Muddy's Justice (Delta Destroyers MC #12)

Chapter One

The river gave up its secrets slow, and Muddy had learned to wait for them.

He stood thigh-deep in the brown water a quarter mile south of Greenville, checking the trotline he'd set at dusk the night before.

Dawn was just breaking over the cotton fields to the east, painting the sky in shades of pink and copper, and the Mississippi moved past him the way it always moved—patient, inevitable, keeping its own schedule.

Three catfish on the line. Decent size. Not enough to sell, but enough to eat.

Truck engines on the river road.

Muddy's head came up, his body going still the way it went still when the current changed unexpectedly.

The road ran maybe fifty yards above the bank, screened by cottonwoods and scrub brush, but sound carried different over water.

He could hear tires on gravel, the growl of a diesel engine, and something else—

Shouting.

A woman's voice, high and furious.

He was moving before he made the decision, wading toward the bank with the slow deliberate stride that was the only speed he knew. The water didn't rush, and neither did he. But he didn't stop, either.

By the time he climbed the bank and pushed through the brush to the road, the trucks were already pulling away—two white pickups with Tatum Construction logos on the doors, dust billowing behind them as they headed north toward town.

What they'd left behind was a woman, a horse, and a scene that told its own story if you knew how to read it.

Muddy read it.

Tire marks where the trucks had blocked the road.

Boot prints in the gravel, heavy treads, work boots.

A secondhand horse trailer pulled off to the shoulder with two tires slashed flat.

And the woman—five-five, sun-dark, built lean and hard—leading a bay horse toward the highway with a split lip, gravel embedded in her palms, and a fury so concentrated it was almost silent.

The horse was favoring its right side. Someone had grabbed the bridle rough, jerked the animal's head around hard enough to strain something.

"Ma'am."

She spun on him, and for a second he thought she might swing. Her hands were fists at her sides, knuckles scraped raw, and the look in her eyes was the look of a woman who'd already been in one fight this morning and was perfectly willing to start another.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Muddy Walsh." He kept his voice even, his body still. No sudden movements. She was wound tight as braided rope, ready to snap. "I was fishing below the bank. Heard the commotion."

"Fishing." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Great. A fisherman. That's exactly what I need right now."

He didn't take offense. People said all kinds of things when the adrenaline was still running hot.

"Your trailer's not going anywhere on those tires," he observed.

"I noticed." She turned back to the horse, running her hands down its neck with the automatic gentleness of someone who handled animals every day. Checking for damage. Her fingers found something near the bridle, and her jaw tightened. "Bastards grabbed him. Could have hurt his mouth."

"Three men?"

She looked at him sharply. "How'd you know that?"

"Boot prints. Three different treads." He nodded toward the gravel. "Construction boots. Steel-toe, work-site issue. Tatum Construction runs crews with those exact boots."

Something flickered in her eyes. Wariness, maybe. Or the beginning of attention.

"You know them?"

"Know of them." Muddy moved closer, keeping his pace slow and his hands visible.

The horse watched him with one dark eye, ears pricked forward.

Good animal—trained, probably, given what the woman looked like.

Barrel racer, if he had to guess. The trailer had sponsorship stickers on the back, faded but readable.

"Tatum's been muscling people off river-road properties for three years now. The Destroyers have been watching."

"Destroyers?"

"Delta Destroyers MC." He touched the patch on his cut, the one he'd pulled on over his fishing clothes when he heard the engines. Never went anywhere without it. "We claim this stretch of river. Everything from Greenville to Vicksburg."

The woman's eyes moved over him—the cut, the hook scar on his cheek, the river mud still clinging to his boots. Assessing. Deciding. She had the look of someone who made decisions fast and lived with the consequences.

"Tessa Mayhew," she said finally. "And I don't need a motorcycle club's help."

"Didn't offer it." Muddy shrugged. "Just saying what I know. Those men will be back. Tatum doesn't give up on a property he wants."

"This isn't property." Her voice went sharp. "This is a public road. I train here."

"Train?"

"Barrel racing." She gestured toward the horse, toward the slashed trailer, toward the flat stretch of river road that curved away to the south.

"That straightaway is the only flat ground in twenty miles where I can condition him properly.

The qualifying circuit doesn't care about construction crews—I need the practice time or I drop in the rankings. "

Muddy looked at the road. It was a good stretch, now that he considered it—straight and level, packed gravel with good footing, the kind of surface a horse could run flat-out without risking a stone bruise or a stumble. He could see why she'd chosen it.

He could also see why Tatum would want her gone. The river-road corridor was prime development land, and a barrel racer running her horse at dawn was a witness to whatever construction crews did when they thought nobody was watching.

"They threw you," he said. Statement, not question.

