Burn in Hail Read online

  Chapter 5

  Thongs—the best thing since sliced bread.

  -Tate’s secret thoughts

  Tate

  She was wearing a thong.

  The skirt she had on today was shorter…way shorter.

  It was also skin tight, and I had a feeling that she had no clue that she was showing me the goodies.

  Though, that had a lot to do with the way the glass table was pushed up close to her knees.

  In the reflection of the glass I could see pink, and bare skin.

  It wasn’t much, not at all, but it was enough for my dick to like what it was seeing.

  When I’d arrived, she’d had me sit down, and then had jumped up about five minutes into our session when her pen had run out of ink.

  She’d stood up, placed the pad of paper in her seat, and then had turned around to grab a pen from her desk, leaning over the back of the wide, plush chair to do it.

  That’s when my eyes had gone to her ass—hey, I was a man. What could I say?

  The lines had started at the top of her skirt, right underneath her lower back. The lines then went down the side of each thigh.

  I didn’t have confirmation that she was wearing a garter belt and thong until just then, seeing the pink stocking clips on the outsides of her thighs, and the reflection in the glass.

  “Can you tell me what went through your head when you saw the victim in court?”

  “What victim?”

  She growled and started to explain.

  “When you saw the young men that you’d hurt after they’d hurt that girl, were you angry? Sad? Upset in any way? Tell me what you were feeling.”

  I shrugged. “Not any more or less pissed off than after I was forced under control by those officers.”

  She sighed and closed the book—the book I was convinced that she was doing nothing but doodling in—and set it on the table next to her left knee.

  “All right, Mr. Casey.” She stood and smoothed her skirt down.

  Doesn’t matter if you do that. I still know what you’re wearing underneath.

  I followed suit, and started making my way to the door.

  “I want to try something different next time,” she said to my back.

  I halted with my hand on the doorknob and turned slightly to look over my shoulder at her.

  “What kind of different?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Somewhere not in a formal setting,” she said. “Somewhere where you can feel more comfortable to speak to me without the fear of having your words used against you.”

  My brows rose.

  “I’m not fearful that you’ll use anything against me,” I told her honestly. “There’s nothing I can say to you that’ll cause this all to turn out any differently. I’m broken. Always have been, always will be. Ain’t nothing you can say to fix that.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but I held up my hand. “Text me with a time and place, and I’ll be there.”

  Then, without another word, I yanked open the door and walked out.

  I was unsurprised to find her father sitting in the reception area.

  I couldn’t wait to see what he thought of today’s outfit.

  He’d never had a problem with letting Hennessy know that her outfits were out of line.

  I remembered one time, what felt like a hundred years ago, when he’d disliked something she was wearing. He’d forced her to spend the rest of the day in his office while the rest of the youth got to have a fun time—even though the rest of them were dressed nearly identically to what she was wearing.

  The guy was an asshole, plain and simple. Overbearing, hateful, and if I were being honest, not really a man of God.

  But that may just be me.

  “Afternoon, Reverend Hanes,” I drawled as I made my way out of the office.

  Reverend Hanes looked up at my voice, and then skittered past me when a movement behind me caught his attention.

  I knew the moment he saw her.

  I also knew that he was about to lay into his perfect ‘untouched baby girl.’

  “Please, for the love of all that’s holy, tell me you are not dressed like that in front of God and this entire town,” Reverend Hanes growled, standing up.

  Hennessy came to a stop directly behind me, and froze.

  “Father, what are you doing here?”

  “I’m here because he’s here.”

  I pointed at my chest. “Me?”

  Reverend Hanes lifted his lip in silent snarl. “You know what you are.”

  Sure, I knew what I was.

  I wanted him to say it, though.

  But before anything else could come out of his mouth, another patient walked in, this one looking around like he was about to fuck up everyone in the room.

  My body tensed.

  I’d spent years in prison, and thirty years in hell before that.

  I was thirty-seven years old, and I didn’t have a single good memory where I didn’t have to be on alert. When I walked into a room, it was getting scanned by me in case there was something in there that had the possibility of fucking me up.

  And no, my fifteen years in the Marines—Oorah—weren’t responsible for that.

  My shit mother was.

  Seems like, when you're raised in a house where your mother whores herself, not because she has to, but because she wants to, you have to learn how to defend yourself at an early age…or else.

  I learned that early in life, and when my mother watched me get the shit beat out of me instead of helping me, I realized that being a mother didn’t make you a mother.

  So yes, on Sundays my mother may go to church and act like she was God’s child, but on every other day of the week, she spread her legs for fun. Let her Johns pay her bills, and in return, she turned the other cheek if someone liked little boys.

  In a roundabout way, she was responsible for me learning how to protect myself early, and inevitably that saved my ass when I was in the Marines.

  A whole lot of fuckin’ times.

  Funny how life worked like that sometimes.

  “Ms. Hanes, I really need to speak with you,” the man with the crazy-filled eyes demanded.

