They both will.
“Hazel, baby, I need you to talk to me. I need to know you’re okay.”
I hiccup a laugh, because of course he’s worried about that.
Of course he’s worried about me being safe.
Archer is always going to be a caregiver. First and forever.
“I know who killed Crystal Watson and her family. And Beth Griffins.”
Beth matters, even if my brother and Archer don’t see how, yet.
Stories and family and betrayal and secrets—all seething along under the surface.
That’s what the County has always been.
What it will always be.
“What are you talking about?” Archer asks, his voice low and tight and angry.
“They want something from me. It’s not illegal, so calm down. But I have to do this. I have to tell their story.”
“Why? They’re dangerous, Hazel. Why the fuck wouldn’t you tell me?”
“Because they threatened you. They said that what they did to Crystal, they’d do to you and Eli and Nora.” I take a breath, and then, “And they took Gabriel.”
Eli makes a noise, all broken and hurt and I swallow hard. Oh, Gabriel.
When this is over, and Gabe is safely home. I’m going to lock the two of them in a room together to sort out whatever is keeping them apart.
“He’s fine, Lijah,” I lie. “They haven’t hurt him. They just need him to leverage against me. And I’m doing what they say—I’m bringing him home.”
“No,” Archer snaps. “You get your ass to the house, and we’ll decide what—”
“I have to go, Archer. Go over the information Jase sent you. I’m—I’ll be home in a few hours. I have to do this. They want their story told. After that, you can arrest whoever you want. But they want their story told. Let me do my job.”
“Hazel,” Eli says, his voice this choked, desperate thing. “Hazel, please.”
I make a soft shushing sound in my throat. “This isn’t Amy, Eli. Gabriel is going to be fine. We’re bringing him home.”
He cries then, and I hang up.
My brother has Archer and Archer will take care of him.
But. There is another brother who needs—I mutter a curse and scroll through my contacts until I find it.
There is a ring. Two. Three.
Stubborn, reclusive bastard.
“Hello?” The voice rasps across the line like thunder and falling rocks, all deep and authority and impatience.
Aiden Delvin never did have much patience for anything beyond the Rayburn brothers and Gabriel and his photography.
“Aiden, it’s Hazel Campton.”
There’s a beat of silence and then, “What’s wrong?”
Fair enough. He was also always too damn smart for his own good.
“Gabriel. He—there are some people. They want me to do something for them. And I am. But they took Gabriel.”
“Is he alive?” Aiden snaps, and I hear a voice in the background, a voice we both ignore.
“Yes.”
“I want to talk to him.”
I hesitate, and Aiden snarls a curse. “You don’t have him?”
“I’m working on it.”
There’s a furious silence, long and tense and then, “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Tomorrow at the latest.”
“Aiden, you—”
I hesitate. Because as much as I want to say he doesn’t need to come home. I know better.
Gabriel is going through hell. And having his favorite brother by his side when he comes home—that won’t hurt anything.
So I ask the question that is hanging between us, waiting to be acknowledged. “You haven’t been back in eight years, Aidan. Are you okay with this?”
“He’s my brother, Hazel,” he says, his voice very empty. Like that is all that matters.
Which is true enough.
King is a small man with a neatly trimmed beard, an impeccable suit, and a black Rottweiler sitting next to him, watching me approach.
“Ahh. I did wonder. It makes sense, that they would use you.”
“My brothers are cops,” I say, softly.
“You’ve enough of a reputation outside the County that you could be a threat, if you wanted to be. And in the County? Well. You’re a third of the Airplane Orphans. You’re a County favorite, darling.”
“Why are they trying to bring you down?” I demand.
And King laughs. “Do you really think that’s what they’re doing? Those three? What they hell would they do with the vacuum? Michael doesn’t want to run a criminal network like Morningstar. He just wants his sister happy and kept in a steady supply of drugs.”
“Then what is this about?”
“It’s about the mother,” King says, easily. “And about that fucking whore, Scarlett.”
I lean forward, staring.
“Tell me.”
King studies me, for a long moment.
And then he tells me everything.
The story. It’s the story that twisted up everything. The story I wanted and didn’t know I was chasing, when I came home.
And as I stare at it, blinking at the submit button.
The County Gazette will publish it, if I send it to them.
So will my old boss, at the e-zine back in Boston. Because the story is fascinating and intriguing and impossibly sensational.
And true.
So true. I hit publish.
The thing about Green County is that it’s home. It’s not a small town—but it has that feel to it. Like everyone knows everything about everyone. We know who married who last weekend, and how long they dated before that. We know who fucked before they married.
We know all there is to know. The good—Louise makes the best pie in the County, and has since her great grandma gave her the recipe. The bad—Marks Automotive is where you go to get a cheap car, but you’ll pay for it in repairs a week later, and everyone will gossip for months about what an idiot you are. The ugly—well. We don’t talk about the ugly. It’s abusive husbands and the mamas’ who take a little pill to get through playdates and dinner time, and the girls who give blow jobs to pass AP English and the boys who spike their girlfriends’ drinks at party.
