KENNICK: A Bad Boy Romance Novel (23 page)

Chapter
Thirty-Six

Kim didn’t really know where to go. She had just been
driving around aimlessly for a good long while. Trying not to think about the
words he hadn’t said. Trying not to think about anything.

Finally, she found herself driving towards the firing
range. She slowed her car as she drove past it. This was someplace she’d felt
strong, confident, unbreakable. But she knew that she couldn’t go there now. It
was too full of his memory, of the feel of his body against hers, his words in
her ears and his love in her heart.

She drove on.

And, before she knew it, she’d driven for six hours.
Going nowhere, making a broad loop through the county, over and over again,
like a dog chasing its tail. Except Kim was chasing some comfort she knew
couldn’t be found.

The idea of going back to her apartment was thoroughly
unsavory. She’d been there with him, too. And she didn’t want company, not
Ricky’s or Tricia’s or anyone’s. So, with the sun just about to set, she headed
back into town and went to her office, where she might at least find a bit of
Mayor Gunderson’s secret stash to help ease the dull pain in her heart and
soul.

As it turned out, though, she wouldn’t be alone in the
office, either.

 
“Oh, Tom,”
she said, following the sound of drunken weeping to his darkened office. She
was surprised he’d come to the office on a Saturday. It was hard enough to get
him into the office on a day he was supposed to be there. But he was most
certainly drunk. He wouldn’t be crying if he wasn’t, she didn’t think. And as
she crossed the threshold, the smell of whiskey hit her like a train. She
scrunched her nose and Mayor Gunderson looked up at her, all red eyes and
blubbering lips. Outside, the sky was red as a blood orange, the
soon-to-be-setting sun making everything fire up.

“God, Kim,” Mayor Gunderson said, extending one
miserably shaking hand towards her. “I jus’, I always jus’, I always jus’
wan’ed good things. For her, you know? For all’a us. Whole place safe and good.
An’ fuckin’….fuckin’…gypsies!”

His tears turned to anger and he slammed one meaty
fist against the top of his desk.

“I know,” Kim said softly. She’d never seen him this
bad. But he’d been very bad indeed recently. Worse and worse, in fact. If she
hadn’t been so wrapped up in Kennick, she might have tried to help. But she’d
been selfish…

She crossed the room, determined now not to be selfish
anymore. She needed to get him to sleep, or some coffee, or some food.
Whichever of those things he was most accepting of would be fine.

“Come on, Tom,” she said, coming to his side. He
looked up at her, tears rolling down his cheeks, when she gripped his forearm
and tried to pull him to his feet. “Let’s get you feeling better, huh?”

“An’ now. Now I did it. I had-ta do it. I had-ta do it
to ‘er. I had-ta kill ‘er, Kim, I can’t…I don’ have a choice,” he said, the
words coming out slurred and shaky. Kim’s body stiffened for a moment. That was
a weird thing to say. A very weird thing indeed. Mayor Gunderson ripped his arm
away with a guttural cry. When he did, Kim caught sight of something shiny in
his belt. A gun? Since when did the mayor have a gun?

“You don’t have to kill anyone, Mayor Gunderson,” Kim
said, her gut churning. She hoped he was just babbling drunken nonsense. But a
part of her knew that was a lot to hope for.

“I do,” he bawled, smacking the desk again. And then
he quieted. And that was, somehow, worse. Much, much worse. Because when he
turned to her, the tears were drying. “I do, Kim. An’, oh God. An’ now you.
You…my Kimmy…I shoulda done you inst’d a her. Shoulda be’n you first, shoulda,
but I couldn’t. But I gotta now. I gotta.”

“Okay,” Kim said, trying to keep the quiver from her
voice. “Okay, Tom, no one is going to be killing anyone. Right? No one kills
anyone.”

He shook his head, his lower lip trembling as he
sniffled, deep and loud.

“You were always real good,” he said, sighing as
though resigned to an action he couldn’t avoid. When Kim watched his arm fall,
hand reaching for the gun in his belt, a rock fell into her stomach and it
plummeted all the way to the base of her body. She reached, too. Faster than
him, but not by much. His hand landed on hers, much bigger, gripping it tight,
engulfing it.

“Leggo,” he slurred, his eyes now ferocious as he
looked at her. “Leggo! Gotta do it!”

