Chapter Four
Whiskey
Church ends twenty minutes later.
By then, the old jail is fully awake. Music plays louder out front, somebody is arguing over a pool game, and a woman squeals from one of the old cells right before something crashes and she runs out front naked.
Typical morning.
I step through the side door into sunlight and find Twila’s black Jeep Grand Cherokee parked across the road. It’s her personal vehicle.
Speak of the damn devil.
No patrol markings. No uniform. She’s standing near the county records entrance in jeans, boots, and a fitted black jacket, her long blonde hair hanging loose down her back instead of tied up like it was at Heck’s Kitchen.
The man she’s questioning is not nearly her height and looks nervous as hell. His shoulders are drawn up, one hand keeps rubbing the side of his neck, and every few seconds he checks the street like he’s waiting for somebody to catch him talking.
I cross before either of them notices me.
He sees my cut first. His face loses all color.
Twila turns and narrows her eyes. “Well, hell. If it isn’t Hell, Kentucky’s favorite criminal accountant.”
“Deputy.”
“I’m off duty.”
“Still nosy.”
“Still ugly.”
I look her over slowly enough to make the point.
“Liar.”
Her mouth tightens.
The man takes advantage of the distraction. “I should get back.”
Twila turns toward him. “I wasn’t finished.”
“I was.” He gets to his car fast, fumbles once with the handle, then slides behind the wheel.
Twila watches him shut the door before looking at me. “You scared him off.”
“He looked scared before I got here.”
“He was about to tell me something.”
“No, he was about to piss himself.”
“Same difference.”
I stop a few feet away.
Up close, I can see the pale healing line at the corner of her lower lip. No makeup today. She don’t need any. That irritates me more than it should.
“You looking into something?” I ask.
She crosses her arms. “Who, me?”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Play dumb.”
“You do it so well I figured I’d try.” She shifts her weight onto one boot and looks past me toward the road, checking that the clerk is actually leaving.
I follow her gaze until his car disappears around the corner.
“What’d you ask him?”
“You know him?”
Something in my face must give me away because her attention snaps back to me. Interest. Suspicion. That look she gets when she catches the edge of something and decides she’s gonna worry it until it breaks open.
“You need to leave this alone.”
She smiles. Not the sweet kind. It’s the kind that comes right before somebody gets handcuffed.
“Now why would I do that?”
“You already know enough about Pearly Gates to know nothing good happens around it.”
“So, you do know who that was. Exactly why I’m asking questions.”
“You don’t know everything the club does.”
Her eyebrows lift. “Then enlighten me.”
“No.”
“Thought so.”
“Just stop digging.”
“Is that professional advice?”
“No.”
“Club advice?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
“Me telling you not to get stupid.”
Her brows climb higher. “Careful, Whiskey.”
“With what?”
“Talking to a deputy like that.”
“You’re off duty.”
“I can still arrest you.”
“For hurting your feelings?”
“For breathing wrong if I so choose.”
A battered truck rattles past behind us, diesel engine loud enough to drown out anything either of us might say. I wait until the noise fades, then close some of the distance between us.
She doesn’t back up.
Never does.
“You hear me, Twila?”
“Oh, I hear you. Stay away from Hell, right?”
“Stay away from old Pearly Gates.”
My answer comes too fast.
Her expression changes immediately.
“Why?” she asks. “What happened now?”
She already knows enough to hear the difference. I should give her something useful. Instead, the same stupid instinct that made me think I could warn this woman off in the first place takes over. “Because I said so.”
She laughs right in my face.
“That line work better for you than it does for my daddy?”
“Probably not.”
“Then save your breath.”
I lower my voice. “This ain’t a road check, a Denny’s fight, or two drunk assholes fighting over a fence line. You already know Pearly Gates has dirty money, property, and rot attached to it. What you don’t know is how many people get nervous when somebody starts pulling at those threads.”
The humor fades from her expression. Then she leans into the warning instead of away from it. “Sounds like you know who the wrong people are.”
“I know enough.”
“So tell me.”
“No.”
“Then get out of my damn way.” She starts past me.
I catch her arm.
Her gaze drops immediately to my hand. Then comes back to my face. “You’ve got three seconds.”
“Or what?”
“You find out whether I can put a man your size on the pavement.”
“You probably can.”
“Then let go.”
Her shoulders stay loose, but her stance changes. One boot slides half a step back, hips turning just enough that I know she has already picked how she plans to dump me on my ass.
I should release her. I don’t. Not yet. Morning light catches the blue-gray in her eyes and turns them cold as creek water. “You think I’m trying to control you.”
