by Tess Sharpe
But then Mo smiles too.
“You think that I need to call McKenna every time some pitiful piece of shit like you comes crashing through my gates?”
His mouth twists meanly, condescension dripping from his words as he says, “I won’t hurt anyone if you just give me Katie.”
“Harley,” Mo calls. “How many cottages do we have?”
“Forty,” I answer.
“Forty,” Mo repeats, jerking her thumb back at the cottages behind her. “Forty cottages. Forty doors. Forty women behind them. With forty guns in their hands.” She pauses deliberately. “Harley, would you want to play those odds?”
“Nope,” I say, staring at Aaron hard. “That would be downright foolish of me, Mo.”
“You’re a smart girl,” Mo says, never taking her eyes off him. “Are you smart, Aaron?” she asks. “Or do you have a death wish? Because it takes just one word from me, and they come out shooting.”
“I want my girl,” he repeats, like a broken record.
“You’re never getting Katie,” Mo says. “It’s not just me or Harley or McKenna or Hawes standing in your way. To get to her, you will have to go through every single woman living here. And if by some miracle, you manage that, and Katie’s left standing? She’ll take you out. Because you may not have taught her how to defend herself, but I did.”
She still doesn’t raise her gun. She doesn’t need to. She just stands there, staring him down like he’s a speck of dirt on her shoe. “Get out. Or we will come for you. And we will not be kind or gentle.”
I’m tensed, poised for the second he moves. He’s going to lunge or reach or punch any second. I know it.
But then, he steps away. He spits on the ground near Mo’s feet, and his voice full of disgust, says, “She’s not worth it, anyway. She’s not pure anymore.”
Mo shifts as he backs up toward his truck. She waits as he gets inside, the hood still smoking as he starts it up. As he throws the car into reverse and heads out, she follows, until he’s driven off the property, heading toward the main road.
She stands at the entrance of the Ruby where the gate used to be, and I join her, watching as his taillights fade in the rain.
“He might come back,” I say. It’s not an accusation, but Mo raises her eyebrow at my words.
“Sometimes, we have to do things my way,” she says. “He comes back, we’ll do things your way. Agreed?”
I nod.
We walk back to the cottages, and Mo pounds on the door of the nearest one. “All clear!” she shouts.
The doors open slowly, and the women come out, pulling on jackets and opening umbrellas. Katie runs down the path past the rest of them. Her dark hair streams behind her, and she throws herself into Mo’s arms.
Mo holds her tight, cradling the back of her head. “It’s okay, honey,” she assures her. “I wasn’t gonna let him near you.”
“Everyone okay?” I ask, looking over to the women who’ve gathered around the two of them. They nod, but I can feel it in the air, the spark of fear. “I’ll get the gate fixed tomorrow,” I promise. “And I’ll stay tonight. No one will bother us.”
“You did good,” Mo says, addressing all of them. “Just like everyone practiced. Are the kids okay?”
“Amanda’s playing with them,” Katie says, wiping at her eyes.
“Good,” Mo says, and I watch as she takes a breath, her eyes closing for a second. I want to reach forward, to steady her, but I don’t.
She doesn’t need me to.
“Let’s get the gate moved and out of the way,” she says, clapping her hands together. “And after, we’ll get pizza for the kids. Do a movie night in the game room.”
I join them as we move the busted gate to the side. It takes half of us to drag it out of the way, but we manage. Glass from Aaron’s truck crunches underneath my feet, but I ignore it.
Later, in the game room, while the kids eat pizza and the cupcakes that Amanda had brought over from the diner, I watch as Mo moves from woman to woman, talking, listening, checking in with each one. I watch as some of the worry drains from their faces, replaced by smiles, laughter, and fondness as they watch the children.
Mo knows every story, every detail, every bruise and broken bone on every woman’s who’s ever lived here’s body. Sometimes I think I understand, and then something happens, like today, and I realize I’ve just scraped the surface. Of the evil in the world. Of the good.
