Chapter 3 #3
Jericho gave him a look. “Hello. It was through the trees and I’m not a creep. Sometimes at night, the dome would glow like a big spotlight. It was . . . like I said, cool.”
Never mind the fact that on dark winter nights, Harley would turn on that light, the one that looked like a daisy or something, and it would shine out into the night. An invitation, maybe.
And like a sappy lovesick thirteen-year-old, he’d turn on his too.
Aw, who was he kidding. He did it all the way to the end, right up until his world imploded, two weeks before he left for boot camp.
Now he glanced at Orlando, who was lapping up water. “What happened to the house?”
“She owns it, I think,” Hudson said. “Rents it out as an Airbnb.”
Sully reached for another slice of pizza. “What’s she doing now?”
“She’s a PI in Juneau,” Jericho said.
“Of course she is.” A smirk tugged at Sully’s lips. “I mean, her dad was the police chief for a couple decades. Seems like she’d go into PI work.”
“I actually heard she was a cop in Anchorage for a while,” Hudson said.
“That’s what I remember too,” Jericho said. “I don’t know what happened there, but apparently, she’s some sort of expert on the Sorros brothers. Determined to put them away.”
Sully smirked again, as did Hudson, their shared look making Jericho’s eyes narrow. “What?”
“Well, I’m just saying, maybe that’s not far from the truth.” Hudson lifted a shoulder, his smirk widening. “Given . . . well . . .”
“Given what?” Malachi asked, his gaze darting between them, his root beer halfway to his mouth. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Just that Jericho has his own reasons for not liking the Sorros brothers,” Sully said, his voice low, his smile fading. “And they involve Harley.”
More silence and Jericho looked away. See, this was why he didn’t come home—didn’t take long for his regrets, his mistakes, to find him.
“All right, I know I’m five years younger than Jericho, but I am part of this family, and I feel like I deserve to know whatever you guys are talking about.” Malachi set his glass down.
Sully leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Once upon a time, Jericho here had a thing going with the girl next door, Miss Harley Tatum. He called her HT. Here’s Trouble.”
Jericho scoffed. “Her initials are HT. Don’t get crazy.”
“It was more than a thing,” Hudson said, his gaze on Jericho. “It was a lifelong flame that turned into a summer inferno.”
“Please,” Jericho said. “We barely kissed.”
“It was true love.” Sully met Jericho’s eyes, almost dark.
Jericho swallowed.
A grin spread across Malachi’s face. “I remember you being friends. But she was always so—”
“Annoying? Stubborn? Infuriating?” Jericho added, his voice a little darker than he meant.
Okay, maybe he did mean it.
“Hot,” Malachi said, his grin widening.
Jericho couldn’t argue with that. With her long blond hair, her lean body, curves in all the right places, and the way she could spark something inside him that made him want to draw closer—yeah, hot. Like the kind that could burn a man. “She was also hot-tempered,” he said.
Sighed. “As the daughter of the police chief, she was always getting in over her head. I think she thought she should shoulder the family mantle of justice or something. Her younger brother Gabe was always in trouble, often with the Sorros brothers, and it just stuck in her craw. More than a few times, she stood up to the Sorroses in school. Which meant . . . I got involved.”
“As the story goes,” Sully said, “Harley’s brother, Gabe, ended up in the hospital after getting high and crashing his car. Harley just lost it. She knew he’d gotten drugs from the Sorros boys and decided to go confront them.”
Jericho looked away, the memory raw and vivid as it flashed into his head. His own words to her at the hospital before she stormed away, “You’re going to get yourself—and me—killed! Don’t do this!”
“I told her not to,” he said quietly, his voice tight. “But she didn’t listen to me, of course.”
“That’s about the time Jericho came to get me,” Sully said.
Kennedy had put down her pizza, now looked at her husband, wide-eyed.
“I’m not sure he needed my help because he was pretty racked up,” Sully continued, “but we piled into Dad’s pickup and drove over to the Sorroses’ place—that ramshackle farm in the woods where they lived with their dad, Brand.
They’d been gone for a few years down in Anchorage, so no one really knew they were back for the summer.
But there was Harley, in the driveway, in Mars’s face, blaming him for Gabe’s accident and telling him she was going to stop him and prove they were the ones who gave Gabe the drugs. ”
Yeah, that moment was branded in Jericho’s brain—driving up, a cloud of dust behind him and Sully, screeching to a halt, piling out of the truck, pretty sure that Mars was going to send a fist into Harley’s face at any second.
