“I’m just glad you’re both safe. I get to keep my nut sack for one more day.”
Taking a deep breath, I turn and walk toward the clubhouse for a moment to think by myself. It’s been a mostly shit day, but knowing the girls are safe helps some. Just as I’m entering the clubhouse, the deep, guttural sound of the brothers’ Harleys rumble in the distance, growing ever closer, and I know I won’t get any time alone. I guess I can deal with today’s shit later. Right now I got to put on my prospect face and suck it up.
CHAPTER 5
December
16 months to Mancuso’s downfall
“There’s something here that I’m missing,” I mumble under my breath. Christmas is nearing, and I’ve been working on this for a month now, and this is all I have to show for it—a scattered collection of sticky notes and business cards strewn about the kitchen table. I can’t make sense of anything I’m looking at, and yet there has to be something here.
Over the past several weeks, things have been getting crazy around Fort Bragg. First it was the crazy-hot and crazy-scary Italian guy showing up at my school. Then it was Dad trying to put the moves on Holly, my administrative advocate. Then it was Holly liking Dad putting the moves on her—which was totally cool because he’s way less of a jerk when he’s got someone in his life. He doesn’t think I notice stuff like this because he never used to bring women home, but he’s way obvious. Plus, Grandma has a big freaking mouth and complains about his “nocturnal habits” often enough that I have learned to stomach the idea that Dad isn’t the exception to the Forsaken rule. He likes the company of women. He just doesn’t like them to talk.
I can’t keep letting myself get sidetracked—which is really easy because research so is not my thing, but hey, somebody has to do it. I sat back and let Dad convince me that everything was okay when the Italian guy approached me at school, and I let him tell me it was okay when suddenly Holly was basically living in our house even though she and Dad couldn’t stand hearing the other talk. They so were not dating, but whatever. It wasn’t until Dad got into a screaming match with Grandma—which he lost—about Holly and her cousin Mindy being kidnapped by the aforementioned crazy Italian guy that I knew everything was absolutely, most definitely, no way in hell, totally not okay.
So I’ve been listening in and pretending to be ignorant when my dad and his brothers talk about club business, because if they know I know things are going south in town and with the club, they’ll all clam up tighter than the last time they were under DEA surveillance. Every single one of those guys act like I’m a baby and I can’t handle them being honest with me. I can, but they won’t give me the chance. So I’m going at it alone in my investigation.
I was sidetracked for a few weeks after poor Mindy was raped—not that anybody told me that’s exactly what happened, but again, I listen in. Holly was in her own head for a long while after that. I can’t even imagine having to watch something like that. For days on end she just kept saying the numbers seven and one. I’ve asked Dad about it, and then Aunt Ruby, and then anybody who I could grab ahold of, but they just all keep saying that everything is okay, and that is a huge freaking lie.
So fuck them and their patronizing crap.
I have a few business cards from a guy named Larry Jennings, the dad of a local who’s in the hospital in a coma. He’s been there for several weeks, and the news has all but forgotten about him, but for some reason, his dad’s business cards were in with Dad’s stuff on Mindy’s rape.
I cast a quick look at the clock that hangs just off center above the bay window beside me. Beneath the clock is a string of garland with colorful blinking lights that Holly hung up when Dad wasn’t looking one day. He’s not a fan of Christmas decorations, but he’s putting up with them the best he can to make her happy.