I head toward the only place that ever felt like hiding, not my trailer.Heard from Krystal Janie is staying there, holding it for me.Making sure the club won’t take it from me.My girls know I’ll come out of this mess, alive and well.
I head to the cemetery behind Pearly Gates.
The gates screech open like they’re tattling on me.The gravestones lean drunkenly, half-eaten by the earth, whispering old sins into the wind.I used to sit here as a girl, whispering secrets to the dead because they were the only ones who didn’t tattle to Daddy.
Tonight, though, the dead feel awake.
I pick my way between cracked markers, barefoot.Every step hurts.Gravel digs into fresh cuts.But pain is grounding.It keeps me here, keeps me moving, keeps me from thinking about the way Royal looked at me earlier, like he wanted to destroy me just so no one else could.
Then I see it.
A scrap of black denim caught on a broken angel statue, stiff with dried blood.A skull-and-crossbones pattern on the seam.My throat closes.
I’ve seen that jacket before.
I’ve seen her wear it.
A woman who went missing almost a year ago, laughed too loud, trusted too easy, followed the wrong man out of this cemetery after choir practice.
I crouch.My fingers shake as I pick it up.
A snap echoes behind me.
Not an animal.Too slow.Too heavy.Too intentional.
“Who’s there?”I whisper.
Silence answers like it’s hiding something.
Fear prickles under my skin.Something watches me from the dark, something with breath or hunger or memory.I don’t wait to figure out which one.
I run.
Branches whip my legs, rocks slice my feet, breath burns my chest, but I don’t stop until I’m back behind the clubhouse, shoving myself through the vent like a girl climbing back into her cage.
Halfway inside, I feel it.
A presence.
Royal stands in the corner of his room, arms folded over his chest, one boot braced against the wall.The dim lamp behind him catches the sharp edge of his knife holster.I’m reminded of the night he taped my mouth and stripped me of every illusion I had left.
His chest is bare beneath his cut.
His tattoos appear darker tonight.
His black lined eyes darker still.
“Lose something?”he asks, holding the chain.
I freeze halfway out of the vent.Dust clings to my hair, my cheeks, my thighs.I look feral.Guilty.Caught.
But I refuse to shrink.
“You left the door unlocked,” I say.“I took that as a yes.”
He pushes off the wall with slow, controlled steps.Not a man approaching a prisoner.A man approaching a problem he intends to savor.
“Gonna lie to me, Becki?”
