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"Because I'm a girl?" She sneered the word out, and he remembered all the times he and Danny had thrown that at her when they wanted to be left on their own, when they were tired of Danny's kid sister tagging along wherever they went. Of course, that had been more when they were all younger, but clearly it had left a mark. "Because I'm just a silly little kid who doesn't know any better, who can't be trusted not to rat you out to her mom?"

  "No," he said. "Because the man who killed your brother, my best friend, is a murderer. He killed your brother to cover up something horrible, and I don't think for a second he'd hesitate to do it again."

  She stumbled back a pace. This wasn't her world, he reminded himself. She didn't deal in the brutal side of the law, where strong people sometimes had to do what was necessary to protect those the law didn't cover. It wasn't pretty, and it wasn't just, but it was true.

  "Do you think for one second I wouldn't put a bullet through the heart of the man who took my big brother away from me?" she said, and a fierce grin stretched Tex's mouth. Maybe this was more Jessie's world than he'd ever dreamed. Maybe he would have a partner in this mess.

  "I think believing you'll do it and actually pulling the trigger are two different things," he said, and he kept his tone just as level and careful as he would when he was talking to a new pledge. No condescension, just truth. "I think going down this road is hard, and coming back from it isn't possible. You may end up in the same town, but you're not the same person. And if you want to help me—Jessie, I'm not stupid enough to tell you no, but I don't think it's something you should choose lightly."

  She considered his words, which was more than he expected from most people who were as angry as she was. He respected that. "Tell me what you can," she amended.

  "How much do you know about your father?" he asked. Because this was where things would start getting very, very dicey.

  Chapter Seven

  She had spent so much of the last few minutes flinching that one more shouldn't have been a surprise. But the way Tex dropped her father into conversation. She hadn't seen Bill since she was a toddler. She didn't remember much about him other than his pale skin and red hair. As a child, she'd been worried he would catch fire. And then he disappeared, and her mother had taken down all of his pictures, and that was the end of it. You didn't ask Janis Hendricks about her ex-husband, not if you knew what was good for you. It wasn't even town gossip.

  "He's a deadbeat who disappeared when I was too young to even have clear memories of him," Jessie said. "Why?"

  She watched Tex carefully. He was carefully settled in his folding chair, looking comfortable even though he was clearly hard as hell inside his jeans. She was desperately interested in that erection, and when he was done answering her questions, she would decide whether or not she was going to take advantage of that. His fingers had dug into her sides so hard she was sure she'd have bruises on her hipbones by morning, and only sheer will had kept her from yanking his jeans off and fucking him right there in that chair like some kind of porn star.

  “You know he was in jail for making meth?”

  “Yes.”

  "Do you know why he didn’t come home after he got out of jail?"

  "No. I never asked. I don't much care." That was true now. When she was a teenager, it hadn't been, especially once Danny was gone. But that lack of interest had been built on the belief that she was never going to know the answer anyway, so there was no real point in asking the question. Now, with Tex—it was going to take some work to remember not to call him Cody, because now that he'd revealed himself, it was almost impossible to unsee the signs of the boy she'd wanted in the man in front of her—dangling that information in front of her, not knowing was harder.

  Tex was quiet, his gaze focused down on his hands for a long moment. "I'm not sure—some of this stuff, Jessie, you're not going to be able to unknow it."

  "Just tell me," she said, even though she wasn't convinced she wanted to know anything about this. She wanted something. She wanted closure. But he didn't look like he was bringing her closure. He looked like he had nothing to offer but more questions, and that was a big twisting knot inside her belly that made her want to be sick.

  "He made meth, Jessie. From what I've been able to uncover, he got in over his head in debt, and your mom found out when he tried to sell off some of her jewelry. She kicked him out, and he got out of Castello and tried to stay ahead of the shithead who was after him. And he did. For a while."

  "And, what, he's dead now?" There was a pang of sadness, but it was smaller than she might have anticipated. She'd never really spent time imagining idyllic reunions. What was the point? If he'd wanted to find her, he would have; it wasn't like she or Mom had moved in the past twenty years.

  "No," Tex said, and she could see that the word cost him something. Did he want to lie to her, give her a prettier fiction than the story he had to offer? "No, he moved down to LA and managed to start up his manufacturing again. He wasn't good at it, though, and he was probably using too much of his product by then. He got in deep with the wrong people."

  He went silent, and he looked at her. The knot in her belly tightened. "What are you saying?" Her mouth was moving, it was her voice, but the sounds came from very far away and echoed in her ears. "Are you saying that someone—my brother—it was an accident, Tex. It was just a hit and run."

  "I don't think so," he said, and his eyes were brimming with tears, too, which was the only reason she didn't slap him. "I think it was a hit, and I think it was punishment for your dad screwing over the wrong distributer."

