“What’s your name?” I asked, standing back up.
“Parker,” he replied.
I stalked forward. “You need me to kick someone’s ass again for you, Parker?” I sneered. “Gonna need to start charging if this becomes a regular thing.”
He shook his head at me. “Your brother was a much better man than you.”
I snorted out a laugh. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“How about I tell you how Butch really died?”
Time stopped, the air stilled, and even the dust motes froze as his words settled over us both.
I scowled. “You better think really careful about what you say next, Parker.”
He didn’t look away from me, though he sure as shit should have if he wanted to live. “It wasn’t an accident, Jesse.”
“Fuck you! Fucking pussy, you don’t know shit,” I snapped, my jaw clenching. “He was drunk, and speeding, and the dumb motherfucker couldn’t handle the beast of a bike we just built together. Idiot had a lapse in fucking judgment—” I couldn’t finish my sentence without choking on my words.
“He wasn’t drunk, Jesse, but hewasspeeding, and then he was rammed off the road.”
I stepped toward the cell bars and gripped them, trapping his hands underneath mine. “I’m going to crush your hands now, and you’re not going to make a fuckin’ peep, you hear me?” I gritted out between my teeth, my grip tightening. “And then when I get out of here, I’m going to carve out your fuckin’ tongue and then make you eat it. You hear me?”
“Do what you have to. I don’t need to tell you this—I want to. Butch was good to me, and I want to do right by him.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah! And any moment now I’m going to get told to get out of here, and you’ll get sent down and probably killed before you reach trial. Then I might not ever get to tell you the rest, so back the fuck off, Jesse!” Sweat glistened off his forehead as I continued to glare at him, but he didn’t pull away or fight me. Instead he gritted his teeth while I continued to squeeze his hands under mine.
“So tell me, now,” I growled.
Parker glanced over his shoulder to the doorway, where we could both hear voices. “He was driven off the road because of what he found out.”
I thought about his words, and what it would mean if they were true. The guilt. The pain. The misery we had been through. And what the fuck would it mean for the club? I let go of his hands and Parker had the good sense to wait a second before he pulled his hands off the bars.
“What did he know?” I asked, suddenly more serious than I’d been in all my life.
Parker nodded, and looked relieved that I was finally listening to him. “You ever heard of the Razorbacks?”
An alarm bell rang in my head, sparks flying in all directions. Because damn straight I’d fucking heard of them. And if they’d had something to do with it, I would kill every last one of them before I died.
I started pacing my cell, realizing what an idiot I was because I was fucking trapped in that damn cell. “What about them?”
“So you have, that’s good. That makes it easier. That night, a large shipment of ice had just come in for your club. Butch got wind of a deal going down between the Razorbacks and another MC club that were looking to steal it.”
“Highwaymen don’t deal in that shit,” I growled out. We might have dealt drugs, but ice was something we had always stayed away from. It was off-limits. Always had been because of the shit that had gone down with my mom.
“Looks like your club is changing,” Parker replied bluntly.
I glared at him for a moment, thinking about all the ways I was going to hurt him when I got out of here. “Who was the other club?” I asked tightly, because now he had my fucking undivided attention and I wanted to know every piece of information he had, and I wanted it right the fuck then.
“That’s not the most important part,” Parker said with a shake of his head, like I was wasting his time with dumb questions.
“Who the fuck was it?” I asked again, my temper rising.
“I told you—,” he started but I cut him off.
“Of course it is!” I yelled, pacing my cell. “Stupid fucker should have told someone what he saw—should have told me. I would have gone with him, I could have helped him.”