Of the strength in every woman.
My daddy may have taught me who I have to be to rule.
But Mo is the woman who teaches me who I have to be to lead.
Eight
June 6, 10:30 a.m.
Now that I need to track down Jessa, I can’t avoid being late for my meeting at the Tropics. I flip open my glove compartment, where I have three phones stashed. I grab mine, leaving the burner and the black one inside, and text Cooper that I’m stuck doing some business.
I crank the AC up high in my truck before driving the six miles west leading to the riverfront. If anyone’s gonna give me information about the happenings on the other side, it’s the people who live by the east bank.
The river cuts through North County like a warning. Deadly in places if you don’t know how to handle the rapids, and home to the salmon the Wintu pull from the water every summer.
Salt Creek’s on one side, as well as three-quarters of North County.
Blue Basin’s on the other. Springfield territory.
Carl Springfield never should’ve survived the explosion that killed Momma and Desirée, Will’s mother. But he’s always wiggling out from whatever tight spot he’s got himself into. Explosions, prison, even Duke’s vengeance—he’s always slipping free.
It took me months after Momma died before I got the full story, pieced together in snatches of conversations and arguments between Duke and Uncle Jake. But when Miss Lissa and Will came to live with us, it was Will, whispering in my ear, high up in the deer blinds as we played, who truly filled in the blanks.
Carl and Desi had been together for about a year, and he’d been hitting her almost as long. It took him a while to start beating on Will, and that’s when Desi started calling Momma. They’d all gone to school together, and Momma was a peacemaker—she always got Carl to leave. When Will told me that, there was a note of awe in his voice, like he couldn’t quite understand, still, how she’d managed it.
Carl would storm out, and Desi would hold strong for a few days—sometimes a few weeks—but the pull of him, the pull of the drugs, it was always too much. She’d call him or he’d show up with beers and drugs, and it’d be fine and meth-bright for a few weeks until he lost his temper again or Will spilled a glass of milk or Desi didn’t cook the eggs right.
That day, Momma kicked Carl out, putting herself between his fists and Desi’s already beaten face like she’d done before. But instead of driving away, pissed-off and drunk like he’d done so many times before, he decided to circle ’round and set a fucking fire in the garage he’d turned into a meth lab.
He managed to get far enough away from the house before the flames reached the chemicals and blew the whole place to kingdom come. Supposedly, he was badly burned, but I’ve never seen the marks myself.
Was the fire supposed to just scare them? Or did he mean to kill them?
Those questions, they used to bother me. They’d circle in my head like a pair of crows around a deer carcass. It took a long time—years—to realize that it didn’t matter if he meant it. He did it.
And he needed to pay.
For two years, Duke hunted Carl. Two long years when I wasn’t allowed off our property without Duke because it wasn’t safe. But in the end, it wasn’t Duke who got Carl. It was the police.
Sometimes I wonder if he let himself get caught, because prison’s certainly safer than running from my father. It’s what I’d do if a man like Duke was hunting me.
Carl did seven years in the federal pen for possession with intent to sell. He should�
��ve done longer, but he turned snitch or something, and they let him out.
When Carl was sent up, Duke made a deal with Caroline Springfield. A truce. As long as she handed over the Springfield customer base and stopped cooking, she could stay in North County with the boys Duke had orphaned by killing her husband. He wouldn’t bother her. Not as long as she gave him the business and stayed quiet and on her side of the river. It must not have been easy—the Springfields have been cooking for as long as meth’s been around, and they’ve been slinging other shit for even longer. But Caroline’s smart enough to know cowering is lot safer than trying to rise up against him.
When Carl was released, the truce held. That surprised everyone. Even me. I wondered if maybe Duke was just getting too old for a war. Maybe he’d finally realized it wasn’t what Momma would have wanted.
Or maybe he was playing the long game, and I just couldn’t see it.
It’s been almost six years since Carl got out. We stay on our side of the river, and the Springfields stay on theirs.