And her standing there, toe-to-toe with him, like she didn’t care at all that the man had fifty pounds and half a foot on her, his two brothers looming behind him.
“Jericho and I got there in the middle of the shouting match,” Sully said, his voice low.
“It wasn’t going to take much for Mars to beat her like his dad had done to their mom.
Just mean, all of them. So yeah, I grabbed the tire iron because I was—well, I was sixteen, and they freaked me out.
” He glanced at Kennedy, his voice softening.
“I mean, I was aware they were a lot bigger than me.”
Kennedy looked at him, not a little horror in her eyes. “No doubt. Did you have to use the tire iron?”
“Yes,” Sully said and looked at Jericho.
“Everything just went south,” Jericho said, his voice low, his gaze on the table. “I grabbed Harley around the waist, towed her back to the truck, and threw her inside.”
“And that’s when Mars went after him,” Sully said, looking at Malachi. “And Jericho became legendary.” A faint grin tugged at his lips. “It was a pretty wicked fight.”
Jericho frowned, touching the bridge of his nose. “I don’t remember much of it,” he said, his voice low, “but I do remember Sully dragging me away, throwing me in the cab, and taking off for the hospital.”
Malachi looked at him, setting his pizza slice down. “That’s how you broke your nose?”
“I was stupid and impulsive and in over my head,” Jericho said, his voice flat. “And the Sorros brothers never forgot it. About a week later, we found slashed tires on all the trucks at the resort and graffiti on the maintenance building.”
“Never proved it.” Sully’s gaze was on the table. “Dad was pretty mad about that. He and Sheriff Tatum vowed they were going to shut down the Sorros gang.”
“I was already at basic by then,” Jericho said, his voice quiet. “According to Dad, though, once I left, they backed off.”
Hudson’s mouth tightened. Jericho frowned at him, but Sully kept talking.
“Their dad, and I think Jago and Conan, got arrested a couple years later. I think that took a little wind out of their sails. I think Mars moved to Anchorage and started causing trouble down there.”
Silence.
Finally, Malachi said, “No wonder everyone sort of has this weird vibe about the mysterious Jericho Bowie.”
“He sort of cemented the Bowie name,” Hudson said.
Jericho frowned at him.
“Not that I was upset,” Malachi said. “I liked having a brother who people thought could dismantle them. Nobody messes with the Bowies, right?”
Malachi held up a fist, and Hudson met it, their knuckles bumping.
“Oh, brother.” Jericho rolled his eyes, a smirk tugging at his lips. “Listen, I’m a long way from that guy. I got my fill of violence in the military, thanks.”
Maybe he was hungry, after all. Jericho reached for a slice of meat lovers, the crust warm in his hand. He took a bite, the tangy sauce hitting his tongue. “This isn’t bad,” he said. “It’s not Mom’s, but it’s pretty good.”
“It’s time the Sorros brothers were brought to justice,” Sully said. He took Kennedy’s hand.
“So, what happened between you and Harley after the fight?” she asked, her gaze on Jericho. “I’ll bet she was glad you came to rescue her.”
He didn’t mean the harsh laugh that escaped him, or his words, really. “Are you kidding me?” Jericho said. “She was furious. She rounded on me at the hospital, told me what a fool I was, that she could take care of herself.”
He sighed then, lowered his voice. “It wasn’t my finest moment. I lost it, told her she was going to get herself killed and that I didn’t want to watch.” He lifted a shoulder. “Then she walked away.”
Silence settled over the table, his brothers suddenly very busy with their pizza.
“And that’s it?” Kennedy asked. “You just let her walk away?”
“What do you mean, I let her walk away? She clearly didn’t want me involved.”
“She was terrified.” Kennedy’s voice softened. “Terrified that you were going to get hurt and probably horrified that she’d put you in that position.”
Oh. But, “That’s not what came out of her mouth.”
Kennedy cocked her head, her lips parting, then closing. “No, it’s not,” she said. “But women and men are different. Men are direct and say what they mean. Women—well, it’s complicated.”
Sully’s gaze flicked to Kennedy, a faint chuckle escaping him.
“Tell me about it,” Jericho said, finishing off his pizza. He reached for a napkin, wiped his mouth. “And for your information, I did try to talk to her. When Mom and Dad were killed in the plane crash with the Tatums.”
Kennedy’s eyes widened, her fork clattering to the plate. “Wait, your parents died with her parents?”