Brax (15 page)

She laughed and wrapped her arms around me. “I think I can
handle that. And I know it’s ridiculously late, but I’m still starving.”

“Good. I made lasagna.” I kissed the top of her head and we
started to walk to the kitchen together. She sat on one of the bar stools while
I stepped around her and opened the oven door. Her phone rang as I pulled the
pan out and placed it on the stove top.

“Brax?” she said; the alarm in her voice made my blood run
cold. I turned to face her, the oven mitts still on my hands. She held the
phone to her ear and her eyes were wide with fear. I threw the mitts aside and
went to her.

“Baby?”

She set the phone down and covered her mouth with her hand.
“The silent alarm went off at the ice cream shop. There’s been a break-in.”

Chapter Twenty

Nicole

I hurt. Air burned my lungs. Each breath hit me with the
weight of a sledgehammer. I wanted to shut my eyes against it but I couldn’t.
Brax held my hand but even my palms ached as we tried to take even a step. If
he hadn’t been there, anchoring me, I might never have gotten through it. He
hadn’t wanted me to go inside, but I had to. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to
process it or even believe it if I didn’t make myself bear witness.

The front windows were smashed to bits. Shards of glass
glistened like diamonds over every inch of the floor and scattered over the
table tops. Those that were still upright at least. They’d hacked and slashed
every piece of vinyl on every bar stool and booth, the foam stuffing carpeting
the floor as if snow could fall indoors. The heavy silver walk-in cooler doors
had deep dents in them. Someone had tried to kick them in. Everywhere I looked
felt like a violation. A tearing apart of my hard work and my family’s before
me.

What man could do this?

Ice cream dripped in rivers all over the counter tops. Not a
canister was spared. They’d torn the cash register from the counter. Dollar
bills mixed in with the muck of the melting ice cream.

“Why didn’t they take it?” I asked, stupidly, trying to make
sense of at least one part of this.

I sank against what was left of one wall as Brax let go of my
hand and trudged through the mess. He’d gone in with his gun drawn. For a brief
instant, I had wished whoever did this was still here. I imagined Brax blowing
them apart and God help me, it made me glad. But the place was deserted by the
time we arrived.

“It’s just as bad up there, I’m afraid.” Colt, Kellan, and
three other club members had met us here. Colt came down the stairs from my
apartment first, his face grim. He slid his gun into his waistband and jerked
his chin toward Brax. He shut his eyes and exhaled, then turned back to me.

He was going to say the words. And I would hear them for the
rest of my life. Just like the last time when I came home from that football
game.

“He’s gone, Nicole,” Colt said.

“He’s dead, you mean,” I said, my voice sounding like it
belonged to someone else. I remembered no one would actually say the words when
my mother died. As if not saying them would make it any less hideous.

“No, I mean gone,” Colt answered. “Your apartment is trashed
but not from a struggle, I don’t think. It’s just ransacked like down here.
There’s no blood. I’ll have Brax take you up there in a second, but I think
Doug’s shit is all gone too.”

“Motherfucker,” Brax muttered while I tried to process what
Colt was telling me. “Just wait here. You don’t have to go up there.”

Brax charged up the stairs with the speed of a freight train. I
don’t know how long it took him, but when he came back down I saw the look that
passed between him and the others.

Slowly I got to my feet. “You think Doug did this?”

“Not by himself,” Brax answered. “And I don’t know. But Colt’s
right. Doug either split before they got here or during. You said he had a lot
of his shit here. It’s all gone, just like Colt said.”

I wanted to make a thousand excuses. In the beginning, that’s
what I’d done. Maybe it’s like that for everyone. You want to believe the best
of the people you love. You think they could never do anything this awful. This
hurtful. But then they do. You’re supposed to tell yourself it’s their
addiction, their disease, not the person inside of them. But sometimes it’s
impossible to separate.

And so it’s possible to hate someone and love them at the very
same time.

I cocked my head to the side, wanting desperately to crumple
to the floor, squeeze my eyes and wish this nightmare away. It was ruined. All
of it. The parlor would never be like it was. I could rebuild. Yes. I had
insurance. But they’d slashed the walls. Destroyed the pictures on the wall.
Taken a piece of my family history and turned it into something violent. And
Doug had either let them or helped.

In the kaleidoscope of ruin, something caught my eye. I don’t
know why, but I moved toward it. Two cardboard canisters of chocolate and
vanilla lay in a heap like the others, but these weren’t melted for some reason.
How could that be? I walked toward them. I don’t know, maybe I’d lost my mind a
little bit, but at that moment I remember thinking if we get them back into the
freezer they’ll still be good.

