Authors: Lauren Gilley
“He - ” Tam swallowed again, throat working. Jo blinked and swore she saw him as a skinny little boy, desperate and terrified and full of the kind of hate he should never have had to feel for anyone, least of all his own father. “He…” His voice shook and he almost sounded near tears. “He came after
my family
.”
Because she and the baby were the only family he had. Because his mother was dead and his father was a monster. Because he was just a balloon without a tether if he didn’t have the family she’d given him.
Jo could have kissed her dad. He had every right to be an irate parent in this moment, and instead, he was a rock for Tam. “I know he did,” he said gently. “But that’s the thing about having a family, right? You gotta do what’s best for them.”
Tam swallowed again.
“Goin’ off half-cocked – that ain’t what you wanna do, is it? You gotta take better care of your girls than that.”
Jo hadn’t announced her baby news, but clearly, everyone in the room had picked up on it amid Tam’s references.
“I’ve gotta do something.” Tam took a step back toward the door. “I have to.”
“Well, let’s think about it first.” In an undertone, Randy told Jordan, “Call your brother,” and turned back to Tam, a hand raised in a
slow down
gesture. “Let’s do this the smart way.”
“Call the police too,” Beth said in a high, wavering voice layered with emotional stress.
“No.” Randy shook his head. “We’ll wait for Mike to get here, okay? Let’s just wait for Mikey. Everyone take a breath.”
Jo wanted to pull Tam to her, to stroke his hair and tell him in a hundred different ways how okay it was going to be. “Tam,” she said, a lump forming in her throat. “Come here.”
But he paced the kitchen like a caged panther. He was too far beyond the point of being comforted; all he could focus on was retribution, and it scared the hell out of her.
**
Michael broke the land speed record getting to the house from Buckhead. He and Delta had obviously been having a cozy night in – and not cozy in the innuendo sense. Mike was in jeans and a sweatshirt, but Delta had tucked her flannel pajama bottoms into Ugg boots and pulled a black wool pea coat on over her
Girls and Shoes = True Love
hoodie.
The country club dream couple was nowhere in sight as the two of them came in. The brother who picked at her and belittled her had transformed into this guy who took Tam by both shoulders and said, “We’re gonna take care of this, man.” And Delta was the disheveled girl who pulled Jo into a double baby bump hug and said, “Oh my God, are you alright? That’s crazy!”
Jo felt like she’d stumbled into a movie as she watched her dad and brothers help her husband plan a very literal attack. She let Delta tow her to the sofa and sat, numb, listening. Phone calls were made. Sentences were quick, clipped shots of sound. Jackets were donned and Jo felt tears burning at the backs of her eyes.
“Can you stay with her?” Tam asked Randy, and his eyes cut over to Jo through the living room. “Them,” he amended, sparing Delta a fast glance. “Could you just - ”
“Absolutely.” He clapped Tam on the shoulder. “You guys be careful.”
“We will.”
She didn’t want him to come to her, because that would mean that he was really leaving and that he was about to embark on the most stupid mission of his life. But Jo let him fold her up into his lap when he sat beside her. She tucked her face into the collar of his jacket, breathing in the old smoke and leather smell of it.
“I don’t want you to do this,” she whispered against his neck.
“I love you,” was his answer. He kissed the top of her head and set her aside. She watched him go to the door with dread pooling in the pit of her stomach.
Before they left, Jo caught Mike’s gaze, just a brief touching of eyes.
Don’t let anything happen to him
, she willed, thinking about their moment on Thanksgiving, of his promise.
He gave her a nod and was gone.
**
It was the coldest night of the year so far, but Tam could have been barefoot and naked for all that he felt of the chill. Everything was red. A big, sizzling curtain of it had come down behind his eyes and all he could taste was hatred like bile in the back of his throat. All he heard was the shaky catch to Jo’s breath. All he felt was the visceral, all-consuming need to wreck his father humming just under his skin, a low buzz in his ears.
They left the Beemer a block down the street from the dive Hank was calling home these days, beneath an unkempt stand of cedar trees that threw black shadows across the pockmarked asphalt of the shady east Marietta street that was alive with car alarms, blaring stereos and barking dogs. The houses were bungalows set well back off the road, behind chain link and sharp-toothed privacy fences, porches overgrown with honeysuckle and holly bushes. Bare tree limbs rattled in the power lines. The wind came straight down from the top of the street like cold water through a funnel, nipping at their backs, scattering candy wrappers and aluminum cans across the sidewalks. The steep slopes of roofs stood black against an indigo night sky, illuminated windows watching them like eyes.
“Great taste he’s got,” Jordan muttered. “What’s the mailbox number again?”
“Thirty-six-fifty-nine,” Mike said, and Tam knew which one it was without searching for the address.
He swore he could smell the stink of the bastard coming like steam off the top of the shadowed, tumble-down bungalow with ivy growing over its four foot chain link fence. It had a concrete porch full of shadows and an overflowing tin garbage can at the curb. Not a single light was on.
“This one,” he said as he turned up its drive, and Jordan bent over the mailbox just to be sure anyway.
