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10

WRAITH

“ Y ou want to tell me why you aren’t on your bike on a fine day like today and why you got those bags in the back of your truck?” Smoke asks.

He knows the bags.

Has seen me grab them many a time.

They contain everything I need for torture: Tarps. Weapons. Rope. Bleach. Cleaning agents.

End-to-end is my specialty. Got no problem whatsoever cleaning up any mess I make. In fact, there’s a piece of me that enjoys it. It’s like a second orgasm. Weaker, but still a sturdy aftershock.

“If I tell you, you become complicit. So don’t fucking ask.”

Smoke leans back against the siding of the hardware store. “I’m asking because I overheard Butcher giving you a clear order to not leave the fucking state.”

Smoke is probably my closest Outlaw brother. I worry about him every fire season. Smoke jumping is as dangerous as it sounds. Remote wildfires are no joke, and steering a parachute into them is fucking heroic. Butcher gave him his name to honor it.

Burn sites can get out of control faster than someone can get there on foot and the state needs crazy fuckers like Smoke to jump down into them to dig the gulleys and trenches around the blaze to remove anything that could burn.

But he worries about me too.

I glance at the crappy dresser. “Again, I plead the fifth.”

“Looks like your little ray of sunshine has arrived.”

I turn my head and see Raven walking toward me. With the sun behind her, you can really see the hint of blue in her hair. “She’s not my fucking anything.”

The rumble of Smoke’s chuckle bugs the shit out of me. “You keep telling yourself that. There’s a reason we’re both here guarding a shitty free dresser like it’s an arms shipment instead of you being on your way to kill whoever you were intending to.”

“Fuck you.”

Fen sees me first, and he takes off from Raven in a sprint. “Wraith, I got a doughnut. A glazed one. Momma says I can’t have it until after dinner, so I don’t ruin my appetite. Do you like frogs?”

I look down at the kid whose cheeks are flushed, his breathing heavy. “Not sure I’ve ever really thought about frogs all that much,” I say.

“They come from tadpoles. Little black, squiggly-looking things. I wanna see a frog. I’ve never seen a real one. Do you think they’re slimy?” he asks.

“I know they are, kid.”

“Fen, I told you not to run off like that,” Raven snaps. “Anything could happen.”

Smoke and I both look up and down the traffic-less quiet street.

“Pretty certain nothing was going to happen to your kid,” I say.

“You have to teach children to treat all sidewalks the same. And that if they’re too far away from their parent, they can’t help if there’s a problem,” Raven says.

“But he wasn’t too far,” I say. Pretty fucking obvious, given there were two bikers, one parent, and no fucking cars on the street.

Her eyes narrow, like I just committed some cardinal sin. “Consistency is key in parenting. Something you obviously wouldn’t know anything about.”

Lottie’s little face pops into mind. I wonder whether I’d let her run up the street to a friend. The ugly ball of barbed wire turns in my chest, churning up old feelings.

“Just open the door, Raven.” I feel Smoke’s hand squeeze my shoulder. A silent instruction to be calm.

“It’s fine, I can take it from here,” she says.

“Mom, please.” Fen looks up at her. “It’s heavy. I don’t want to lift it.”

“It’s fine, Raven,” I say. “Will take us two minutes, and we’ll be out of your hair.”

Raven sighs. “Fine. And…thank you.”

She opens the door, and Smoke and I get to work. The whole while, I’m wondering what the hell I’m doing helping this infuriating, tiny slip of a woman who seems to rub me up the wrong way every time we speak. My thoughts always run hot around her, and I’m not sure why.

Must be a purely physical thing. Something about that narrow waist of hers.

The first trip up those narrow, creaking stairs with a drawer, I hear Fen begging for his doughnut and see Raven put it on top of the refrigerator, out of his reach. The second trip, I overhear Fen getting excited about being able to take his shit out of suitcases.

A kid his age shouldn’t be worried about clothing storage or excited by the prospect of it. He should be more interested in…well, frogs.

And the third, I overhear shit I wish I hadn’t as Raven lifts the sweater she’s wearing over her head, the soft T-shirt partly going with it to reveal a smooth expanse of pale skin I just want to bite.

I’m so glued to the sight of it that I almost trip on the final step when Fen reaches his hand to her waist.

“Daddy’s bruises are gone.”

Raven’s eyes close for a millisecond. Her shoulders rise and sink. She purses her lips, then swallows deeply before putting her hand on Fen’s head. “They were the only ones he was ever gonna make, sweetie. I promise.”

The kid dips his forehead to her stomach, and she strokes a hand over his hair as he hugs her.

When her eyes catch mine, I see embarrassment flood them, and she looks away.

“You gonna move up that last step?” Smoke asks from behind me. “These drawers must be solid wood. They weigh a ton.”

I find my feet and move as that simple exchange between Fen and Raven rattles through me.

I fucking hate domestic violence.

Ask Pinion, one of the old-timers who beat up his old lady. The guy was eating soup through a straw by the time I was done with him. Butcher docked me a month’s pay for siding with the old lady over the brother, but I couldn’t even look at that black eye of hers without rage flowing through me faster than coke up a banker’s nostril.

I’ve lived through it. Watch my dad beat seven bells out of my mom until she got us out of there.

On the way to collect the carcass of the dresser, I check out the security on the door. The Dobsons should be ashamed. They own a goddamn hardware store. Not like it would cost ‘em much to add a dead bolt instead of this flimsy lock screwed into the wall with the world’s tiniest screws. The shitty chain isn’t much better. It would take one solid kick of the door to break it.

