Chapter One
about six months later
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Cox felt his nape draw tight, the way it did when somebody was behind him.
Everything on the inside drew tight as well. The reaction wasn’t fear or worry; there wasn’t anything to be afraid of—he was at work, and no stranger would make it all the way to the Signal Bend Construction warehouse unimpeded. No, the feeling clenching his sphincter was irritation. Fuck, how he hated being interrupted when he was in the zone.
“What?” he snarled without stopping his current task: cleaning his socket wrenches.
“Fuck, man,” Mel chuckled. “Are you ever in a good mood? After near twenty years knowing you, I can’t say I’ve seen it.”
Now Cox put his wrench and his damp shop cloth down, but he didn’t turn around. “You’re saying twenty years, you only see me in a bad mood?”
“Yup.” There was laughter in Mel’s voice. There was always laughter in that asshole’s voice. His skin was like Kevlar; everything bounced off.
“Y’ever think maybe you’re the common denominator there?” Cox pointed out. In truth, Mel was more right than not. It was unlikely anyone would ever find him in a good mood, because it was people that put him in a bad one. Only in solitude did he ever feel okay. Not good, mind you, but not murderous.
He’d been in solitude three minutes ago. One of the main perks of being the head mechanic at SBC was the ability not to have to hang around with people all goddamn day. Though he had two mechanics under him, once the crews were out on the job site he could arrange his day to be on his own more than not.
Checking his watch, he saw it was a lot later in the afternoon than he’d realized. Shifts were over; no doubt the clubhouse was filling up already.
Mel outright laughed. “Nah, man. Can’t be that. Everybody loves me. Even you.”
Cox stuck a hand back and put up his middle finger.
“Aw, so sweet. Anyway, Badge is calling us into the Keep. That’s what I came out to say.”
“Why?” Surprise pushed the question into the air, and Cox instantly regretted it. He’d find out in the Keep. Asking Mel only prolonged the chitchat.
“No idea, but I guess it’s important. C’mon, assface, let’s go.”
Cox gritted his teeth and put the socket wrench in its slot. He folded his shop cloth and set it on the wrench case, so he could pick up where he’d left off.
When he finally turned around, Mel was still waiting, arms crossed, stupid smirk on his face.
“Assface?” Cox sniped as they headed to the Keep together. “Are you thirteen?”
“I’m young at heart, my brother. You should try it.”
“Eat my ass.”
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~oOo~
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“Looks like Kennerman’s decided to be a pain in our dick from the jump,” Badger said as soon as he gaveled the meeting open.
Mark Kennerman was Signal Bend’s new mayor. Ellis Hopkins, who’d held the position for several terms, had died suddenly a couple weeks earlier—a ‘thunderclap coronary,’ or something like that. He’d complained of a bad headache, stood up to get something for it, and dropped dead. As Cox understood it, the man’s heart had practically exploded.
The Signal Bend governmental structure was a bit bare-bones and loose, but Kennerman had been the town treasurer, the only other full-time employee at the town hall who wasn’t a secretary or a janitor, so he’d stepped into the role of mayor and would hold it at least until November elections.
Government was bare-bones and loose in Signal Bend because what went on in the town hall was mostly set dressing. The real decision maker in town was the Night Horde MC. They handled town security and protection, and for decades, almost since the founding of the club, the mayor had answered to the club president. The arrangement worked well for just about everyone involved, but there had always been a few sniping voices. Since Signal Bend had grown in the past decade or so, those voices had increased from ‘few’ to ‘some.’
Mark Kennerman was not a friend to the Horde. As treasurer, he’d gummed up works where he could, holding up funds for as long as possible, arguing with the mayor at every opportunity, trying to foment unrest in the town. He’d been unsuccessful, largely because the Horde were heroes to lifelong residents, and they had stories like folklore to tell at every opportunity.
But now Kennerman had the big desk. At least until November, there was a lot he could do—or, at least, try to do—whether the people of Signal Bend wanted him to or not.