“No, Tom,” Kim screamed, panic kicking in heartily
now, adrenaline rushing through her like white lightning. She used it to her
advantage and wrenched her hand free, taking the gun with it. But as Mayor
Gunderson’s strong grip released her, the momentum drove her backward until she
landed on her ass in front of him. Rolling to his feet, his face a blank mask
of rage, he roared and advanced. Kim grabbed the gun in both hands, pointing it
up at him.

“I’ll shoot, Tom! I swear, I’ll shoot!”

He lunged downward. She had a split second to aim. The
sound deafened her as her finger squeezed the trigger. His shoulder spun back,
bright red exploding as the bullet shot through his flesh and came out the
other side. His roar was animalistic, but Kim barely heard it over the ringing
in her ears. He was still falling toward her, and she raised her knees, meeting
his stomach with her feet and pushing back with all the strength she possessed.
He looked at her, suspended for a moment above her, his eyes almost childlike
with surprise and sorrow.

“Kimmy,” he said, their eye contact broken as he was
forced backward, his back slamming into the desk with a solid thunk. Scrambling
backward, Kim’s hands were shaking as she raised the gun once more, ready to
unload the whole damn clip if she had to. But she didn’t have to. His eyes were
closing. His shoulder hung at an unnatural angle.

Unbelievably, he snored.

Kim felt like each breath she took was part torture,
part blessing. She felt like she should be crying. But she wasn’t. Mayor
Gunderson bled out onto the floor. The gun was still in her hands. When she
dropped it, there was a clatter she barely heard.

Raising on shaky legs to her shaky knees, hands out as
though the room were pitch black and she needed to rely on touch to get around,
she finally managed to fall upwards to shaky feet. She stumbled forward until
she hit wood. She’d managed to avoid the Mayor’s unconscious body.

She sat down heavy on his chair and scrambled for the
phone, still breathing in small, hitched, barely-enough breaths. Her elbow
knocked over the mostly-empty bottle of whiskey that had been sitting on the desk.
As she dialed, she saw what Mayor Gunderson had been looking at while he drank
himself into a prison cell. It almost made her drop the phone. Almost.

It was old, weathered.

The date on the upper-right corner was old, too.

Thirty years old.

It looked official.

It looked exactly like page from a police report.

Chapter
Thirty-Seven

Damon and Kennick went back
and forth, back and forth. What if Pieter
was
wrong? Even if he'd really seen Jenner set the fire, would anyone trust the
word of a kid over Jenner's? Did
they
trust
his word? If they came forward with what he'd told them, would they be putting
him in danger? If Jenner Surry was crazy enough to set a trailer on fire with a
baby inside, who was to say he wouldn't do something to Pieter as payback for
ratting him out?

There wasn't time to sleep
on it. It was only a matter of hours before the
kumpania
would gather to discuss the fire and what it meant and
what they'd do. They'd sent Pieter home to his mother and told him that he
should stay home for the rest of the night. They told him not to tell anyone
else what he'd seen. He'd seemed eager enough to follow that bit of wisdom.

Kennick held his hair in both
hands, staring straight down at the tabletop. Everyone was eager to believe
that the fire was set on purpose by someone from Kingdom, someone who believed
they were responsible for Rhonda's murder thirty years prior and then Jessica's
murder. It
was
a spectacular
coincidence, after all, even if thinking about it for only a few moments
yielded more confusion than anything else. But this was not a time for rational
minds to prevail; in the aftermath of murder, in a small town like Kingdom,
there was only room for emotion and revenge.

Hell, Kennick himself had
believed it was a Kingdom citizen who'd set the fire – the angry letters to the
editor that followed the publication of Ricky's article were enough to convince
him that there were some people in town who'd be happy to pick up a torch to
avenge the death of one of their own. And if the roles were reversed, if
someone from the
kumpania
had been
killed, would his people be any more patient? He'd like to think so, but he had
to be honest with himself at the same time. People were people.

When he thought once more of
Jenner Surry, sneaking through the trailer park with a Molotov cocktail,
throwing it through the window, not giving a damn about the women
 
or child inside, he saw red hot anger in
his vision, his muscles tensing. He wanted to find the bastard and beat him to
a bloody pulp.

