Deke’s eyes moved to Tate. “You?”
Tate stood up. “We’re combin’ the hills where Sunny was attacked.”
Deke nodded. “Wood’s already got boys headin’ that way. They even got fuckin’ quadrants. He’s all over it.”
“Feds didn’t find anything up there,” Bubba noted.
“That don’t mean there’s nothin’ to be found,” Deke replied.
“Krys got Jonas?” Tate asked Bubba and Bubba nodded.
“Stella’s on her way up,” Deke added.
“Let’s go,” Tate muttered and headed out the door.
Krys and Jonas were in the living room when they arrived. Both sets of eyes flew to the three men as they hit the dining area.
Jonas shot off his chair and ran to Tate, slamming into him headlong and throwing his arms around Tate’s middle.
Jonas was holding his shit too, but that hold was slipping.
“Dad,” Jonas whispered, his voice small and scared and Tate allowed himself in that instant to acknowledge what he’d known since he’d heard Frank’s voice on the phone and that was the fact that tonight someone was going to die and Tatum Jackson was going to fucking kill him.
“Goin’ out, Bub, lookin’ for Laurie,” Tate muttered, his hand moving along his son’s hair and down to curl around his neck.
Jonas’s head shot back. “Can I –?”
“No,” Tate cut him off.
“But –”
“I gotta go, Bub,” Tate told him.
“But Dad –”
Tate grasped him by his biceps, pulled him firmly but gently away and held on as he bent double and looked in his son’s eyes. His eyes. Eyes Laurie had told him, in the dark when they were in bed after he’d made love to her weeks ago, that she thought were the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen, both sets of them.
“Who’s my big man?” Tate whispered.
Jonas’s lip trembled.
Then he whispered back, “Me.”
“Look out for Krys,” Tate directed.
“Okay,” Jonas was still whispering.
Tate let him go but hooked him with an arm around his shoulders, yanking his son into his body and squeezing tight. Then he let him go again and his eyes swept Krys. She was standing and he saw her eyes were bright but her jaw was clenched. Gritting her teeth to keep back the tears.
“Be back with Laurie,” Tate told her.
She swallowed.
“Right, Tate,” she said.
They were out the door, Deke peeling off to his truck, Bubba to his, Tate to the Explorer when they saw lights coming up the lane. They stopped to see Shambles and Sunny’s VW van park off to the side. Both got out, Shambles ran to them, Sunny coming slower.
“Word?” Shambles demanded.
“We’re goin’ to look for her,” Bubba answered.
“I’m coming,” he turned to Tate. “Jonas?”
“In the house,” Tate answered and looked at Sunny. “He could use you.”
She didn’t even nod. She ran to the house.
Shambles ran to the passenger side of Bubba’s truck.
They all climbed in and went down the mountain.
Jim-Billy
He should have bought one of those cell phones.
He really should have.
But he didn’t and there was no time to spare.
He also shouldn’t drink so goddamned much.
But it was Christmas and every twinkling light, every swaying garland, every Christmas tree blinking in every goddamned window reminded him.
So he drank too much.
But not too much not to remember gabbing with Dalton ages ago, it had to be over a year, and Dalton telling him about his place. Jim-Billy hadn’t even thought about it, not then, not later when all that shit with the girls was going down. It was a nothing conversation he put out of his mind.
But Dalton had told him he didn’t have an apartment in town or a house. He lived in the hills, the hills where the hippy chick was attacked.
“My Ma’s old place,” he’d muttered.
And drunken Jim-Billy – hearing about Laurie when everyone at the bar was murmuring about it, panicking, the men heading to the garage – fear threaded its way through the alcohol drenching his system and he’d remembered pretty Jane Simpson who’d gotten knocked up in high school and had a boy. She’d lived up there with her folks until she got herself a man and she’d moved to Ouray to be with that man. And he remembered vaguely hearing word that she’d been killed, knifed to death by her boyfriend who swore he didn’t do it, swore he loved her, swore she was the love of his life even though he was charged and found guilty and went to prison for it. Everyone they knew, Jim-Billy remembered the talk filtering from Ouray, had been stunned. All those folks said Jane and her man were tight, they were in love, they meant the world to each other. And with Jane’s folks both dead by then, Jim-Billy remembered hearing her son had gone into foster care.