A sob escaped her. Had she really ruined everything? Hopelessness and helplessness engulfed her, and she sank to her knees on the floor. Hugging her chest, she rocked herself while she cried.
Gazing miserably across the room, she noticed her canvas backpack hanging on the doorknob. Her scrambled thoughts paused—she could disappear for a little while. She wouldn’t leave for long, just until she turned eighteen and the FBI could no longer use her against Preacher. And maybe some time apart would give Preacher the time he needed to calm down… and hopefully forgive her.
Scrambling to her feet, she retreated quickly into the hallway and practically ran to the living room. Peering inside Eva’s crib, Debbie’s heart painfully squeezed. Tentatively she reached out and ran her shaking fingertips down Eva’s cheek. Tears blurred her vision.
She couldn’t leave her daughter. She just couldn’t.
“I love you so much, baby girl,” she cried softly.
But maybe she should leave…
Just for a little while.
Just long enough to make everything right again.
? ? ?
Preacher elbowed his way past the many men crowded outside the office, then slammed the door shut in their faces. Right now, his head was a mess of problems without solutions, and he didn’t have the patience to deal with everyone at once.
He took half a second to eyeball the desk he’d sworn he’d never sit behind before kicking the chair out from under it and collapsing into it. Uncapping the bottle in his hand, he guzzled at least two inches worth of gin before looking up and acknowledging the others in the room.
Rocky stood in a corner, arms crossed over his chest, head lowered, black eyes flashing beneath a heavy brow. Joe and Frank sat at opposite ends of the meeting table. While Joe appeared distraught, tapping his fingers anxiously over the oak slab, Frank was as stiff and as unreadable as ever.
“Two of my men are dead,” Rocky spat angrily. Everything about the man was threatening—the menacing edge in his tone, his wide stance, and the clenched fists at his sides.
“Aren’t they my men now?” Preacher growled. In an effort not to punch something, he picked up a pen lying on the desk and spun it between his fingers.
Rocky took a deliberate step away from the wall. “Am I missin’ something? Did I sleep through bein’ patched in?”
Preacher raised an eyebrow. “It’s a damn good thing I didn’t patch you in, or we’d all be in fuckin’ cuffs right now.”
Grimacing, Rocky shook his head. “Who’s this we you’re so concerned about? Your men or mine? Seems to me like you’re thinkin’ mine are expendable.”
Preacher shot up out of his chair. The pen in his grip snapped in half, and ink dripped from his clenched fist onto the desk. “In case you forgot, I’ve got two dead men myself.” He stared at Rocky, hard and unblinking. “At the end of the day, we’re all fuckin’ expendable.”
Preacher didn’t bother bringing up his mother. Rocky didn’t place the same value on women as he did men and wouldn’t consider her death as any great loss to the club.
Unconsciously, Preacher’s gaze slid to the family photograph on the desk. Avoiding The Judge’s disapproving stare, he looked instead at his mother, and he couldn’t help but feel that when the club had lost Ginny, they’d lost everything.
He turned back to Rocky. “Greenpoint is gone. Your two men? Gone. Now we can sit here screamin’ about it, or we can get down to business and make sure this shit doesn’t happen again. What’s it gonna be?”
Seconds passed in silence while Preacher and Rocky stared each other down. Rocky looked away first and retreated to the wall, looking only slightly less lethal than before. Tossing the broken pen away, Preacher wiped his ink-stained hand on his jeans and took his seat.
“Good choice,” he muttered, “Now let’s fix this shit.”
“It’s like I told One-Eye over here.” Rocky jerked a thumb in Joe’s direction. “We need to get the goods outta the city. Couple of my guys got some land over in Illinois—a pumpkin farm with a barn. It’s the perfect place for long-term storage. Middle of fuckin’ nowhere.”
Preacher nodded. “That solves one problem. Now what about Greenpoint? How’re we gonna make back what we lost?”
“We jack up prices for a while,” Frank offered. “Columbians won’t ever need to know what happened.”
Joe scrubbed at his jaw. “We can do that with the metal, but it ain’t gonna fly with the drugs. We’re gonna need to cut up what we’ve got left, stretch it as far as it’ll go.” He shrugged. “Fake it ‘til we make it all back.”
Frank frowned. “That’s risky.”
What Joe was proposing was very risky. If buyers caught on to what they were doing, which someone undoubtedly would, people were going to get pissed—and when people got pissed, things had the potential to get messy. Messy and bloody.
But not nearly as messy as losing their heads at the hands of the Columbians.
“No shit, Sherlock.” Joe rolled his eyes at Frank. “But it’s either that or we start robbin’ banks.”
Frank slowly turned in his seat, his deadpan stare landing on Joe. “Your old lady likes guns, don’t she? You two gonna be the next Bonnie and Clyde?”
Snorting, Joe flipped him off.
Preacher grabbed his bottle of gin and took a long swallow. “Nobody’s robbin’ any banks. Nobody’s givin’ Sylvie any guns, either.” He pointed between Joe and Rocky. “You two, get the fuck outta my office and go tell the rest of ‘em what they need to know.”
When the door had closed behind them, Frank faced Preacher. “You’re really gonna make Rocky your sergeant?”
Sighing, Preacher eyed the office door. “For now.”
“He’s a loose cannon.”
“I know.”
“He’s gonna be trouble.”
“Not much I can do about it.”
“Yet,” Frank said.
“Yet,” Preacher agreed and took a swig.
“We got any leads on who tipped off the Feds?”
Preacher chugged another several inches of gin. “It was Debbie,” he said tightly.
“What was Debbie?”
“Greenpoint. She ratted us out to the Feds.”
A subtle flaring of his dark eyes was Frank’s only reaction.
“They scared the shit outta her… threatened her with… somethin’.” Preacher shook his head. “I don’t know specifics.”
“If she folded once, she could do it again.”
Preacher sank down further into his chair and took another swig of gin. “I’ll figure it out,” was all he said. Just not right now, he added silently.
Right now he was going to drink himself into oblivion and hopefully forget the never-ending, ever-expanding pile of problems heaped at his feet… for just a little while.
“Here.” Frank set down an unopened bottle of rum in front of Preacher. “You’re lookin’ a little low.”
Muttering his thanks, he continued to drink, hardly noticing when Frank left.
Sometime later, Preacher staggered out into the hall looked blearily toward the living room. Music was playing, and he could hear chatter and laughter. Rum in hand, he stumbled forward.
The bright colors in the living room made his head hurt, and he sat down on the first empty seat he came across. Someone called out his name, though he wasn’t quite sure who.