Too soon, it was 8:00, the
day’s waning light still reddening the sky. One by one, the
kumpania’s
older members began to arrive
at the Volanis brother’s trailer. Anyone over the age of 22 was considered
adult enough to attend a meeting like this, and people either brought their own
lawn chairs or sat on the grass or stood. Kennick, who could still barely
stand, set up a chair on the stoop, where he could oversee the meeting. Damon
and Cristov stood at his sides like sentries.

“We all know why we’re
here,” he said to begin the discussion. “Last night, something terrible
happened to us. No one was seriously hurt, thank God, but it was a clear act of
violence against us.”

He scanned the crowd,
wondering what would come of this discussion. He had his own hopes.

“So we’re here to discuss
what to do,” he continued. “We can leave. Or we can stay. I think it’s
important to have this meeting so…”

“We already
know
what to do,” a surly voice called
out. Jenner Surry. Kennick’s hands tightened to fists. “We’re obviously getting
out of Dodge. What is there to discuss? We know these townie fucks attacked us
and….”

“We don't know
anything
yet,” Kennick pointed out. “We
know that it wasn't an accident. But we don't know who it was, or why. And...”

He glanced at Damon, who
gave him an almost imperceptible nod. His eyes fell, instinctively, to Jenner
Surry, who was staring at him with such blatant hate that it made him want to
spit on the ground and scream his name to the heavens, tell everyone what he'd
done and let the
kumpania
dole out
what justice was due.

“Well, I don't know how much
I can say on this matter, but there's
some
evidence that it wasn't a citizen of Kingdom who did it. It
may
have been one of our own.”

A collective gasp that went
up from the crowd, followed by grumbling whispers that threatened to rise to
the level of shouting.

“I can't say too much on
that matter,” Kennick said, holding his hands up in an attempt to quiet the
crowd. “I'm just saying it's a...possibility.”

“Based on what?” a female
voice called out.

“Well,” Kennick said, “for
one thing, we
know
that no one
drove
here from Kingdom when the fire broke
out. Dago was sitting right in front of his trailer, overlooking the road. And
you didn't see anyone, did you, Dago? No one entered the park in a vehicle.”

“S'true,” the man called
out. He'd already been questioned by the police, but Damon and Cristov had done
their own bit of questioning while Kennick was recovering in the hospital. They
hadn't come up with anything that proved anything....until Pieter had come
forward. Then, all the little things they'd discovered seem to add up a lot
more.

“So it's hard to imagine
someone from Kingdom trekking all the way out here holding a Molotov cocktail
and then beating it through the woods without anyone noticing.”

“That doesn't prove
anything,” called a voice that Kennick recognized as Nico Kristina.

“No, it doesn't,” Kennick
admitted. “But you know what else doesn't prove anything? Running away.”

This was it. This was the
argument that Kennick and Damon had finally decided on presenting to the
kumpania.
And it was a good one. Not
just in terms of logic or persuasion. In terms of heart, and honesty, and pure
emotion. It was a good argument because it was the one that Kennick had been
having with his own self ever since waking up in that hospital.

Thirty years ago, Pieter
Volanis and his people had run away from Kingdom because they were being
persecuted for something they didn't do.

When they say that history
repeats itself, they never mention that you have a choice in how much you allow
that adage to prove true.

Kennick Volanis didn't want
to run away from anything anymore. And he thought he could show his people that
running away wasn't their only option. It was true, gypsies had spent
generations running. It seemed the whole history of the Rom was a history of
running. But it didn't have to be that way, not now, and not ever again. They'd
set down roots here. They'd been
welcomed
here, at least by some. Gypsies travelled; it's what they did. But there
was nothing like having a home to come back to after going wherever it was you
wanted to go. And if they could stay in Kingdom, it could become that home.

“He just wants to stay
because he's in
love,”
Jenner shouted
over the mumbling. Some heads turned to the voice, others stayed steady on
Kennick. “He doesn't have our interests in mind. Just his own lust.”

It took every ounce of
Kennick's will not to launch himself through the crowd and toss Jenner to the
ground, beat him within an inch of his life and leave him in the street to be
run over by a truck.

“Shut the fuck up, Jenner,”
another voice called from the crowd. Kennick tried to see the source of his
defense; to his surprise, it was Nal Surry, Jenner's cousin. “You've been
talking a lot of shit since we got here. I'm getting tired of it. Just like I'm
tired of running. I like what he's saying. Let him keep talking.”