Brax must have followed my line of sight, because he moved
when I did.  I sank to my knees and reached out to pick up the tub but Brax put
a hand on my arms.

“We ready to call this one in?” Colt said.

“No,” Brax answered. He closed his hand around my wrist and
pulled me away. “Not yet. E.J.? I need you to get Nicole out of here. Take her
back to my place and stay there until I get back. Maybe have a couple of the
prospects go with you.”

I cocked my head and looked at Brax. Some of the color had
drained from his face and a pulse beat in his neck at a furious pace.

“What you got?” Colt stepped forward and my eyes went back
down to the tub of ice cream I had meant to pick up. The cardboard had broken
away from it. Two square brown packages slid halfway out of it; the tape
covering one of them had split. White powder covered the ground.

I staggered backward as my heart raced. Then I lost it. I
lunged for one of the packages and grabbed it off the floor before Brax could
stop me. I held it up toward Brax, wanting to tear it to shreds or throw it
against the wall.

Brax rose with me, keeping his hands on my wrists as I
clutched the package. “What is it?” I said, my voice coming out more like a
shriek.

Colt stepped forward and took the package out of my hands,
prying my fingers away from it as Brax held on to me. Blood boiled inside of
me. I felt like I was trying to breathe through tar.

“Nicole, look at me. I need you to go with E.J. I need you to
stay out of sight and off the phone until I get back.”

Brax looked over my shoulder and gave a quick, grim nod to
Colt. He took out his cell phone and stepped out of earshot. I tried to pull
out of Brax’s grasp. I wanted to punch something. I wanted to take a sledgehammer
to everything that was left. But Brax kept me steady. He waited until I caught
my breath again and held my gaze.

“Nicole. Listen very carefully. Go with E.J. Wait for me. We
have maybe one chance to unfuck this and I need for you to not be here right
now.”

I let out a hard breath and nodded.  “It’s heroin,” I said, my
voice flat and bitter as I tasted bile. “He brought that shit into my house.
Into my
shop
?”

Brax tore a hand through his hair and blinked hard. Then he
locked eyes with me again and nodded. It felt like the ground had opened up
beneath my feet and I was falling down hard and fast.

Chapter Twenty-One

Brax

Inch for inch, Jase Reddick looked exactly like his brother
Colt except for one thing. Instead of a GWMC patch on his jacket, he wore a
badge. Tonight though, Officer Reddick wasn’t wearing it.

I paced near the ruined windows of Nicole’s shop, keeping
watch as Jase and Colt talked in hushed whispers behind me. I was too fucking
keyed up to stay in one place. Jase squatted near the ruined ice cream cartons,
picking through the bricks of powder. He wore latex gloves and his face got
hard as he touched his pinky to the powder and put some of it on his lips. He
didn’t have to tell me what it fucking was. I curled my fists and smashed through
a patch of broken glass hanging from the metal window frame.

“Can we keep her out of it?” I asked, walking back to where
Jase squatted. He rose slowly and fixed his dark eyes on me, then shot a look
to Colt. I fucking hated that. The two of them could have whole conversations
by some sort of twin telepathy. At the moment, neither of them had hopeful
expressions on their faces.

“Brax, this is systematic. This little bit is what someone
left behind. You sure your girl had zero clue this was going on under her
nose?”

I gripped one of the bar stools and thought about trying to
rip the fucking thing from its moorings. “That little cocksucker. This was her
brother, Jase. One hundred percent. This isn’t on Nicole. I’d put my life on
that. Shit, I’d put
your
life on that.”

Jase nodded. “No. I get it. But the problem is, it’s here.”

“You know what’s going to fucking happen if this gets out. If
she gets pinned for this. She’s finished. Even if she’s clear of any criminal
conspiracy charges. They take her shop. Her fucking reputation. She’s going to
lose everything because of that little shit.”

Colt put a hand on my shoulder and I jerked away. I felt like
they were trying to handle me and I wasn’t going to put up with it for a
second.

“What can we do?” Colt finally said, crossing his arms in
front of him and squaring his shoulders. “How do we fix this?”

Jase parted his lips and cocked his head to the side. “Jesus.
This is a lot of fucking dope. I can’t just put it in a shopping bag and toss
it.”

“Why fucking not? I mean, what are we standing here for? I
know what I’m asking. But this girl is decent. She’s kept this place going in
spite of all the shit her family has rained down on her. Goddammit, she’s
Lincolnshire. One of ours. And she matters to me, okay?”

He wasn’t convinced. “Jase. I’ve got a pretty good idea who’s
supplying this shit. And we both know this club is better equipped to handle it
than your department is.”

