Jared collapsed back onto the ground, the fight draining from him. Had he been so wrapped up in his demons that he’d tried to drag Hoyt down with him?
1
Jared Crowe had felt the press of cold steel against his skin before, but he had never expected to feel it here, at his home. A place he hated.
“Lookee here, I done caught me a rat.” Her voice had that hill folk lilt to it. An accent he normally found revolting, but for some reason he couldn’t define, hers sounded nice.
Familiar.
Jared lowered his binoculars and placed them on the ground. The cold mountain air swirled through the mist that had not yet been dispelled by the early morning sun. Dry autumn leaves crackled, stirred up every now and then by a chilled breeze. A mockingbird let out a harsh caw down in the valley below, signaling a threat to his nest.
“Now, you keep them hands above your head and get up real nice and slow like. Don’t make me blow a hole in your head.” Okay, even if her voice was sexy, she was starting to piss him off.
Homegrown or terrorist he didn’t care—Jared didn’t like it when gun barrels were pressed to his head.
She stepped back and Jared pushed off the hard rocky dirt, careful to keep his arms away from his body. No need to alert her. He had time. She would look away. Blink. And then it would be over.
“All right, you’re doing good. Now turn around.”
Jared turned, just as slow and methodical as he had risen. Steam from his breath puffed in front of his face, but he didn’t feel the cold. And even if he had felt it, he wouldn’t have allowed it to affect him. His family had beaten any softness out of him long ago.
They’d beaten everything out of him.
He didn’t experience normal emotions. He knew he was broken, but he didn’t care enough to try and fix himself. It wasn’t like he had a family or wife in need of his emotional support. The only people who needed him were his brother and his unit, and a sensitive weakling would be of no use to any of them.
Maybe that’s why he found it so easy to smile at the woman in front of him, who was holding a shotgun as long as she was tall. “You fire that gun and it’ll knock you on your ass, girl.”
A wide-brimmed floppy leather hat obscured half her features, and damned if her clothes gave away any indication of her actual age. She looked like a little girl playing dress-up in her daddy’s clothes. Loose baggy jeans, baggy shirt, and a worn-out leather vest. He’d died and gone to hillbilly hell.
But her lush, tempting lips were all woman. Then she lifted her chin and he saw her eyes. Awareness sucker punched him and he drew in a small breath. Her eyes, the amber color of pure mountain whiskey. He’d known one girl—one person in his entire life—with those exotic gold eyes. “Sparrow.”
She blinked and steadied the butt of her shotgun against her shoulder, keeping a safe distance from him. “How do you know my name? What are you? You ain’t no cop and you ain’t no DEA. Them boys don’t wear the camo like you got on.”
Camouflage paint completely covered his face, and a black do rag was tied tight and flat against his head. She wouldn’t be able to recognize him in his war paint, not after all these years, and maybe that was for the best. He could reveal his identity later, take her by surprise and rip that gun out of her hands before she shot herself with it.
“You’re right, I’m not any type of law enforcement. If I were, you’d be a lot safer than you are right now.” Jared made his voice menacing. Even allowed a little bit of his old accent to slip in. Let her know she wasn’t dealing with some yuppie from the city who didn’t know his way around the back woods.
“Who are you?”
“I’ll keep that information to myself for now.” While he figured out the best course of action. He had no intention of harming this girl. She’d been the only one to show him kindness after his parents’ death all those years ago. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t use her to get into his aunt and uncle’s compound.
“If you won’t tell me, you’ll have to tell them.” She gestured past his shoulder. Jared glanced in that direction and spied two very large armed men.
A normal man would probably be scared.
But Jared hadn’t felt fear in over a decade. He turned back to face Sparrow and gave her a wink. “Too bad, I was looking forward to getting to know you better.”
Her eyes widened, her lips parted. She ducked her head, quickly obscuring her features with that monstrosity of a hat. But not before he’d seen the surprise. The fear.
