Page 572 of Hell Hath No Fury
“Then your wound makes a scar.” He pats a hand over his heart. “The body keeps score.”
“That doesn’t sound very promising for me, does it?” I force a smile despite him facing away still. “Hopefully this is the only one.”
“It’s not.” He shifts to turn side-on to me, but his gaze stays trained on the sleeping phone. “You have many already.”
“You don’t know that.” My muscles tense. He doesn’t know me. We’ve never… been that way. I’ve stayed distant from Jo-Jo, allowing two of the braver girls to relieve him of his needs. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I don’t need to know you well to see it, Beth.” He turns fully, rising onto his knees so we’re eye to eye.
I press back into the chair.
“It’s here,” he says, setting his scarred hands on my shoulders, fingertips massaging the muscle. “Here.” His touch slides behind my arms, resting against my upper back. “And here.” He braces both palms against the base of my ribs. “I see it when you move.”
This motherfucker…He’s pinpointed the places I hurt every day. I’ve shared my chronic pain with no one. Kept it to myself. “How do you know that?”
“Like I said.” He removes his hands. “I see it in the way you walk, how you sit, and when you lift heavy things. Your body has kept the score, Beth.”
I don’t want to cry. Not again, and especially not in front of this scary bastard. Not when he’s close enough for me to smell the cigarette smoke on his breath. “Did Hooch ask you to watch me?”
He shakes his head and repositions himself on the floor at my feet. “Crackers did.”
Oh, fuck you. There’s no holding back now. I sit and weep silently behind a killer, too ashamed to show my weakness in front of such a hardened man. With the blanket clutched in one hand, I lift it in front of my mouth, snuggling against the soft surface so that my tears have somewhere to go.
I don’t notice Jo-Jo move until he gently tugs at my shield.
“They found her.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Crackers
She broke all of us. Tied to a fucking pole in the middle of a cornfield, Dagne fucking tore our hearts out and set fire to our souls. I’ve only seen a grown man cry twice in my life, and tonight was the second.
I can’t blame the guy.
I’ve only known the little lady a few months and seeing her like that? Fuck. The sight of her tore apart, inside and out, will stay with me for the rest of my goddamn life.
Hooch rode home with his woman in the truck, while Murphy stayed back and waited for Timmy-boy to arrive so he could escort the prospect home on Pres’s bike.
Me? I rode out before the call was given, pre-empting what comes next.
The fucker has to die.
Nobody’s certain where the bastard went, but if we’re in his hometown then I’m sure there’s only one place to start—where the bullshit began. A quick text to King got what I needed: Digit’s original place of residence. His parents’ house.
I still remember the day the club took that goddamn geeky kid in as though it were yesterday. Around the same age, we stuck it out together—the trials, the taunts, and the tests. Prospects put through their paces, the smug little shit did it all with a cocky smile while I railed against authority, pushing my luck and almost losing my chance to wear the colors on my back.
I guess that’s what hurts the most, what stings as bad as the night air whipping at my face; I thought we were the same.
We couldn’t be more different.
The sparse nothingness of farmland—cropped paddocks as far as the eye can see—gives way to the town as I ride into the outskirts. Good people live here. Good, hardworking people shown in the industry that lines the railway flanked road. It fucking disgusts me to think that their reputation gets tarred thanks to the actions of one ignorant motherfucker. One guy who, from what he hollered at Pres last night in the parking lot, thinks can do better.
I’d give him the chance to try, only to see him fail, if it weren’t for the justice that needs to be served.
I cruise the street, fifteen miles below the posted limit, reading the street signs as I go. From what I remember when I briefly looked it up on my phone, it was a right-hand turn, but I can’t remember how far in. The warmth of the day has long subsided by the time I cruise to a stop at the corner of his block and count the numbers in. A simple timber construction ringed by a chain-link fence, there’s no personality to the property other than a pick-up parked under an awning to the right.
I can’t see his bike.
