Jackson Stiles, Road to Redemption (36 page)

We stand there, as he lets it all out. I put an arm or two around his shoulders while he does it, wishing I hadn’t been such a fucking dick to Mikey.

Maybe he’d still be here if I hadn’t been.

Maybe not.

The suck-ass thing is, I’ll never know.

Green watches the two of us. She’s flushed and visibly shaken. Maybe because she’s glad this is all over, or maybe because she’s afraid the jig is up.

Time to figure out, once and for all, which side she’s on.

I WAS NEVER WORRIED

BY THE TIME the kid lets me go, and I’ve given it the official Jackson Stiles effort at telling him shit’s gonna be okay, the place is a little less crowded. Up to and including the fact that there are a couple of troopers leading Bulldozer outside and into a mobile trailer.

You don’t see that kinda crazy every day.

Stix wipes his face, and I tell him to go grab some water or something from one of the EMTs. Green and I keep eye contact for a minute, only to be broken by my father approaching me.

Suddenly, my demeanor is a little less thoughtful and a little more, well, let’s face it, bitter.

“They haven’t found any trace of Connor.” He checks his watch. “And Graham Black was forced to backpedal in the middle of the speech he’s still giving.”

His amusement almost makes me wanna join in on his happy.

Almost.

I’m dying to see how Black talks his way out of this.

Later.

“What the hell are you doing here, Dad?”

I can’t help but be a little bit in awe of the man, despite our complicated history.

“I almost wasn’t.” He seems impressed with himself. Or someone, at least.

“The fuck does that mean?”

“Nick didn’t explain? I figured he’d─”

“He explained.” I give my father a cold stare. Waiting.

For what?

“Then─”

“I guess what I’m trying to understand is how you managed to stay sober long enough to even pull this shit off? And why didn’t you mention this when you saw me?”

“It was a covert operation, son. I had no idea you were in on any of this until I saw you at the gate. Nick never mentioned─”

“He didn’t know either. Until tonight.” Beside the point. “Did Ma even really leave you?” Because it wouldn’t surprise me if he was a liar on a top of being a dick.

“She did.” His voice is gruff and stressed. Fine.  I’ll give him that one. His expression hit the emergency brake. And, yes, I question every fucking thing.

Always.

“It was ugly and happened at the worst time.” Of course, he’d see it that way. “She made me wonder if I was going through with this whole thing tonight.” He wears a cloak of wonder now. He looks about twenty years younger all of a sudden. “Then you said something.”

He doesn’t even know what the fuck he’s saying any more.

Clearly, he’s mistaken.

“Catching perps, taking down the bad guys.”

Yeah. I said that, all right.

I’m so confused right now. Was that a compliment?

“That’s why I started this all those years ago, Jackson. I wanted to end it that way. Even if I’ve screwed everything else up along the way.”

“Why do I get the feeling you’re not just talking about your family?”

His face falls into a sad, painful smile. “You always were the smart one.”

Okay that definitely was a compliment.

Right?

“You gonna explain yourself?”

He sets a hand on my shoulder.

It’s heavy.

“That’s a story for another time, son.”

The way he carries himself right now doesn’t look like a man who’s had a drinking problem for the majority of his life. He looks like someone who’s been dragged through the wringer about a hundred times over.

He’s not getting any sympathy from me, if that’s what he’s after.

One good deed doesn’t make the fuck up for all the shit he’s put us through over the years.

Am I a tad impressed that he pulled this shit off? Quite frankly, yes. Okay, maybe more than a tad. He doesn’t need to know that, though.

“For now, I’m just glad I didn’t lose another son through all of this.”

My breath catches with those last words of his.

Simple. Yet perplexing.

Everything is muddled right now, between what I expected to hear come out of his mouth, which was a whole bunch of self-righteous bullshit, and what he actually said. For the first time in a very long damn time, I’m caught off guard by the old man.

“I don’t understand.” I’m not sure why I let that slip out. But there it hangs, like a fucking matzo ball, for all the world to see.

I search his eyes for the punchline, but he doesn’t give it to me. Instead, he gives my shoulder a tight squeeze and tries to grin—only it’s more like he’s forgotten how.

“We’ll talk more, soon,” he tells me. “Let’s just say your mother made a few things clearer for me.”

I am still so confused.

“Women do that to ya,” he jibes, and instinctively, I find Green again.

“Excuse me, Dad.” I stride past him. We’ll pick up on this conversation again at some point. I’m not sure I can process any of it right now anyway.

I eye Nick getting taken care of, and Stix, who’s talking easier than you’d think with one of the men in blue. And Walker, of whom I have serious fucking doubts about. For now, everyone else becomes a blur until I’m up in Green’s personal space. Her, I can see.

She opens her mouth to say something, but I stop her.

“You confuse the shit of me, Green.”

She nods. “I know.”

“I don’t like to be confused.”

“I know that, too.”

A grueling minute goes by. She doesn’t make it easy to be ticked off when she freely admits to what she’s done to make me ticked off.

“Who
are
you?”

“I’m the same person I was earlier.”