But that’s not all.
Here’s the secret.
Green County is no different from any other small town Americana you’ll find sprawled across the Heartland. It’s kind and generous and frustrating and under it all, there are a thousand secrets that no one will address.
That is the truth of every small town. But ours more than most.
Three days ago, four people were killed. The papers will continue parsing it apart, trying to tease out a reason.
Some will say it was senseless violence.
But some aren’t me. And I’m here to tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there was a girl and two brothers and they were happy.
I wish that is where this story ends. A simple fairy tale, as easy as it is short, and utterly unremarkable.
It’s not.
Nothing is ever truly without reason.
A girl grows up alone, with only her brothers and their fumbling concern. A girl with demons and a deep need to be loved. To matter.
This isn’t to say she was perfect. She wasn’t. She was beautiful, but cold and calculating and cruel.
But children become the thing they are shaped into.
Once upon a time, there was a woman. She was smart and hungry, and poor. And she made choices.
She fought her way from a working girl in the streets of Kansas City, to be the favorite of her pimp. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted to be the power that moved pawns. She wasn’t happy as the pretty face on the arm of a powerful, dangerous man.
She wanted his power. His danger.
Green County is a small place. It’s not the kind of place that would seem like a spot for a criminal organization.
Why do two women fight? Why does a place as small as Green County become such a valuab
le piece of a criminal empire?
Why are four people killed so brutally?
It’s like everything else in Green County. It’s family.
Want.
Family.
Betrayal.
Once upon a time, Hanna McGrey hated the mother who deserted her. She walked away from dangerous people, and took her brothers with her, and stole the drug trade of a powerful criminal empire, because she hated her mother.
And all things have consequence.
It was on a cold night, almost six months ago. Her brothers were out, dealing with their street dealers, while Hanna worked at home.
She was alone.
Strange in and of itself, because her brothers were almost obsessive in their diligence, keeping her protected.
The attack came quickly, brutally quickly. Two people.
Scarlett Materson. A dirty cop who vanished when her ties to the criminal empire came to light. There was speculation, that she ran the whores in Green County.
What wasn’t speculation was that Hanna’s mother considered Scarlett a surrogate daughter.
Another oddity—that the surrogate daughter of Hanna’s estranged mother would lead the attack on her.
Scarlett took a few boys with her, and they tore into Hanna.
The attack wasn’t sexual.
That was the only concession they made for her.
But when it was over, Hanna was barely alive. She had three broken ribs, a shattered wrist, her leg was broken in three places. Her face had been especially brutalized—her jaw shattered. She was concussed and had a ruptured spleen, a collapsed lung.
She was dying.
The message was simple.
Back off.
Scarlett and her boys worked for other people. And that was who Hanna’s brothers wanted.
They were patient.
They waited, while Hanna recovered, a slow fucking process—and she wouldn’t. Not really. She wouldn’t ever be the kind of ethereal untouched lovely she had been, before the attack.
And while they waited, they learned.
Scarlett ran the whores in Green County. But the two people she answered to? Ran everything.
Kathy McGrey. And Rusty Watson.
You know his name, now.
His daughter was in that house. So was her best friend—a young woman with a bright future and a tiny baby who will grow up alone.
It looked, on the surface, like a home invasion. It was supposed to.
It wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. Nothing in this town is ever simple, and John and Michael McGrey had never allowed anyone to harm their sister.
Slaughtering John’s family. Killing the mother of his illegitimate child. It wasn’t random. It was justice. The kind of fucked up justice that makes sense, in the world of secrets and crime.
I wonder, if Scarlett is still alive. I wonder what hole she’s hiding in and if the McGreys will find her before they turn themselves in.
A tiny part of me hopes that they will.
Secrets and lies and family. That’s what makes up this County. What has always made up this County.
The brutality we saw, this week. It was one family’s secrets and rage.
I wonder if that will be the end of it. But I know. It’s not.
Because secrets. They’re everywhere.
And they’ll come to light.
I’m waiting for it.
Sitting in a booth at Mama’s. My phone is going off, alive with texts and fury from my brother and Archer.
The story is bouncing out, further than just our little County. Jase is doing what he can, making it spread.
The text doesn’t surprise me. Not really.
Unkown: Meet us at the Black Prism. Bring the cops.
Some of my tension eases. Mama Nora is standing near the table and I shiver under her hard stare. “You okay, Hazy Girl?”
I remember when she first called me that. I was thirteen, and still closed off. Still refused to get close to anyone but Eli. Still lost in my own mind and my books, more than present here.
She said when I looked at the world, I looked through a haze. Smiled, so full of affection and warmth that it hurt, to see. Called me Hazy Girl, and it stuck.
I smile, and blink away the memory. “Yeah, Mama. I’m okay.”
She doesn’t push me, just gives me a worried sort of look, and backs away, going to fill coffee for someone else.
I look at the phone again.
Hazel: Meet me at Mama’s. Hurry.