Jase put up a hand. “Don’t tell me another fucking thing. I’m
sucked into this up to my balls as it is.”

I didn’t want to have to say the rest of it. Colt at least
understood. Kellan came to stand by his shoulder and he knew what I was
implying too. I’d given everything I had to this club and more. I literally
knew where the bodies were buried and I was the one who put them there when it
had to be done. I’d never asked for anything back. Well, today I was asking.

Jase shut his eyes tight and let out a breath. “Fuck.
Fuck!”

He turned to Colt. In their unspoken language, I knew he was
asking whether this was just my request or Colt’s. It wasn’t just Nicole’s neck
on the line right now. If Jase helped us clean up this mess, it put him at risk
too. A hell of a lot more than the rest of us, actually. And it wasn’t the
first time we’d asked him. I guess being the brother of a club member wasn’t so
fucking easy either.

Colt looked to Kellan then back to me before he gave a quick
jerk of his chin to Jase.

Jase pressed his lips into a hard line. “Get a fucking garbage
bag. And hurry. Black and whites are already on their way.”

I put a hand on Jase’s arm. “Man. Thank you. I know how big an
ask this is.”

He nodded but looked back at Colt. “He’s right, Colton. This
is Lincolnshire. I don’t fucking ask what you do and I stay out of your
business. But
this
shit can’t happen. Not in my town. You get that?” He
waved the brick in the air as Kellan came back with a black plastic bag. Jase
took it from him and shoved the dope inside of it.

Colt gave him a grim nod and then looked at me. This was a
different conversation we needed to have when Jase was long gone. Fucking Doug
Ridley was dealing. Big. But we both knew who might be backing him.

Chapter Twenty-Two

We headed back to
The Den
just before Lincolnshire’s
finest rolled in with lights and sirens. I had E.J. bring Nicole back so she
could go over the damage with them. For a minute, I worried whether she’d be
able to keep it together. It was still Doug we were dealing with and he was her
brother. But Nicole got it. Before I left, I took her into the alley. She was
shaky, and that was okay. But solid as a rock too.

“I love you,” I said again and it felt good. I fucking hated
that she had to go through this.

She nodded. “I still love you too. And thank you.”

“You know there’s no way this doesn’t land on Doug, right? The
cops know his history and they’re going to ask you a lot of questions. You
don’t have to lie. Just . . . well . . . as far as anyone knows, you’ve had a
break-in. Forget about the special inventory. It’s taken care of for now.”

“What about . . .” I stopped her with a kiss.

“Don’t worry about the rest of it. Just give your statement. I
gotta head back to the club. I’ve left a couple of prospects at
The Den
,
they’re a phone call away if you need them. And I mean that. You need anything,
you call them. Anything. You find a fucking spider in the shower, you call one
of them. And promise me you won’t leave by yourself. You know the guys from the
club now. You don’t go anywhere unless it’s with me, one of the club members,
or the cops. That’s it. When you’re done, you call me. Is your phone charged
now?”

She smiled. God, she looked so tired.

“I know the drill. Yeah, this is the worst of it, but I’ve
been dealing with Doug’s messes his entire adult life.”

“You know you can’t protect him. You can’t tell the cops this
was random. Like I said, they know his history. They’re going to put two and
two together.”

“Brax, I’m not trying to protect him. Not this time. This . .
. God. This is everything. I’m done. I want him to get help, but my enabling
days are over. I get it. I can’t help him if he won’t get help for himself.
I’ve sacrificed all I’m willing to for him. I love him, but he’s ruining my
life. No more.”

Her lip wobbled and tears filled her eyes, but she wiped them
away and looked up at me. I hooked a finger under her chin and kissed her
again. “You’ve got this. And I’ll see you either tomorrow or the day after. I
think it’s better if we lay low and out of your hair until some of this blows
over. I don’t want anyone drawing a direct line between you and the club. Not until
I have a handle on shit from my end.”

She gave me a hesitant nod. God, it killed me to take off on
her. But I had no choice. We had serious club business to discuss and the
consequences of it could get ugly. Hodges and the Red Brigands were the conduit
to those fucking kilos in Nicole’s restaurant. We needed to shut it down. I
didn’t want any of it touching her. I’d keep eyes on her from a distance, but
that’s all I could do.

“It’s okay. Really.”

It wasn’t though. She’d closed herself off just like I had.
Except I had a brotherhood to lean on. She didn’t. Her
real
brother was
the problem.

“Brax,” she said. “I’m good. Now go. You go do you. I’ll do
me. We’re on the same page and I’m not going to break before I see you again.”

