise, making my stomach twist. I moved closer and swallowed against the metallic tang filling my nostrils. I reached over to close his eyelids. Nobody deserved what Diaz would have done to him.
The bastard hadn’t earned mercy. Yet I gave him a version anyway.
Boots sounded on the stairs. General appeared in the doorway. He took in the scene with one sweep of his gaze. “Done?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Do you feel better?” he asked.
I considered. “No. Not better. Just… lighter. The weight shifted.”
He nodded. “Bodies can be dealt with. Ghosts linger. You cut some of his loose today. That’s enough.”
We wrapped Roth in a tarp and carried him out between the two of us. No ceremony. Nothing to mark the man he had been. Just cleanup.
The club had a place for this. Not on the property. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere deep. Somewhere Diaz would never find no matter how hard he dug.
I didn’t go on that run. Atilla sent General and Knuckles instead. I stayed. My job now sat in the main building, probably holding a mug too tight while she pretended to listen to Casey.
I washed Roth’s blood off my hands in the sink by the garage. The water ran red, then pink, then clear.
When I looked up, Spade stood in the doorway, tablet tucked under his arm again. “He’s gone,” he said.
“Yeah,” I replied.
He nodded, eyes distant. “At least we got enough to make Diaz bleed. Maps will consume my life for the next couple days. The timetable gives us clear targets. Routes. Names. Safe houses soon to become death traps. I’ll present everything at Church after organizing.
” Spade paused. “Jade asked for you,” he added.
Of course she had.
I dried my hands and walked inside.
* * *
I found her on the back porch, sitting on the top step, knees pulled up, arms wrapped around them. She wore jeans and one of my T-shirts, sleeves rolled, hem hitched up a bit when she moved. Her hair sat in a messy knot at the back of her head, a few strands blowing loose in the breeze.
She didn’t turn when I opened the door, but her shoulders relaxed.
“How’s the weather?” I asked.
“Blood-tinged,” she said quietly.
I eased down beside her. The wood felt rough under my jeans. The morning had warmed up, but the shade still held a chill. “You felt it?” I asked.
“Not with some psychic tether,” she said. “I saw everyone come up. You don’t need an overactive imagination to connect those dots.”
“You okay?”
She huffed. “Do you own any other questions?”
“They seem to cover the bases.”
She rested her chin on her knees, staring out at the yard. The fence line. The trees beyond.
“He chose the knife,” I said after a while.
She closed her eyes. “Fast.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Fast.”
Silence stretched between us. Roth hadn’t been a good guy. Even if he’d helped a bit at the end, it didn’t nearly make up for everything he’d done.
“Bad people don’t sit on back steps wondering if they’re bad people. They’re too busy polishing their own stories.” That tugged a faint smile from her. “The kids okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Casey turned the almost-locked-down into a movie party. Popcorn, blankets, the whole thing. They know something’s up. Kids always do. But they’re not scared. Curious, yeah. Riley asked me if the ‘mean man’ was gone yet.”
“What did you say?” I asked.
She exhaled. “I told her some bad men were trying to mess with our family. That the grown-ups were handling it. That she and the other kids didn’t have to worry about anything but not spilling orange soda on Marci’s couch.”
“She believe you?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I think she believes it more than I do.”
I slid my arm around her shoulders and pulled her against my side. She came willingly, head fitting under my chin like it had always been meant to be there.
“We’re handling it,” I said. “One piece at a time. Roth, then Diaz. We’ll take him apart with the same methodical cruelty he used on everyone else, and we’ll do it without turning into him while we work.”
She snorted. “Listen to you. War speeches before breakfast.”
“Pancakes count as breakfast,” I said. “I’m covered.”
We sat there, watching the yard. Prospects moved fences. Someone tuned an engine in the garage. A dog I didn’t recognize trotted along the perimeter, nose to the ground, following some invisible trail. Life, again.
“Spade’s going to have a field day with those names.” She grinned. “He looked high yesterday when he showed me the map.”
“That’s how you know he’s in his happy place.”
“You think this is all going to work?” she asked. “The maps. The routes. The calculated hits. You think you can cut Diaz down without him burning the world on his way out?”
I nodded. “I think we have a better shot now than we did last week. We know where he’s vulnerable. And I think he doesn’t know yet how hard we’re willing to hit when we finally swing.”
Jade considered my words, her brow furrowing. “What if we miss some? What if you cut off his legs, but he grows new ones somewhere else? What if he escapes and someone worse fills the void?”
“We’ll handle the problem when the time comes,” I said. “The nature of war never changes. Another bastard always waits in the wings. Our goal isn’t to fix everything forever. We need to make our home safer for everyone beneath our roof. You. The kids. The town. One circle at a time.”
She pressed against my side. “You make everything sound doable.”
“Nothing about this will be easy,” I said. “The explanation merely sounds better.”
A genuine laugh escaped her lips.
She tipped her head back to look at me. “You really want me in this for the long haul? Even with the nightmares. The rage. The fact that I’m probably going to flinch every time the doorbell rings for the next ten years.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I haven’t run away from all that so far. I want you in this for as long as you’ll stay.”
“You’re sure you won’t look at me one day and see nothing but baggage?” she asked.
“Pretty sure,” I said. “You’re the one who rolled up here with a trunk full of problems and made me fall in love with you anyway. That’s a trick. I’m hanging on.”
Her eyes went shiny. “Say it again,” she whispered.
“I’m hanging on,” I said.
She leaned closer. “Before that,” she whispered.
“I love you,” I told her.
Jade inhaled sharply as though hearing the words for the first time, despite how often I’d repeated them to her.
“And I want you wearing my patch,” I added. “When all this chaos settles enough for us to catch our breath and get the stitching done.”
Her fingers found the edge of my cut, gripping tight.
“The asshole at the bar keeps echoing in my head,” she murmured. “The one who decided I wasn’t worth your trouble.”
My eyes locked with hers. “Yeah?”
“Next party we attend, I want all of it. Not just the property cut. I want to be yours in every way possible.”
Heat blazed through my chest. “Say more,” I urged, needing to hear her conviction again.
Jade nodded. “Ask me later. For real. When Diaz stops haunting our every move. You’ll hear me say yes.”
Pride, fierce and sharp, flared under my ribs. “Done.”
“You’re not going to turn it into a spectacle, are you?” she asked. “I’m not ready for a parade.”
“We’ll keep it small. Just you, me, the club, and a patch that tells the world you’re ours.”
“Ours,” she echoed. She sighed and rested her head on my shoulder again.
We sat there until Marci stuck her head out the door and told us we had ten minutes before lunch and she wasn’t saving us any biscuits if we didn’t move.
Jade rolled her eyes. “She’s scarier than Diaz.”
“That’s why he’ll never step foot on this porch,” I said. “He can handle guns. He can’t handle Marci with a spatula.”
She laughed again, lighter this time.
We went inside together. Jade walked beside me, her shoulders a little higher. The kids still ran in the hall. The smell of food wrapped around us.
Roth was gone, but Diaz still sat out there, king of a rotten hill.
We had work to do. We had ghosts to quiet. We had a war to win.