They hate it.
Both of them.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. We aren’t playing by Archer and Eli’s rules. Not this time. The strings are still being pulled by Michael and Hanna.
So we go.
All three of us, together, and I will never tell them, but it feels right. Being together, like this, even with the uncertainty and danger. It feels right.
Three killers, two cops, and a journalist walk into a bar.
Sounds like a bad joke, right? It’s not.
It’s the end--dear god I hope it’s the end--of the worst day if my life.
I just hope we all walk out alive.
The Black Prism isn’t a bar. Not really. It’s a club, and it belongs to Seamus King.
Slimy bastard. Eli and I have been watching him for years, but there’s never been anything we could actually pin on him.
Somehow I don’t think that today will change that. The Prism isn’t being offered up so King can bare his neck for the GCPD.
“Eli,” I murmur, and he nods, pulling Hazel close. She huffs her displeasure but doesn’t argue as I walk deeper into the empty club.
“Drink, gentlemen?”
I suck in a breath as I see King behind the bar. He’s got a cocky sort of smile on his lips. Like this is a grand adventure and a big joke.
Like he knows damn well that whatever happens, he’s walking out of here.
“Where are they?” Hazel demands, leaning forward.
“Patience, darling. You’ve done beautifully.”
“King!”
The voice is like a nightmare. Shrill and taunting and furious, and so fucking familiar. Eli makes a low noise, all rage and hurt and I step toward my brother, catching his eye. King lifts a hand, and I realize something.
We’re still in the shadows. Deep in the shadows, where it is too easy for us to be overlooked.
Hazel realizes it too, at the same instance, and her gasp is only just barely muffled.
We aren’t here to participate.
We’re observers.
Scarlett Materson stalks from a long hall at the back of the bar. She looks the same as she’s always looked—small, and beautiful and dark. Dark brown hair pulled up into a tight pony tail. Tight black pants and a red top that highlights all her best features.
And she’s furious.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she demands, and King gives her a bland look. “You said you’d control the McGreys. That they wouldn’t be a problem for Morningstar.”
“I did,” King says agreeably.
“Then what the actual fuck is this?”
She throws down a tablet, and I feel Hazel give this little twitch, a smirk turning her lips.
“That, Scarlett, looks like an expose.”
“How the fuck do you consider this controlling them?”
“Calm down,” a deep male voice orders, and Hazel shivers. Scarlett stops, abruptly, like a puppet with cut strings.
Rusty Watson looks different than the last time I saw him. Less wrecked. There is grief, in those dark eyes of his. A set of world-weary and defeated to his shoulders that I’d bet was new.
But he doesn’t look like he’s one strong word away from falling apart.
We really should have talked to Crystal’s father.
“King.”
“You expect me to control them when your tortured their fucking sister?” King snarls. “You’ve met John, haven’t you? The boy is an animal. And Michael let him off leash
—for what you did. Don’t blame me if that mess lands on you.”
There’s a moment of utter silence, and then Rusty snarls and lunges forward. “That was my family, you bastard!” he roars.
“Calm down,” Scarlett shouts, throwing herself into Rusty and knocking him away from King.
“I told you when you attacked her, that there would be consequences. You should have left them the fuck alone,” King spits.
“I’m going to kill them,” Rusty says, softly, almost to himself and Scarlett sighs. “There’s no fucking way I’m letting those bastards kill my family like that, and—”
“We didn’t kill them all,” Michael says.
The reaction is instant. Rusty’s pulled a gun and trained it on Michael before the words die. Fury rippling through him.
How the fuck did I think that the grief stricken father was anything other than a threat? How did I buy into that fucking act?
“You’re a stupid bastard, coming here,” Rusty breathes.
Michael spreads his hands, and shrugs. “Maybe. Or maybe, if my brother doesn’t hear from me in the next fifteen minutes, he kills the kid. Maybe, if my sister doesn’t hear from me, she sends every file and document we’ve ever copied from Naomi to the cops.” He stills. “Maybe I am stupid. But I’m not so stupid that you’ll shoot me here and not feel the consequences.”
“And maybe I don’t give a fuck.” Rusty spits, stepping forward.
Michael laughs. “You should have left us alone. That’s all we wanted.”
“You wanted to ruin her,” Scarlett snarls and Michael turns his gaze on the girl who destroyed my brother, once.
“No, we didn’t. But Hanna does want to take everything from her.”
The words stutter. Catch. Rusty’s face twitches into confusion and I hear Eli’s snarled curse, hear Hazel gasping his name. But it’s all distant.
So fucking far away.
The only thing that makes sense, that makes it through the haze of confusion, is the gun.
Michael’s hand, filled with the black metal of the gun, and Scarlett’s eyes, so wide and startled.
The echoing report of it, and she makes a noise. Something like a gasp, all wet and stunned and pained.
Eli howls, a noise that is too full of loss to make any kind of sense.
Nothing makes sense.
Dirty Sexy Secret (Green County Book 1) Page 15