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  when the weather was tolerable and right before the summer rain settled in for its evening cry above Jessep.

  I understood how it felt to want to be left alone and for a brief moment I contemplated sparing the spider the death sentence, but quickly changed my mind.

  One just like it killed Jesse.

  It had to die.

  It seems I was good at killing things.

  I set up our old rusty ladder and climbed up to the top, positioning the end of the broom handle over the innocent spider who had no idea what was coming. “Sorry little guy,” I whispered, right before I crushed him into the corner. Over and over again I hit and hit and hit him, crushing him into oblivion. I killed that spider over and over again and kept killing it until my hands were bleeding from the splintered broom handle and tears ran down my face, long after what was left of the spider fell from the end of the broom and into the grass.

  “Miss Andrews?” a man asked. I gripped the top of the ladder with both hands to maintain my balance, and dropped the broom. It fell onto the uneven porch and rolled off the side into the grass.

  A very tall man stood on the dirt drive holding a manila folder and a handkerchief that he kept using to wipe the sweat off his red face. He was wearing a wrinkled grey suit and a sideways smile.

  “I’m sorry Miss. I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said in a proper southern accent. If his clothes weren’t a dead giveaway for not being a local, his accent would have done the trick. “I’m looking for a Miss Andrews?” the man asked again, holding up the file to shield his eyes from the sun as he watched me climb down from the ladder.

  “Who wants to know?” I asked, turning around to wipe my eyes, picking up the broken broom handle from the grass and tossing it back onto the porch.

  “My name is Ben Coleman and I’m here on behalf of The Sun…” I didn’t need to hear him finish his sentence to know why he was there. The Sunnlandio Corporation were vultures and assisted in my mother’s downhill decent into crazy before falling off the side and taking my dad with her.

  Ben Coleman didn’t seem to notice the crime scene tape floating in the wind. He stood on the driveway on a Tuesday night, wearing a wrinkled grey suit and dripping so much sweat it looked as if he’d been caught in the rain storm that I could see in the distance but hadn’t yet come.

  Ben approached and extended his hand to me. I folded up the ladder and walked right past him toward the shed on the side of the house. “You can leave Mr. Coleman, I know why you are here and I want nothing to do with it.” I set the ladder in the shed and shut the door.

  I could smell the approaching rain before I could see it. I used to make fun of my dad for saying he could smell the rain, but as I got older I could feel the shift in the air and I learned to recognize the sweet pungent zip of fresh oxygen before the clouds rolled in, turning off the stars and changing the night sky from black to grey. “Miss Anderson, I just need to go over this with you. We have the groves best interest at heart.” Ben said, holding out the folder toward me.

  I laughed. “Did you have my parents’ best interest at heart when your company cancelled the contract the grove had with Sunnlandio since the 60’s? Because I would ask them if they felt like you had their best interest at heart but I can’t. And judging from the look on your face you know why I can’t. So for whatever reason you are here, go sell it to someone else. I’m not interested and on top of that I don’t have time. I have a meeting with the sheriff.”

  The wind picked up, zipping around the house, blowing my hair into my face. Ben’s suit jacket blew open as he continued to follow me on my way to the front of the house.

  That’s when I spotted his gun.

  Either he was the kind of businessman that was used to southerners shooting at him or he was no businessman at all.

  The rain was already drenching the open field next to the house, it was only a matter of seconds before it found its way over. “Cut the shit, Mr. Coleman. If that’s even your name. What is it that you want?”

  “I need you to come look at this file. Tell me what you think. It’s an offer to buy the grove. A generous one at that.” He held out the manila file.

  “Get off this property right now and take that with you,” I warned.

  “You’re going to make me have to play hardball with you, Miss Andrews. I was willing to make you a proper offer, but you leave me no choice. Since you weren’t yet eighteen when your parents died and they had no living will on record this property isn’t yours and it won’t be yours until it goes through an expensive and rather lengthy court process. And I hate to state the obvious but without a contract with a distributor like Sunnlandio the grove isn’t worth anything anyway. There is also the little matter of you potentially going away for a very long time and I assume that’s what your little meeting with the sheriff is about. But we at Sunnlandio would rather we take care of this now and we rather put the money up front then wait for the judge to deed us the property.”

  That’s when the gravity of the situation hit me, what evil lurked in suits and ties and concealed their misdeeds in folders and briefcases. “That’s why you did it? That’s why you cancelled my parents’ contracts isn’t it? To devalue the land then screw them over with some bullshit offer?”

  “Miss Andrews, I don’t make those decisions, but I will admit that the law is on our side here. We’re just trying to streamline the process by having you sign off.”

  “I’m not even eighteen yet, I can’t sign anything,” I said.

  “Your birthday wasn’t two days ago on July the twelfth?” Mr. Carson asked, flipping open his file and reading off the date before closing it again.

  I missed my own birthday?

