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“It’s easier to bully two young women than it is to bully armed gangsters, is my guess.”
“I guess Craig is more like his cousin than I thought.” I walk to my truck and Cora follows. We get in and I start the engine, but don’t pull away. “I should leave someone here to watch over Kady.”
“Bad idea.” Cora’s staring out the window at the woods behind her trailer. I do my best not to follow her gaze—I don’t want to see that place. I haven’t been back in there since the last time I went in to meet her, all those years ago, the week before she testified. I don’t want to relive that conversation, not if I can help it.
“Why’s that?”
“She’ll probably try to seduce him. We have bad taste in men.”
I smile to myself and pull out, heading toward the Lonely Cat.
There are rules most men follow. If a new guy wants to play this game, he needs to figure those rules out fast or else everyone around them will turn their backs and ignore it when those bigger and stronger players inevitably come and take him down for fucking something up and making life harder. One of those rules is: don’t fuck with civilians. Noncombatants are off-limits. Regular people don’t get shot, they don’t get hurt, they don’t get threatened, not unless they took money or bought drugs or somehow involved themselves in the game. Breaking that rule means the heat comes down and the sheriff gets pissed, and life is a lot easier with a fat, happy and lenient sheriff.
Cora and Kady should be off-limits. Kady didn’t do a goddamn thing to Jaxson, and if anything, he started this garbage by pulling his little blackmail stunt. The ORB should be smart enough to cut ties with a dick like Jaxson and accept that minor punishment as a reasonable reaction to a stupid man’s overstep.
Instead, they sent Craig here to escalate things.
Which means the ORB isn’t interested in playing by the rules.
We head into the Lonely Cat together. Cora goes behind the bar and starts making coffee while I open up the office. The guys shows up a few minutes later and while Eric’s still pissy about Cora hanging around, they let her give them coffee and make small talk and even make a few jokes about her beating up Craig the next time he tries something like that.
“I know you Southern girls are all tough as nails,” Alex says, laughing as he runs a hand through his thick hair. “Back where I grew up, I think most of the girls I knew would’ve been on the floor covering their heads if some biker guy showed up with a shotgun.”
“You get used to idiots with guns down here, I’ll say that much.” Cora winks at him. “Where’d you grow up again?”
“Pittsburgh. I’m a goddamn yinzer transplant.”
“What made you end up down here?”
“He heard the peaches are just so sweet,” Troy says, putting an arm across Alex’s shoulders and laughing. “Couldn’t help himself.”
“More like my dad got transferred when I was twelve but yeah, sure, close enough.”
Eric catches my eye and nods. I gesture for him to follow and he gets up. The rest of the crew filters back and we gather in the office with the door shut. Even though I can’t be sure the place isn’t bugged, it’s about the safest spot we have indoors.
Before we can get into it, I point at Cora. “I’ve got a job for you.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Do you now?”
I open up the safe behind my desk and come back with a duffel bag filled with small bills. I dump it onto the card table, shove a notebook and a pen in her hands, and nod at the whole mess. “Count it.”
“Excuse me? Are you crazy? That’ll take me all day.”
“Good. Count it.”
“Don’t you have machines for this?”
“Not here, and those machines are expensive, and also feds love to pay attention to the kind of people that buy them. Sit down and get counting.”
The boys grin at our little exchange but I ignore them. This isn’t some power trip—this is for her safety, even if she doesn’t realize it. Counting cash right now means she won’t be able to listen closely to what we’re about to say, and that could save her life one day. The less she knows, the safer she’ll be.
Reluctantly, she sits down, starts making piles, and gets to counting.
“You know we can’t let this stand,” Eric says once I’m seated behind the desk. “The ORB crossed a line.”
“Shooting out some girl’s tires like that?” Tom shakes his head. “That’s some low shit.”
“I agree,” I say, still watching Eric. I’m not sure how he’s going to react to all this, but I can tell by the way he’s looking at me all quiet and working his jaw like he’s chewing rawhide that he’s pissed as hell. “We’re in a bad position right now. That ORB idiot threatened someone associated with our family.”
