Blood & Rust (Lock & Key #4) (55 page)

She turned me around and leaned her forehead against mine. “You’re a good friend, Tania.”

She planted a gentle kiss on my lips, and all those sensations flooded back. That fervid urgency, that delicious curiosity, that crazy sweetness, that apprehension of the unknown.

I cleared my throat. “I need to tell you something. Cards on the table. I can’t keep it from you, and I don’t ever want you to think that—”

“What is it?”

“After you left him, after you…”

“After I broke him, you mean? That last time?”

“Yeah. He and I—”

She held up a hand, shaking her head at me. “You don’t have to explain, Tania. I’m glad that he had you in his corner. I’m glad he tried to forget.”

I threw my head back. “Dear God, you are so wrong! He did it to
remember
. His passion for you is some kind of fury. A fury whose fangs and claws have sunk deep. A fury that won’t let go. A damn tidal wave of love, anger, pain, desolation. A tidal wave that won’t quit. And he tortures himself with it.”

She stiffened, throwing up the old barricades against my words, against the emotions they would surely invoke. How many times had we done this in the past?

“He got on with his life,” she said, her voice flat. “So did I.”

“Yeah, he sure did. Just like you did. Oh, there were the usual women. An old lady here, and another one there. They never lasted long though. Not one.”

She averted her gaze. “Well, I’m glad he had you.”

“We were only two people grabbing at something we couldn’t have.”

She stepped away from me.

I could tell her now, tell her whom I saw, that the enemy was circling. But it would only make her panic and run again. No, Finger would take care of it, take care of her.
That’s why he is in her face now.

“It has nothing to do with me.” She plucked the shopping bag off the floor.

“That is such bullshit, and you know it,” I said, raising my voice. “You have to let him in. You have to tell Finger. I won’t ever. I made you that promise. But you have to tell him.”

She shook her head as she folded the bag and placed it on a nearby box.

“Who’s afraid now?” I said. “Finger knows I know more than I’ve been letting on. Honey, the other night was crazy.”

“He was so angry,” she said, her voice low. “He got angry at you, too.”

“Yes, he did. But that’s because he felt powerless. He wants to help you, and he doesn’t know how. He’s desperate to reach you.”

Lenore put her hands over her ears, drowning out the viciousness and the hope.

The howling of her own wolves.

“You still love him,” I said.

Her big eyes glimmering like sea water in the sun found mine.

Swim to the surface, Rena.

I pulled her hands from her head, her rings pressing into my fingers.

“Can’t you say it? Why can’t you say it?” I asked.

“There’s no point. Too much has happened.”

“No. You have to be brave. You have to be brave enough to act on that love.”

Those shrill screams, the ugly words, harsh decisions, stinging tears of our shared past roared between us.

“How brave are you, Rena?” I whispered, lacing our fingers together.

Her eyes held mine. “How brave are you?”

WES WAS COVERING HIS TRACKS
.

I couldn’t pinpoint his location, so I’d tracked his best friend, Zach, instead, sending Dawes over to his house in the middle of the night to plant a device on the kid’s bike. Bingo. The boys had cut out of football camp today and were in Deadwood, about an hour-plus north of Meager.

A thick blanket of tall evergreens rose around me as I got into Deadwood. I followed the winding road into the center of the historic town nestled in the glorious Hills.
Once a frontier gold rush town populated with infamous gamblers and gunslingers, Deadwood was now an American Wild West tourist haven
,
offering casinos, restaurants, bars, and
shops. The streets crawled with people, and the road was clogged with vehicles and a shit-ton of bikes. Another hot summer day in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

I stopped at a red light and scanned the amazing selection of colorful, shiny bikes on my side of the street. Lock’s hand-painted version of the One-Eyed Jacks skull with the glinting star shining from one eye glared at me from the gas tank of a Panhead. Jump’s Panhead. My shoulders stiffened. The metallic candy shimmer of the paint on his unmistakable Harley danced in the afternoon sun.

Wes was right here.

I hunted for a parking space. I edged into one an elderly man on a trike had freed once his wife had come out of a store. I scanned the streets for any signs of the tall, athletic seventeen-year-old high school senior. The sidewalks teemed with couples, families, and strollers while the shop doors opened and closed, letting out folks, letting in more.

Left.
Nothing
.

Right.
No
.

I scanned the area once more.
Wes
. Across the street, at a diagonal from me. He dumped the remains of what looked like a hot dog in a garbage can and took a swig from a can of Red Bull, wiping his brown hair from his eyes. Wes was an expert dirt-bike racer, a great football player, and now, a rebel with a certified cause.

I’d recognized the signs months before when his parents could barely be in the same room with each other. And now since his father’s death, those signs of edginess, irritability, sourness had only gotten clearer, stronger.

I darted across the street and strode toward him. “Wes? What’s up?”

Wes’s body jerked back. Tense dark blue eyes met mine, narrowing. “Butler. Hey.”

“Surprised to see you up here. Didn’t you have practice this morning?”

“Nah.”

“Really?”

He shifted his weight on his long legs, his shoulders rising and falling quickly.

I gestured at Jump’s bike with a slant of my face. “How’s she riding?”

“She’s a dream.”

“Your dad always kept her in good shape. Hope you are, too, now.”

A frown passed over his features. “Of course I am.”

“Good. What are you up to?”