  The wall of rain came, soaking everything in its path, including the man in the suit who stood his ground, smiling as his hair flattened to the top of his head. “I am going to court tomorrow to file the offer with the probate judge and demand that the grove be properly appraised. You can either sign off on this now or ready yourself for a battle that you’re not going to win. A battle you can’t afford.”

  The law in on our side.

  The law is on our side.

  I saw red. So much red that I wished that a lightning bolt would come out of the sky and strike this suit wearing creep right off the driveway. Ben set the folder on the porch and flashed me that smug smile again and a salute of all things before heading back down the driveway. “Mr. Coleman?” I asked sweetly. He turned back around. “Yes, Miss Andrews?” he asked, shouting above the sound of the pouring rain.

  “Did you just say that the law is on your side?” I asked, tilting my head to the side.

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “Well then,” I dialed in the code on the lock on the heavy porch box and the hinges sprung open. I removed what I needed off the hooks connected to the underside of the lid. Unlike the older one I’d risked my life with when my mother and I played Russian Roulette, this one worked on the first pull every single time. “Did you know that here in Jessep, anyone can shoot someone on their property for no reason at all?”

  “You wouldn’t,” he said, not with fear in his voice. With challenge. He held his hand over his jacket, but he knew he didn’t have time to go for his gun.

  One step is all it took.

  He took one step forward, calling my bluff.

  I pulled the trigger.

  “Welcome to Jessep, Mr. Carson.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Bear

  An echoing CRACK pierced through the night, so loud I heard it above the roar of my bike, rippling the air around me like I was stuck in a wave. Something small but fast zipped by my ear like a scream, so close I felt the heat trail on the side of my neck.

  A bullet.

  Crack. Echo. Crack. Echo.

  There were two bikes on my tail. Two bikes I recognized. Two bikes I helped build.

  Bastards.

  I knew there was a possibility that the second I left Logan’s Beach on my bi
ke these fuckers could be trailing me. The problem was that I was too wrapped up in finding Thia before they did that I hopped on and sped off without even telling King where I was heading.

  Fuck, maybe they already did.

  My chest stung like I’d already been hit with a bullet.

  The Beach Bastards might have been lawless, but they weren’t soulless, one of the codes we lived by was ‘Always look a man in the eye when you are about to take his life.’

  The club must have gone even more to shit then I’d originally imagined because the two pussies behind me, firing at my back, had chosen to ignore that particular code.

  CRACK.

  I felt the heat against the skin of my neck as the bullet whizzed by.

  I passed the Welcome To Jessep sign and tried to shake the fuckers following me by taking a sharp right.

  No such luck.

  Bullets might have been flying, Thia might have been in danger or already dead, but when I picked up speed and leaned forward pushing the machine between my legs to its limits I was reminded of another time, another cloudless night when going fast wasn’t fast enough.

  I’m five years old and I’m in the passenger seat of a car I’ve never been in before. My mom is driving.

  She’s mumbling to herself and biting her nails.

  When she picked me up from school I’d gotten into her red convertible, but she passed the street we always turn on, the one that takes us to the clubhouse. The only stop we’d made was when we’d traded her car for this one behind the Stop-n-Go.

  The little Toyota we are riding in smells like the time I got sick after drinking Tank’s special soda he’d left on the pool table. The only special thing about his soda was the amount of puke it made me spray all over the floor of my dad’s office.

  Dr. Pepper is way better.

  Mom lights a cigarette and rolls open her window, but just a crack. The car fills with the smoke she breathes out, but it doesn’t bother me because I’m used to it. Everyone in the club smokes. I saw a commercial on TV once that said that smoking makes you stop growing, and I want to be real tall like my old man, so I’ve decided I’m gonna wait until I grow a lot taller before I start smoking.

  It’s dark outside, but since we are on the highway, every time we pass a street light the inside of the car goes bright and then dark, like someone is flipping a light switch on and off. I don’t count how many times the switch gets turned on, but it’s a lot. I stop when I get to a hundred because that’s the highest number I know.

  Every time a motorcycle passes, Mom grips the steering wheel really tight and holds her breath until it speeds by. She keeps checking the mirrors and wiping the hair out of her eyes. She’s got bubbles of sweat on the top of her face and when the car lights up the next time, I notice she’s got tears leaking from her eyes.

  “What’s wrong, cunt?” I ask.

  Mom rolls her eyes and shoots me an angry look. “Just because your father calls me that, doesn’t mean it’s a nice thing to say to someone. You just stick with calling me Mom, okay?”

  “Cunt doesn’t mean beautiful girl?” I ask, confused because Tripod is the one who told me what it meant, and he is the VP of my old man’s club, so he knows a whole lot.

  “No honey, it doesn’t mean that. It’s a bad word so don’t ever say it again, okay?” She ruffles my hair with her hand and goes back to checking the mirrors.