I slid my hand around her waist and pulled her to me. My girl
was tiny, but mighty. And if I had anything to do with it, she wouldn’t have to
be so strong all the time after this. She put a palm on my jacket and gently
pushed me away.

“Do what you gotta do. I’ll see you soon.”

Smoothing my hand over the curve of her skull, I finally let
her go. Colt and the others waited for me at the other end of the alley. I
watched Nicole straighten her back as she walked into her wrecked shop to face
the cops. It killed me I couldn’t stand by her side. But with Jase sticking his
neck out and our past reputation, it was better if I lay low.  

So I did the only thing I could: I rode back to
The Den
with fury in my heart.

We had the full membership at the table. Colt took a call
right before we started and his face went gray. He pressed his thumb to his eye
and nodded. He said exactly one thing to the caller. “Son of a bitch.” Then he
clicked off and hurled the phone across the room.

“That was Jase,” he explained. “He’s got shit handled but he
wanted us to know what we were dealing with. That shit we pulled from
Ridley’s
was China White.”

Rage bubbled inside of me. We’re not perfect. Lincolnshire
isn’t perfect. But until now, we’d kept the harder shit out of this town. China
White was as bad as it got. Kids were dying from it in Detroit, Ann Arbor, even
in Toledo.

“You fucking know where that’s coming from,” I said, trying to
keep my voice even. This had the Red Brigands written all over it. China White
was their calling card and they’d ruined cities with it. Now they were trying
to do it here right under our noses. Daryl Hodges probably earned his patch
suckering Doug Ridley to get their inventory into town.

“Fuck.” Colt lowered his head and drove his fist into the
table.

“Are we gonna sit here and discuss this, or are we going to do
what we should have done weeks ago?”

I know it wasn’t fair of me to lay my anger at Colt’s feet. In
my heart I understood why the vote went the way it did when I first brought it
to the table. Doug was a shitheel. For him alone, Colt couldn’t risk the whole
membership. But it still stung. Hard. And maybe if we’d have acted sooner, I
could have stopped this shit from landing on Nicole’s literal doorstep.

“How do you want to handle this?” Colt said. I wasn’t prepared
for the question. There was no vote. There didn’t need to be.

“I think we find Nicole’s idiot brother and get him to start
talking. It shouldn’t be hard. He gives us the intel on his next pick-up and
we’re there.”

“You don’t think he’s in the wind by now?” Kellan asked.

I shrugged. I honestly didn’t think he was that smart.

“Is there anyone here who doesn’t think the idiot trashed his
sister’s place on his own?” This from Tate. “I mean, come on. The Brigands
aren’t usually that sloppy.”

I rubbed my chin and nodded. It made sense and had been on my
mind since Nicole first got the call that the alarms went off. “Yeah. I think
that’s probably right. He’s stupid enough to think it will buy him time with
Hodges and the Brigands. They’re coming after him for missed payments. He
brings heat down on Nicole’s place, they find his dope, he skips town. At the
very least, he knew they were coming and slithered into hiding before they got
here.”

That last thought made me see white. If Doug had gotten some
kind of tip-off that the Brigands were on their way to
Ridley’s
and he’d
bailed, God, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop myself from killing him. What if
Nicole had been there?

E.J. sat next to me. I think he could see the thoughts
crossing my mind. He put a hand on my shoulder and gave me a grim nod. Yeah. We
were all on the same page. Nicole was mine. That meant what happened to her
happened to the club.

“It’s settled then,” Colt said. “We grab him up and decide our
next move based on the intel he gives us. But no matter what, this shit stops.
The Brigands’ line of distribution into our town ends today.”

I dug my fingers so far into my palms I drew blood. No one
said it. I knew they were thinking it. So I knew it fell to me.

“It’s not enough. Dealing with Ridley isn’t nearly enough. We
have to send a message, Colt. Scorched Earth.”

Colt didn’t flinch. We all knew how this worked. I was still
the club enforcer. Hodges was a problem that had to be dealt with. Maybe the
rest of the Brigands too.

“This doesn’t just fall on you, Brax,” Colt said. “We do it
together or we don’t do it at all.”

***

Finding Doug Ridley was easy. I had contacts at every train
station, car rental place, bus depot, and the airport. He wasn’t the first
shithead who ever tried to leave my town without me knowing about it. One of
the new prospects from Emerald Coast, a scrawny kid named Sam, grabbed him up,
taking a very important step toward earning his patch.