  Her throat burned with bile. "Stop that," she said, coughing on the words. "Stop—calling him -" her stomach heaved, and she bent over. He had a trashcan ready, and she vomited into it, the water burning through her sinuses and her throat, tears streaming from her eyes. "He's not my father. Stop calling him that." She was crying. When had she started crying? Holy God in Heaven, there was no way Tex would be saying these horrible things to her if he didn't believe him, which meant she needed to understand why he believed this. It was the only way to find out if there was any merit to this—this story. She took a moment to build very strong walls around the tangle of fear and anger and ancient hurt that was curdled in her chest, and then took a strong breath.

  "Okay," he said. "John, then."

  "Yes." She took another breath as he lowered the trashcan. She reached for the water and pressed it against the back of her neck for a moment, then rinsed her mouth out, spitting into the trashcan. When she glanced up, he was grinning at her. She couldn't help but smile back. "What?"

  "Just glad to see the girl I knew isn't all gone."

  Jessie leaned back into the couch and closed her eyes for a moment, rubbing at her temples with her left hand. "She's here. Bruised and battered and unlucky in love, but here."

  Something smoldered at her words, and when she opened her eyes, Tex's gaze was locked on her throat, tracing down her torso to the curve of her breasts. It heated her skin and her heart. Why had she said she was unlucky in love? It wasn't untrue, but it also wasn't the sort of thing she generally would have shared with a stranger. And she needed to remember Tex was basically a stranger to her. No matter that he'd been the first boy she'd kissed, the first boy who had ever make her feel powerful and confused at the same time, the measure to which all other lovers had been compared and found lacking. She didn't know him anymore.

  "How do you know all this?" she asked him, trying for the tone her favorite lady cops used on police procedurals on TV. "It seems like Detective Pedroza would have tracked at least some of this information down. And if he had, why didn't he share it with us?"

  Another deep breath. She was quickly discovering that his deep breaths led to painful revelations for her. This was either the worst come-on in history, or absolutely true. "He did. We've been working together for—well, since I turned 18, anyway, and got in touch with him, and started helping him. Tracking down people he couldn't get to."

  "And you could
?"

  "Yes."

  "What connections did you have, Tex, that were more important than the connections a police detective had?" She knew the answer this time, but she wanted to hear him say it. She had never been involved with motorcycles again after Danny had died, but she knew enough about motorcycle gangs to know that guys being super-macho and running around on metal death machines were not a recipe for peaceful assembly.

  "I ran with a bad crowd after my parents left Castello," he said. He wasn't apologizing, and she respected him for that, even though his words made her want to throw up all over again. "I knew people who knew people. I was good at following good orders, and good at fighting back against bad ones, so I made a mark, and I rose in the ranks."

  "So you're in a gang. This is a gang headquarters." She sounded like a made-for-TV movie character, but she couldn't quite wipe the condescension out of her tone.

  "No," he said. "We're not outlaws. We deal in lightweight things, a little pot, rare liquors, drugs that are cleaner than what people can get on the street. We've run prescriptions over the border for people who couldn't afford them otherwise, and we've helped rescue kids who are being abused by shitheads. Most of the guys are people who just don't—fit, otherwise. Who can't sleep with four walls around them."

  "Was it always that way?"

  "Since I took over, it has been," he said, and the steel in his voice was like liquid heat in her veins.

  "So you met people who knew John Hendricks."

  "Yes. They don't call him that. He's mostly known as Smokey these days."

  "Smokey?"

  "He makes candy."

  "Ah."

  "He's the lowest of the low in my world. There are some people who manufacture molly or whatever, and they do it in a serious, controlled way, with testing and purity controls. People are always going to use shit, you know, so at least make sure it's safe, and it's not going to harm them in ways they don't expect. But he's—he's not that guy. His product is cheap as shit because it's made like shit. It's a fucking miracle that he hasn't blown himself up or died of mercury poisoning."

  Jessie was nodding like a bobble head. She tried to make herself stop, but the motion was keeping her connected to her body. If she stopped noticing her body, she was going to start noticing her feelings, and that simply wasn't allowed. That was a disaster waiting to happen. She would either curl up like a ball and sob until she turned inside out, or climb him like a telephone pole and fuck him until she died, and neither option was actually healthy at the moment. "So 'Smokey' is in debt to everyone, and pisses off someone, and then they decide to kill the son he hasn't spoken to in years as some kind of punishment? That's ridiculous."

  Tex nodded. "It is. The guy who I think did it—he's not strung together all that well. He's not the sort to realize that a shithead like Smokey—he might not even know what happened, you know?"

  The nausea swung back, closing her throat, and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, taking deep breaths through her nose to keep herself from throwing up again. "It's not fair," she said, tears brimming again. "It's not fair that he's alive and Danny is dead."

  "It's not," Tex agreed.

  "But you said you think you know who actually did it. The man who hit Danny."

  "I'm not sure," he said, his hands up and fingers spread, palms facing her. "I think so. But I'm not positive."

  "Does Detective Pedroza know all of this?"