Tessa's jaw tightened. "Three of them. Grabbed the bridle, spooked the horse, hauled me out of the saddle." She held up her scraped palms. "I came up swinging. Got one of them in the knee before they decided it wasn't worth the trouble."

"You fight back."

"I always fight back."

Something shifted in Muddy's chest. It wasn't attraction—not yet, not exactly. It was recognition. The specific recognition of a man who'd lost everything to forces he couldn't control, looking at a woman who'd rather get thrown in the dirt than stop running toward what she wanted.

"Your trailer's dead," he said. "I've got a truck. I can tow you back to Greenville."

"I don't need—"

"Wasn't asking." He met her eyes, held them. "I'm telling you what's going to happen. I tow you back, you get the tires fixed, and you think about whether you want to keep training on a road Tatum's men are watching."

For a long moment, she just stared at him. The fury was still there, banked but burning, and underneath it was something else—exhaustion, maybe. The particular tiredness of a woman who'd been fighting alone for a long time.

"Fine," she said finally. "But I'm not changing my route."

"Didn't expect you would."

He walked to his truck while she loaded the horse, taking the time to really look at the scene.

The boot prints confirmed what he'd suspected—Hebert's crew, probably.

Frank Hebert ran Tatum's intimidation squad, the men who did the dirty work while the construction boss kept his hands clean.

Three men to handle one woman and a horse.

It was excessive. It was meant to send a message.

The Destroyers would have to send one back.

Muddy hooked the trailer to his hitch and checked the tow chains while Tessa secured the horse. She moved efficiently, no wasted motion, hands quick and sure. Whatever else she was, she knew her way around equipment and animals both.

"You said the Destroyers have been watching," she said as she climbed into the passenger seat. "Watching what?"

"Tatum's operation. The properties he's been acquiring.

The businesses he's been destroying." Muddy put the truck in gear and pulled onto the road, heading north toward Greenville.

"He's been building a development corridor along the river road for three years.

Every property owner who refused to sell ended up with accidents—equipment sabotage, material-yard fires, personal intimidation. "

"And you've just been watching?"

"Gathering intelligence." He kept his eyes on the road. "Can't fight what you don't understand."

"Seems like you understand plenty."

"We understand enough to know you're not safe on this road alone."

Tessa was quiet for a moment. The trailer rattled behind them as they passed the spot where Tatum's trucks had blocked her in, the tire tracks still fresh in the gravel.

"That straightaway is the only flat ground in twenty miles," she said again. "The nationals qualifying circuit is in three months. I'm ranked sixth in the region, and I need to move up to fourth to make the finals."

"That important?"

She turned to look at him, and the fury in her eyes was something else now—desperation, maybe. Or faith. The specific faith of a woman who believed in something enough to risk everything for it.

"It's the only thing I've ever been good enough at to make a living. The only way out of Greenville that doesn't involve marrying someone or working at the plant." She held his gaze. "I'm not changing my route. I'm not missing training. I don't care how many construction crews Tatum sends."

Muddy read her the way he read the river—watching what was moving, what was shifting, what was about to go under.

She was wound tight and moving fast toward a goal she might not reach. She had the compressed energy of a woman running out of time. And the look on her face said she'd rather fight three men again tomorrow morning than give up a single day of practice.

The fisherman who'd lost everything to water he couldn't read saw in her the kind of faith in a future that he'd stopped having when the boat went down.

It was either the bravest thing he'd ever seen or the most reckless.

He had a feeling it was both.

"I'll follow your trailer home," he said. "Sit outside until you're settled."

"Why?"

"Because Tatum's men know what you look like now. Know your truck, your trailer, your horse." He pulled into Greenville proper, the morning traffic picking up around them. "They'll find where you're staying. Probably tonight."

"And you sitting outside my trailer is going to stop them?"

"No." Muddy's voice was flat, certain. "But it'll make sure you're not alone when they come."

Tessa stared at him for a long moment. Then something shifted in her expression—not trust, not yet, but the beginning of it. The acknowledgment that maybe, just maybe, she couldn't handle this one alone.

"Fine," she said. "But if you're going to sit outside my trailer all night, you can at least tell me what kind of man I'm trusting."

The almost-smile that crossed Muddy's face was the most expression she'd seen from him since they'd met.

"The kind who reads the current," he said. "And doesn't let people drown if he can help it."

It wasn't much of an answer.

But from a man who spoke in short declarative sentences and wasted nothing—not words, not motion, not time—it was more than most people got.

Tessa turned back to the window and watched Greenville roll past, and thought that the quiet fisherman with the hook scar and the river patience might be the most useful and most infuriating person she'd ever met.

She had a feeling she was going to find out which.