Chapter 8
Some people will only love you if you fit into their box. Don’t be afraid to shove that box up their ass.
-E-card
Ghost
It was three hours into Mina’s arrival back home when Josh tried to make his first move.
I had the house under surveillance, and after a call from one of Lynn’s men, I was there within thirty minutes. I arrived just in time to see Josh stepping out of his car, his eyes focused on the front door.
“Guess you didn’t get my message,” I murmured.
Josh stiffened, not having realized that I, nor anyone else, was close to him.
He was heading up the front walkway to Mina’s house—my house—and hadn’t once looked to see if he was alone.
I wanted to smile, but chose to allow him to think that I wasn’t as fucked up in the head as I was.
“How did I know that you’d be here the moment I arrived?” he chided.
I didn’t answer him.
“How did I know you’d be here the moment she got back home?” I shot back. “How did you know she was here at all? All she did was drive into town. You got some lookouts?”
Not on my street, he didn’t. It was possible that he had some in town, but that was unlikely, too. This was Dixie Warden territory. Nobody fucked up in their territory and lived to tell about it.
And despite Mina’s husband being dead, she still belonged to the MC and always would.
Doubly so, if you thought about me being a part of the Dixie Wardens in two different lives.
He finally turned, and I got a load of his eyes.
They were harder, a little less scared of me this time, and I didn’t like that. Didn’t like that he thought he didn’t need to fear me any longer.
“I had questions,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Why would a man be so adamant that some other man move out of the neighborhood so a woman didn’t get pursued by him, unless that man had some sort of attachment to said woman?”
I didn’t like where this line of questioning was headed.
Not even a little bit.
“I started doing some digging,” he grinned. “I’ve had a month to really think hard about this, and I think I figured it out.”
I knew he knew who I was before he said what he said next.
“See, I was a lowly soldier on the Morrison’s totem pole when their son died,” he continued, staring at my face to see if I was reacting to what he was saying.
But I wouldn’t give him that.
Not in a million years.
“Their son was about your size, less muscle, though, and had these fucked up green eyes…kind of like yours,” he grinned. “But he was a cop, so I stayed the fuck away from him when I saw him in town. Always turned the other way. I always wondered how the hell a couple like the Morrisons could allow their son to be a LEO—a law enforcement officer—when they did what they did. But I didn’t say anything, because if I had, they’d see me as using my brain and thinking independently from what they wanted. So, I chose to keep my trap shut…then, one day, their beloved son dies.”
His smile was lazy. As if he had all the time in the world to form what he was saying into a nice pretty package and wrap it up with a fucking bow on top.
“Well, he doesn’t die. Not really. Because I’m there when they bring him back. He’s fucked up, but I don’t really care about staying away from him anymore. He’s too sick. Too fucking weak to hurt me or my operations now. So I do my job, guard him and the other men that the Morrisons are—erm—using, and go home at night to my side jobs.”
“Your women?” I ask. “The wives that you marry and then kill?”
He smiled pleasantly.
I wanted to beat the shit out of his face.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. Them,” he grins. “But that’s neither here nor there. Fast forward a year after the Morrisons’ son dies, and I’m a little higher on the totem pole. I do my jobs, get pats on the back by the big guys, and then go home.” He crosses his arm over his chest, not caring at all that Mina’s directly behind him.
Within hearing distance if she only opened the door. Me, I felt exposed. I’d never been in her neighborhood like this during daylight hours. Never allowed myself to be seen so openly.
To be seen was to allow my parents that much more of a leg up, and for right now, they didn’t yet know that their precious baby boy wasn’t dead by their handler’s hand.
Yet being the operative word.
“But a little shy of a year, their son dies by his guard’s hand, and then his guard goes and shoots himself because he fears what his employer might do when they find out that their prized weapon has been killed for not following orders—even though his orders were to detain, but never kill, if necessary,” he paused. “But you, you look so much like their son—their new son—that I did some more digging. I’ve gone over my surveillance, and that night wasn’t the first night I’d seen you. I’d seen you fifty-two other times, on one single camera.”
My stomach clenched.
“And I have this nifty face recognition software that has this special ability to focus on the eyes…eyes that look so much like their son’s that I want to shout it from the rooftops that their sweet baby boy isn’t dead after all…and guess who that man is…it’s you.”
I shook my head. “You have no clue who I am, and I’m not their kid.”
My body locked, and I stared with no expression at all betraying my thoughts.
He didn’t say anything, so I kept going.
“You have no fucking clue who you’re dealing with,” I told him bluntly.
He shrugged, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “You let me have her, and I’ll think about not telling them.”
I ignored his words.
“Go home or I’ll drop you like the piece of shit that you are right here in the middle of her yard.”
He grinned.
But he got in his car and drove away.
I watched him go, and then looked across the road at Lynn who was standing there, watching the entire altercation from his front porch.
He gestured with his head for me to follow him and then disappeared inside of his house.
Giving one last glance at Mina’s front door, which was still shut tight along with every curtain pulled, I walked across the road. Straight into a nightmare.
***
“Listen,” my boss, the head of the FBI in our region, growled. “This is big. I realize that you want to keep her safe, but…”