48. Tyke
48
TYKE
“You want to explain what happened here?”
Ronan smiles. “You shot a man, Tyke.”
“No shit.” Second in as many days. “I mean, why the fuck’d you turncoat?”
He steps closer to Terry’s body and crouches down, nudging at his boss’s neck with two fingers.
“Pretty sure he ain’t about to rise like Jesus and come after you.”
“Stranger things have happened.” He stands, apparently satisfied Terry’s gone.
Although I'm unsure what part of the fucker's head sprayed over the adjacent trees makes him think otherwise. I'm four feet from the asshole's bare toes, and even I can tell he's dead. Gone. Dispatched to the great ever after.
Although, for a sinner like him, I can’t imagine it’d be that great.
"You gonna answer me?" I ask, checking how many bullets remain in the magazine. Two.
“You going to give me my weapon back?”
I drop the bullets into my palm, slide the magazine home, and then pass it over. "Sure."
“Take it this wasn’t gesture enough that I don’t intend to kill you.” Ronan nods toward the body.
“Stranger things have happened.” I throw his words back at him.
Fucker grins. “You got a plan for what to do with him now?”
“You?” I hitch an eyebrow.
He glances at the problem again. "Can't make it look like a fall now." Ronan scrubs a hand over his chin. "He's too vain for it to be a suicide. Argh." He offers a disgruntled sound and sets both hands atop his head. "You ready for this, Tyke?"
I know what he alludes to—war.
Terry's death won't pass as an accident or non-suspicious in any way, which means somebody must take responsibility for the death. Either I do and endure the ensuing power struggle that comes with assuming such dominance over the underworld hierarchy, Ronan takes the fall and faces retribution from Terry's devout, or the internal politics that'll come from the need for a new head of the cartel.
"I don't need this," I say. "I got no designs on being the biggest dog in the yard or watching people cower at my feet. But if you keep this in-house, you know what the assumed outcome will be, don’t you?”
“Connor takes the reins. Aye.”
“Kid doesn’t want that,” I offer, unsure why I feel it pertinent to protect that fucker’s hopes and dreams. “He’s got no interest in bein’ his father.”
"I know." Ronan meets my eye and holds it with calm authority. "I agreed to do this on one condition." He glances at Terry.
Fucker continues to stare at the sky with his one remaining eye.
“What was that?”
“The mob leave the kid alone.”
“You.” I huff a laugh. “They turned you .” Gianni said he’d take care of the problem, but I assumed that meant with his own men. “How long?”
"We need to sort this out." Ronan nods to Terry, then glances back up the track. "Sound travels well in the valley, as I'm sure you've noticed. A perk of settling ourselves here. Can't say how long it'll be before we 'ave company."
Thought had crossed my mind as well. If the guards back at the house are worth their salt, they’ll be down here to assess the situation, even if they do believe Ronan capable of holding his own.
“Two bullets aren’t going to help much.” I shake the evidence in my hand. “Not like you to be so unprepared.”
“Who said I was?” He nods down the path. “We got to carry this son of a bitch two hundred or so yards that way, and we’ll be golden.”
“Yeah?” All that surrounds us are trees and more fucking trees.
“Trust me.”
“Think I got no other choice.”
He chuckles as I start for Terry’s body and bend to take him by the ankle. “Uh-uh. You made the mess; you get the shit end of the stick.”
I lower the weird fucker’s bare feet back to the ground and round his body with a sigh. Blood pools on the dirt beneath his head and shoulders, staining the wanky cardigan. Consequences of your actions, asshole. I slide my hands beneath Terry’s limp shoulders and heft him into the air as Ronan does the same at his feet.
We shuffle a few yards before I ask again. “So, why’d you do it?”
"Because I could." Ronan glances over his shoulder, checking where he's walking. "And because it needed to happen, and I was the one who could do it."
“But you didn’t.” I pulled the trigger. I did it.
"If you hadn't come today, Tyke, he would have been dead by the end of the week anyway.”