  Tex was quiet for a long time again. "I'm not entirely sure that telling him is the right move, is the problem."

  Something inside of her went icy cold. "Tell me."

  "Eduardo's cousin may have been the one involved. It might have been a killing designed to get him increased in rank within his club, which is much more of a gang than mine."

  "Tell me." The hair on her arms and the back of her neck rose. She felt perfectly calm, and yet she could feel herself trembling. This was fight or flight. This was the depth of adrenaline.

  "I can't prove any of this, Jessie."

  "Tell me."

  "I think the Racketeers are preparing to make a move on Castello. I think they want to take over this town and start dealing here. I think they're trying to get revenge for something I don't entirely understand. And I'm scared to death that you and your mom are going to get caught in the crossfire. I think that when Danny was killed, it started something, but it's far from finished."

  It was a really good thing he was still good at anticipating her needs. It meant he had the trashcan between her knees again, so she didn't vomit all over his nice, hardwood floor.

  Chapter Eight

  Tex ran his hand along Jessie's back as she heaved again. She didn't flinch away from his touch; that was reassuring. He wanted to be a comfort to her—ironic, given the horrible things he'd been telling her for the past hour—in whatever way he could be.

  When the heaving stopped, she stayed hunched over, her arms wrapped tightly around her midsection. She looked so much like the gawky girl he'd last seen that his heart tore apart. When he'd seen her in the salon, and when she'd gotten out of that car, she'd looked so practical and polished that he'd wondered if there was anything left of the friend he'd grown up with, or if Danny's death had taken all of that away from her, too. He was glad to see something of the old her; he hated the way it had been revealed.

  "What do you need?" He pitched his voice low and careful, the same tone he'd use with a frightened animal.

  "My brother back," she said, without hesitation and without looking up at him. "For all of this not to be true. How sure are you?"

  "Call it ninety percent," he said. "The witnesses I have to the different connecting pieces—let's say that I believe them, but no defense attorney would even let them make it to the stand. If we get revenge on this guy—if I do—it'll happen outside the law."

  "So what's stopping you?" That core of ice cold fear and anger inside of her frightened him and made him proud. She had experienced tragedy in her life, and she'd used it to harden her edges without giving up the part of her that loved. That was impressive; he knew plenty of people who weren't able to make that kind of compromise in their lives.

  "I know I look like a complete badass," he said, and when the edges of her mouth tilted up a bit, he allowed himself to grin. "But I don't want to send an innocent man to his death, especially because I don't want to let the real killer go free. And there's more going on here than just this one guy. I don't know how it all ties together yet, and if I move too fast, then I risk wasting all our energy on the wrong target. I need to be more sure than ninety."

  "What do you want from me?" He must have been wearing an entertaining expression, because when she glanced up at him, she barked out a quick laugh at whatever look was on his face. "I mean, aside from the obvious. I'm a great lay these days, but I don't think I warrant you relocating your entire—group—up to Castello just so you can get in my pants."

  It was self-deprecating humor at its finest, and it cut him to the core. He could see in her eyes how fast she'd had to grow up after Danny died. She'd been a kid, barely a teenager, and really it wasn't like he was so much more worldly, but his parents had at least been relatively solid through the whole nightmare. Her mother must have been torn apart by grief. What resources would she have found to give her struggling daughter? What had Jessie been through in the past few years that had colored what she thought of men, of love, of sex, and made her so willing to call herself both unlucky at love and a great lay?

  "First of all," he said, "You're worth that and more. But more importantly, I don't want any more from you than you're willing to give."

  Her eyebrows went up. "So if I climbed into your lap and wrapped my arms around your neck right now, you'd say no?"

  The rasp in her voice put his cock back at attention. She was going to destroy his control, and he needed it more than ever. "If I thought you were insincere with your desire, yes. If I thought you were just using sex as currency to get me to help get revenge, yes
. If I thought you were just trying to distract yourself from the pain?" He let himself shift, let her see him adjust, yet again, to make himself a little more comfortable. "We would need to have a conversation."

  "But you wouldn't say no?"

  He swallowed hard, trying to keep his eyes from laser-locking onto her nipples, hard as diamonds and making shadows on her t-shirt. "Not necessarily."

  "Because we're sitting here, and we're talking about death and destruction and innocence and guilt, and all I keep thinking about is what would have happened in the yard, fifteen years ago, if that fucking motorcycle hadn't hit my brother."

  "I don't know," Tex said. His throat was dry. She was not being anywhere near as reserved with where her eyes were wandering.

  "Liar," she said, and he swallowed harder. She had kept her legs so demurely crossed the whole time she'd been sitting, and now she spread her thighs a little, easing her ass closer to the edge of the couch. If she were naked, it would be nothing to go down to his knees at her feet and slide his hands under her sweet ass, lifting her pussy to his mouth. Would she scream when he devoured her, or would she be one of those women who were full of breathy moans and soundless screams? Which would it be?