“Not entirely,” I say the only words that I know can stop him in his tracks.
“Myoffice. Now.”
I bite down on my tongue.What do you expect? You bailed on him,my inner voice pipes up.
Following him inside my old office I notice that unlike the house, not a thing has changed.Still kinda my office then, isn’t it?
“Talk,” he demands.
“Rage is Damien’s son.” Maybe I should have dressed that up a little bit, but that’s never been my style.
“Does he know that?” Bull asks after long moments of silence, and I shrug.
“I don’t know.” I exhale heavily as I take a seat across from him. “Damien was obsessed with Brooke. She and her husband always seemed solid though, at least they had that whole happy family look going. That’s why he went nomad, seeing her with her husband and Thunder was too hard. I guess I should have put it together, but I didn’t even know until the night he died.
“Brooke and Dave had hit a rough patch one year, and her husband was spending most of his time down in Rapid City. Damien got his shot, and he took it. He left again when Brooke told him she and Dave were going to try to make it work. It was a few years before he came back and that’s when he found out about Jessup.”
“He’s my cousin then.” The shock on Bull’s face is matched by the wonder in his voice. “I remember everyone giving Damien shit about going to church.”
I can’t help but laugh. “I wanted to strangle the both of you, that day you insisted on going with him. Turns out he hadn’t found God. It was just the only time he could see his son.”
“I doubt I’d have become friends with Lincoln and Jessup if not for the church picnics,” Bull muses.
“Yep, and then you started having them over.” I nod my head remembering it all clear as day. Stryker fell right between them age wise and somehow the boys were instantly friends. “I thought about that later. There’s no way he could have known it would happen, but it must have meant the world to Damien, seeing Jessup running around the house, playing with you.”
“Damien was already dead when their parents died, and you set Thunder up in that apartment. You made sure he got custody of Rage, didn’t you?” he asks me.
“Damien made me promise to keep an eye on him. Rage was only fifteen when his mom and Dave died, so yeah. I got Thunder that job, told him not to worry about rent, although he always insisted on paying me something.AndI called in a little favor with Judge Kausch.”
“Thunder and Bronco headed out with Halo. They’re going to meet up with a pastor up that way, he was tight-lipped on the phone, but Halo thought he knew more than he was saying,” Bull shares what he knows with me. “I’m assuming it’s that Balo guy who answered when we called his phone, unless you have a longer list of people who are looking to fuck with us.”
“No one living,” I respond with a smirk before getting serious again. “Look, what do you say to Frost and me heading up there?”
He sits back in the seat, his eyes drilling holes into my skull, and I wonder how long it’s been since I’ve been able to read his expression. Of course, I know the answer to that. Since his momma left. That was the day he shut me out.
“Frost, you, me, and hell, I’ll grab the prospects, too. Might as well make it a party,” he finally decides.
Chapter 5
Rage
“Hey! Psst, can you hear me?” I’ve been in and out of it for at least an hour, and even with this woman clicking her tongue with impatience, I’m so damn thirsty, I’m not sure I could talk.
“Can you open your eyes?” Forget impatience, she sounds borderline pissed.
Letting out a groan, I manage to open my eyelids and am even able to keep one of them that way. My entire body hurts. Christ, even my scalp. How is that possible?
“Oh, thank God! Look, I need to stop for gas and get a couple of things. Water included because I was more worried about getting away from there. I just need to know if you can hold off on using the bathroom?”
“Thirsty.” I mumble out some version of that word, before burrowing deeper into the cocoon surrounding me and closing my eye again.
“Christ, you’re burning up,” the woman says, as she lays an icy palm on my forehead. “Can you drink a little bit?”
It’s too hard to open my eyes, but at the feel of the bottle against my lips, I purse them and start swallowing as she slowly tilts the water.
“Here, now I want you to take this,” she instructs me, placing a capsule in my mouth and I instantly close my teeth around itbefore pushing it back out. “I know you have no reason to trust me, especially after what you’ve been through, but that’s an extra strength ibuprofen that I take when I have cramps. It’s all I have right now, but I do have medical training and I’m taking you some place I can get you checked out with no questions asked.”
I keep my lips sealed shut, wondering why it’s so hard to think, let alone talk.I need more water, I think and that’s when an inkling of a sensible thought breaks through the fog in my head. If she had wanted to drug me, she would have put something in the water.She didn’t try to hide the pill.
