"If I had any room left I'd have you put that on me. Shit's totally fucking tits man," I said. "Speaking of tits, I just saw Ray up at the house and I was wondering if you've got any weed."

"Why the fuck did that sentence start with SPEAKING OF TITS?" King asked, tacking his sketch onto a board beside the window and glaring at me like I just told him I fingered her in his bed.

"'Cause your girl was up there feeding your kid. She was in the living room. Calm down dude, it's not like I saw nip or anything."

"You're starting to sound like Preppy," King said. "And the only reason why you're not dead right now is because you are about to tell me that you covered your eyes, turned your ass around and walked right out the fucking door when you realized she had her tit out."

"Sure. Sounds good. That's exactly what happened," I said sarcastically. "But seriously you got any weed? I'm out and I need it for something."

"Like getting high?" King asked.

Smartass.

"Yes, motherfucker, like getting high. But it's not for me, it's for Ti. She asked me why I was doing blow and I told her to check out of reality for a bit and she surprised me by begging me for it so she could forget too, I damn near gave in."

I neglected to tell him that I also needed it to apologize for tonguing her down without finishing. For promising to help her forget and instead running away right when I was getting to the good part.

"Why didn't you let her? Never seen you stop a girl from a good time before," King said.

"I didn't have any left, but it didn't feel right anyway. She's not some club whore."

"You finally decided she's not out to get you?" King asked.

"I guess not."

"You figure out what to do with her yet?"

"Plan hasn't changed. And I made a call which should help."

"What kind of call?" King asked, eyeing me warily.

"Bethany Fletcher," I admitted.

"Wow."

"Can't call club lawyers, they don't work for me any more. Figure if I can get Ti off the hook for shooting her parents then I can sneak her out of here and drop her off far enough away where the MC won't ever look for her."

"I still can't believe you called Bethany," King said.

"When you're at war with the devil sometimes you gotta dial up a demon," I said.

"Hope you know what you're doing."

"I do."

I had no fucking clue.

King walked over to the wall where a big painting of a melting clock hung from the ceiling to the floor. He shifted the painting, revealing a hidden safe. He turned the dial and when he opened it there was another safe inside, this one requiring a code.

"You want me to wait while you dig a key out from the backyard to open safe number three?" I asked.

"Fuck off," King said. "Got kids running around here now. Things are different. Can't have shit everywhere like we used to."

It was hard to imagine King, a man who did what he wanted his entire life without giving two shits if it was right or wrong, sneaking off at night to get high in the garage after the kids went night night.

"My mom did everything and everyone in front of me," he continued. "I don't want that for my kids. Want them not knowing about the bad shit. Want them believing in Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and the goddamn tooth fairy until they're fucking forty."

"Why?" I asked, not understanding what he was trying to get at.

"'Cause they're kids. Want them to just be kids. Play with toy guns and not have to worry about using the real deal before they're old enough to drive. I want their biggest worry to be about whether we're having pizza or hot dogs for dinner. You and me? We didn't get the chance to be kids. It was stolen from us by our shit parents, and instead of a childhood we were given a big plate of harsh fucking reality. Not gonna do that to them. I won't."

Since I'd gotten back to Logan's Beach I was under the assumption that King had gotten soft, but I was wrong. Wanting to protect his kids didn't make him soft. It made him even more fucking crazy, just in a different way.

Because he had a different purpose.

"You'll get it one day. You'll have your own to worry about, and then you'll realize that the psycho you thought you were, the one no one was stupid enough to fuck with, should be very fucking afraid of the psycho you will become to protect your family."

"Right now I can't see past tomorrow, never mind that far into the future. My days are numbered anyway. The MC is gunning for me the second I step out onto their turf. May not live long enough to knock someone up."

King tossed me a small ziplock bag and I shoved it into my back pocket. He closed the safe and leaned against his desk, crossing his arms over his chest. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize you'd turned into a big fucking pussy while you were gone."

"Fuck you," I spat.

"The old Bear would have phrased that shit differently. Tell me something, man. You still want it? The gavel? Because a few months ago you said you didn't want it yet you're wandering around here like you're a lost fucking puppy dog."

