Page 24 of Reese’s Protection

Bullet sighed, and suddenly, warm air swirled around the cab. He must’ve turned on the heater. “I could swing around and drop you at the hospital now that you got your pound of flesh.”

“No, I gotta see this through. I won’t be able to look Reese in the eye if I can’t tell him the man who shot him is dead and won’t ever touch him again.”

“What if Reese is dead and you weren’t there over this mess?” Bullet glanced at me in the rearview mirror, and my hands balled up into fists on my lap.

“I hope he knows how I feel,” I whispered. “I care about him a lot. Layton is there. And if that awful shit were to happen? I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the eye if I didn’t see this through. Then, it really would’ve been for nothing. At least this way Jeremy won’t hurt anyone else.”

Bullet hummed. “You’re wired the right way to be a King. A positive charge ready to blow someone’s hand off. Why aren’t you in the club? King would have you.” He turned so he was looking at me over his shoulder again before shifting around to watch the road. “Bet Jester would sponsor you.”

I rolled my eyes, and thankfully, he didn’t notice. “I don’t want to take orders.”

“King’s all right. He’s a hell of a man. You’d never be out in the cold if you were in the club. We take care of our own.” He shrugged. “I’m an associate member and they even take care of me.”

I rested my head back against the seat. “I love the bikes. The rest isn’t for me.”

“We’re here.” Bullet sounded very pleased with himself as he pulled the truck up next to a strange space. When I got out, I hummed. The headlights illuminated a big hole in the ground that took up about half the space of a basketball court. There were metal rods sticking up in square patterns at the bottom.

“What is this?” I scratched the back of my head.

“They’re putting in about ten transformers for a new gated community going in somewhere that way.” He pointed vaguely to the right where there wasn’t anything to see except pine trees. “Forty-five or fifty houses, depending on how they cut the lots up. But before they start the work, they want to get the electricity going. They’re digging for sewage, too.” He walked over to a big industrial toolbox, fiddled with a keypad lock, and then lifted the lid.

I blinked when he pulled out two shovels and tossed me one. “How is this a plan?”

He used his shovel to gesture around. “We’re going to move a few of the rods, dig a hole, drop the asshole in, smooth the dirt, and put everything back. Tomorrow, there’s going to be about a ton of concrete poured right here. Then, transformers will be set on top of him. In about two hundred years, if they decide to redo the whole thing, he’ll become an unsolved mystery.” Bullet looked damned proud as he clinked his shovel against mine.

“What’s to stop them from noticing things have been disturbed?” I mumbled.

“I’m part of the crew tomorrow. We’re going to start marking areas to run the power lines to the houses. A lot of it is underground these days, but there will be a few poles.” He twirled his shovel, showing off.

Grunting my agreement to his plan, I turned and dragged Jeremy out of the back of the truck, and I wasn’t gentle.

“Want to kill him?” Bullet asked, frowning down at our bloody cargo.

“Nah. We’ll let the dirt do it.”

Bullet chuckled as he hopped into the hole.

We dug for about an hour and a half, and Jeremy was awake and crying by the time we carried him to his final resting place. The thud he made as we dropped him in was very satisfying.

“Y’can’t do this,” he sobbed as I tossed dirt onto his face, making him sputter.

“Really?” I asked, grinning at him as more dirt landed on him from Bullet’s shovel.

His tears created rivers of mud down his cheeks because, after the first couple shovelfuls of dirt, we buried his body first. Contentment wrapped around me and it was warmer than a hug. He had time to fully digest the horror.

Scrape.

Plop.

Scrape.

Plop.

The mounds of earth had a music I would never grow tired of listening to as long as Jeremy was the one being covered. He was screaming again as we finally buried his head, but that quickly turned to coughs, and not long after . . . silence.

I didn’t feel an ounce of fucking guilt, and I wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

We were staring at the support rods that needed to be precisely replanted when Bullet waved a hand at me. The ground was smoothed flat. No one would ever know we’d done our dirty deed.