by Parker, Zoey
I turn the bike in the direction of his house, hoping he’s not too drunk to listen to reason. Otherwise, there’s no way I’ll make it to Christina.
Chapter 31
I ride to Adam’s, taking the back way through the woods. I can’t risk being caught by the police. It’s not easy navigating through the trees in the dark. It’s better than the alternative of being taken into the station, though, leaving Christina to fend for herself.
I try not to visit these woods unless I have to. It’s hard enough living on the outskirts of them, waking up every morning to see them outside my window. The woods where my wife died.
I remember the first time I met her. It was at a party. I’d only started hanging around with the club, looking for a way in. Adam had noticed me sort of hanging around the fringes, had pulled me aside to ask me what I was doing there. I told him I wanted to part of the club. He’d laughed, throwing his head back. I’d been embarrassed, but I hadn’t backed down.
When he saw I was serious, he got serious, too. “You know what you’re getting yourself into when you join this club?” he’d asked, looking me straight in the eye. “Once you get in, you can’t leave. Not ever. It’s like a mafia, kid.” I’d been impressed by him, though he was only a few years older than me. He was confident, cocky. He struck me as a guy who had seen things. I’d wanted to be just like him.
He had decided to sponsor me, so to speak, vouching for me with Frankie. He brought me into the party, introducing me around. “This is my kid sister, Marissa.” She was so pretty. Like an angel. A halo of golden curls, an easy smile. She was funny, too, and tough. We spent a long time talking.
I was hooked from that first night. The way they lived. Hot girls, plenty of booze, dancing. Living it up. The image was too tempting to resist. Nobody told me that was just a good night, a celebration. Life wasn’t always that way. Normally it was gritty, rough, even a little scary sometimes. A member never admitted to being afraid, of course.
Once I met Marissa, though, there was no question of whether or not I wanted to join. I only wanted to know how to get on the fast track to a patch. If she wanted to be part of this world, so did I. I’d go anywhere she went.
Look where it got me.
I finally reach the clearing. Adam’s house is only a mile or so up the narrow dirt road. The area back here is considerably less built-up than even where I live. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a few shacks back here. God only knows what went on in the places nice people didn’t like to talk about.
Adam’s house is mostly dark, only one light on. The kitchen light. I know he’s sitting in there, probably drinking himself into a stupor at the table. He was always a heavy drinker, but back in the day, he could handle his liquor. That time has come and gone. Now he’s gained at least twenty, maybe thirty pounds. He looks flabby, fleshy. Not the man I used to know.
Then again, I came close to falling into a dark hole after Marissa died. I know how easy it would have been to crawl into a bottle and never come out. I spent weeks nearly unconscious once the questioning was over and it was agreed there was no evidence that could make charges against me stick. After that was over, I started drinking and didn’t stop for an entire season. I missed a whole summer, either drinking, passed out drunk or hungover before getting drunk again.
I’m not sure what stopped me. I sure didn’t have anybody in my life to offer me support. A parent, a sibling, a friend—one of them might have helped me. They could have shown me a better way, sent me to a doctor. Anything. I was all alone.
It’s all hazy, the day I decided to stop drinking. I woke up in a whorehouse on the other side of the town’s outskirts. The shady area, near where I grew up. A dirty, windowless place where girls with track marks on their arms would do just about anything for money. I hadn’t gone for sex—even though I’d hit rock bottom, I still had a shred of common sense. I just wanted to drink and be left alone. They’d serve me there. The bars wouldn’t once I got past a certain point.
I woke up one morning in a puddle of my vomit. There were girls on the floor, girls on couches. One girl was sleeping on the sticky bar. And me. The place reeked. A few girls were moaning, having just shot up. What the fuck was I doing with my life? That was enough to turn me around.
I find it hard to believe Adam hasn’t hit rock bottom yet. Maybe he has and doesn’t know it. Regardless, I need his help and hope he’s in the right shape to give it to me. I knock on his door. Almost a minute passes before I hear him shuffling toward it. His face appears in the window.
“Hey, man. Please. Open up. I have to talk to you.” He shakes his head. “Please, I’m begging you. It’s an emergency. I’ll tell you about it but please, open the door. I’m on the run. I can’t let them find me. They can’t see me standing here.”
“What do I care? As long as I don’t open the door, they’ll leave me alone. Get off my property!”
“Please, Adam. I need you. We can have this out tonight, but after that I need you. It’s life-or-death.”
It looks like he’s thinking this over. Finally, I add. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know.” It’s the last thing I want to do, but I know it’s the only thing that will make him trust me.
“Everything?” His voice just barely makes it to my ears.
“Yeah. Please, Adam. I need your help. I’ll tell you everything, anything.”
The lock flips, the door opens. “Come in.”
I hurry inside, shutting the door behind me as fast as I can.
“Where’s your bike?” Adam slurs, turning on one of the lamps in the living room before flopping onto to the couch. The room is dark even with the light. Dank. Dirty. Bare walls, secondhand furniture. What happened to him?
“In the woods, maybe five minutes’ walk from here,” I explain. “I don’t want them to see it here. And I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“Wow, thanks,” he says, sarcastic.