She’s right. She’s still the same confident, smug, infuriating woman I’ve come to know over the past couple weeks.

I’m still ticked. Don’t get me wrong.

“Did you know about Connor?”

She shakes her head. “Not a damn clue. Not until I got here.”

“That’s gonna be an interesting conversation someday.”

“If I ever see him again.”

“I have a feeling you will.”

She lets out a shaky breath.

“And Walker?” I push because come one, it’s what I do.

She looks over at the dick himself. “He’s not as bad as you think, Stiles.”

“Jesus. Fucking A. You, too?”

A hand reaches out and hooks itself around mine. When I look down to see us connected, I think how easy it would be to let the feeling of her in my arms take over and just forget about tonight.

Move on.

Only I’m not like every other schmuck on the street.

I need some fucking answers.

“What the hell happened tonight?”

I’ll decide whether this can even happen or not.

“Where do I start?”

“Wherever you need to make this shit make sense.”

She nods and takes a deep breath before she begins.

“At the bar.”

“Fine.”

I notice something as she starts to tell me her story.

“Walker confronted me about the texts from Anonymous.”

I haven’t let go of her hand.

“So he does know the guy.” I goddamn knew it.

“Only because he’s been tracking him for about a year now.”

So he says.

“Anyway, he doesn’t call him Anonymous. He calls him Nathan Threshold.”

Threshold. Threshold. Where the fuck do I know that name from?

“And how did he know you had anything to do with it?”

“He tied him to my dad. I’m not sure how, but it wasn’t difficult for him to figure out who I was after that.”

“So he’s been planning this shit all along.”

But exactly how long? That’s the million-dollar question here.

“I don’t know, Stiles, but he’s definitely given it some thought.”

“What does that mean?”

“You sure you wanna hear this?”

I find a bale of hay to sit on. Something tells me I’m gonna need to be sitting down for this shit. “Yeah.”

“Apparently, there’s some history there, with your dad and Threshold.” She hesitates when she says the word
dad,
and when she’s done, it takes me a couple seconds to compute what she just insinuated.

“I’m sorry. Did you just fucking say my father is personally acquainted with the douchebag who’s been wreaking havoc in Redemption?”

“I didn’t say
personally
,” she corrects me. “I just said there was some history there. Enough to make Threshold think Walker wanted in on an illegal operation that’s been going on under his direction for at least five years or so.”

Definitely longer.

“I don’t know
all
the details, yet, but─”

“What do you mean, yet?” I interject. And why do I have a bad feeling about this shit?

“I mean Walker kind of promised me an exclusive on the story if I promised to play tonight through like I was on Threshold’s team.”

Awesome.

“Another exclusive, you’ll be set for life.”

“Or at least get a real investigative reporting job somewhere, right?” Her face beams with excitement.

I’m not feeling it so much.

“Sorry,” she tells me. Her voice is low and soft.

I shake it off, though. “Keep going.” I peek over at my dad, who’s chatting it up with Walker on the down-low. I’m gonna need to dig into that BS later.

“All I really know is Walker needed an in to get to Threshold. He’d already made some sort of connection with your father a while back, and once I came into the picture, it was a done deal. Tonight was a test for both of us. He thought we’d passed until you showed up. And then your dad pulled out the Uzi.” She laughs. “Guess he didn’t see that one coming.”

“Nobody did.” I’m still trying to comprehend that shit.

“How did you even know where we were, anyway?” she asks and I think about Thomas for a second or two and how maybe there really is a conscious underneath that drug-dealing, potential psychopathic facade of his.

Nah.

“A friend tipped me off.”

Green nods and turns quiet. “Tell me you believe me.” She tugs at my hand, which is still firmly gripping onto hers. “I really didn’t know anything about any of this until we were at that bar.”

I search her eyes for answers while she continues.

“There wasn’t enough time to explain, and I knew you’d try to talk me out of it. But we needed this. We needed to get him, Stiles. Tonight was it.”

She doesn’t twitch, or tuck, or lose eye contact one time.

She’s being truthful.

She wasn’t screwing me over.

She’s not planning on it either, despite whatever plans Walker might’ve had.

Not that it should surprise me, but I let out a sigh of relief anyway.

“Listen.” I don’t do apologies. It leaves too much out there for people to hang over your head for too long. “I
am
sorry about that whole having my dick in the evil temptress comment back there. I didn’t mean─”

“Yes you did.” At first she’s bitch-faced, but then I see it.

A grin.

A smug, pompous, sexy grin.

“A ‘thank you’
and
an ‘I’m sorry’ in one night. I don’t know what to say, Stiles.”

Me either. So I pull her into my arms and wrap them securely around her frame instead. I’m fucking tired, and I use her shoulder as a pillow of sorts, burying my face into her hair, like it’s the last time this’ll happen, even though, if I have anything to say about it, that’s far from the fucking truth.

Her arms slide around me too, and when she leans in closer, I know for now, she doesn’t harbor too many hard feelings about the shit I said outside by the fence.

The two of us, here, like this, in this fucked-up barn, in the middle of this fucked-up situation, takes some of the confusion and pain away.

I find myself breathing a little easier than normal.