But if something’s happened to Jessa…
I can’t even think about it.
I turn right at an oak tree with a wooden cross nailed to it, my tires skating over the tight-packed dirt road. The long, flat building in front of me isn’t much of a building anymore, long fallen to ruin, the tin roof half collapsed now. There’s a battered wooden sign made out of split log leaning against one wall, reading HAWES LUMBER MILL EST. 1905.
Momma was a Hawes before she married Duke. The mill was owned by Grandfather Hawes—a man I never met—and then Uncle Jake, but now what’s left of it’s mine. Seems everything I have comes from somebody being killed. I try not to think about that too much, but sometimes it’s hard not to.
The Hawes family was an old one, like the McKennas. There’s always been some of us here, way back before there were even county lines. But the Haweses are, or were, legit. And the McKennas never have been.
Momma’s life wasn’t supposed to follow the path it did. If her parents hadn’t died, it probably would’ve gone a lot different. Jake tried his best, loved her fiercely, but he hadn’t been able to control her. She’d been wild, searching for the kind of free most girls never even touch. She was sixteen when she met Duke. Ten years her senior, he was all wrong for a girl like her. But I guess that’s what she was after, because she married him the day she turned eighteen, and I came along six months later.
But now she’s gone and so is Jake, and I’m the only Hawes left.
I park the Chevy behind the sagging building near a pile of rusty equipment. The teeth of the big table saw are chipped and missing, and stacks of rotted lumber are scattered around.
Uncle Jake sold most of the mill equipment when he and Duke went into the trucking business together. He got offers on the land all the time, being right near the river like it is, but he wouldn’t sell. He wanted it to stay in the family.
So I never sold it, either. A few years ago, I was driving by when I noticed the tents set up by the river. Decent but down-on-their-luck people. I brought some supplies over the next day, and as the years passed, the little community grew. There’s twenty or so people living by the banks now. The people across the water, with their vacation houses and river views, aren’t too thrilled about it, but Sheriff Harris isn’t about to tell me no.
I honk a few times, not getting out until I see a figure in the distance, walking up the slope that leads to the river. Dust clouds the air, kicked up by the breeze, and his thinning hair flaps against his bald spot.
When he’s near, I slip out of the truck, waving. Busy scrambles out next to me, watching Ray carefully, but sticking to me.
“Hey, Ray,” I say, when he gets close enough.
“Harley.” He nods. His sad beagle eyes are puffy with age, his skin drooping from too many hard years, sleeping rough wherever he could find a safe spot. “I was hoping you’d come by.”
My eyes narrow in the sunlight. “What’s up?”
“You missing a Ruby?” he asks.
“Yeah. Jessa Parker. Have you seen her?”
Ray looks toward the riverbank, half hidden by the sloped yellowing hills and the old-growth oaks. “You better come see,” he says.
I follow him, careful to watch my feet as I go. There are gopher holes everywhere, weakening the clay soil, ready to break an ankle.
Ahead of us is an encampment, a cluster of tents and tarps set near the river. There are men and women moving around inside and out of the tents, twenty or so all told, last time I did a head count.
Ray leads Busy and me down the main path between the tents to one made out of green tarps. He pulls back the flap, gesturing to me. I duck inside, and the only reason I don’t gag is because this isn’t even close to the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
Jessa’s lying on top of a sleeping bag, her right eye swollen shut, her left cheek bruised so bad it looks black, her bottom lip split, and finger marks on her throat and thighs. Her skirt’s torn and her shirt’s stained, reddened with what might be clay or blood. Hell, it might be both.
I take a deep breath.
I do not flinch.
But I shake when I kneel down beside her. When my hand hovers over her shoulder and finally makes contact, I want to hug her, but I’m no good at that sort of thing, even when someone’s not messed up.
“Jessa?” My voice cracks on her name. It’s not fair to have favorites among the Rubies. But Jessa reminds me of Momma, that wild streak in her a mile wide, and her eyes blue and laughing, like she has a secret.
