3. Nothing but Foreskins
Nothing but Foreskins
Vedder
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Noam Braun was a man in his fifties.
Military paraphernalia, such as coins from over a hundred units, pictures, and military certificates, crowded his desk and dripped from his bookcase.
He had a National Guard green beret, and he seemed to have made it his entire personality in his retirement years.
“Taz said you were looking for help. I have a lot of free time on my hands.” I took a seat across his gray, metal desk. The chair groaned under my weight, and one of the wheels squeaked when I moved forward to put my elbow on the table.
“Taz, huh?” Braun, the local bail bondsman and resident private investigator, tilted his head, looking me up and down. “You a long tabber?”
Special Forces. He meant Special Forces. If I hadn’t known he was a National Guardsman in the 20th Special Forces Group, I would have figured it out from the numerous plaques littered across the bare drywall. Unpainted, smoke-stained, and dingy, this place was likely a front for something.
Especially when you factored in the state-of-the-art cameras, biometric safes, and advanced security systems. Well-hidden, but still noticeable if you knew where to look.
I was here to fill my excessive amount of free time with gainful employment. That was true. But I was also here to satisfy my own curiosity. What the hell was this small-town bondsman up to? How did he stay in business in this sleepy town?
“I was on a team with her.” I struggled to smile. It was like my cheek muscles had atrophied and couldn’t make the expression anymore.
“With the rest of Lucky 13?” He and Taz had gotten chatty. “I’ve met that First Sergeant of yours. McClanahan. Seems like a good man.”
“The best.” I’d been squatting in his barn for over a year now and gotten some good things done to the property; helped him with the siding of his house, installed the soffits, and added some decorative shutters to keep with their Victorian aesthetic.
“And why, other than your association with my recently knocked-up colleague, are you coming to me now? What’s making you want to don the auspicious title of bounty hunter?” He looked at me suspiciously. “You trying to get a book deal? A TV show? Thinking you’re the next Domino Harvey?”
My brows went up in disbelief.
I mean…no. Hell no.
But also, why? Why was I here? I had my retirement. I had medical disability. No real rent to speak of. So what was I doing?
Maybe I was sick of squatting on the farm. Once there was nothing else to build, no more land to till, no floors to level, and no sidings left to replace, I’d wear out my welcome.
“I’m putting away a nest egg to get a place of my own,” I decided. “I can’t bum around in my First Sergeant’s barn forever. Gotta start thinking about what’s next, and this is a good way to use my most marketable skills.”
Tracking and killing an enemy in the real world was infinitely less useful than a solid understanding of Microsoft Excel. And I still hated computers, so I had to take what I could get.
Braun tapped his finger on the desk, the damn rusted chair squeaking as he rocked back and forth. Then he stilled, having made up his mind.
“Perhaps you can be as useful as Taz was.” He went into a drawer and pulled out a wooden box. He nipped the end of a cigar, leaving the cut tobacco leaves discarded on the table. “The other pups who came here were nothing but foreskins.”
I froze, my brain stalling like a glitching computer.
“I’m afraid to ask for clarification…” Truly, I doubted any good could come of it.
“They disappear when things get hard.”
“I shoulda trusted my instincts,” I mumbled. “I’m more disturbed than a bear catching salmonella.”
Braun chuckled as the scent of his cigar filled the room. A sad little fan in the corner blew smoke my way.
“You’d think a man named ‘VD’ who looked like you wouldn’t be such a cornflower,” he said with a sparkle in his eye. “You are certainly not your reputation.”
I almost winced. I should have been used to it by now; my past was a poison I would never outrun. I should have known that, considering…well, everything.
You couldn’t have roots and wings. You couldn’t have a home while always starting anew. I’d chosen this. I’d chosen Mack, the team, and all that it had implied. It meant my past indiscretions entered a room before I did.
“I’m not the man I used to be.” That was all I could say. To myself and to everyone else.
“So it seems.” Braun puffed his cigar and lifted his brow at me. “Alright, friend, as you are a fellow Kansan, not to mention a long-tabber, I’ll do you a solid.”
He pulled a single yellow folder from his drawer and slapped it on the desk.
“This is Luke Gray. Ever heard of him?” He tapped the photo of a square-jawed blond man in a polo shirt. “You helped Sheriff Whitlaw fish him out of the river.”
I looked down at the face I’d only seen as a rotted, zombie-looking thing. I knew nothing about him.
“That’s Melody Gray’s stepfather, and the brother of Turner Gray. You know who they are, right?” Braun lifted a bushy white brow.