  I looked over at ‘Ms. Hanes’ and gauged her reaction.

  Her flinch was telling.

  “Mr. Finch,” Hennessy smiled woodenly. “Won’t you come back to my office?”

  The Finch character did, slamming the door shut before Hennessy could follow.

  “Mr. Casey, I’ll see you next week.”

  With that, she turned around.

  “I’ll see you next week, too,” Reverend Hanes growled.

  I gritted my teeth and watched him leave, then took a seat in the lobby and waited.

  Exactly forty-six minutes later, Finch walked out of the office, his eyes still as crazy as they’d been when he walked in.

  He paced into the reception area and looked at the walls like a cornered bear. “Gotta go.”

  Then he left without another word, looking over his shoulder twice at the building he’d just exited before he rounded the corner.

  “What are you still doing here?”

  I looked to find Hennessy standing there watching me with surprised-filled eyes.

  “Guy gave me the creeps,” I said, dropping the magazine about Fourth of July recipes onto the counter. “Wanted to make sure he didn’t shoot you.”

  My words were harsh, but the smile she gave me was nothing less than sweet.

  “Thank you.”

  I walked out without telling her that she was ‘welcome.’

  I wanted to, though.

  I really, really wanted to.

  ***

  “Tell me again why you can’t go to this one?” Travis asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “I’m not going to repossess another woman’s car like that,” Baylor said. “I repossessed the last one,
and she cried. It fucking sucked. Give me all the men. I’ll take getting shot at over being cried on.”

  Travis looked at Baylor like he’d gone soft.

  “She’s behind on her bill,” Travis interjected. “You don’t have a choice here. I don’t have a choice here if you want to keep getting paid.”

  “You have a choice,” Baylor grunted. “Don’t act like you don’t.”

  Travis looked to me, and I nodded.

  I had no problem repossessing a woman’s car. I’d be able to do it. But normally when nobody else wanted to do it, Dante took it. He’d respected his employees’ right to choose what they were and were not willing to do.

  “Where the fuck is Dante?” I asked suddenly. “Didn’t he used to do this?”

  The sound of crickets proceeded my comments.

  Travis cleared his throat, then looked up at the ceiling.

  “Dante’s wife and kids were killed in an automobile accident. An accident where my sister was driving.”

  My stomach clenched.

  The sister I’d known had committed suicide. That was one of the first things that Baylor had told me when I’d gotten back—but only because I’d asked how she was doing.

  Now to hear this?

  Couldn’t this family catch a break?

  “He’s gone off the deep end, I suspect.”

  Travis nodded, then looked to Baylor.

  “We’ve had to make some adjustments to our usual routine. As of right now, Dante no longer has anything to do with us, this business, or the town of Hostel.”

  I could imagine.

  Dante and his wife had gotten married at the park in town. They’d had their first baby shower at that same park. Their daughters played in that park. That park was the whole fuckin’ town.

  Yeah, I knew why he’d left. Hell, I would have, too.

  Especially if I had the one thing that Dante did, and then got it taken away so ruthlessly.

  God, the idea of never seeing those two faces of Dante’s children again…that fucking sucked. It sucked so bad that I found myself tearing up.

  “Yeah, you’re about like we are,” Baylor muttered, obviously reading the look on my face. “Still in shock, even though it happened a while ago. Fuck, I still feel like I’m going to hear them scream my name when I get to the shop late on school days.”

  I looked down and studied my hands.

  “Fuck.”

  That about summed it up.

  Chapter 6

  No, I don’t care if I eat like a child. At least I don’t look like one.

  -Hennessy to Krisney

  Hennessy

  I smiled at the checker that was ringing my Lunchables up.

  “How old are you again?”

  I looked over at Krisney and grinned.

  “Don’t judge me. You know you still eat them, too,” I growled. “Not to mention the fact that I swear I saw you eating those crackers the other day that you spread cheese on with that little red stick.”

  Krisney shrugged.

  “I’d have killed to have these in Germany,” she told me.

  Krisney had been posted in Germany for a stint in the reserves before she’d resigned completely just a few weeks ago.

  Although, I couldn’t figure out why she’d left. Each time she talked about it, or I asked her what she planned to do now, she’d get this sad, faraway look on her face.

  “Oh, no.”

  I turned to the checker and tilted my head.

  “What?”

  “My car.”

  I turned to face out the windows that lined the front of the store, and saw the tow truck backed up against the back of a red Volkswagen Bug.

  “Oh, shit,” I said, turning back to her. “They’re taking your car?”

  She looked down and scanned the next item.

  “Yeah,” she whispered almost soundlessly. “They are. I haven’t paid the note, apparently.”

  Anger and uneasiness competed in my gut.

  “Do you have anything in the car that you need?”

  She shook her head. “Learned that lesson the first time it happened. The only things in there are a couple of jackets that I got at the Goodwill, and a few books.”