Kennick gave Nal a nod,
appreciating the words in his favor, and the way the crowd seemed to be swaying
in his direction as Jenner spat on the ground and grumbled.

“This is going to be
something we all decide,” Kennick said at last. “I won't make a decision that
could put any more of us in danger. I just won't. But nothing says guilt quite
like running. We came here to clear my father's name. Not just my father; our
rom baro.
A man who always put the
kumpania
before himself. Before his own
familia.

If we leave now, not only
have we not cleared his name, they'll throw even more dirt on it. And it won't
just be Pieter Volanis anymore. It'll be Ana Volanis, and Baba Surry. And Nal
Surry, and Peta Kristina. And Dago Tenniss. And our sons and daughters. If we
run from this, every last one of us winds up stained with guilt.”

Murmurs filled the silence
as Kennick stopped speaking, and he looked out at the adults in his extended
family, his clan, the people he lived for and would die for. If they chose to
leave, he would neither blame them nor try to stop them. He had to admit he had
more than a little bit of a reason to want to stay. Leaving Kim would render
his heart immobile, useless for the rest of his days. But the
kumpania
would always come first.

“What if they come after
us?” Peta Kristina called out. “If they
did
burn the trailer, who's to say they'll stop there? Who's to say they won't
loot our businesses, hunt us down, harm our children?”

“We have the protection of
the police,” Damon said, rising to stand beside Kennick. “They've promised not
to hold back when they find the person who attacked us.”

Damon's gaze fell,
pointedly, to Jenner, who was burning red with frustration.

“The police? You can't be
serious,” Dago scoffed. Damon's attention shifted to Kennick. It was no secret
that cops and gypsies had rarely gotten along, and many in the
kumpania
had already felt the sting of
police questioning.

“I don't think,” Kennick
said slowly, choosing his words carefully, “that we need to fear the police
here in Kingdom. I know some of them – they are good men. When my nephew got in
trouble for stealing, they didn't use it as an example of what it would mean to
have gypsies in their town. You don't have to take my word for it, but...”

“But we should,” Baba Surry
said, standing up now. As one of the oldest members of the
kumpania,
Baba Surry was like everyone's grandmother, and despite
her failing mind her word went a long way. Kennick hadn't dared to hope she
might take his side, and when she stood to address the crowd he tensed in
anticipation.

“Pieter Volanis led us for
many years,” she continued, gazing with near-blind eyes at the crowd, all the
faces that she had watched grow from babies to adults. “He was a good man. One
of the best. A
rom baro
that I never
once doubted.”

Kennick noticed Jenner's
growing agitation as his own grandmother rose in defense of his worst enemy.

“Kennick is our leader now.
We should trust him. He has Pieter's blood. And he is as good a man as his
father.”

At that, Tula Volanis,
Kennick's cousin and a true seer who shared his grandmother's gift of
foresight, stood up.

“I stand with Kennick,” she
said. “Not just because he's my blood. You all have trusted me, in the past, to
see your futures, what lies beyond the veil. I wish I had seen the fire before
it had happened. I wish...”

Her voice trailed off
slightly as her face grew troubled.

“If we leave, the trouble
will not,” she said. “I mean – it follows. There are bad days coming, I can
feel them. But we won't avoid them by running. They will find us wherever they
go. My cousin is right. I was afraid to say it before, but the worst things
that are going to happen to us...they will start amongst ourselves. There is
something bad lurking within our own clan. I can't see what, I can't see who; I
just feel it. We ought to stay.”

She nodded firmly, then sat
down in a hurry. The crowd began its slow, low murmuring once more. Baba
Surry's words carried a lot of weight. So did Tula's visions. More than one
member of the
kumpania
had seen her
predictions come true. Kennick's heart began to race slightly as one by one,
all eyes returned to him.

“Let's sleep on it,” he said
finally. “Eat, and discuss, and then tomorrow...”

A car engine rumbled,
drawing everyone's attention from Kennick. He immediately recognized Kim's car
as it barreled across the trailer park; apparently, plenty of other people
recognized it as well, because her name was whispered across the crowd. His
fists tightened. This was poor timing indeed. The last thing he needed was for
everyone to be reminded that his heart had a huge stake in the matter.