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“Somebody explain to me exactly what I’m looking at here,” he said, stepping in and closing the door. “Ma… what is this?”
Her mouth dropped open and she shook her head. “I… it’s hard to explain.”
No it isn’t.
“Does it have something to do with the thorn tattoo on Pops?”
“How the hell do you know aboutthat?” Randy asked, taking a step toward her son, who was standing there with his arms crossed.
“The same way I know Gerard had one too,” he snapped, directing those words at Carmen, who still hadn’t said anything.
It made a lot more sense now, the way Carmen had reacted to me at the clubhouse, suddenly. Like she hadn’t reallyseenme before then, as if seeing those thorns on my arm had removed some sort of blinders from her eyes.
The picture helped me understand.
She was afraid.
Because she knewexactlywhat aThornwas.
She’d married one.
As new as the information was to Tati, it was to me, unraveling a new piece of an ever-growing mystery. For every answer I wanted, it seemed like more questions popped up, and now there was just this dark cloud over all of it, looming overhead just waiting to drench us all in bullshit set in place before we were even conceived.
“Why do you have him tied up?” Blue asked, turning toward me and starting in my direction. “We checked in with y’allabouthim being missing. I guess this is why neither of you had much to say. What is this?”
“Donotturn him loose,” Carmen snapped, rushing to get in front of him. “He is here to kill us!”
Blue’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously?”
“Probably!”
“Not at all,” I spoke up, shaking my head. “I’m not here for any of you.”
“So youcananswer questions then?” Randy asked, crossing her arms. “We’ve been trying to beat the truth out of you for hours and you didn’t have anything to say, why now?”
“BecausenowI know who you are. I’m no threat to you. If I was, I would’ve done what I needed to do months ago. Why hang around?” I asked, looking between all three of them.
“Reconnaissance,” Carmen huffed. “Can’t believe I didn’t recognize you as soon I laid eyes on you. It’s what I get for not keeping vigilant.”
“It was thirty-something years ago,” Randy shrugged. “And the kids were supposed to be protecting the herd.”
“Is somebody going to explain this shit to me,” Blue cut in. “What the hell makes you think he’s here to kill us? Just cause he’s aThorn? There’s a dozen of those motherfuckers around this town.”
Clearly that was new information for the vigilantes, both of them looking to Blue with wide eyes.
“Sincewhen?” Carmen asked and Blue shrugged.
“For years. I just found out about all this shit recently, but they’ve been around here a while.”
“SinceThe Gardenfell,” I added, prompting them all to turn to me. “And Alicia was here before that. Working for the Whitfields.”
“As inDanielWhitfield?” Randy put a hand to her chest, meeting eyes with Carmen. “So they would’ve known that, right?”
Carmen nodded. “I would think so… but they decided not to tell us. Why?”
“So we wouldn’t worry—about them, about our babies. All that was behind us, we were building something new,” Randy sighed.
Behind… us?