Jared waited, calm and patient. He knew what it was to be feared. He waited for her hands to shake and tremble. Waited for her to back up a step and realize how close to danger she really was. But she didn’t. She lifted her chin once more and those warm amber eyes flashed cold. “Jimbo, Bob, I caught me a spy.”
As if to dare him, she stepped forward and placed her gun within his reach. If they’d been alone, he would have yanked it away from her. But not with two more guns pointed at his back
“You’re going to get to know me. Real, real good.”
*
Sparrow’s heart raced faster than a damn jackrabbit running from a fox. So much so that all she could hear was a buzz in her ears instead of individual heartbeats. Something about this man tugged at her memory.
How did he know her name? Sparrow gave a quick glance back at her adopted brothers, but their expressions gave away nothing. Not that they’d tell her anyway. Something was brewing between those two, something that boded ill for the mountain, and Sparrow couldn’t figure out what. She’d been spying and quietly questioning everyone she could trust, but had failed to turn up anything other than a bad feeling.
Maybe now she’d gotten the break she’d been waiting on.
Then he smiled, and her heart had stopped its furious pace altogether. That wasn’t a smile of warmth. It wasn’t even a smile of acknowledgment. No, that was a precursor of death. Hard flat black eyes did nothing but reflect her own image back at her.
Her survival instinct kicked into overdrive, but she smashed it down. She couldn’t afford to give herself over to fear. Not here. Not ever.
When Sparrow was eight years old, her mama, Tootsie, had finally overdosed on painkillers. Sparrow was the one who’d found her, naked and cold in their trailer. Tootsie’s day trade had been her body. Her night trade had been the pills. Always the pills. From a young age, Sparrow had learned that in order to survive she needed to take care of herself.
Then Miss Kay Crowe had taken her in, and Sparrow found herself a turn-key family. One ready for her to move in with for good. One with a mother who wasn’t a whore and a druggie. And even two real live older brothers. Even then Sparrow knew Kay wasn’t a good woman, but she had to be better than Tootsie. And if she was willing to take in a whore’s daughter, she had to be good deep down.
That innocent daydream quickly vanished. Her new brothers saw her as nothing more than a brat in need of a good beating, and they relished telling her the real reason why Miss Kay had taken Sparrow under her wing.
Miss Kay had made Tootsie a promise to watch out for Sparrow, and Tootsie had been Miss Kay’s top-selling whore.
“Better turn him over to someone who can handle him.” Jimbo’s words yanked Sparrow back to the present.
“Well, then I guess he better be staying with me, seein’ as how you lost the last one.” Sparrow let the words drip from her lips slow like molasses. Jimbo Crowe, her oldest adopted brother, had turned out to be the very opposite of a protective family member. He used to cuff her and slap her around when no one was looking. The abuse hadn’t ended until old man Squirrel taught Sparrow how to throw a knife. The next time Jimbo tried to corner Sparrow, she used her newfound skill to bury her knife into her adoptive brother’s hand.
Bob Crowe burst out laughing, his tall skinny stature the exact opposite of Jimbo’s big hulking one. “That girl don’t take shit from nobody.”
Jimbo’s eyes would’ve turned red with rage if he had possessed that ab
ility. Instead, his meaty hand shot out and wrapped around his little brother’s throat, easily lifting the man off the ground. “You were saying?”
Bob kicked like a runaway chicken about to get his head chopped off. Even made the gurgling sounds to go with it, before Jimbo dropped him to the ground.
Sparrow had to move fast or she was going to lose her prize to her brother. This was her chance to find out what was really going on, and for some reason, she didn’t want to see the camo man tortured by Jimbo. Torture was her brother’s specialty. “I stake my claim.”
She could feel the man’s eyes on her, and there was the creeping sensation he was seeing more than she wanted. But she couldn’t pay attention to him. Not yet.
Jimbo looked her up and down, and then spit a large wad of tobacco on the ground by his feet. “We’ll see how long that lasts.”
Then Jimbo turned and lumbered back toward home. Bob was a little lap dog at his heels.
“Tweedledee and Tweedledum,” the camo man said.
“Come again?” Tweedle what?