“What’s that mean?” Isaac grumbled. He’d been making Cox a solid challenge for the title of ‘club grump’ for nearly a month now. Ever since his daughter, Gia, and Zaxx Bello, her boyfriend and the newest Horde patch, had struck out on a research road trip for her dissertation. She was studying outlaws and visiting friendly clubs.
They were somewhere in California, Cox thought. At their very first stop, in Tulsa with the Brazen Bulls, they’d almost gotten caught up in some Bulls trouble. It had all turned out okay, more drama than danger, but Isaac had tried to demand Gia come home—that Zaxx bring her home, by force if necessary—and they’d blown him off. He’d been a rabid grizzly since.
“It means,” Badger answered, “the motherfucker signed the contract with that Rooney bitch. He sold the fucking property out from under us.”
The men around the table erupted at the news. Tommy, their SAA, raised his voice over the rest. “Then he needs a fucking correction.”
Everybody seemed to agree—except Badger. He shook his head.
“I agree, but not right now, and we gotta be careful. Yeah, Kennerman is not good for us, and we either need to find a way to get him on board or get him out of office. But with Springfield PD starting to make noises like they’ll investigate Danvers and Donahue, we need to be careful what kind of light shines our way. We’ve been riding pretty straight longer than I’ve had the gavel, but we are fucked a dozen ways if they find those guys.”
Last summer, Bill Danvers, a Springfield cop, and Bennett Donahue, an ex-cop and Danvers’ former partner, raped and beat Zaxx’s younger sister, then broke into Zaxx’s house and lay in wait for him. The whole scene was a complicated mess, but the end result was those assholes were extremely dead, and their bodies were rotting at the bottom of a quarry lake. Because the Horde had put them there.
The club had given up the outlaw life long ago, but they still handled their shit in the way it needed to be handled.
“That was almost a year ago,” Cox said aloud.
Dom, their intel officer, answered. “Donahue had some relative—aunt, I think, and when she didn’t hear from him at Christmas, she started making calls. I can’t tell yet whether they’re just trying to appease her, or if they’ve decided the story doesn’t fly that they ran off to get clear of their mess.”
Danvers and Donahue had been troublesome cops, with lots of hits on their files for violent encounters with the public, especially women. Dom had seeded a story that they’d run off before shit in Springfield got too hot for them. It had taken root, unless this aunt or whoever started pulling weeds.
“What if they find the bodies?” Thumper asked.
“First, short of somebody at this table telling them where the bodies are, it’ll take a mountain of detective work before anybody’ll even think to look there. That lake is deep, and we sank ‘em to the bottom. Nobody’s gonna come across that scene accidentally. Second, even if somehow they do find ‘em, it’s not a sure thing they’ll connect the dots to us,” Dom said. “We covered the tracks well. But it’ll be tense as fuck for a while.”
“We are all fucked if they do connect the dots,” Showdown mused.
“It was fucking self-defense,” Isaac growled. It had been Gia who’d actually killed those men, when she came upon them waiting at Zaxx’s, and it had absolutely been self-defense. But when it was cops, self-defense didn’t get to count.
“Hey!” Badger said, raising his voice above the others. “All that’s true, and it’s why we have to tread careful with Kennerman. But he’s got a couple pressure points, so we’ll get him turned in the right direction. The issue on the table right now is we don’t have him yet, and he sold the fucking property. I called Larry, and he’s looking into it, but he says legal channels probably won’t go anywhere. It’s the town that officially owns that property, and the mayor gets to sign those deals.”
The deal they were talking about was the purchase of the abandoned building that had long housed a heavy-machinery repair shop with a small used-machine sales lot. Last year, a commercial development company from out of state started angling to buy that property and the block of small homes immediately behind it. The developer was one of those greedy shithead companies that bought out local businesses, razed the old buildings, and threw up some balsa-wood strip mall full of crappy franchises like payday loan places and convenience marts. Then, once they got a foothold, they kept buying out the locals and throwing up their flimsy town-killers.
