Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(97)

Hound was going to trust me.

Right there in my closet, I was officially becoming his old lady.

I felt a tingle of happiness even as I braced.

He kept going.

“He’s a lunatic. Psychopath. Sociopath. I don’t know the difference but he’s probably both. He makes pornos, runs girls and deals drugs. He wanted Denver and Chaos is in Denver so he was pushing to take our patch. We been rubbing each other the wrong way for a long time. Not long after he kidnapped Millie, he disappeared. And a woman, his woman, or we thought he was banging her, but whatever she was doin’ with him, she had a place in his operations. Now she’s taken his place. And her name is Camilla Turnbull.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

Hound ignored my whisper and kept talking.

“Chew is either behind Valenzuela’s maneuvers or he’s behind Turnbull pushin’ her way in, getting close and then taking him out so Chew can take over. One way or another, it’s Chew who wants Chaos. And if Valenzuela got dead after the Millie shit, it would make sense because only Chew would retaliate for one of his men doin’ something that stupid and doin’ it to an old lady. But mostly, doin’ it to Millie.”

He was right. Chew had loved Millie. In fact, I thought back in the day that Chew had loved Millie. It was just that she was High’s in a way that she was High’s and that would never change, this being proved because even when that did change, it never actually did and they were back.

“So what does this all mean?” I asked.

“Either Valenzuela knows he fucked up, the big man is pissed, that big man bein’ Chew, and he’s on the run, or they made their move and he’s dead. That only matters if he’s on the run and he finds himself the firepower to come back. What matters now is that our real enemy knows us in a way he knows us. Most a’ the shit we did, the statute of limitation is long past. Some of it doesn’t have a statute of limitation, and if he doesn’t know where the bodies are buried, he can guess.”

“Oh my God,” I breathed, understanding what that meant, particularly for my man. The happy tingle was long gone and the only way I could express the very different tingle that took its place was to whisper, “Hound.”

“Tack’s dealin’ with that tonight with me and some brothers. The recruits won’t touch this, ’specially Dutch and Jag will not be layin’ hands on the bones of the men who took out their daddy.”

A chill slid over me.

“God. Hound.”

“I need you solid with this, Keely, ’cause ghosts are rising and I finally got you, I am not fuckin’ losin’ you to more of Crank’s fuckin’ shit.”

He wasn’t ever going to lose me.

But right now I could tell he was losing it.

So I went to him immediately.

I curled my arms around him in his cut, pressed myself close and tipped my head back to look in his eyes.

“You won’t lose me,” I assured him.

“We all put bullets in him and the man still won’t die.”

I slid my hands under his cut and started to stroke his back over his tee soothingly, murmuring, “Honey. This is not Crank. Crank is gone. This is Chew.”

“He was Crank’s boy. Like a fuckin’ lapdog. Pantin’. The deeper Crank pulled us under, the more the rest of us choked on shit, but for Chew, it made him freer to breathe.”

“It’s over,” I reminded him.

“It’s not over,” he bit out. “Evidenced by the fact I gotta meet up with Tack, Dog, Brick, Boz, High and Hop and go dig up his motherfuckin’ bones and take them somewhere to put lye on ’em.”

I beat back a shudder and fisted my fingers in the back of his tee. “We’re talking Chew here. Remember that,” I urged strongly. “That man cannot take on Chaos. He can’t outthink Tack Allen. You got this.”

“He’s managed to dick with us for a really long time without a single one of us knowin’ shit, Keely.”

That seemed to be true.

I pressed my lips together.

I unpressed them to say, “You all …” I yanked his shirt out then pushed it back, digging my fists into his back, “have this.”

He finally lifted his hand, put it on my crown and slid it down the length of my hair before he went back up and cupped the back of my neck.

“The good part, we know what we’re dealin’ with,” he said. “We didn’t before. Tack has what he needs now to do his thing. And that came from you.”

I nodded.

“But I had to lie about how I got that shit,” he told me.

“Yeah, probably not the time to tell them I gave you this info over breakfast, or your second breakfast because your first one was eating me.”

Finally, some of the ferocity went out of his face and his mouth softened.

“Can I ask why you didn’t put lye on them before?” I requested curiously.

“Brother vote, they rot slow in deep graves, forgotten.”

That seemed a perfectly sound decision to me.

Too bad circumstances circumvented it.

I pressed closer. “I’m sorry you have to deal with this tonight.”

His eyes drifted to his rail of clothes and back to me. “Yeah, my woman moves me in, other ways I’d like to spend the night.”