  She bit her lip at the word ‘books’ and I realized that those books probably meant a whole lot more to her than she was saying.

  “Krisney, can you pay for this?” I asked her, handing her my credit card.

  Krisney nodded and took the card.

  There was no reason to tell her my pin. She knew mine, and I knew hers. We were best friends for a reason.

  As a best friend, Krisney had to always be available to listen to me gripe. She had to bring me donuts randomly, and she had to be able to French braid my hair whenever I wanted her to since my French braids sucked ass.

  It was only reasonable that she would know my pin number.

  I hit the asphalt of the parking lot and started directly for where I could see the top of the tow truck driver’s head.

  It was in a buzz cut, and I could swear I knew him from somewhere.

  The coveralls were throwing me off, though.

  I could see the man’s feet and legs, as well as his upper half, but any and all available skin was covered in an old, dingy, black coverall that hid any distinguishing features from sight.

  It wasn’t until I rounded the hood of the tow truck that I got a good look at the man’s backside.

  It looked good…really good.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “But…”

  The man whipped around, eyes filled with surprise, and I got my first good look at the man towing away the poor checker’s car.

  “Tate…”

  The moment he saw me, his entire demeanor changed.

  He’d been frightened and on the defensive, but once he realized I wasn’t a threat, he turned loose.

  “Ms. Hanes,” he greeted, turning back around to mess with some knobs at the side of the truck.

  Then he pulled a lever, lifting the car up in the air.

  “Ummm,” I said, feeling silly now. “Do you think it’d be okay to grab some clothes and a couple books out of this car for my friend?”

  He looked over at me, those hazel eyes of his leaning more toward green today than blue. “Company policy says no.”

  Company policy says no.

  Okay.

  “But it’s only a few books,” I excused. “And she wasn’t going to even ask for them, knowing your policy, but I could tell it would break her heart if she didn’t have them. Please?”

  He grunted something unintelligible. “Go ahead. Get what you need, but just know that she already had them out of the car when I came and took it.”

  I grinned at him, but it was lost on him, seeing as he’d turned around the moment he said that, continuing to do whatever he was doing at the levers and buttons.

  I hurried past him to the car, snatched open the door, and looked inside.

  There weren’t just a few books in here and a few jackets, there were clothes, pillows, a few toiletries, and what looked to be bread and peanut butter in the front seat.

  The checker wasn’t just using this as a vehicle. It looked like her whole life was in the car.

  Shit.

  I looked back at Tate, and could see him looking in the car right along with me.

  He looked up at the sky, counted to ten aloud, and then turned around.

  He came back moments later with a big black trash bag.

  I didn’t bother to ask him why he had that in his truck. I just thanked him and started shoving everything that would fit into the bag.

  By the time I was finished, not only was there so much in the bag that it was bulging out the top—thank God for the Forceflex part of the bag—but I also had an arm full of books.

  And I had no freakin’ clue how the hell I was going to get it to the checker, or what she was going to do with it all from there.

/>   “Go.”

  I turned, noticed Tate staring at me with his arms crossed over his chest, and reached for the bag.

  He brushed my hand away and took the bag himself, nothing straining at all as he picked it up and started walking toward the front of the building.

  He didn’t stop at the sliding doors. Didn’t smile or greet any of the people that were standing there, only walked with single minded determination straight to the checker.

  “Here,” he said, dropping the bag on the ground behind her, blocking her into the little cubicle. “You left this outside.”

  The checker looked at me, then to Tate, and then back to me.

  “I did?”

  He nodded once, and then turned on his heel and left.

  “What the hell?”

  I turned to find Krisney standing there, eyes wide.

  “Was that Tate Casey?”

  I nodded my head.

  “He’s gotten big!”

  He had.

  Much bigger than he’d been when I’d seen him at the church picnic the day my father had embarrassed me in front of the whole congregation—and Tate.

  “He has,” I agreed, going up to the bag and moving it after I placed all her books on the counter.

  Only, when I went to move it, the sheer weight of it surprised me.

  “Wow,” I grunted. “The man acted like this weighed nothing.”

  Krisney came up to my side, and we both dragged it out of the way so the checker could make her way out.

  “Let me help,” the checker said. “We can take it to the breakroom for now.”

  “Are you okay, Lark?” Krisney asked.

  Lark, the checker, looked away and started dragging.

  Luckily there were no other customers in the store, so they didn’t know how pathetic we all were trying to get the bag through the line of checkouts, and to the breakroom.

  “That has to weigh a hundred pounds,” I muttered under my breath. “Seriously, how?”

  “Tate was always big.” Krisney pushed it the last few feet. “I’m just seriously impressed that the bag could hold up with all those books in it. A hundred pounds seems mighty impressive.”

  “It’s probably more like fifty,” Lark argued. “But since it’s packed so full and awkward, there really isn’t much to hold onto except little pieces with the tips of your fingers. That’s why it feels like it weighs more.”