“What did he do with the block behind the building?” Len asked. “He can’t sell that. Other people own those houses.”
“Looks like MWGP upped their offers enough that people are biting,” Badger replied.
“We told them we’d keep them whole,” Bart said.
“There’s a difference between being whole and being strong,” Darwin observed. “We can’t fault guys like Jim Miller if he takes an offer that makes him strong. Man’s got four kids and a grandkid he’s supporting.”
“Look,” Double A, their VP, said when crosstalk started to claim the table again. “The priority here is to keep eyes off the quarry, and off us. We gotta stay low-pro until SPD closes that case. We can’t do that and fuck up a big deal already inked. Seems to me, Kennerman and this chick from MWGP win this round.”
The patches processed Double A’s wisdom and eventually, reluctantly, agreed.
“They only get this round, though,” Nolan said. “So how do we get back on top?”
“For one thing,” Mel suggested, “We need to keep a close watch on the redhead. That little chick is the spoiler in all this, and if we don’t get over on her, she will shove all our balls in an air fryer and eat ‘em up like popcorn.”
“Fuck, man,” Cox complained. “Can’t you talk like a normal person?”
Mel grinned blithely.
Badger made an irritated face and moved on. “Kennerman told me she’ll be in town next weekend, for the Spring Fling. I guess she wants to make nice with the locals. We’re gonna need somebody on her ass from the second her wheels cross the town line.”
Double A jumped in to add, “We need to set the work schedules for the Fling anyway, so let’s add redhead babysitting to the list.”
“At least she’s nice to look at,” Saxon said with a slanted grin. “I can think of worse things than following that little ass around.”
“I wish Shannon would let us bug her room,” Dom sighed. “Show—"
Showdown, Shannon’s old man, glowered and cut him off. “That discussion is fuckin’ dead. It’s not gonna happen. The B his mother must have started to make tea and forgotten.
“Momma?” he called out as he unpacked the totes and put the items away. “I’m here. I brought groceries. They had pork chops on sale—the thick bone-in cuts you like. I thought I’d fry a couple up and have dinner with you. I got some buttermilk, too. Maybe you could make biscuits?”
Only the television greeted his words. Cox paused for a second, closed his eyes, and got his head where it needed to be. Then he finished putting groceries away—inside the fridge were at least five plates and bowls holding half-eaten meals, but not much else—and did a quick scan of the kitchen for signs that things had gotten very bad in the few days since he’d been by to check on her. They were getting close to one of the points on the calendar where shit got pretty dire around here, but if it had started already, that would be the earliest yet.
Things were never good with his mom, but there were five times of the year, a total of about ten weeks or so, when shit got pretty dire. The first one was in May, almost a month off yet. Three of those times came upon each other quickly enough that the whole summer was usually a nightmare. Though he was used to it by now, Cox did not relish an early start.
He checked the trash under the sink. Nothing out of the ordinary, which meant quite a few beer cans and a wine bottle mixed in with the usual kitchen trash. Nothing worse. The sink was full of dirty dishes, but they’d made it to the sink, and most of them had been scraped off. All decent signs. He grabbed the kettle, filled it, and put it back on the stovetop to heat up. Before he turned the burner on, though, he went to find his mom.
She was in the living room, asleep in his dad’s old La-Z-Boy, which had been Mom’s chair for thirty years. On the table beside the chair was a can of beer in a crocheted cozy, the remotes for the TV, and a prescription pill bottle. Goddammit.
Cox grabbed the bottle; it had no prescription label. Of course not, because his mother didn’t have a prescription for Ambien, which the pills in the bottle were. She didn’t have a prescription for any addictive drugs anymore, because her doctors had stopped prescribing them to her. Cox had made sure of it. Forcefully.
How many had she taken? And washed down with Bud Light?
He cupped his hands around her face and shook her, gently at first. “Momma. Momma, wake up.” When she didn’t rouse, he checked her pulse—slow, but rhythmic. A slightly harder shake. “Momma! It’s Danny. C’mon, wake up.”