James was waiting for them. He was dressed in black head-to-toe, hood pulled up around his ears. He coalesced from the shadows at the edge of the house as they reached the top of the drive. Mike and Jordan didn’t jump, but Tam swore he could feel when they startled, both of them pulling up on either side of him.
“You didn’t come alone,” James said, and his voice was exactly the sort of deep rumble criminals didn’t want to hear come out of the darkness toward them. “I really didn’t wanna do this with witnesses.”
“Too bad.” Mike had his puffed up, I’m-the-man voice out. “We’re his brothers.” And Tam didn’t think he’d ever loved the two of them more.
A beat of silence passed and then James snorted. “Yeah. Y’all look so much alike.”
The wind stood up and bared its teeth at them, rattled the world with a heartfelt wail.
“How do we do this?” Tam asked.
“He’s not here.” James hooked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the house. “He spent the night in lockup a couple weeks ago on a drunk and disorderly, and this is the address we got off him. I called the owner and he said, yeah, Hank Wales is renting from him. Neighbors aren’t exactly talkative, but from what I got, your old man spends most nights at home.”
“So we wait?” Jordan asked, standing up the collar of his canvas jacket.
James nodded.
“He has to leave here in cuffs tonight,” Tam said. “If he doesn’t, you guys will have to pick him up in a body bag.”
Mike elbowed him, but James just nodded again. He was a cop tonight, but as he’d said over the phone earlier, he was only a cop once the cuffs were on. Before that, he was on Tam’s side.
“Call your girl,” he said.
Tam pulled his cell away from his ear when the other line started to ring and put it on speakerphone. Jo picked up almost instantly, her, “Hey,” laced with barely contained nerves.
“Hi, baby.” He heard how unsteady his own voice was. Mike and Jordan were watching him. “James needs to talk to you.”
“Hey, Jo. How you doin’?”
“Fine.”
Wrong: she was
not
fine. She’d been attacked…and every time he played the scene out in his mind, his fury spiked so hard it became a physical thing grinding screws through his temples. He felt like the biggest failure; the reason he’d run away from her five years before, the one thing he’d wanted to protect her from was the thing he’d let happen. How –
how
– could he love this girl this much and hurt her at every turn?
“Here’s what I need you to do,” James said to the phone. “Call 9-1-1 and report the assault.”
Assault
. His wife had been assaulted. His
pregnant
wife.
“Tell them it happened just a few minutes ago and give them all the details. His name, what he’s wearing. Be as specific and sound as rattled as you can.”
“Okay,” she said.
“They’ll send a car to your house. Really play it up. If you’ve got bruises, show them.”
Bruises. Oh, shit, he hadn’t even thought of that yet. He –
Mike clapped a hand down on his shoulder.
We’re here. We got this. Chill out
.
“You’ll need to press charges,” James told her. “We’ll need something to hold him on.”
“How long will you be able to hold him?” Which was what Tam had been thinking too.
“You let us worry about that.”
Tam swore he could hear her swallow on the other end of the line.
“Tam, take me off speakerphone.” He did. “I want you to promise me something,” she said when he had the phone to his ear, “that you’ll come home tonight.”
Which meant so many things: don’t get arrested. Don’t get killed. Don’t go off on some vigilante mission. In some small way, he hated that he could let her override the things he needed to do. He was supposed to protect her, not run home to her. But he said, “I will,” anyway.
**
They waited for almost two hours, the wind raking its jagged claws across them. Tucked away on the porch, bundled in jackets, they were invisible. Talking was minimal. Tam smoked three cigarettes and Jordan could hear the impatience on each of his exhales. The night was like a boyhood game of espionage come to life, only it was the sort of night that made his palms itch and tunneled cold down into his bones rather than the adventure he’d thought it would be when he was much younger. A week ago he’d been Mr. Propriety about salvaging his job. Tonight, he’d followed his brother-in-law without question to a sketchy part of town where he now waited to ambush a man alongside an off duty cop. The irony was definitely not lost on him.
“Headlights,” Mike said, and Jordan didn’t look up right away because he’d said it every time a car came down the street.
This time, though, the truck that approached growled and screeched and stalled its way up to the end of the drive. Tam came away from the wall, a finger of shadow detaching from the wreckage of the house, and Jordan knew this was it.
The truck was a Dodge – he could tell by the shape of the headlamps – with a ladder rack in the bed. Streetlamps revealed a spotty collage of paint colors and rust patches. Its ability to pass an emissions inspection was more than doubtful as it limped to the house and swung up the drive.
Jordan squinted as the headlights cut across them and his pulse kicked into overdrive with an excitement that had nothing to do with being excited. He didn’t really do frightened, but suddenly, that was what the churning in his gut felt like. The engine died with a sputter, the lights were doused, and Jordan held his breath as the driver’s door opened.
He’d seen Hank Wales only once before, and that had been just hours ago when the man had Jo pressed up against the back door. He was a big, solid man, with wide-set shoulders and big catcher’s mitts for hands. He looked nothing like his son, though they apparently shared one trait – he spotted the smoldering orange tip of a cigarette as Hank climbed out into the night, a broad shadow outlined by the streetlamp.