“Just out with friends. Great day to ride.”

We stared at each other. A draw.

“Wesley, this how it’s going to be for your senior year? For shit’s sake, you’re going to be starting quarterback this year. What the hell? You can’t be taking off for a good time.”

His gaze darted away from me.

“Who are you here with?”

“What’s with all the questions?”

“You here with that new girlfriend of yours?”

Wes cocked an eyebrow, rubbing his hands together. “Maybe.”

Fuck no.

Maybe
used to be my stock response to a whole array of questions.

Maybe I’ll drink the whole bottle of Jack.

Maybe I’ll fuck this chick who’s rubbing her tits up against me along with her friend.

Maybe I’ll break the face of this motherfucker who’s staring at my old lady’s ass.

Maybe I’ll fix my bike’s cover today.

Maybe I’ll sniff more joy powder to keep the carnival in my mind whirling.

I leaned into him. “Don’t give me fucking
maybe
. Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m the king of maybes. Don’t bother making it a good story, give me the truth. And P.S., I know you’ve been blowing off work at Eagle Wings. Lock was looking for you a while back and then again the other day. He knows something’s up with you, but I stopped him from going to your ma. Plus, you blew off the go-kart painting yesterday.”

Wes’s chin jutted out. Defiance, resentment.

“Where’s the girl?” I asked.

“In the restroom, making herself pretty for me.”

“Tell me, since you’ve had all this free time lately from cutting football, cutting your job, what have you been up to?”

He shrugged.

I leaned in closer. “Pyrotechnics,
maybe
? Did you set that fire in the Blades’ junkyard?”

Wes’s eyes pierced mine. I recognized the fuck-off-I-ain’t-telling-you-shit signs.

“Ah, damn it!” I gritted, clamping a hand around his arm

He shoved out of my hold. “You don’t know nothing! Nothing! Those fuckers have to pay for what they did to my dad!”

“It wasn’t the Blades, Wes.” I lowered my voice. “It was Reich, a Flame of Hell from Ohio. He was aiming for Nina and probably for me. Your dad—”

“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time? Collateral damage?”

“Yeah, he was. Look, Reich was punished by his own club for that and for many more sins. It’s done now, you hear me? And, as for the Broken Blades, their club is in pieces. They’re out there, begging for scraps. The one thing your father hated more than anything else, the one thing he never, ever wanted for our club, was to be taken over, ripped apart, told what to do by another club. And that is what’s happening to the Blades. The Jacks played a role in making that happen, and that right there is very sweet.”

Wes’s eyes filled with water, and I wrapped a hand around his neck. He pushed against me, but I yanked him back in.

“You do not ever go out there on your own. If they’d caught you—goddamn it, Wes. If anything had happened to you—” I caught my breath and pushed down the wave of emotion, that slice of pain ages old and so familiar, searing my middle. “The go-kart championship we’re running in a few weeks?”

He glanced up at me. “Yeah?”

“I’m working it with you. We’re working it together, whatever Lock has you on.”

“What?”

“That’s right. One-on-one. You could learn a thing or two about an engine from me, boy. And Lock doesn’t have the free time to show you how his designs get done whenever you feel like dropping by. You need to be showing him respect.”

“I respect him just fine!”

“Not good enough when you show up once in a while whenever you feel like it, pretend you’re listening, and then duck out. Think I haven’t been watching you? And another thing—”

“Now what, goddamn it?”

“I’m going to be picking you up from practice and bringing you home from school. Every day.”

“Hell no. I got my bike. I don’t need—”

“You can ride your bike, but you’ll be riding it alongside mine. You got that? Home, school, home again.”

“Am I grounded, too?”

“That’s up to your mother.”

“You gonna tell her about—”

“She’s the one who found the shit on your bike and told me about it! You think she didn’t know what it was?”

Wes let out a hiss under his breath, his body going rigid.

“We clear?”

He raised his head, an ugly twist to his mouth, his eyes narrowing. He was either going to explode or cry or implode. Any was good for me. He needed to.

I leaned into him. “Right now, you are putting our club at risk. Igniting a war that is unnecessary, dangerous, and very destructive.”

Wes grunted, his gaze jumping to my side. “She’s coming.”

I turned. A petite redheaded girl bobbed toward us from down the street. Her fingers tugged on the open ripped neckline of her cropped tank.

I knew the various stages of girl through woman all too well. I’d been with plenty of jailbait and older women in my time. I’d grown able to make the fine distinctions of age from the way females carried themselves, their expressions, their skin tone, the lines on their faces. This was no woman. This was barely a full-fledged teenager.

“She’s just a kid,” I muttered.

“She sure doesn’t act like a kid.”

“That makes it all right?” I grabbed his collar. “What the hell are you doing? What are you thinking?”

He pushed against me. “She’s crazy about me.”

The girl’s pace slowed down under my and Wes’s stare, her teeth raking over her highly glossed bottom lip.

“Um, hey,” she mumbled, her eyes widening as she looked up at me.

Her gaze darted at Wes for a second and then shot back to me. She gaped at my colors, her eyes widening.

“What’s going on?” Her voice came out tiny, low.

I shot a look at Wes and turned back to the girl. “I’m Wes’s uncle. What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“I’m Lindy.”

“Got to get you home, Lindy.”

“What? I don’t wanna go home! I’m here with Wes. Right, Wes?”