He gave me a pitying look. “If you think the judge is gonna come down here and reduce your sentence out of the kindness of his heart, then you’re a bigger fool than I thought, Peaches.”
“My dad’s a small-town sheriff,” I said. “Might be able to pull some strings with the sheriff, or Judge Benjamin.”
Jayce laughed and shook his head.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe youthinkthat might happen.” He took the Coke can from me, drank a long sip, and handed it back. “Look. I’m gonna tell you somethin’ you need to hear. The sheriff has no power in this town. Neither does the judge. The only man who runs this town is named Sid, and he has an army of bikers at his back.”
“That biker gang I’ve seen?” I asked. “Mindy told me. Is everyone in this little town really scared of them?”
“The Copperheads are a lot more than a biker gang,” he said. There was sadness in his voice, and experience. “The way they operate…”
He paused with a bite of sandwich in his mouth, mid-chew.
“What?” I asked. “How do they operate?”
“Fuck.” He swallowed his bite and tossed the rest of the sandwich on the bed of the truck. “Hear that rumbling? You’re about to find out, because that’s Sid coming this way.”
12
Jayce
Fuck me sideways. And here I’d thought this day was going pretty good.
I knew the motorcycle rumble in the distance was Sid, and not just some of his goons out for a ride. The extra noise told me so. Sid always traveled with at least two dozen Copperheads, because he only felt safe when he had an army around him. Like all bullies, he was never cocky when he was alone.
I saw them in the distance, the sun reflecting off their shiny hogs like a parade of mirrors. There was still time to jump in my truck and hot-tail it in the opposite direction. But that would give Sid what he wanted. He loved the chase more than the kill.
And I wasn’t the kind of man who ran.
“Are… Are they going to do something to you?” Charlotte asked.
“Maybe.”
“What should we do?”
I shoved a pick-up stick and trash bag into her hands. “Go back to picking up trash. Say nothing.” I grabbed her arm. “I meannothing. Be completely silent. You understand?”
“Okay,” she said in a shaky voice.
She wandered off to pick up trash. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to calm my thumping heart. Sid was a man who enjoyed slow escalation. Since his thugs had beaten the piss out of me the other night in jail, Sid wasreallygoing to hurt me today. He wouldn’t kill me since he hadn’t gotten what he wanted, but this was about to get ugly.
I wish Peaches didn’t have to see this.
I stood more calmly than I felt, my pulse throbbing in my ears. The motorcycles rumbled like distant thunder. A storm rolling in from the horizon, leaving ruin in its wake.
They rode two-by-two, taking up the entire two-lane road. Ten bikes in the front, and ten in the back, surrounded Sid in the middle. They slowed as they neared us, rolling their bikes to a stop on the edge of the road, parting like the Red Sea and leaving the middle clear. Only Sid parked his bike and stood. Even though he was a hundred feet out, I would have known him just by the way he walked. Slow and dangerous. Like a panther stalking its prey.
Sid was a sickly-pale man who wore his dark hair in dreadlocks that ran down his back like greasy snakes. His boots glistened with fresh polish, and tattoos covered his left arm and the left side of his face. Tribal bullshit that macho assholes used to think was cool decades ago. Faded jeans and the same leather jacket as all the other bikers completed his look. And above his shoulder poked his crowbar, strapped to his back like it always was. The sight of it made me wince. I’d seen that curved piece of iron break a lot of kneecaps.
He paused twenty feet from me to light a cigarette. A puff of smoke went up from his face, carried away by the gentle breeze. “There’s our favorite boy,” he said in his smooth voice. The voice of a used car salesman, altogether too friendly and too hostile. He pointed with his cigarette. “Been looking for you, Jayce. You sneaky little ferret.”
“Haven’t been lookin’ hard, then,” I said in an even tone. “I’ve been right here all day. Yesterday, too.”
“Cleaning up our fair town. Public service looks good on you.” He craned his neck and the register of his voice shifted. “Who’s that little thing over there?”
Don’t say anything, I willed Charlotte.Listen to what I said.