I watch his face as he looks down to his plate, and I can tell he doesn’t talk much about that time.
“It’s why I always wanted the next tour. I sought it out, because being there, in the fucking carnage, never having time to think or remember, seemed easier than being here with nothing to distract me. Understand?”
I nod. “Were you worried every time you went that you might not come back? Were you afraid of dying out there?” I ask.
Sean leans back in his chair and folds his thick arms over his chest.
“My bunkmate, Buck, he used to read poetry. Old-world Spanish poetry, and one in particular always stuck with me.Contented, the righteous nest searches for the ominous blackbird to fill it / The darkest of beasts rest soundly in the most hidden dens, / The dead in their shallow grave, and the sad in their oblivion, / Only through this peace will my soul become sand in its desert.”
“That’s beautiful,” I say softly. The look in Sean’s eyes tells me Buck is no longer alive, and I don’t want to pry.
“For me it means that, even at death’s door, from flat on my back in that fucking desert, I knew I couldn’t let the beast win. The darkest parts in me needed to stay hidden in the beast’s den. The good I had left in me? I had to choose to let that overcome the bad. I had tochoosewhich part of me got to take flight. I chose to use my demons to help others learn how to do the same.”
I watch him as I take my last bite of toast.
“The government I had ruined myself for mentally was nowhere to be found when I was done with my active service. I didn’t turn to drugs like many of my brothers. I joined the club and I started a career where I knew I could help. Is what we do illegal? Yeah, but we do it to help fund the things that matter. Sometimes you have to do a little bad to do a lot of good. I made the choice to be involved, to make a difference for anyone else returning home who was feeling lost and ruined, because I knew our government wasn’t going to be there for them either. I can’t help every soldier, but I can help some.”
Sean sits up straighter and his brow knots for just a fraction of a second.
“Your back?” I ask him quietly.
“Yep. It’s always a little tight in the morning.”
We sit in silence for a moment before I say, “We’ll work it out with the next massage. It’s a process.”
Sean watches me, then nods toward the end of the hall.
“Go get ready, I’ll clean up and get you something packed for lunch,” he says, setting his fork down. He leans closer and kisses me. “And you’ll be my good girl and eat it, yeah?”
Another wave of emotion hits me square in the chest, but this time it isn’t grief. It’s the feeling of him looking after me, yet again. He does it like it’s second nature to him, whether I need him to or not. I’ve just spent so much time looking after myself that I don’t really know how to respond other than nod and head down the hall like the good girl Sean Hunter wants me to be. The truth is, even with him living a life outside of what anyone I’ve ever known would deem to be honest or right, even with him having threatening conversations about breaking someone’s bones while he cooks me breakfast, I’m feeling more and more likehisgood girl every single day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sean
“Make sure he tells us where it all is.” I push the K6er’s head down and more blood drips from both the gash on his brow and his mouth as he groans. He’s already looking rough, but before we’re done hewilltell us where our product is.
Kai comes back into the room we’re holding them all in, ready to make their nightmares become reality. We’re in an abandoned house in the shittiest part of town. The fucking windows are boarded up, for Chrissakes, and it smells like piss. There are two women, if you can even call them that—they look more like high schoolers—sleeping on sofas in the living room. They’re high as fuck and still dressed to pick up. Meth bowls, cotton, a few spoons and lighters, and used needles are strewn all over the table. One of the girls still has her arm banded up from her last hit. I’ve seen at least one of these women on the street outside our Bleaker Road clinic. She barely fucking looks eighteen.
The moment Kai pulled up our security footage and we saw who was behind the break-in at the clinic late last night, we were on the hunt. It didn’t hurt that Kai thought they might be able to help me with my search for the man who killed Layla’s parents.Now that she’s talked about it with me and I’ve seen the pain behind her eyes, it isn’t just a want for me to find him, or them, and get her the answers. It’s aneed.
We found them in the alley behind this shithole, handing off one of their girls to some guy in a van. She looked scared, and it was obvious she didn’t want to go. An all-out fight followed, and one of them punched her in the kidney. He’d never hit her in the face because he wouldn’t want to damage his moneymaker. They’re dealers of drugs and pussy, but most of them are avid meth users themselves. And one thing about junkies like that, they get freakishly strong when they’re high and they don’t feel any pain. We beat the shit out of them and dragged them back, but we all took a couple good knocks before we were able to overpower the five of them and drag them back into this place. One of them hit me with a piece of wood that was lying in the alley and split my cheekbone open, but we got them inside and tied them up and then we got to work.
I look at the old clock on the wall. I’m supposed to be at my clinic appointment with Layla in five minutes, but it’s not like I can call her while Kai and Jake are slicing these fucks open and breaking their fingers, so I pick up my phone and call our prospect Boyd instead.
Thirty minutes and five more broken fingers later, one of them finally breaks and tells Kai where a week’s supply of our methadone and a massive stash of clean needles is. That’s the problem with what we do—junkies want needles, and we have them. They also steal our methadone mistaking it for something that can get them high.
“He also told me a rumor he heard about a couple getting shot at an Atlanta gas station a couple years back, and a certain Wretched Souls member,” Kai tells me before speaking to Jake. “In the bathroom, under the sink, lift the bottom of the cabinet out, you’ll find it all there.” He turns back to the junkie that spilled all and grips his face hard. “Unless you’re fucking lying to me. Then I start taking teeth.”
I shake my head. Fucking Kai. He loves this shit way too much.
Kai kicks him hard and the prick cries. He’s already tweaking for his next fix.
“Shouldn’t have caved so early, I was looking forward to breaking the rest of those fingers,” Kai says to him, genuinely disappointed.
I make my way through the dark house, doing my best not to step on a rat as I open the kitchen window to take a breath that doesn’t taste like the inside of a sewer while I pull my glove off to call Boyd. There’s shit everywhere—garbage and booze bottles.
Fucking pigs.