Jessa’s head turns a little at the sound. “Harley,” she breathes, wincing as soon as the sound’s out of her bleeding lips.
I’m going to end the man who did this.
“Who?” I ask.
She takes in a rattling breath, her throat catching. And then one name falls from her lips, the name that dominated my childhood in mutters and curses, the name that makes the gnawing in my gut sharpen to a knifepoint.
“Springfield,” Jessa says.
Nine
I’m seventeen the first time I come face to face with Carl Springfield.
It’s a sunny day in March. Will’s in the feed store and I’m outside in the truck. I have Busy with me—I’m not allowed in town without her. Daddy’s got her trained to stick to me like a burr.
Sometimes I watch him working with her from the deck, teaching her how to protect me, making her more deadly—and it’s hard not to compare.
He trained me, too.
The cracked vinyl of the Ford’s bench seat makes the back of my thighs sweat, so I get out and pull the tailgate down. I leave Busy in the cab with the air conditioning on, because she’s panting and I forgot to bring any water.
“Well, look at you.”
I spin around from my spot on the tailgate and look over my shoulder.
When I see him, when I finally connect a voice to the face that’s been lurking in the back of my head since I was eight, I go completely still. Rigid like a deer caught in a hunter’s sight.
Carl Springfield strolls around the truck and up to me, his head tilted as he takes me in.
If you ever see him, you run, Harley-girl.
I should run. Yell for Will. Yank the truck door open and let Busy at his throat.
But that reckless part of me, that part of me that’s pure McKenna and all Daddy, makes me want to stay right here.
I want to see what the bogeyman’s made of.
I’ve been waiting.
He’s short and stocky, a redneck peacock of a man in a dirty wifebeater and Wranglers with oily stains on the pockets. Slicked-back hair just starting to go gray, and the kind of sunken cheeks and jutting bones that come only from years of tweeking.
I know how to spot them.
He walks with his chest thrust out, so you don’t miss the swastika inked on his sternum. I’d heard he’d gotten even more into that sick neo-Nazi shit inside the pen. It makes me want to vomit, especially when I think about how he’d tr
eated Will as a kid.
I can’t see the burns—the scars he got in the explosion that killed Momma and Desi—but I know they’re there, hidden by his clothes.
I pray they hurt. That they pull and ache with every move he makes.
“You know who I am?” He grins, his Skoal-stained teeth bared at me. “Course you do. Bet your daddy’s got a target with my face on it.”
I stare straight back at him. I don’t move. And before I speak, I wait until I’m sure my voice is level.
“I’m surprised they let you out of prison. You turn snitch or something?”
He rocks back on his heels, sticking his thumbs in his belt loops. He grins, eyes sweeping up and down me in a way that makes me want to take ten hot showers, one right after the other.
“You’re taller than your momma,” he says, and my stomach clenches because it sounds almost like an accusation. Like I’ve done something very wrong. “God, you’ve got the look of her, though.”
He reaches forward, and I pull back, but there’s nowhere to go. Busy barks in the cab as Springfield strokes one dirty finger up the length of my hair. His hand closes around my braid where it starts at my neck, and suddenly he jerks my head back, his fingers digging into the base of my skull.
I can’t stop the breath that wrenches out of me, almost a whimper as he leans in close. I can smell the minty tobacco from his chew. Tears trickle down my cheeks from how hard he’s pulling my braid, and his eyes map all over my face like he’s looking for something. “You favor her, but they say you’re all McKenna on the inside.” His hand tightens in my hair, and I can feel strands tearing out of my scalp.
“Oh, yeah?” I hate how the words come out in a strangled gasp when he yanks forward, dragging me off the tailgate by my braid. My feet leave the ground, and I scramble to regain my footing as he crowds me against the truck so close that it would make Daddy gut him if he saw. I choke, blinking furiously as he pulls and pulls my hair like it’s gonna achieve something, like it’ll crack me open wide enough to give him what he wants.