"Now the answer is 'I don't know,'" I said honestly. "Been asking myself the same fucking thing."

"Ain't gonna find your answer at the bottom of a bottle of Jack."

"Oh yeah, since when did you become my fucking mama?"

"Since an old friend asked me if I remembered who I was and I realized I'd lost touch. Thought you might like the same kind of reminder," King said, throwing my words back at me that I'd told him months ago. "Do you want to know what that old friend would have just said?"

"Sure," I said, because I did want to know.

"The old Bear wouldn't have said that the MC was gunning for him the second he stepped on their turf, the old Bear wouldn't have said shit, but he would have reigned down hellfire on them until it wasn't their fucking turf anymore," King said.

"How the fuck am I supposed to do that? I'm just me. All of my brothers besides one, take their orders from Chop. I'm only one soldier when they have dozens. Going into the MC would be fucking suicide and shit's fucked up but I'm not ready to go out just yet."

"That's funny, because a second ago it sounded like you were giving up."

"I'm not, just doing what I gotta do to get through life, man."

"That's even more funny," King said, lighting a cigarette.

"What is?" I asked, growing annoyed with my friend.

"That you think what you're doing is living," King pointed out.

"Shit is so easy to say coming from someone who's gone civilian."

"I'll soldier for you," King said. I was just about to light a cigarette but his words made me pause, the flame flickering inches away from my smoke, swaying in the air while I took in the gravity of what he'd just said.

"No," I said finally. "You've got Ray and the kids. If she found out you were gonna soldier for me so we could take back the MC she would fucking kill you before they had a chance to."

"See? That's how I know that you don't know shit," King said, pointing up to the house through the window. "Ray and my kids are my everything, but she knows and accepts me for who I am and what I need to do. When the time comes, and you see your way clear of all the bullshit you're insisting in stewing in, I'm in. I'll soldier. No fucking questions."

King had finally lost his goddamned mind. "No. And I'm not saying it just to say it man. I couldn't let you. If Ray doesn't kill you, she would most definitely kill me."

"Oh yeah?" King said, sitting back down at his desk and turning his back to me. He picked up his pencil and began another sketch. "Then why did she suggest it?"

I was mulling King's idea to take back the MC over in my mind. Wondering if it was a real possibility. With every step I took toward the apartment it sank its teeth into my brain and by the time I opened the door it took hold, but the thought didn't last long because as soon as I opened the door I felt it in the air. I knew before I even peered into the bedroom. I knew before I ran back up to the house to ask Ray if she'd seen her. I knew before I spotted my ring on the coffee table still attached to the chain.

Thia was gone.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Thia The venom of a brown widow spider is six times more powerful than the venom of its cousin, the black widow. But unlike its darker relative, the brown widow's first response to a threat is to retreat, rarely biting unless direct contact is made. Attacking is its last option.

A last resort.

Kind of like me.

I had more in common with the spider that killed my little brother than I did with Bear.

Sheriff Donaldson wasn't ever in his office until after three pm. The town of Jessep may have been big in land mass but we were small in population, so small in fact that our town sheriff only worked part time.

Jessep was one of the oldest towns in Florida and being old meant a lot of its laws had been written a long time ago. One of its charms is that those laws hadn't ever been revised, leaving all sorts of backwards southern rules on the books.

Under Jessep law, men were not permitted to wear women's clothing, but it didn't stop there. More specifically, the punishment for those men caught wearing satin strapless gowns would be much more severe than those caught wearing knee-length skirts.

Showering naked was also a big no-no. Oral sex, even between married couples, was strictly forbidden as well.

It was illegal to sing in a public place while wearing a swimsuit. The rule makers may not have liked singing at all because it was also illegal to sing to a goat.

Even on the goat's birthday.

It was illegal for a single woman to parachute on Sundays.

I peddled back into my backwards hometown on a bicycle I'd found in the garage, an old blue beach cruiser with a tattered orange flag attached to the back of the seat. I'd rode all the way back to Jessep without stopping, my need to put distance between me and Bear and my desire to face what I had coming to me head on propelled me forward, faster and faster I'd pedaled until I'd finally slowed when I turned down the road with the Welcome to Jessep sign, Population 64. I'd meant to go straight to the sheriff's office but it was only two o'clock. I hadn't meant to go to the house but before I'd realized it, I was still on the bike with my feet on the ground staring at the yellow crime scene tape that had dispatched on one side and was now floating in the wind.

