Soulless (Lawless #2)(51)
“Actually, if you motherf*ckers must know, I was looking up porn,” Preppy said with a shrug of his shoulders. There was a rustling in the brush up ahead. A huge brown hog with wiry hair and a broken tusk darted out from its hiding place and into the clearing, making a run for his life through the trees. Preppy lifted his gun and pulled the trigger. He missed the fast moving pig and the bullet blew a huge hole into a tree stump. “But you’d be surprised how one little misspelling of the word BEASTIALITY can change the entire f*cking nature of a search.” King and I looked at one another and followed Preppy, who started reciting lines from Braveheart as he ran full speed after the hog there was no way he was ever going to catch.
After an hour of chasing Preppy through the trees and almost accidentally shooting one another a few times, Preppy finally gave up and we headed back out to the truck. “Fuck this. I’m just going to get one of those plastic pig heads they sell at the gas station and mount it in my room.”
“Could have decided that a lot f*cking earlier,” King muttered.
Preppy cracked his knuckles. “And now for the business portion of the day,” he said, grabbing two shovels from the bed of the truck which were laying over a blue tarp. He tossed us each one and pulled off the tarp, revealing the tied up body of a man underneath.
“Who the f*ck is this?” King asked.
“This was the motherf*cker who pulled a gun on me last night when I was out running collection,” Preppy announced, poking the corpse with the handle of his shovel.
“Ugh, why are you guys dragging me into this. This is your shit,” I huffed.
“Bear you can’t f*cking complain,” Preppy snapped, grabbing a hold of the man’s ankles.
“Why the f*ck not?” I asked.
“’Cause, bitch,” he said, flashing me a big white-toothed grin as he slid the body from the truck bed until it was about halfway and then he let it fall to the ground with a dull thud. “It’s my motherf*cking birthday.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Thia
I wrapped my arms around my legs and held them close to my chest, resting my chin on the tops of my knees. I closed my eyes and slowly inhaled through my nose, breathing in the wet air and the smell of Grace’s roses.
We’d finished with all the boxes just as the sun set. Ray was inside making a call to the babysitter to check on the kids while I sat outside on the deck in Grace’s backyard and wondered what the hell the future had in store.
For Bear. For me. For us.
Only time would tell, but the time I was most concerned about was the next few days, and whether Bear would come out of them alive.
I tried my best to steady my erratic beating heart, but I felt helpless—a feeling I hated more than anything.
Crickets chirped loudly from out beyond the fence. I rubbed the heels of my bare feet over the warmed fabric of the chair. There were so many questions in my head that I just wanted to do a hand stand and shake them out of my ear.
He could be hurt. He could die.
My stomach twisted as I forced myself away from that thought.
He could also succeed.
Then what?
I didn’t hear Ray approaching until she sat down next to me, her shoulder bumping mine. “In my life, everyone close to me has died,” Ray started with a sigh, looking out over the backyard as if she were wrestling with something in her head too. “My best friend from when I was a kid. Well, I guess my two best friends, although one was kind of my husband for a minute. A woman who was more like a mother to me than my actual mother, and someone I knew for only a short period of time, but was more connected to than anyone else, besides King.” Her eyes flickered from the house to the trees and finally back to me.
“Preppy,” I said, wishing I’d had a chance to meet the guy that King, Ray, and Bear had all cared for so deeply. Ray nodded and attempted a small smile that did nothing to mask her hurt.
“Yes, Preppy. I was in love with him you know,” she said with a sniffle.
“You were?” For a second I thought that Bear hadn’t told me the entire story.
“Yeah, not in the way I’m in love with King, but I was…or I am,” Ray corrected, “as in love with Preppy as I could be without it being a romantic kind of love. I loved him deep, and so it hurts deep. That’s just the way love works, I guess.”
“Aren’t you afraid something will happen to King?” I asked, needing to know if I was alone in the anguish I felt over them going to war against Chop. “If he goes to bat for Bear, he’s putting his life on the line. It’s not even his fight. Even Bear has tried to talk him out of it.” I was grateful that Bear had King in his life and that King was so willing to step up for Bear, but being no stranger to loss myself it was easy to put myself in her shoes.
If something happened to King, it would leave their three kids without their father, and she would lose yet another person she loved. “I know how it feels,” I added, reminding her that she wasn’t alone.
Ray shook her head. “No, I’m not afraid. If I’ve learned anything over the past year, it’s that going to bat for one another is what family does, regardless of the cause. This is King’s battle because it’s Bear’s battle.” Ray absentmindedly picked at the threads of the fraying chair cushion. “I grew up in a house with two parents and it still took me coming here to learn that myself. Besides, it wasn’t like when I met King he was an accountant or something who suddenly decided to venture into another questionable and dangerous line of work. I knew what I was getting into from day one.” Ray let out a quick burst of laughter. “Did. I. Ever.”