—
This time the sun was bright and harsh. I blinked, trying to remember where I was . . . Then it all came back and I looked around, wondering where my girl went.
Shit. Becca was gone.
What the hell really happened last night? I sat up, spotting my colors hanging from a rack next to . . . school uniforms? Fuck, some kid must live in this room, I realized. That’d suck, coming home to a mess like this. I turned and lowered my feet on the far side of the bed, figuring I’d open the window to air things out, check the lay of the land in the process. I stepped on a pile of books, which fell over. I reached down to pick one up.
Textbook.
I picked up another. Shit, it was another textbook, and under that was a notebook. That’s when I started to get a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach—something I wouldn’t have pegged as possible, given how shitty I already felt about how the night had played out.
The notebook opened in my hands, and I saw the name Becca Jones written on the top of the front page, along with English: First Period and the date.
Below were notes.
Maybe she was in college, I thought desperately. Please, fuck . . . let her be in college. A piece of colored paper fell to the ground, and I dropped the notebook to pick it up.
What I saw nearly made me throw up.
It was a flyer for a dance—a high school dance.
Becca was still in school. Jailbait. The fuck? It didn’t add up . . . Then her last words to me sank in, and it all added up far too well.
“Tell him I did good, okay? Just tell him I did good. Please?”
—
I flew down the stairs half dressed, my boots thudding loudly. My shirt was filthy from her floor, but my cut was still fine—safe and sound after a night spent hanging next to Becca’s little school dresses. Fucking piece of shit pimp Teeny.
Had to be him.
This was his house. Who the hell was she? His kid? What the fuck kind of asshole pimped out his own daughter? But shit, I guess it happened all the time, all over the world. About halfway down I heard her scream, which should’ve woken up everyone all over the goddamned house. Most of them were still passed out drunk, though. I heard more shouts outside and knew my brothers were probably coming.
That turned out to be a good thing, because I came damned close to ending a man’s life that day—fucking craptastic way to start parole . . .
Teeny stood in the center of the kitchen, Becca huddled at his feet as he kicked her. Then he whacked her across the head with a fucking soup pot, of all things, and I lost my shit.
“You cocksucking asshole!” I shouted, launching myself at him. “Fucking twat! I’ll kill you!”
My fists destroyed his face with a crunch. It felt good—cathartic. He fell like a bag of concrete and some part of my brain noted vaguely that Becca was scrabbling away from us, chunks of her long hair torn loose and left on the floor. Blood, too. Another woman shouted and tugged at her, but I didn’t turn to look.
Nope. I had work to do.
Specifically, I needed to kill Teeny with my bare hands. Then I’d tear him apart and eat his heart. Raw. He screamed like a bitch the whole time, and I heard Boonie yelling in the background. Then they hauled me off his ass, kicking and fighting because I’d well and truly lost my shit.
“What the fuck is happening here?” Picnic Hayes demanded. Beside him stood one of the Longnecks, a guy who looked a fuckuva lot like Teeny and I realized this must be the brother who was part of the club. Bax.
Bax wasn’t a happy camper. Fair enough. I was pretty fucking unhappy myself.
Teeny moaned on the floor, rolling onto his back, and I spat at him. Then I heard a sobbing noise—one that’d already been burned into my brain. Becca was crying, and I looked over to find her huddled up against Teeny’s old lady.
Shit. I hadn’t seen it before because the woman was so nasty and used up, but under that scrawny, tweaker body was an older copy of Becca. Had to be her mother . . . Even with the meth eating her, though, she seemed too young. If that was the mother, she must’ve had Becca really fucking early.
“She his daughter?” I asked her, my voice like a knife. The woman shook her head quickly, lips quivering. “You let him pimp her out?”
She looked away.
“Damn,” Picnic said. “This is a hell of a clusterfuck.”
“I’m not leaving her here. He’ll kill her.”
Pic shook his head slowly, thoughtfully, but I could see it in his face—he knew I was right.
“Yeah, she can come with us,” he said. “You up for that, Boon?”
My president nodded, eyes never leaving the huddled mass of blood and human filth crying on the floor.
“We’ll head out in twenty minutes,” Boonie said decisively. “Anyone got a problem with that?”
He looked around the room in challenge, and several of the Longnecks glanced away—apparently they weren’t going to stand up for Teeny. Said a hell of a lot about them in general and Teeny in particular. I mean, I was glad that we weren’t fighting our way out, but that’s just pathetic. They were happy to party with him. When it came time to take his back, they were gone.
“C’mon, let’s go upstairs and grab some of your shit,” I said to Becca, reaching toward her. She gave a little scream and pushed back with her feet, sliding across the floor to get away from me. Fuck.
“I’ll get her ready,” the mother said suddenly. Her voice quavered, but her eyes were resolute as they met mine. “She’ll go with you—just get her away from here. He’ll hurt her bad for this. Real bad.”