“Sure…” No idea who Turner Gray was, but I knew Melody.
Sweet Melody with eyes like a phoenix and thick, pouted lips with a small, upturned nose.
She had skin the color of Pacific sand that got lighter in the winter and darker in the summer.
Sunlight scattered little freckles along her nose and cheeks, and anytime she came over to the McClanahan farm for dinner, I always hovered like a creep over her shoulder, just… wanting to be close to her.
“Well, the Gray family—that is, Turner and his father—have hired me to figure out what happened to him. They’re saying foul play.”
My brows came down in confusion. Foul play?
“I thought they said he’d drowned.”
“Apparently,” Braun said pointedly, “the Grays are all fantastic swimmers and boatmen. There was no way that he could have been killed by drowning, so they want to know what happened to him really.”
He puffed his cigar, then shrugged.
“They don’t believe Sheriff Whitlaw. They think she’s biased.” He chuckled to himself as he ashed into a tray. “Though, if you ask me, she’s not the type to let her own feelings get in the way of an investigation.”
I agreed. I hadn’t interacted much with the sheriff, but she seemed straightforward, serious, and really, really competent. I didn’t get the impression she’d be biased in any way.
“Why would they think she’s biased?” I asked while examining photographs of the living Luke Gray.
There were family photos. Him with his wife. Sometimes she was in nurse’s scrubs. Three kids. Two girls and one boy. Melody was a lot older than her siblings. I knew that, though. She was now their guardian.
My eyes lingered on her face. She had the most amazing eyes that reminded me of the wings of a phoenix—rounded in the middle, then tipping drastically upwards at the ends. I’d never seen eyes quite like hers, and I’d become a little obsessed with them.
Melody. Everyone called her Mellie or Mel, but she wasn’t either.
She was a Melody through and through. I knew from the moment I saw her walking up the McClanahan driveway last Christmas.
She had the weight of the world on her shoulders and the look of genuine gratitude anytime I helped her with anything. That gratitude did it for me.
Maybe I had a gratitude kink, because I mesmerized by the way she said thank you, and I wanted her to thank me after the throes of orgasms. To look at me with lust-filled gratitude as I gave her everything she needed.
Was that a real kink? I wasn’t about to google it. That was a minefield ready to kick me in the ass.
“Hm…” Braun mused, staring at me as I stared at her photo.
“It’s an open secret that Sheriff Whitlaw’s son was probably the product of an ill-fated union with Mr. Turner Gray.”
“What?” I said, my head spinning from his way of speaking.
“Sheriff Whitlaw is twenty-nine years old. Her child is thirteen. Are you any good at math, young man?”
“Carry the one…She had a child at sixteen?”
“Pregnant at fifteen. That’s right.”
“How old is Turner Gray?” I asked, scanning the documents for his birthday.
“Forty-eight.”
“Well, that’s another twist in the world’s most disgusting pretzel.” I let out a whistle, my stomach turning. A fifteen-year-old seduced—no, raped—by a thirty-six-year-old?
I was thirty-seven. The idea of sticking my dick into any human who wasn’t old enough to drink made me want to puke.
Braun pursed his lips, nodding. “Yes. It’d be better for everyone involved if Turner went the way of his brother and found himself face down in a lake. But if wishes were horses…”
I had no idea what would happen if wishes were horses. There’d be a lot of horse dung on the road?
“What do they think happened to him? Do they have any suspicions?”
“Yes,” Braun drawled. “They think the pretty little stepdaughter had something to do with it. You know Miss Melody Gray, don’t you?”
The sly look in his eyes told me he did not require an answer.
There were no secrets in a small town. I knew that from having lived in Belfree, Kansas many lifetimes ago.
Mourningkill wasn’t much different except for the elevation.
Everyone here knew me as the guy living in the McClanahan barn, and Melody was the neighbor they all looked at crossways.
I hadn’t missed the sidelong glances or the cold shoulders sent her way.
It made me like her more, to be honest. I was the small-town outcast once. Hell, I was the outcast on my old team, too. I was an outcast now.
I made no secret of being nicer to her than I needed to be.
“You seem protective of the good sheriff.” I noted, returning to the last woman we were talking about.
“I’m protective of good people.” He waved me off.
“Go do good things and come back when you have something that can unravel this whole…mystery. Should I like what I see, and you can prove yourself as competent as your friend, Trinity Guerro, then I’ll provide you with more than a steady stream of work. ”
I nodded. I was sure I could get something.
“Oh, and discretion is paramount. The Grays don’t want word of this going around. Scandal, and all that. I’m sure you understand.”