They all start picking up knives but I’m too preoccupied to notice. I don’t care how long this takes me, I will keep throwing until get my knife to land in Travis’s smug face. Then I’ll do it over and over again.
“Wait, is that Chef down there?” Loyal asks, staring at the extra bullseye while Chef’s head snaps toward her.
Chewy grins, “Yup, that one is for Sage.” Mama Debs nods once, turning to go find her granddaughter, the little kids all running around her feet.
I met Chef last night. He’s one of the men staying behind to help out. He seems like a nice enough man, although I could tell there was history between him and Sage. I don’t know the story, but it’s none of my business to know so I shake off the thought and take a deep breath, letting it out slowly while my gaze settles on Travis’s face all the way down there on the bullseye.
Closing my eyes, I picture the last time I saw his face, when it was leaning over me, bearing down as his eyes bulged with rage. The way his spittle hit me on my cheek as I cowered, trying hard to shrink, to look the other way. The way his gaze landed on Kit before his eyes turned back to me, pure evil as he leaned her way and his fist flew at her. The way I wanted to kill him there and then but I was too scared. Frozen. Cowardly. A scream rips from my throat as my arm pulls back and I fling the knife, aiming directly between Travis’s cold eyes. Bullseye. But it’s not enough. My legs carry me to the target, only stopping when my left hand hits the backboard, my right grabbing the handle of the knife and wrestling it out of the old, scarred wood. With it in my fist I stab at Travis’s face. Again. Again. In. Out. Over and overin his cold, dead eyes. His smug smirk. His doughy fat face that I know is rotting in the belly of a gator in a swamp somewhere in Louisiana but it doesn't matter. This is for the old Joy. The Joy who couldn't stick up for herself. The Joy who was afraid. The Joy who cowered. No more. Never again.
“It’s done, sweetheart. It’s done.” Momma’s gentle voice breaks through my tears and my screams and brings me back to the here and now.
The here and now where my friends are all standing with soft smiles on their faces. Where Reid’s two sisters and three brothers all dip their chins at me. Where the faces around me show pride. The knife drops from my hand with a dull thud in the grass as they all surround me with hugs and words of encouragement. For the first time since I escaped, I feel free.
“Do you have more family members arriving?” Chewy says, squinting toward the trees, belly sticking out the bottom of her band t-shirt.
Gallows follows Chewy’s line of sight. “No. We’re all here. Why?”
“Huh.” Chewy says with a wave of her hand. “Just wondering, because that -” Chewy points toward the figure in the trees, “doesn’t look like one of the gingers I’ve been introduced to. A foreign ginger, if you will.”
“How the hell do you knowthat?” Nat asks, her gaze darting from Chewy, to the woods.
“There are fourteen gingers that are meant to be here. Five of Switch’s siblings, three of their children, Joy and Kit, Loyal and her two girls, and Gallows,” Chewy says waving a knife in his direction. “That,” she says pointing, “brings our total of gingers to fifteen. That’s too many gingers.”
“Why does that sound slightly hair-ist?” Jazz murmurs to me.
“I agree. I’m not sure whether to be offended or not,” I whisper to her.
Gallows and Mercy share a look and then both start to move with intent, little by little, scoping out the situation while Chef, Wire and Flack start running toward us along with Reid’s brothers. They probably saw something on the cameras dotted around the treeline.
“What do you think we should do?” Loyal whispers, edging closer to her little girls, much like I am.
“Mama and Momma!” Chewy yells over her shoulder as she tosses her knife in her hand. “Take the kids inside will you.”
“You’re getting inside too, preggo,” Gallows growls, he and his sister trying to corral us nearer the house with urgency, probably so they can go and get rid of the foreign ginger, as Chewy put it.
“Ladies,” Chewy says, ignoring Gallows completely. “Knives at the ready, throw on my command.”
“No!” Gallows growls, “Fucks sake-”
“Throw!”
Gallows
I’m going to kill my cousin. Seriously. I don’t need this shit. I have a clubhouse full of fuckers with no ears. I do not need to spend my time twelve hours away from home with a bunch of crazy fucking Ol Ladies who don’t listen either.
“You’re very quiet,” Mercy says, and I can tell she’s getting a kick out of this shit.
“Shut it.”
“Yes, Prez,” she says, the smile evident in her voice.
“Just hurry up and help me.”
Mercy rolls her eyes and grabs the ginger stranger's free foot and starts to drag him out of the treeline with me.
“Momma said to put him in the meat processing shed. I need him hanging. K thanks. I’m hungry.” The little menace waddles off presumably to get something to eat while we drag the human pin cushion behind us.
“So, when did the big, bad Saints Outlaws Prez become a prospect to a little preggo?”
