“I came here only to give you a gift,” he says. “Open it. You’ll see how giving I am.”
Skull opens the folder. I’m looking over his shoulder, and my stomach drops to my fucking feet when I see what’s inside. It’s a picture of Beth and another girl standing at a flower stand. She has a baby in a pink outfit on her hip—a baby with dark black hair with small curls. The baby is smiling while Beth kisses the side of the child’s face.
Fuck.
“Where did you get this?”
“My men took it. This was the last known sighting of Beth and her sister Katie.”
“Where? When? What are you trying to prove here?” Skull growls.
“Ironically enough, Tennessee. Just a month ago.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I’m telling you that the woman you’ve been grieving—the woman you thought you killed—has been alive all this time, and hiding.”
“You’re fucking lying!” Skull yells, his body jerking in fury.
“Am I? Then ask yourself, Skull, why does that child she’s holding look so much like you?”
“You’re fucking lying!” he screams again.
I see the pain my brother is going through, but all I can do is think back to the phone call I got almost two years ago when I put a drunk and unconscious Skull to bed in his room. Fuck.
“After you work it out in your mind, Skull, you might ask yourself two important questions.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“First, ask yourself why she let you think she was dead this entire time.”
“You. Son. Of. A. Bitch.”
“Then ask yourself if you can find her before the Saints do, because if I find her first, she’s going to die.”
“You—”
“She’ll have to. The family wants the blood of her and her sister. I only came to warn you because I wanted to see that look on your face.”
“You son of—”
“That look right there, the one that says I just destroyed your world… all over again.”
With that, Colin leaves. We all stand there frozen, unsure of what to do or say. Skull screams, yanks the table up, and throws it across the room.
Fuck.
“You alright, boss?” I know he’s not, but don’t know for the life of me what else to say.
“No. And for the record, I wasn’t alright the other ninety-nine times you asked me.”
We’re walking from the garage back to the club. We spent the night in Tennessee, then drove straight here. Skull’s barely spoken two words to any of us. He bunked down in Sabre’s room last night, but Sabre just shrugged this morning when he came out. Well, no, that’s wrong. He shrugged, then put the locket that Skull usually wears around his neck in my hand. It’s still in my pocket, in fact. Since the day we discovered it in Pistol’s hands when Beth was kidnapped, Skull hasn’t taken it off. Not once. It’s been almost three years and still it’s remained around his neck. The sight of him not wearing it now should bring me joy because I’ve been hoping he would heal and move on for years. Now, it doesn’t. He isn’t healed. He removed it because he just learned his grief and mourning have been a lie. No one has mentioned it, but everyone’s thinking it. It’s not even a question anyone seems to be asking. We all believe that Beth is alive. Every last brother here is sure she is, and the kicker is, they don’t even know what I do.
I haven’t found the right moment to tell Skull about the call I got so long ago from a young woman claiming to have a message from Beth. I wish I could go back, but I can’t. I wish I would have went to that hospital and met with the woman. I wish I had at least tried to find out what was going on. It didn’t even fucking occur to me that it could be true. People don’t just come back from the dead… It just doesn’t happen.
We’re all sitting around the wooden table in Skull’s office now waiting for church to begin. Skull sits at the head of the table, but he’s not made any move to begin the meeting. I know I need to confess what I know, and I will. I’m just having trouble finding the words. How do you explain to someone that you are probably the reason why his woman didn’t contact him after all this time? If the shoes were reversed, I’d gut me.
“Torch, I need you to start intel,” Skull tells me. “Find out any way you can if the picture that Donahue left behind is real. I want to know everything I can about the two women in the photo and the…” he clears his throat before continuing, “the child.”
“Got it, boss. I… I wanted to talk about—”
“Start in Tennessee,” he goes, “since that’s where the fucker said she was. But don’t waste a lot of time. Chances are, he fed us wrong information. He’s playing with me. I want to say the women in the photo are fakes, but sweet Jesus, it looks so much like… like Beth.”
“Boss…”
“You might could try France. If Colin told the truth and they did off the grandfather, that’s where he lived. That might be the smartest way to check Colin’s story.”
“Boss!” I growl, this time demanding his attention. Skull stops and, for the first time since the meeting began, looks at me.