Draw (Gentry Boys #1)(76)

“That’s not what it means at all and you damn well know it. If there was no getting away from the past then Saylor McCann wouldn’t have looked at you twice this time around. If there was no getting away from it then we wouldn’t be able to wake up in the morning knowing there was still an evil son of a bitch living out there in the desert. Try again, Cord. What the f*ck does it mean?”

I was silent. I leaned over and began to pick up the playing cards which had fluttered to the floor. A nurse poked a disapproving face into the room and told us to keep it down.

I held the cards in my hand and arranged them into a neat stack. Chase still awaited my answer. He wasn’t going to stop challenging me until he got one.

“It means,” I sighed, “that the reason Creed and I need to go out tonight and fix this is because that’s what we’ve always done for each other. It’s how we lived long enough to be here. If there hadn’t been three of us to fight back then we wouldn’t have gotten this far.”

My brother shook his head in disgust, flopping back to the pillows. “You’ll throw it away,” he grumbled miserably. “You’re going to throw away everything. Saylor. Me. Yourself. For what, Cordero? What will you get out of it?”

“Justice,” I whispered.

“Oh yeah? Whose version?”

I couldn’t answer that. I didn’t even have a clear idea about what I was going to do. I remembered the bolt of fury which had shot through me when I looked into my phone and saw the faces of those men. I could well imagine how I would be overcome when I came face to face with them.

Creed walked in. He noted the tension in the room immediately and approached us with a question in his eyes.

Chase grinned at him. “You have a nice shit, Big C?”

Creed didn’t return the grin. “It was all right.” He cleared his throat. “We got some business, Cordero.”

“All right,” I nodded, rising from the chair.

“Someone fighting tonight?” Chase asked sarcastically.

“Yeah,” Creed answered smoothly. “Someone might be fighting tonight.”

“Dammit, Creed,” Chase muttered. He was blinking rapidly, trying not to cry. I hadn’t seen Chasyn cry since we were kids. It was painful, knowing that we were the ones making it happen now. It was the second time in a day I’d made myself a cause of misery to someone I loved.

Chase was an open wound. I was teetering on the brink of emotional collapse. Only Creed stood there, slightly apart, stoic and unmoved.

“Let’s go, Cord,” he said.

“You want us to get you anything, first?” I asked Chase, trying to keep the shakiness out of my voice. “I’m even willing to try to smuggle up a beer, although that moon-faced dude at the front desk has already been looking at me sideways every time I pass by.”

“I don’t want a f*cking thing,” Chase responded, replacing the bandages over his wound. It wasn’t true. He’d already told me what he wanted.

Creed touched his arm lightly. “We’ll be back, little brother.”

“No,” our brother answered bleakly, “you won’t be.”

Chase rolled over on his side, turning away from us. I dimmed the light on the way out and closed the door.

Once we were in the corridor Creed showed me a picture on his phone. It was a house with some sort of funky symbol hanging under the peak of the roof.

“Found ‘em,” he said, pointing emphatically as we made our way to the elevator.

“You sure?” I asked as the elevator door closed behind us. “So what’s the plan? Roll through the front door with bats swinging?”

Creed gave me a hard look. “You said you were in this.”

“I am in this. I’m just asking what the hell ‘this’ is?”

“We’re going to make them answer. We’re going to tear it the f*ck out of their throats if need be. I can go it alone, Cord. I got no problem with that.”

I scoffed. “Well I do have a problem with that. I’m with you, Creed.”

The elevator opened into the lobby. A big wall clock caught my eye. It was six thirty. Saylor was in Emblem now, immersed in the misery of her mother’s wedding celebration. As if on cue, my phone buzzed. Creed glanced back and waited while I pulled it out. It was a text from her.

“Miss your face.”

I hit the reply button. Then I stared at the blank field until I realized I couldn’t think of a single answer. Slowly, I put the phone back in my pocket.

“I’m ready,” I said.





CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN


SAYLOR



My mother only stopped complaining long enough to say her vows out on the back patio in front of an audience of about two dozen guests, most of whom I knew and wished I didn’t.

Gary, aka The Gnome, shook my hand and patted my ass in his first official capacity as my stepfather. Then he leered at me while licking the straw hanging out of a Long Island iced tea. It was uncomfortable; an optical violation of sorts. Gary had known my folks in high school. My mother turned him down for the prom or something. I don’t know. I never really got the whole uncensored story. But I knew he was sort of a joke to her until she decided changing her mind could be more profitable. In addition to having served several mayoral terms he owned a local moving company.