“Ain’t you?”
“I’m trying to keep you breathing.”
That gets through for half a second. Then she leans closer. “Why?”
Because I keep picturing her walking through a gate she doesn’t come back out of.
The club already knows Crowley and Pearly Gates have been moving girls through safe houses.
What we don’t know is where the current trail leads, and Twila walking into it blind is exactly how somebody fucking disappears.
Twila knows enough about Pearly Gates to keep pulling on the thread without knowing what might be waiting on the other end. And because my thumb against her mouth has been stuck in my head since the second I touched her.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I say, thinking about it.
Her expression closes. “You don’t give a shit whether I live or die. All you bikers are the same.”
“Believe whatever helps.”
She yanks her arm free.
This time I let her.
Twila steps backward, keeping her eyes on mine. “You know what I think?”
“Usually too much.”
“I think you’re scared.”
“Of you?”
“Of what I’m going to find.”
I almost laugh.
Instead, I glance toward the clubhouse.
“Go home, Deputy.”
“I’m off duty.”
“Then go do something off duty. Get your nails done or whatever ladies do.”
She makes a disgusted sound, flips me the bird, showing off her short plain nails, and heads for the Jeep. I watch her climb inside, start the engine, and flip me off again through the windshield before pulling into the road.
I stand there long enough to call myself every kind of dumbass. Telling Twila Dix not to look into old Pearly Gates is the same as pouring gasoline on a brush fire and asking it to behave.
By the time I get home, it’s after three.
My house sits outside Hell on a narrow road with more trees than neighbors. One story, old porch, detached garage. Far enough from the main road that nobody wanders up by accident, but close enough to town that I can get to the Lockup or Wren’s school without spending half my life riding.
My black Road Glide ticks hot beneath me when I kill the engine. Cicadas scream from the trees, and sunlight flickers through the leaves across the cracked driveway.
Wren’s pink bicycle is lying across the front walk. One pink shoe sits on the porch. I step inside and find chaos. Construction paper covers the kitchen table. Markers have rolled halfway across the floor. Glitter sparkles on the couch, the counter, and Glamaw.
My mother is half asleep on the couch with silver glitter smeared across one cheek. My daughter sits cross-legged beneath the kitchen table surrounded by empty glue sticks. She’s been home all of thirty minutes.
She looks up. “Don’t be mad.”
I shut the door behind me. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“House looks like a craft store blew up.”
“It’s a project.”
“What kind?”
“Ecosystem.”
I look at the poster board propped against a chair.
A blue river cuts through a green forest. Cotton balls hang in the sky. Three plastic deer are glued upside down beside a handwritten label that says PRAY.
I point at it. “That deer religious?”
Wren crawls out from beneath the table.
She’s seven, skinny as a fence rail, with dark hair falling into her eyes and one front tooth still growing in crooked.
“No.”
“Says pray like church.”
“Real church or fake church?” She’s talking about the club.
I press my palms together and show her.
“It’s supposed to say prey like kill ya and eat ya.”
“Then fix it.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I lost the brown marker.”
I look around the disaster zone. “Use black.”
“Deer ain’t black.”
“Some probably are.”
“No, they ain’t.”
“Paint one dirty.”
She plants both hands on her hips. “Daddy.”
“What?”
“That’s not science.”
“Science is mostly guessing.”
“No, it ain’t.”
“Then you already know more than me.”
She sighs like I’m exhausting.
Probably am. I shrug off my cut and hang it over the back of a chair before crossing to the couch. Mama snores softly. I tap the cushion near her leg.
She jerks awake. “What?”
“Why are you glittering?”
She rubs her face and somehow makes it worse. “Wren said she needed help.”
Wren points accusingly. “She glued the river backward.”
“A river ain’t got a backward.”
“It does on a map.”
Mama looks at me. “I told her that.”
“I promised you less than an hour.”
She sits upright, notices the glitter stuck to both palms, and curses.
Wren gasps. “Glamaw said a bad word.”
Mama looks down at her hands like the evidence is stacked against her.
“You hear worse at the clubhouse,” I say.
“I do not.”
“You called Royal a butthead.”
“He is.”
Mama gets to her feet. “Kid ain’t wrong.”
I point toward the front door. “I’ve kept you long enough.”
She kisses the top of Wren’s head on her way past but pauses beside me at the doorway.
“She called again.”
Wren is bent over her project, pretending not to listen. I know better. Kids hear everything you don’t want them to.
“Not now,” I say through my teeth.
Mama studies my face for a second, then nods and lets herself out.
Wren doesn’t ask who called. That hurts worse than if she did.