“Adam, please.”
“Listen, I only let you in here because if you’re on the run, I don’t want cops seeing you outside. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say, though. Your words don’t mean anything to me.”
“Adam, come on! I told you, I’m ready to admit everything that happened. I need you to trust me.”
“Like my sister did? The way she trusted you to love her when you married her? That was a joke, just like this is.” There’s a bottle of whiskey sitting beside him on the end table. He uncaps it, raising it to his mouth. Damn it. The drunker he is, the less likely he is to listen to me.
“I did love her. I still do. Why do you think I stay in this shitty place? In that house? With reminders of her everywhere I look?”
“Because you need to, so you look innocent. Hey, I’ve thought this all out before. I’ve wondered what the hell you’re trying to prove, staying there. You’re right. You could go anywhere. You have no ties. No parents, no kids. The club wants nothing to do with you. Nobody here wants anything to do with you. You only stayed so you’d look like the good guy. And to piss the rest of us off.”
I sigh. He’s not far from the truth. “You’re right, partly. I did want to piss you off at first. I wanted to prove I had nothing to run from. If I had left town, it would have been enough to make people’s minds up for good that I’d killed Marissa. I couldn’t do that. Because I didn’t kill her.” He laughs. “I didn’t. I loved her. I haven’t wanted to let go of her in all this time. I swear it.”
“You swear?”
“Yes. I do.”
“On a stack of bibles?” He laughs again, taking another swig.
“Look, damn it.” I sit on his coffee table, facing him. Cigarette ash covers it, the ashtrays overflowing. It feels vaguely sticky. “I don’t know any other way to tell you this. I didn’t kill your sister. I loved her. Everybody assumed it was this bullshit crime of passion, or whatever. The truth was way deeper than that, man.”
“Oh, really? How long did it take you to come up with some big story? Two
years? Why couldn’t you have just told the truth back then, if it was so deep?”
I look at the floor. “Because it would have hurt you too much.” I hear his hysterical laughter.
“It would have hurt me? Are you fucking serious?” He laughs again, and I hear the tears threatening. He’s on the edge of a breakdown. “Because this doesn’t already hurt? My sister’s dead either way, man. Don’t pretend you were trying to spare my feelings but not telling me this big truth, this deep story. That’s the biggest load of crap you’ve laid on me yet.”
I look up at him, sitting there. He’s practically falling over. I have to get this out before he loses all control.
“I told you I’d tell the truth. I will. But you have to listen. Okay? Stay with me. You keep drinking, you’re gonna pass the fuck out before I get the chance. And I can’t be here long.”
“What’s the big hurry? Why are they after you?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. First I have to tell you the story. I need to get this off my chest, man. And I don’t know…if I’ll make it back. You deserve to know the truth before I go.”
“Fine.” He waits for me to continue.
I take a deep, shuddering breath. I’m sorry, Marissa.
“I didn’t kill Marissa in the woods that day. I followed her there when I realized she took my gun. I was trying to keep her from killing herself.”
Chapter 32
Adam doesn’t look impressed by the bombshell I just dropped. “What are you talking about? I expected something lame, but I never expected it to be this pathetic.”
I knew he’d feel this way. “It sounds like a convenient excuse. I understand.”
“Yeah. Convenient. Exactly.”
“But it’s true.” I stare at him, needing him to believe me.
“Marissa didn’t have it in her it to kill herself.”
“Adam, when a person’s in as deep as she was…they’re capable of anything. Heroin changes a person. She wasn’t the person you knew, the kid sister. She wasn’t even the girl I met that first night. Remember? When you introduced us at the party?”
His eyes get hazy, a far-away expression. “Yeah. She was, what, fifteen?”
I nod. “I was only sixteen. I’d been dying to get into the club for years, no matter what it took. You found me hanging around outside that party.”
“I wish I hadn’t.”
“You know what? Sometimes I wish the same damn thing. But that’s what happened. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been somebody else. I remember the way she was that night. So beautiful. And a lot older than just fifteen. She was worldly, she knew things. She could tell me the names of everybody there, all the guys in the club and their girlfriends, all the girls who hung out to service the members or just party. She knew them all, knew their stories. Knew the entire world. I wanted to be part of that world, so I drank it up. It was fascinating. I remember how perfect she was.”
“She was perfect.”
“She wasn’t anymore by the time she died, man. This is what I’m trying to remind you. You remember her as that little girl. A lot of shit went down between that night and the day she died. She wasn’t even smoking pot when I met her—nothing. She was totally clean. All that stuff came after. I watched her decline. Every day, she got a little worse. I know you know it. I know you saw it. You told me at the time how worried you were about her. How you wanted her to go to rehab. Remember?”
After a long time, he nods. I continue. “Believe me. I’m not trying to bring this up to hurt you, or ruin your memory of her. I have a lot of memories of Marissa that nothing can touch. I loved her so damn much. What happened to her, what she became? That was a different person, man. I would never have believed she was capable of half the shit she did. Suicide is the least of it.”
“Why would she do that? I mean, if I believed you—which I don’t—why would my sister try to kill herself? Or did she not get the chance to tell you?”