She moaned and slapped at him. “Tired, leave me alone,” she slurred. “Go ‘way.”
When she rolled to her side in the chair and drew the threadbare throw over her shoulders, he checked her pulse again, decided she was under but not in danger, and backed off.
He starred at that fucking pill bottle. He could guess where she’d gotten it. His hand shaking, he grabbed that fucker, stormed out the front door, and marched across the street.
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~oOo~
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He was halfway up the neighbor’s patchy lawn when he heard, “Hiya, Mr. Danny!” in a friendly young voice.
It had come from in front of him, and Cox drew up short and found the little kid sitting under the bushes beside the porch steps, having made himself a hideout.
Cox hated most adults and could tolerate only a handful. By the time human beings reached maturity, they’d all learned to be selfish shitheads, and most of them could die in a fire, as far as he cared. But children were innocents, and he didn’t take his shit out on innocents.
He slammed his mental clutch and shifted gears, finding a smile for the boy. “Hiya, Colton. What’re you doin’ under there? Camping?”
“I’m a pirate! ARRR!” He brandished a paper-towel-tube sword. “I got ship-wecked.”
“Oh no! Do you need a rescue?”
“NO! I’m dis-cubbering! Like Columbus!”
Speaking of shitheads. “Okay, good luck! Is your mom inside?”
Colton nodded. “She’s makin’ dinner.”
Good. She’d be in the kitchen. He could go in that door, where Colton wouldn’t see.
He went to the side door and slammed his way in.
Standing at her pantry, Tally Baker jumped as her kitchen door slammed open. Still dressed in her nurse’s scrubs, she spun with a little squeaking scream, and then Cox had her by the shoulders and shoved her against the wall.
“I told you to fuckin’ stop giving my mother your goddamn drugs, you fuckin’ pusher. I guess you need a stronger lesson.”
Her eyes were round as pie plates. “I didn’t—”
Cox slammed her against the wall again. “Lie to me again.”
“You’re hurting me.”
“Yeah. I’m trying to.” Actually, he was trying to control himself, to scare her, not hurt her, but he wasn’t doing a great job. “Stop. Doping. Up. My. Mother.”
“I didn’t! You told me to stop and I stopped!” Suddenly, Tally deflated, and Cox knew her deceitful protest was over. “She’s hurting, Danny. I’m tryin’ to help her. You know how I feel about her.”
Yeah, he did. Tally had practically been his adopted sister when they were kids. She’d escaped across the street whenever her brutal father was in one of his ‘moods.’ His mother had kept her safe and given her the love she couldn’t get elsewhere.
Still furious, but in control of himself now, he eased off. “You’re killin’ her with your ‘help,’ Tal. You’ve got to stop.” He shook the bottle at her.
She frowned. “I didn’t give her a bottle. I gave her a couple packets. Just for a couple nights. Not enough to do anything but sleep.”
Those words rang true. Cox frowned at the unmarked bottle. There were almost ten pills rattling around in it. He couldn’t imagine his mother finding an actual dealer—if nothing else, she almost never stepped foot out of the house, and dealers didn’t generally make house calls.
“I’m gonna say something you won’t like,” Tally said as he tried to make sense of the bottle. He glared at her, and she looked afraid, but she pressed on. “You know like I know—better than I do—that she’s never gonna come back from Billy. She’s miserable, Cox. She’s broken. Not just her heart. Everything. She hasn’t wanted to be here for twenty years, and it’s been thirty since she was happy. Maybe it’s time to just let her g—”
Cox roared and punched the wall beside Tally’s head. Then he threw the pill bottle on the floor and stormed out of her kitchen.
He went back to take care of his mom. He’d make her a nice dinner, change her bed linens, maybe coax her into a bath while he cleaned the kitchen. Get her to see things a little more brightly.
Because she was not fucking leaving him. Not her too.