“You know, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, off the cartoon,” he said it like she was supposed to know what the hell he was talking about.
“Whatever. Now let’s me and you get something straight.” Sparrow took a small step back, her instincts warning her not to get too close. She could sniff a pig out a mile away, but this man wasn’t a cop. Which meant he couldn’t be bribed. Which was dangerous.
“I’m waiting.” That small smile was back on his face.
Sparrow wanted to rip it right off, but she held her peace.
“You belong to me now. You do what I say. When I say it.” Sparrow steadied the rifle against her shoulder, but he didn’t look the least bit worried.
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll turn you over to him.” She nodded at her retreating brother’s back.
He threw a hand up over his heart and stumbled back a step, “You’d just leave me like that? And here I thought we were making progress.” His words teased, but his black eyes were still as empty as a bar pit.
Her threats weren’t working against him, probably because he’d never seen what Jimbo could do with a hunting knife. But Sparrow had been forced to watch as her brother flayed a man’s back. She swallowed and looked up at the stranger through her thick lashes, careful to keep her thoughts hidden. “Turn around. We’re going home.”
“And what if I don’t?” He stepped forward and closed the distance between them, forcing her to tilt her head back to get a good look at him.
Her heart kicked up that furious pace again. What could she do?
“I can see your pulse racing. You’re scared. That’s smart.”
She’d spent years perfecting her front of indifference, but he saw right through her. And if he could see, so could her family. Sparrow gritted her teeth and put the end of the barrel underneath his chin. “If you don’t do as I say, then your brains are fixing to feed the birds.”
His smile disappeared and Sparrow felt a surge of dominance. For some reason, even though she held the rifle, she’d felt like he was the one in control of the situation.
“Careful, little girl. I don’t take kindly to having guns pointed at my head.”
“And I don’t take kindly to strangers spying on my family.” Sparrow held her breath, waiting on his reaction. If he so much as flinched, her over-itchy trigger finger might jerk. She’d never had to shoot a man before.
She studied him, trying to see the face beyond the camouflage paint, trying to get a read on his thoughts, but all she could make out was a strong square jaw. Full lips. Black soulless eyes.
Then his teeth flashed bright white against the black and green paint, the look on his face positively evil. “All right, I’ll go along with you. Where to, sweet thing?”
He turned around and Sparrow slowly and quietly exhaled the breath she’d been holding. She wasn’t stupid. She might be ignorant white trash, but she knew when death was staring her in the eyes.
And she had Satan himself at the end of her gun.
2
Jared walked back to his old house with all the enthusiasm of an inmate walking down death row. He didn’t feel the cold air, didn’t hear the leaves crunch beneath his boots. His vision tunneled on the half-moon circle of dilapidated wood shacks in the clearing ahead.
There were ten in all, plus a trailer on the far right. The largest cabin, the one that sat in the middle, housed the head of the Crowe clan, Miss Kay. She was a direct descendant of the infamous Ma Barker and twice as deadly. This camp acted as her headquarters, with the rest of her people spread out all over the county.
But it was the house just to the right of the middle that held his focus. It was a little house, with an even smaller closet. A closet with a bolt in the floor to which he and Hoyt had once been chained.
Chills skittered across his skin and dread settled heavy in his chest, but the fear he’d felt for so long as a child was absent. A killing rage had taken its place instead.
Two glass pane windows, dirty and faded and covered in cobwebs, sat on each side of a broken front door. A cypress porch littered with trash and warped with age and weather held up the front, just like he remembered. Hell on Crowe Mountain.
Sparrow propelled Jared into the clearing with that gun of hers pressed to his back. People stopped to stare, people he did not recognize. And thank God he didn’t, because if he saw his aunt and uncle right now, he’d be tempted to forget his entire guise and strangle them where they stood. No, the clothes and lean malnourished forms were the same, but the faces were unfamiliar. Jared took a deep calming breath. Remember your brother. He was here to rescue Hoyt. But later, once Hoyt was safe, Jared would return.
And he would demolish the Crowe family once and for all.