Sam brought him to an abandoned airstrip we kept just outside
the city limits and over the Liberty Bridge. By the time we got there, Doug was
halfway to squealing. I had to stifle a smile. Sam had him tied to a chair in
the middle of the room under a spotlight in the middle of one of the hangars.
He’d set up a card table with a hammer, a saw, and a power drill. Pure fucking
theater but Ridley bought it. He was crying when I walked in. It was just me.
Though I appreciated Colt’s sentiment, I knew my job and I wasn’t looking to
shirk it.

I paused at the card table, running my hands along the tools.

“Shit. Brax. Mr. Anderson. Let’s talk. Okay? This kid said
you’d be willing to talk.”

I turned to Doug and picked up the cordless drill. I pressed
the trigger and it whirred to life in my hands, echoing through the building. I
gave a quick wink to Sam, impressed that he even thought to charge the thing.
He turned so Doug couldn’t see his face. Yeah. I wasn’t above using methods
like this. But Ridley was just a pretty-boy douchebag. Sure, his parents had
let him down, but he’d grown up as privileged and middle class as they come. He
wasn’t a hardened thug like I was used to dealing with. I’d have this shit
handled with him in half an afternoon.

 I walked slowly toward Doug, bouncing the drill against the
side of my leg. Sam put another folding chair in front of Doug’s and I
straddled it backward. “You know, I’m not sure there’s much to talk about. At
least, there’s not much for me to say. But I’m always willing to listen. I
really only have one question. Your answer to it is going to tell me a lot
about your character, Doug. And I have to admit, I don’t exactly have a very
high opinion of it right now.”

He trembled, nearly falling backward in his chair. Sam got
behind him and pushed the chair forward so the front legs stayed solid on the
ground.

“When’s the next drop, Doug?”

His eyes went wide. “What drop?”

I sighed and fingered the trigger on the drill. “Now here I
was hoping we were friends. I mean, I visited you in the hospital. Remember
that? Remember what Hodges did to you to put you there? I mean, I assume that’s
who tuned you up the last time. Now I can help you, Doug. I can’t get you out
of the jam you’re in. As long as you owe the Brigands, you’re going to have to
live your life in fear. But see, where you’re lucky is here. My need to make
you pay for what you did to your sister’s place is outweighed by my need to
stop the flow of that fentanyl-laced shit you helped bring into my town. So
like I told you in the hospital the last time, this might be your lucky day.
You help me out by telling me the when and where of your next drop, and maybe I
make sure you don’t get hurt worse.”

“I didn’t trash my sister’s place. And it’s not just her
place. You’ll help me? You’ll really help me? Jesus. Yes. Anything. As long as
you take care of those assholes for me.”

I wanted to smack the shit out of him. He’d just admitted
someone else flipped
Ridley’s
. Which probably meant he knew they were
coming and skipped out just like I feared. He put Nicole in danger. I had to
stifle my need to make him pay for that so I could deal with the bigger issue. China
White in my town.

He still didn’t get it. “I’m not taking care of anything for
you, Doug. In fact, when this is all over, you’re done here. You got me? You’re
going to forget you have a sister. You’re going to forget you ever knew anyone
in Lincolnshire. Because you’re going to be a marked man either way.”

I’d like to say that persuaded him. That Doug could understand
reason. That his love for Nicole made him see the light. But it didn’t. See,
there’s a thing about junkies like him. His disease did the work for me. After
about an hour, he started to shake. Then he started to sweat. All he could
think about was getting his next fix. So I waited another hour. Then another.

And the kid, Sam, thought of that too and came prepared. He
held a syringe in his hand and the minute Doug saw it, he told me everything I
needed to know. I’m not proud of it. I don’t have to be. But sometimes the ends
more than justify the means. That shit he brought into my town was going to
start killing kids. It probably already had.

“Tomorrow. I’m supposed to meet Hodges at noon. There’s an old
oil refinery along the Maumee River, just outside of Paulding by the Indiana
border. We meet there. I’m supposed to bring the month’s take.”

He was still sweating and his knees shook.

“How much. How much are you into them for?”

Doug’s eyes flicked back and forth from me to Sam. “Ten Gs.
It’s not my fault. I tried to tell them. I got jumped a few weeks ago. That’s
what landed me in the hospital.”

I ran a hand across my jaw. “You told Nicole twenty.”

“I was gonna pay off my debt and get the hell out of town. I
swear to God she was never going to have to see me again.”

“Well, that’ll be her lucky day. But instead you decided to
crash at her place where you hid that fucking tainted smack. Do you realize
what happens to her if anyone finds out? She could lose everything. And you
knew
Hodges and the Brigands were coming for you. What was your plan if Nicole had
been there? Were you going to warn her or just let her get killed when they
showed up looking for you?”