I walked slowly up the path, taking the bike with me. I didn't plan on getting off or walking up to the porch or sitting in the old rocking chair inhaling the smell of rotting citrus.

But I did.

The afternoon rains had turned my mother's blood on the side of the house from fresh red to pale brown. Anyone who didn't know what happened there would have just thought it was a mud stain.

But I knew what happened here.

What I didn't know was what was going to happen next.

That's when I saw it.

The spider.

I stood on the rickety porch holding an old straw broom with a broken handle. I watched as it turned over a small black bug using a few of its many long and striped legs. It was lingering under the fascia, minding its own business, wrapping up his lunch, while I stood only feet away and planned its imminent demise.

The sun was beginning to set, one of the only hours of the day when the weather was tolerable and right before the summer rain settled in for its evening cry above Jessep.

I understood how it felt to want to be left alone and for a brief moment I contemplated sparing the spider the death sentence, but quickly changed my mind.

One just like it killed Jesse.

It had to die.

It seems I was good at killing things.

I set up our old rusty ladder and climbed up to the top, positioning the end of the broom handle over the innocent spider who had no idea what was coming. "Sorry little guy," I whispered, right before I crushed him into the corner. Over and over again I hit and hit and hit him, crushing him into oblivion. I killed that spider over and over again and kept killing it until my hands were bleeding from the splintered broom handle and tears ran down my face, long after what was left of the spider fell from the end of the broom and into the grass.

"Miss Andrews?" a man asked. I gripped the top of the ladder with both hands to maintain my balance, and dropped the broom. It fell onto the uneven porch and rolled off the side into the grass.

A very tall man stood on the dirt drive holding a manila folder and a handkerchief that he kept using to wipe the sweat off his red face. He was wearing a wrinkled grey suit and a sideways smile.

"I'm sorry Miss. I didn't mean to startle you," he said in a proper southern accent. If his clothes weren't a dead giveaway for not being a local, his accent would have done the trick. "I'm looking for a Miss Andrews?" the man asked again, holding up the file to shield his eyes from the sun as he watched me climb down from the ladder.

"Who wants to know?" I asked, turning around to wipe my eyes, picking up the broken broom handle from the grass and tossing it back onto the porch.

"My name is Ben Coleman and I'm here on behalf of The Sun..." I didn't need to hear him finish his sentence to know why he was there. The Sunnlandio Corporation were vultures and assisted in my mother's downhill decent into crazy before falling off the side and taking my dad with her.

Ben Coleman didn't seem to notice the crime scene tape floating in the wind. He stood on the driveway on a Tuesday night, wearing a wrinkled grey suit and dripping so much sweat it looked as if he'd been caught in the rain storm that I could see in the distance but hadn't yet come.

Ben approached and extended his hand to me. I folded up the ladder and walked right past him toward the shed on the side of the house. "You can leave Mr. Coleman, I know why you are here and I want nothing to do with it." I set the ladder in the shed and shut the door.

I could smell the approaching rain before I could see it. I used to make fun of my dad for saying he could smell the rain, but as I got older I could feel the shift in the air and I learned to recognize the sweet pungent zip of fresh oxygen before the clouds rolled in, turning off the stars and changing the night sky from black to grey. "Miss Anderson, I just need to go over this with you. We have the groves best interest at heart." Ben said, holding out the folder toward me.

I laughed. "Did you have my parents' best interest at heart when your company cancelled the contract the grove had with Sunnlandio since the 60's? Because I would ask them if they felt like you had their best interest at heart but I can't. And judging from the look on your face you know why I can't. So for whatever reason you are here, go sell it to someone else. I'm not interested and on top of that I don't have time. I have a meeting with the sheriff."

The wind picked up, zipping around the house, blowing my hair into my face. Ben's suit jacket blew open as he continued to follow me on my way to the front of the house.

That's when I spotted his gun.