“Hang a right. We’re headed to that trailer over yonder.” Sparrow’s hillbilly twang drew him out of the dark chamber prison of his past.
The trailer would have been considered run down in any other place, and that was being generous, but here it fit right in. Half the underpinning lay twisted on the ground. A set of rickety wooden steps with no handrail led up to the front door. Still, the windows were intact, and there weren’t any gaping holes in the walls. That was about all he could say for this sorry excuse for a home. “Yours?”
“Yep. Bought and paid for.”
Jared turned to catch a brief blush rise on her cheeks, but that stupid, oversized hat swooped down and covered her expression.
He wanted to ask her exactly how long she’d saved up for the piece of shit, but there’d been a note of pride in her voice. He suspected the girl had probably worked long and hard for the privilege of having her own place.
He just prayed she didn’t work the way most women up here did—on her back, with her legs spread.
“Nice. I’m guessing that’s where I’ll be staying too?” Jared said.
“I know it probably ain’t what you’re used to, city boy. But yeah, that’s exactly where you’ll be staying.” Sparrow’s voice held a tinge of hurt and he regretted his tone.
“Good, it’s the best looking place out here. Do I get my own bed, or do I get to sleep in yours?” Jared stopped at the bottom of the steps. Sparrow stumbled forward, stopping just short of crashing into him. She backed up, but her fresh spring scent lingered in the air.
“Hey sexy, you can sleep in my bed,” someone said from behind him. “Hell, I’ll let a brawny man like you in for free too.”
Sparrow stiffened and Jared turned to see a woman, at least he thought she was a woman, approach. He barely checked a smile at her obvious attempt to swing her less than generous hips as she walked. Her hip bones poked out above a sagging mini skirt. Her crop top provided just enough material to cover an almost concave chest, revealing a starkly outlined ribcage. To top it all off, her smile showed two missing teeth. He suppressed a shiver.
“Back off Geraldine, he’s mine.” Sparrow swung her gun toward the woman. Geraldine stopped and scrat
ched her tangled hair. Probably lice.
“Whatcha mean yours? You don’t know what to do with any man, least of all a real man like that.” Apparently the threat of Sparrow’s gun was useless. Geraldine pushed the tip of the rifle aside and swaggered closer to Jared. “But I do. I got all kinds of tricks to please ya.”
Geraldine laid a hand against his chest and Jared flinched back. Lice would be the least harmful thing he could catch from her. “Sorry, ma’am, but I’m afraid I’m already spoken for.”
Before she could protest, a knife appeared around the front of her throat. Geraldine froze and lifted her chin. Jared grinned. His little mountain cat had sharp claws.
“You might not worry about my gun, but you know how good I am with a knife.” Sparrow spoke low and Geraldine trembled.
“I was just wantin’ a touch. We ain’t got no menfolk like him up here.” Her words were cut off when Sparrow eased the blade a little deeper into her neck. Not enough to draw blood, but more than enough to get the point across.
“You remember what we did to Jack Wideman?”
Jared watched, fascinated, as every single ounce of blood drained from Geraldine’s face. Sparrow’s answering smile was feral. “Yeah, I see you do. If I see you waggin’ your scrawny butt near this man again, I’ll give you a personal lesson, just like I did with Jack.”
“No. No…I…I won’t touch him. Never.”
Sparrow thrust the woman away from the trailer and Jared side-stepped to avoid further contact. Geraldine wrapped a bony hand around her throat and took off.
“Dang it, I’ll have to disinfect my knife after touching that trash.” Sparrow wiped the blade on her pants and tucked it into a hidden sheath at her side.
“You were awfully rough on her.”
“You want her touching you?” Sparrow asked.
Not with a hundred-foot pole. He recognized walking syphilis. “No. But she didn’t mean any harm.”
Sparrow scanned the clearing behind them and picked her rifle up off the ground. The few people still walking around quickly made their way inside. Interesting. This little scrawny girl seemed to invoke some fear in these folk.
Reckless River: Men of Mercy, Book 3 Page 2