“Ain’t gonna find your answer at the bottom of a bottle of Jack.”
“Oh yeah, since when did you become my fucking mama?”
“Since an old friend asked me if I remembered who I was and I realized I’d lost touch. Thought you might like the same kind of reminder,” King said, throwing my words back at me that I’d told him months ago. “Do you want to know what that old friend would have just said?”
“Sure,” I said, because I did want to know.
“The old Bear wouldn’t have said that the MC was gunning for him the second he stepped on their turf, the old Bear wouldn’t have said shit, but he would have reigned down hellfire on them until it wasn’t their fucking turf anymore,” King said.
“How the fuck am I supposed to do that? I’m just me. All of my brothers besides one, take their orders from Chop. I’m only one soldier when they have dozens. Going into the MC would be fucking suicide and shit’s fucked up but I’m not ready to go out just yet.”
“That’s funny, because a second ago it sounded like you were giving up.”
“I’m not, just doing what I gotta do to get through life, man.”
“That’s even more funny,” King said, lighting a cigarette.
“What is?” I asked, growing annoyed with my friend.
“That you think what you’re doing is living,” King pointed out.
“Shit is so easy to say coming from someone who’s gone civilian.”
“I’ll soldier for you,” King said. I was just about to light a cigarette but his words made me pause, the flame flickering inches away from my smoke, swaying in the air while I took in the gravity of what he’d just said.
“No,” I said finally. “You’ve got Ray and the kids. If she found out you were gonna soldier for me so we could take back the MC she would fucking kill you before they had a chance to.”
“See? That’s how I know that you don’t know shit,” King said, pointing up to the house through the window. “Ray and my kids are my everything, but she knows and accepts me for who I am and what I need to do. When the time comes, and you see your way clear of all the bullshit you’re insisting in stewing in, I’m in. I’ll soldier. No fucking questions.”
King had finally lost his goddamned mind. “No. And I’m not saying it just to say it man. I couldn’t let you. If Ray doesn’t kill you, she would most definitely kill me.”
“Oh yeah?” King said, sitting back down at his desk and turning his back to me. He picked up his pencil and began another sketch. “Then why did she suggest it?”
I was mulling King’s idea to take back the MC over in my mind. Wondering if it was a real possibility. With every step I took toward the apartment it sank its teeth into my brain and by the time I opened the door it took hold, but the thought didn’t last long because as soon as I opened the door I felt it in the air. I knew before I even peered into the bedroom. I knew before I ran back up to the house to ask Ray if she’d seen her. I knew before I spotted my ring on the coffee table still attached to the chain.
Thia was gone.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Thia
The venom of a brown widow spider is six times more powerful than the venom of its cousin, the black widow. But unlike its darker relative, the brown widow’s first response to a threat is to retreat, rarely biting unless direct contact is made. Attacking is its last option.
A last resort.
Kind of like me.
I had more in common with the spider that killed my little brother than I did with Bear.
Sheriff Donaldson wasn’t ever in his office until after three pm. The town of Jessep may have been big in land mass but we were small in population, so small in fact that our town sheriff only worked part time.
Jessep was one of the oldest towns in Florida and being old meant a lot of its laws had been written a long time ago. One of its charms is that those laws hadn’t ever been revised, leaving all sorts of backwards southern rules on the books.
Under Jessep law, men were not permitted to wear women’s clothing, but it didn’t stop there. More specifically, the punishment for those men caught wearing satin strapless gowns would be much more severe than those caught wearing knee-length skirts.
Showering naked was also a big no-no. Oral sex, even between married couples, was strictly forbidden as well.
It was illegal to sing in a public place while wearing a swimsuit. The rule makers may not have liked singing at all because it was also illegal to sing to a goat.
Even on the goat’s birthday.