  When I get back to the clubhouse I’m going to ask Tripod about that word again. My old man says that girls sometimes don’t understand things the way boys do, so Mom is probably just confused.

  “How can a word be bad?” I ask.

  “It just can, Abel.” She says with a huff. Mom has the same look on her face she gets before she sends me to time-out, but at least her eyes aren’t leaking anymore.

  I don’t like it when her eyes leak.

  I also don’t like it when her nose leaks blood after she argues with Chop, my old man.

  “Mama, what’s wrong?” I ask her again.

  She shakes her head at me and smiles. “Nothing baby. Nothing’s wrong. In fact everything is great.”

  “But I want to go back to the clubhouse,” I whine.

  “No!” Mom yells, slamming her fist against the wheel. She takes a deep breath and another drag of her cigarette, stubbing it out in the ashtray. She reaches over and grabs my knee. I giggle because it’s my ticklish spot. “Abel, we are going somewhere you are going to love. It’s even better than the clubhouse. I promise.” She removes her hand and lights another cigarette.

  I shrug and start to get excited, mostly because I think my mom might be taking me to Disney World. I have never been there, but it’s the only place I could think of that could be better than the clubhouse.

  I go back to stretching the arms of my Stretch Armstrong and tie them behind his back the way I saw the cops do when they took Uncle Gator away yesterday. Cops aren’t friends of the club, so I didn’t tell my old man how cool I thought the lights and sirens were. He said Uncle Gator won’t be home anytime soon, but that we can visit him next month in a place called Up-State.

  I hear a familiar rumble and I turn to look behind us. “Hey Mom, Dad’s here,” I say, but she only looks ahead and nods. Her eyes start leaking again. Motorcycles surround the car and my mom slows down but doesn’t stop. I recognize Tank and his bike when he pulls up close next to us. Even with his helmet and yellow tinted goggles I can tell he’s angry by the lines around his mouth. He’s shouting something, but I can’t hear him over the other bikes. My mom hears him because she shakes her head ‘no’ like she’s answering him.

  I see Tank kick out his boot and the next thing I know the back window explodes into the car and the glass flies everywhere. Even though I duck behind the seat it’s too late. I catch a piece in the corner of my eye and it feels like a deep burning scratch. My mom screams and the next thing I know I feel the car veer to the right, the tires bumping over uneven ground before coming to a stop.

  I take my hand off of my eye and try to open it but the second I do it shuts automatically and I’m sure that the glass piece might still be in my eye. Mom grabs my face and inspects my eye. The bikes have all come to a stop around the car and now I see Chop. He gets off his bike and throws his helmet to the ground. My mom picks a small shard of glass from my eye that’s stained with red. “I love you, Abel. Now and forever. Just remember that.” She whispers as Chop tears her door open and drags her out of the car by her hair. She screams and kicks but Chop doesn’t stop dragging her until they are covered by the trees on the side of the highway.

  I may not be able to see them, but I can still hear them. “Do you not know how to fucking listen!” Chop shouts. “I told you that if you ever set foot in Logan’s Beach or near my fucking kid again, that I’d cut your tits off and hang them on the fence of the clubhouse! Did I look like I was fucking joking, cunt!”

  I’ve heard them yell at each other before but something about this times seems different. “Come on, buddy.” Tank tells me, leading me out of the car and back to his bike.

  “Why the fuck did you think you could steal my kid and live to fucking tell about it!” He shouts. He must have hit her because I hear my mother scream again. The leaves on the trees shake and I can’t take my attention away from where I know they are. Tank continues to lead me to his bike but I’m walking backwards.

  “I had to try.” I hear my mother shout. “I had to try to give him a life where he wouldn’t end up…” She pauses.

  “Say it, bitch. You know how this works. This ends the same way no matter what so you better get it out now…while you have the chance.” Chop says. I hear a click.

  “I wanted to take him away from here so he wouldn’t end up like you!” My mom shouts and as soon as the last word leaves her mouth there is a popping sound.

  And then nothing.

  Tank puts me on the back of his bike and starts it up, the others that are with us do the same. Biggie, one of the younger guys, jumps into the
Toyota and speeds off. Pager, one of the oldest in the Bastards, is waiting at the edge of the brush when Chop appears with blood splattered across his cheek, his gun still in his hand. He tosses the gun to Pager who wraps it in a rag.

  Tank signals something with his hand to Chop, who sees him because he nods in response, but his eyes are locked on mine. He breaks our connection to wipe the blood from his cheek with his bare hand.

  I wasn’t ever scared of him. Not when he beat my mom. Not when he beat me for any number of things I’d done that he didn’t like. Not when he brought me on his airboat and forced me to watch as he shot a man and dumped his body in the Everglades.

  It’s this very moment when a shiver of fear snakes down my spine and for the very first time I’m afraid of my father. He looks down at his now red-coated palm. Shivers dance down my spine when his eyes again find mine…