Page 32 of Bad Seed

“What a mess,” Harley mumbled, but she found nothing of note on Larry Beaumont. His credit rating was decent, and he paid alimony to his ex-wife every month without fault.

The last person on Harley’s list was Brendan Pope. She started by running a standard background check, and got a surprise when she learned he’d changed his last name from Wallace to Pope just after he graduated high school, as had his mother and three brothers, just before they moved residence to Jubilee. She’d never run across a situation like this before and was extremely curious as to why this happened until she ran a check on Clyde Wallace, the man listed as the father on the birth certificates.

“Holy shit,” Harley muttered. “His father is a lifer. He nearly beat his wife to death, then killed two random people afterward in a drug-induced spree.”

She kept running searches and found a couple of blurry photos of Brendan during his years at theCulinary Institute of America. She had a list of the places he’d worked in later, most of which were upscale places in New York City, many of which she was familiar with.

By the time she’d finished his background check, other than a couple of speeding tickets for riding a motorcycle too fast when he was still in his teens, he was clean as a whistle. But it was seeing his DMV photo that had taken her aback. Traditionally, those photos were supposed to be a joke. His picture looked like a Hollywood headshot. Ray was right. He was a handsome man.

***

The same night Harley Banks was running Brendan’s background check, he was driving home on autopilot. He didn’t remember anything but the glare of headlights and the noise of Jubilee at night until he turned down the street where he lived. At that point, he began slowing down and then pulled up into the driveway. Remembering the note from before, he glanced toward his front porch, eyeing the security cameras and the motion-detector light that came on at his arrival, but nothing had been disturbed, probably because his stalker was in jail.

Satisfied that his security was in place, he pressed the remote and sat waiting for the garage door to go up, then drove in and closed the door behind him.

Walking into a dark and silent house was never welcoming, but it was his life. It was just the loneliness that got to him.

Sean had Amalie.

Aaron had Dani.

Wiley had Linette and Ava.

He had a stalker named Justine.

He felt like he’d fallen down a rabbit hole and couldn’t see daylight anymore. Nobody knew he felt this way, which made it even worse.

As a kid, he’d always told his troubles to his mom, or his older brothers, but he’d long since aged out of that privilege. And if he said anything now, it would only turn the family into matchmakers who’d start setting him up.

He went through the house, turning on lights as he went, kicked off his shoes, traded jeans for sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and turned up the heat as he went back to the kitchen.

Three scrambled eggs and two pieces of toast later, his last meal of the day was over, and he couldn’t sit still. He needed to outrun the ghosts from his past or he’d never sleep. It was cold and dark, but the roads were clear and dry, and they were calling.

Within minutes, he was in the garage in his biker gear, rolling out the Harley. He mounted as the garage door was going down behind him. The rumble of the engine was fine music to his ears. It was purring like a contented lion as he rode out of his neighborhood.Once he reached the highway, he turned west through Jubilee. As soon as he hit the blacktop road leading up the mountain, he accelerated, riding the Harley like a runaway rocket. The modified LED headlight cut through the dark like a knife, while the roar of the engine blasted through the quiet of Pope Mountain.

He was headed for the top.

***

Cameron Pope was on the back porch with Ghost, listening to the night sounds on the mountain and watching as the old dog investigated the perimeter of their world, sniffing at all of the fence posts and under the branches of leafless bushes as diligently as he’d sniffed out bombs for Cameron and his men in Iraq.

In the distance, Cameron could hear someone coming up the mountain, but it didn’t sound like a car or a truck, and whatever it was, it was coming closer. When it finally flew past, he realized it was a motorcycle.

Ghost was at his side now, intent on protecting if the need arose, but the roaring monster was already gone. Cameron laid a hand on the old dog’s head.

“It’s okay, boy. It’s just Brendan, still trying to break the sound barrier with that Harley. Still trying to outrun his ghosts.”

***

Brendan rode all the way up to the mountain’s peak and then stopped and shut off the engine, toed down the kickstand, then sat astraddle the bike in the dark.

A three-quarter moon was hanging over his head, and he could hear the faint roar of Big Falls off to the north. Pope Mountain was only one peak in the chain of the Cumberland Mountains, but it was theirs…the Popes, the Cauleys, and the Glass families. But for the paved road beneath his feet, it was the same as it had been when the Chickasaw were here, and then the trappers that brought the first Pope to this place.

As he sat, a deer walked out of the woods, crossed the road in front of him, and leaped a ditch only to disappear into the trees on the opposite side. The fact that it did not fear him was surprising.

“Thank you for the honor,” he said, then glanced at the time. It was after midnight. He was already looking at no more than four hours of sleep before he had to get up for work, but the ride had been worth it.

He put his helmet back on, toed up the kickstand, and started the engine. The rumble turned to a roar as he started back down the mountain, but not as fast, nor as desperate as he’d been going up.

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