“Assholes,” I mutter.

“You talking to yourself, brother?” Smoke asks.

“She needs better locks. You lift that end and go up backwards.” I go to pick up the dresser carcass, but Smoke slams to a stop.

“What?” I ask.

He smiles, but it’s sad. “It’s okay to think about her that way.” He tips his chin toward the window on the upper level. “Cute kid. Cute woman. It’s okay to admit you’re worried about her.”

I shake my head. “I’m worried it’s going to get dark before we have this dresser up those stairs.”

“You’re not gonna like what I say next.”

I look up at Smoke. He shaves his head every summer before he goes jumping, then lets it grow back during the winter. It’s short, shaggy curls right now.

“If I’m not gonna like it, don’t say it.” Because I’m pretty certain I know what he’s thinking. “Every time you say that, it’s usually followed by how to get back on the dating wheel. Wasn’t it dating apps last time?”

“Hallie wouldn’t want you to be alone. That woman dreamed of giving you a family, brother. She wouldn’t want you to spend the rest of your life without one.”

“Motherfucker, I’m gonna?—”

“Momma just searched on the Internet about tadpoles and it’s tadpole season.” Fen claps his hands and jumps up and down on the spot at the top of the stairs. “She said we can go looking this afternoon. Do you want to come with us?”

Smoke raises an eyebrow in my direction. A silent challenge that encourages me to say yes.

“No can do, kid. I got shit to do. So, move out of the way so I can get this upstairs for you.”

Fen’s face falls. “Okay.”

It might have hurt less to kick a puppy.

“Well, that was disappointing,” Smoke says.

“Yeah, well. Fortunately, I don’t give a shit what you think.”

He huffs. “Good luck telling yourself that.”

We get the dresser up the narrow stairs, and Smoke gets a call from Butcher.

“Where do you want it?” I ask Raven.

“I can move it from there,” she says, arms folded defensively across her chest and my eyes are drawn briefly to the round curves of her tits.

Again.

I sigh. I’m getting sick of this shit where I don’t want to help her, she doesn’t want my help, and yet here we both are with a tension between us that we both seem to want to avoid. “I’m sure you can. But just tell me where you fucking want it, and we can both be done.”

Raven takes a breath, drops her shoulders and points to the wall at the bottom of the bed. “In there, please.”

Smoke ends his call. “I gotta go. Butcher needs me for something.”

“Thanks for giving me a hand,” I say.

“Yes. Thank you.” Raven smiles at Smoke, and I find myself stuck somewhere between envy and wanting to punch my brother’s lights out.

How does he get the smile and I get the pushback?

I drag the carcass of the dresser into the bedroom and catch sight of Fen trying to drag one of the large drawers over.

I hurry to help him. “Don’t drag it. You’ll scratch the floor.”

“But I want to do it with you.”

“Then bend your knees and lift.” I show him what I mean.

He mimics me. I wonder if this is what it would have been like with Lottie. Me doing chores, her wanting to help. Me teaching her shit. How to brush her teeth, how to change the oil filter on her first car.

Not that I would have let her do that while I was still around.

If ever there was a job I would demand as mine, it’s oil filters.

I take ninety-five percent of the weight of the drawer, and the two of us move it to the dresser, where we slot it into the bottom opening. Then we repeat it six more times until all the drawers are in place.

“Look at it,” Fen says wistfully. “Isn’t it perfect?”

The wood is chipped in places. One of the knob handles is loose. The feet are scratched and beaten, like someone kept running the vacuum cleaner into them.

“Yeah. You guys did good finding it.”

I ruffle his hair, then step out into the living area. Raven is putting away some dishes she washed and left to dry.

“Is that where you wanted it?”

She glances over her shoulder and smiles when she sees Fen desperately throwing clothes into the bottom drawer. “I’ll have to refold all that once he’s gone to kindergarten on Monday.” The tone is humorous, like she’s loving watching her kid enjoy the crappy bit of furniture. “It’s perfect where it is. Thank you.”

I nod. There’s nothing else left to say. I can leave knowing I did my good deed for the day.

Except, when I go down the stairs and see that shitty lock, I get irritated all over again.

My truck is right outside the door, the bags safely locked in the back. I need to get into it and drive through the night to Kansas City to pick up the lead of the man who killed Hallie and Lottie.

I check the time. I need to leave now.

First, protecting the living is more important than avenging the dead.

Spark is in my fucking head, playing like a record. I can make a choice. Get in the truck, disobey my president, and go and find the two men who might know?—

I sigh. Butcher is right. The chances of them knowing anything is slim.

Worse, Spark is right too. Protecting the living is more important than avenging the dead. I don’t know how Raven got those bruises…but she isn’t getting any more.

“Fuck,” I curse, and storm around the corner into the hardware store. It smells of freshly cut wood and varnish, and it takes me no time to find the things I want. An industrial door lock and keys, a dead bolt, an additional sliding lock, and a screwdriver kit with all the bits I’m gonna need.

Old man Dobson is sitting at the cash register, but he shouts when I walk straight for the door without paying. “You can’t just take all those.”

Pissed, I turn and go back to the counter before pointing to the ceiling. “You’re charging that woman and kid up there rent. Least you can do is pay for a proper fucking lock to keep them safe.”

“The rent’s low. She’s not expecting a palace,” he says.

“I’m taking the fucking lock. You should be relieved I’m not sending you the bill for my fucking labor.”

He holds my gaze for a second, and then, like a dog in the face of a wolf, he drops his chin. “Fine. Go ahead.”

When I leave, I slam the door behind me.