Page 1 of Man of Honor

Chapter One

GAGE

I’m not dead—yet.Not for lack of trying, though.If the punk who'd taken a tire iron to the back of my head had better follow-through, it would be a different story.I cracked one eye open. Pain lanced through my brain like a metal spike, and I groaned.Once the world stopped spinning and my watering eyes cleared, I was finally able to get my bearings.Cypress trees clawed toward a sky the color of a fresh bruise.The smell of wet dirt filled my nose, tangled with the green bite of vegetation and stagnant water.

I was back in the bayou.

Home.

And of course, the first person I thought of was Wyatt.Hell if I know why. I’d spent five years building a solid list of reasons to forget that man ever existed, repeating them to myself every night like a mantra until I almost believed them.Didn't matter. All it took was one breath of the bayou, and all that old anger and longing came rushing back.

I lay frozen and kept my breathing shallow, giving time a chance to jolt my muddled brain back into working order.Someone had beaten the brakes off me.The taste of copper coated my fuzzy tongue, and the deep, familiar pain of a broken rib was stabbing me in the lungs.Nothing I couldn’t handle. It wasn’t my first time taking a beating, and it wouldn’t be the last.

I’d been raised on it.

There was a strange weight pinning my legs, but when I managed to lift my cinder block head enough to glance down, I wished I hadn't.

A girl’s limp body was sprawled across my lap.

“Aw, hell,” I muttered, spitting grit from my mouth and dragging my aching body upright.The cold ground had turned my muscles to stone, but I managed to get vertical.I put my head on a swivel, squinting blearily through the mess of roots and underbrush, trying to get my bearings.We were off grid, deep in the bayou, at least a mile from anything resembling a road.

For years, I’d only seen this place in dreams.

Muddy water sloshed nearby. Just past the mound of fresh earth someone had dug, a horde of red alligator eyes glowed like demonic fireflies.Too many to count. Most people went their whole lives without ever knowing what color a gator’s eyes were in the darkness.Lucky me. We'd been dropped in the middle of a congregation during peak mating season.Whoever dumped us hadn't expected us to live long enough to crawl back out.

I glanced down at the girl again.Her head lolled across my thigh like a broken doll, but she was breathing, at least.That was good enough for now.Grime streaked her face, and dried blood matted a ponytail that was bleached so white it reminded me ofcobwebs.She looked young. Late teens, maybe.Just a kid, with that sickly, waifish thinness I recognized from the streets.

Just like that, memory flooded back.I remembered dozing in the ancient Buick I'd won in a Vegas card game.I'd parked in a shadowy lot behind a dive bar at the edge of the parish, partly to catch some sleep after days on the road, but mostly to put off seeing my brothers.

The girl's scream woke me.

She was planting her feet and digging in her heels, skidding across the gravel while a group of lowlifes in leather vests dragged her toward an idling truck.I’d worked security in Vegas long enough to see my share of ugly things, but something about her smallness and her fear cut too close.Even from across the lot, I could feel the malice oozing off the men, and I knew it wasn't going to end well for her.

I hadn’t been to confession in years, but when Gideon finally managed to wrangle me back into that booth, there were some things even I didn't want to admit.There wasn’t a damn thing heroic about me, but some things a guy just can’t ignore.

So, I didn’t.

It was a piece of cake; I had the first guy in a sleeper hold before anyone even realized I was there.The second thug landed in the dumpster, and another went down with a shot to the nuts.The last man was scrawny and pointed, all elbows and chin, and he dropped the girl the second he saw me coming.He threw his hands in the air and backed off, but just before I reached him, a sound whispered behind me.I turned, but it was too late to block the tire iron swinging for my skull.Pain exploded through my head. Then darkness.

Typical Thursday night.

I flexed my jaw, testing the soreness, and gingerly pressed the lump at the base of my skull.My fingers came away damp. Blood or mud, it didn’t matter.What mattered was getting out of this pit before those scumbags came back to check their handiwork.My pockets were empty. Cell phone, wallet, keys—all missing.Not that they’d do much good here; cell towers barely reached this far into the bayou.

Groaning, I staggered to my feet and slung the girl’s weight over one shoulder.Pain detonated in my chest, but I gritted my teeth and breathed through the worst of it.

“Come on, darlin’,” I grunted breathlessly.“Somebody must be missing you.”

The pit wasn’t deep, but the incline was sharp and marshy.It felt like climbing up an escalator made of quicksand.By the time I crested the rise, I could barely breathe.The bayou spread out in front of me in all its messy, tangled glory.To my left, an orgy of gators lurked, glutted on sex and a rich food supply.At least the path to the right looked solid.The highway was a mile or so through the trees if I had my bearings straight.It was nearly impossible to be sure.The bayou had a way of swallowing everything whole: light, sound, and people.

It had almost swallowed me once, a long time ago.Sometimes it felt like I’d never fully escaped.Not in one piece, anyway. But I wasn’t dead yet, and neither was the girl.For now, that would have to be enough.

With her breath tickling the back of my neck, I gritted my teeth and headed out.Mud sucked at my boots, fighting me for every step.It was late spring, and the heat was alreadyintense, building to the full-blown smackdown of a southern summer.The sticky breath of the swamp was rotten with the stench of waterlogged trees, a smell I knew from childhood, the kind that was impossible to completely wash away.

I never should have come back to this godforsaken place, but I didn't have much choice after my old man kicked the bucket.My brothers were already going to tear me a new one for missing the funeral.

Boone Beaufort wasn't our father by blood, but he was the closest any of us had.A wealthy, eccentric old bachelor, the last of a long line of southern aristocrats; he was our guiding light and our moral compass.He'd taken five broken boys and turned us into men.For him, we kept it together the day our brother Ben was sentenced to life in prison.We all wanted revenge, but none of us wanted to break Boone's heart by forcing him to lose another son.So, we made a pact: we'd wait, watch, and when the time was right—we'd get Ben out of there.

Boone knew I wouldn’t last. Back then, I was a guilt-ridden, impulsive mess, a hair trigger away from doing something I couldn't take back.So, he handed me a one-way bus ticket out of town.It was the last time I ever saw him face-to-face, but his words that day still echoed in my head:“No one escapes this place forever, Gage.It’ll call you back one day. But when it does, you’ll be the man I've always known you can be.Not an angry boy with a chip on his shoulder.Go now, before you throw away the future Ben gave up his freedom for.We'll be waiting for you."

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