“She told me. She told me everything. She’d been keeping secrets from me for a long time.”
“And?”
This is the part I knew would hurt him the most. The main reason I never wanted to tell him in the first place.
“Remember that big blow-up we had, around three months before she died? With the cartel? And the guns?”
“Who could forget that? It was a bloodbath.”
I nod. “Yeah. It was. We lost five men. Including Frankie.”
“It was Frankie’s baby, that deal. He’d been in with the cartel for years. That was our biggest moneymaker.”
“Yeah, it was. He was a good leader. He wanted what was best for the club.” I look at Adam, stressing what’s coming next. “Until he got greedy.”
“Greedy? What’s that mean?”
“Why do you think they killed him that night at the warehouse? Seriously, man. Does it make any sense? He was good friends with the head of the cartel. They’d been working together for years, went way back. What went down? We never got the slightest word there was a problem. No complaints, no threats. Nothing. How does that work?”
Adam shrugs. “Bad blood. It happens.”
“Right. And that’s what they wanted everyone to think, the cartel members. They’d had a falling out. Well, they did, only it wasn’t over the actual business deal. On paper, everybody should have been happy. It was over Frankie skimming off the top.”
“What? No. Frankie wouldn’t do that.”
“Get real, man. He did. He saw how much more money he could make if he sold the guns for more than he told the cartel he was getting. He’d been doing it for about a year before they caught on.”
“No! How could he get away with something like that without any of us knowing?”
I shrug. “Maybe because we all loved him so much, none of us wanted to see it. I mean, I’m sitting here telling you about it, and you still don’t want to.”
“Because it’s easy for you to say years after the man was killed!”
“I understand that. But what I’m telling you is true, man. When they walked into that sale at the warehouse, Frankie and the guys, the cartel was lying in wait. Took out all the other guys—they had no idea what was happening, they were just going along because Frankie was our president. Trusting him blindly, the way we all did. Then they killed Frankie. I imagine they saved him for last, but maybe they took him quick. Who knows?”
Adam takes this in. “If this is true—and I still think you’re lying—but if it’s true, how the hell do you know?”
I sigh, folding my hands between my spread knees. “I know because Marissa told me. Out in the woods that day.”
“What? Marissa? How would she know about this?”
“Marissa knew a lot more than she let on. More than I knew, for sure.”
“She was your old lady! She wasn’t in on anything!”
“Right. Just an old lady. Who was having an affair with Frankie.”
Adam gasps. His eyes are wide, like saucers. I know my words have hit home.
“You okay?” I ask.
“I don’t believe it.” Something about the look on his face tells me he’s lying, though. He does believe it. He just doesn’t want to.
“She told me herself. Confessed it all. That day in the woods.”
“I mean…” Adam looks off into the distance. “Here’s the thing, right? I knew Frankie was always screwing around.”
“We all did. His dick was never dry. Girls loved him,” I agree. Frankie was a leader for a reason. He had that special something that set him apart. Magnetism. Then, once he took his place at the head of the club, that power was even more reason for women to hang off him. Power’s a turn-on.
“I noticed he got real secretive about his women toward the end. I even wondered, more than once, if there was a piece on the side he wasn’t telling anybody about.” He looks at me, his eyes big and sad. “It was Marissa?”
I nod. “Yeah. For around a year.”
“What? A year? How didn’t I kn
ow?”
I laugh. “You? I didn’t even know! Not until she told me. Yeah, I suspected something was going on. But I blamed it on…”
“…the drugs,” Adam finishes.
I nod. “You knew about that?”
“Jax, I tried like hell to get her to stop that shit. I really did.”
“I know, man. So did I. It was stronger than us.”
“So they were together for a year, and none of us knew?” He still has trouble believing it. I don’t blame him. Aside from ratting, sleeping with the old lady of another member—wife or otherwise—is the ultimate treachery. You’re pretty much telling a guy he’s not man enough for his woman, and you’re gonna take her instead.
“So she told me.”
“I always thought you two were so happy together. I did.”
“Yeah?” I can’t help snapping. “That’s not what you told the police, is it?”
He winces. I can’t help feeling smug. I want him to feel like shit over the things he told them about me. “I meant you weren’t happy in the end. Don’t pretend you were. There was a lot of shit going on between you two.”
I nod. “That’s fair. But it was all over the drugs. And Frankie. Once she started up with him, I looked…less appealing.” It stings, admitting that. No man wants to admit he wasn’t enough. Especially not me. Then I add, “Plus, he didn’t care about the drugs. Whether or not she used. That was one of our biggest problems, the way I gave her hell over the H. I couldn’t let her do it without saying something. I loved her. Frankie? He didn’t care. She was a piece of ass.”
Adam stirs defensively. I hold up a hand to stop him. “Come on, man. You know how he talked about women. They were bitches, whores, skanks. Pieces of ass. Think about it. If he loved her the way we did, would he have let her keep shooting up?”
That stops him. He shakes his head.
“We were fine until she started up with that shit again. Hell, for all I know, Frankie gave it to her.” My voice is bitter. “I never saw the hypocrisy until it was too late. All that ‘love your brother’ shit. He was a backstabbing son of a bitch. Always was.”