River Bodies (Northampton County #1)(28)

He didn’t like it at all.

He fed the bike more juice until he was going too fast to decelerate in time to stop. He blew by his driveway, easing up on the throttle once again. He turned back around and headed toward home. An old pickup truck was parked alongside his house, the rear fenders rusted and full of holes. He grumbled, cursing under his breath.

He got off his bike and opened the side door to the kitchen. One of the club’s prospects was in his living room cleaning out ashtrays and wiping down the table. John had forgotten his place had been trashed last night, littered with booze and smokes and strippers. He dropped onto the couch, legs splayed in front of him. The place had been straightened up a bit and no longer had the funky party smell. He eyed the prospect. The kid looked to be twenty, maybe younger.

“I’ll get out of your way,” the kid said, a nervous waver in his voice.

John cocked his head. “Are you afraid of me, Prospect?”

“A little,” the kid said.

John laughed a strange, maniacal laugh and not his usual lighthearted sound. The kid looked down and all around, anything to avoid looking John in the eyes. He didn’t blame the kid. After all, John was the enforcer in the club.

“That’s good,” he said. “A little fear is a sign of respect. It will serve you well around the other members.” He rubbed his chin. “It may even save your life.” He wasn’t sure what he’d meant by the last part. Maybe it was simply that having a little fear about something made a person cautious, made a person think twice before taking action. But the trick, he reminded himself, was listening to that fear, the very thing he’d failed to do and pulled the trigger anyway.

The kid swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

John stood and put his hand on the kid’s shoulder. The boy was sturdy. He had some muscle to him. That was good too. He would need it sooner or later to defend himself or the club.

“Let yourself out when you’re done. I’m going to lie down.” He headed for the stairs, then turned back around. He didn’t mind the kid being frightened of him, but he didn’t want the kid to think he was an asshole. “And thanks for cleaning up. I appreciate you helping me out.” He motioned to the kitchen and the soon-to-be-cleaned living room.

The kid smiled, his one cheek rising higher on the left side. It was the first John had noticed the right side of the kid’s face sagged as though it lacked muscle tone. John shook his head. A bunch of misfits, that was what the club had turned into. Society’s castoffs, juvenile delinquents, guys with strange appearances or personalities or oddities. It was what had attracted his father, a Vietnam vet who no longer fit into mainstream society, to the club. It was only by default that John had been sucked into the life. He’d never felt he’d had a choice.

His legs were heavy as he dragged himself upstairs, collapsed on top of the bed. He thought about Becca. He needed to find out the reason she was back, what she was doing here. He closed his eyes. Maybe her father had died like he’d thought earlier, but the club would’ve heard about it if he had. Her return couldn’t be a good sign. He never should have allowed her to see him by the river. He’d made a mistake, and if there was a loose end, a weak link, she was it. But he couldn’t change the fact that she’d been there. It was far too late for regrets.

The question he needed to answer now was what he was going to do about it.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Becca paused outside the diner and gazed at the stars. How different they looked on this side of the river—clearer, brighter, more brilliant somehow—which wasn’t logical and was borderline ridiculous, but she saw what she saw. As much as she wanted to forget her life here, she couldn’t forget that it had once been home. Even the air was wetter, sweeter, from the breeze coming off the water.

Across the street, she could just make out the yellow tape marking off the area where she’d first spied Parker. For a moment, Becca allowed herself to think about the body in the river. For as long as she could remember, drownings had occurred in the Delaware. There were places in the river that were deep, unpredictable. Rapids rushed and slowed only to rush again, crashing over rocks and debris. There were long stretches of winding white foam where only the highly skilled in white water rafting could manage. And yet, every year, someone less skilled, someone inexperienced in the river’s undercurrents, got sucked under, never to resurface. It only took a second for a tragedy to occur.

She wasn’t being melodramatic about the dangers on the river. She’d seen what it could do, how one second you could be floating in your inner tube, soaking in the warm sun, taking in the green leaves of summer, the perfect blue skies, the rapids pulling you along, and in the next second, the current was dragging you under, plunging you deep into the abyss, the inner tube continuing downriver without you.

It had happened when she’d been young, only fourteen years old, tubing with Parker and his parents. They’d been in the water for less than an hour. The river stage had been three feet, which had been considered good conditions for a recreational outing, the stage being the elevation of the water above a fixed point, not to be confused with the depth of the water since the depth varied with drop-offs, holes, shallows, and ledges.

It had been a gradual float downriver, a leisurely trip. They’d been heading around a bend. Parker and Becca had been a few tube lengths behind when his mother’s inner tube had taken an unexpected turn. In a second she’d disappeared, pulled right out of the center, vanishing underwater. Parker’s dad, a big, tall guy like his son, had stretched his long arm into the cycling current, grasping her hair by the fistful. With some effort, he’d yanked Parker’s mom’s head above the water, ripping a clump of hair from her scalp in the process.