“You plotted against him.”
“From the moment I walked in that house and saw yer daughter there, bound up and used like no woman should be—as a pawn for her father’s sins.”
“Some sin,” I snap, rolling my ankle a little when a rock wedges beneath my boot. “I ain’t do a goddamn thing wrong other than refuse to sign over my land to this cunt.” If I could kick the asshole as we walked, I would. But I don’t fancy falling on my ass and ending up down the hill too. “You aware what Fox has—” I pause, correct myself. “— had agreed to with the Devil’s Breed?”
“Knew he wanted the road for personal gain, but not what.”
“Skin trade,” I push through gritted teeth. “Fucker agreed to cart women down that road once he’d secured it. Truckloads of stolen, drugged, beaten, and sold women.”
Ronan slows his shuffle, holding my gaze. "Why'd you correct yourself and say 'had' instead of 'has'?"
“Because I took care of that problem, too.”
He nods twice to acknowledge what lies unsaid.
"Tell me," I urge, while we seem to be on open terms. "Was there ever a threat from you to Rae?"
He rearranges his hold on Terry's legs and sighs, pivoting a little to walk more side on, the dead drug lord slung between us like a hammock. "Rae was Fox's job. When your brother heard about where she'd ended up—at your club—he propositioned using her as leverage for the lot. Terry figured it couldn't hurt to let him try, but he asked me to keep an eye on how things pan out, anyway."
“Just in case.”
“Just in case.” He stops moving, still as a predator that’s caught scent on the wind, and narrows his eyes on the trail behind me.
I keen my hearing, but there’s nothing other than the soft drone of the breeze through the trees.
“Do you think she would’a sung?” he asks, picking up our conversation as though it never stopped.
I jostle my hold on Terry and nod to indicate we should keep moving. “Perhaps. Given the right motivation.” He frowns a little, so I elaborate. “She’s on good behavior.”
“No shite.” He chuckles, navigating us through a tight, descending S-bend in the track. “What for?”
“Smashing up her ex’s car.”
His chuckle continues. "Hope you've got a plan for keeping your bike safe if things don’t work out for you."
“They will.”
He gives me a knowing grin. The one all men who've been repeatedly burned by women share. The grimace that says, "Sure, buddy. You believe what you want." I don't like it. Like what it insinuates less: that I have poor judgment, that I don't know what I'm in for.
I fucking know. I’ve seen that woman go through hell this past week, and I still want in.
I want all of what she's got and then some.
Shit. She's young and still has the whole marriage and baby thing to go. A conversation we need to have. I’ve been done having kids for a long while now, but damn, the thought of her carrying a baby? It’s a conversation I need to have with Digger.
"You went quiet," Ronan says as we emerge from the forest onto a less populated section of the hillside.
I stall, brow furrowed at the sight before me. Three solid timbers framing a hole in the fucking hill. “Didn’t know there were mines here.”
"There's not." Ronan sets Terry's feet down. "There were exploratory shafts made a fucking age ago, but they moved north when they figured what they wanted weren't here." He dials a combination lock on the steel fence gate blocking the entrance. "Council has some marked, but this one isn't on their records. If they came across it, they'd believe it closed due to contamination and be reluctant to step inside."
“You’ve got a fucking dead cow hole.”
“A what?” He grins.
"Farms. They have pits they throw dead cows in. When they get too full, they cover them up and dig a new one. Guess this is your dead cow hole, huh?"
“I guess.” He swings the gate open. “Not far to go.”
“I ain’t going in there.”
“Scared of the dark?” Ronan taunts.
I fix him with a dead stare. “Close quarters, asshole. We may be friendly now, but that don’t mean I trust you.”
He sighs, hands on his hips. "Well, fuck, Tyke. That's gonna make this take all that much longer."
“Not my problem.”
"Fancy heading back to the house and breaking the news while I finish this?" He smirks when I don't respond. "Exactly. Now pick up his fucking split melon and help me do this. Yeah?”