Snake leaned closer and brushed her hair away from her face.“Honey, I won’t sleep much anyway and I’m going to keep you safe.”
Della swallowed hard and whispered, “What happened to you over there?”
Snake shook his head.“Nothing that I care to talk about Della.I won’t give you nightmares you can’t walk away from.That’s my burden to carry, not yours.You take the bed and I’ll be on the couch.Take Bucky with you so nothing or no one bothers you while you sleep.I’ll be okay out here.”
Della looked at him silently for a minute then nodded, “If you insist.”She leaned down to grab her duffle and then snapped her finger at Bucky.They both made their way to the door of the bedroom.
When she closed it behind her Snake looked longingly at the door but he didn’t push it.He just sighed and grabbed his computer out of the second bedroom and he sat down at the table and began to type.Glancing at the window, he noted Thrasher was still awake as the light was on in his room.
He sent the other man an email and asked him to check on the Red Devils out of Chicago and a man named Jesse Gregory.He knew Thrasher could and often did use connections he had all over the nation to double-check whatever he found.
Then he began to dig into what Jesse had been up to in the last eleven years.One thread took him to another thread and time passed slowly as he began to unravel Jesse’s life of petty crime since he last saw him.
Chapter Five
Snake finally pushedhis chair back and stood just as the sun was coming up.He went over to the coffee maker and made a fresh pot.Gazing out the window into the woods that surrounded the farm, he thought about what he had learned in the darkness of the night.He had to wonder how Jesse had gone so far astray from what they talked about while growing up on the south side of Chicago all those years ago.
Two teenage boys had discussed what they wanted out of their lives so many times but no matter how often they discussed it, drug dealing and human trafficking hadn’t ever come up.He shook his head and wondered again how Jesse had fallen so far off track.
When Della wrapped her arms around his waist he almost jumped.So intense with his thinking he failed to hear the bedroom door open or Della’s soft footsteps joining him.
Della chuckled.“What’s up?What were you thinking about so heavily?”
Snake shook his head and heard Bucky whining to go out.He poured her a cup of coffee then walked to the back door and let the dog outside.Then he looked at her and shook his head again.“I need to ask you something and I want the truth.”
Della stiffened then nodded.“Ok, what do you want to know?”
“Why did Jesse turn his back on everything we used to believe in?”he asked softly.“I mean I realize he never wanted me to leave, but something else had to be going on.When you told me everything that went down after I left I was stunned.The Jesse I knew and grew up with never would have done what you told me he did.”
Della sighed hard then took a sip from her mug and then set it down on the counter.Gazing out through the window, she replied in a saddened voice, “I don’t know.His complete turnaround stunned me too.”She turned to look at him.“I think it was the fact that you walked away from him.When you left, he just fell apart.He didn’t know how to go on without you.You two were so close.Hell, you never went anywhere without the other one.Without you there, he started sliding down a hill he couldn’t stop.He began a freefall that never crashed, not yet anyway.”
Snake shook his head.“I asked him to come with me but he said he couldn’t leave, he had you and your mom to look out for.That’s why when you told me he offered you up as a sacrifice, I couldn’t believe what you were saying.The Jesse I knew would never do that.”
Della shook her head as she continued to stare out the window.“I think by then he was hooked on the shit he was dealing.I could see it in his eyes.They were hollow of any feeling he ever had for me but you were right, he never would have done that if he’d been right in his mind.”
“When did he start using?”Snake asked.
