After a meaningful pause, Jared shook it. “I’m your neighbor.”
Swat’s bleary eyes widened slightly. “Oh shit, dude! Are we being too loud?”
“Usually, yeah.”
“I’m sorry about that, bro, you know how it is—”
“Cut the bullshit, Swat,” Ghost cut in. “Where’s Max?”
Swat swayed on his feet with the effort to extract the proper response to that question from his muddled brain. “Max? Ahh…haven’t seen him.”
“Don’t dick me around. He’s here. You can tell me where or I can find him myself, but you might not like my methods.”
“Hey, man, don’t come in here harshing—”
“Fuck out of my way.” Ghost shouldered him aside. Swat stumbled and almost fell. While ordinarily Jared wouldn’t dream of barging uninvited through someone’s house, he followed Ghost’s dark silhouette down a hallway with his heart racing in his ears, drowning out the sound of protests coming from the living room. Too late. Ghost threw a door open at the end of the hallway. While Jared couldn’t see inside the room from his angle, the way Ghost surged through the door told him they’d found their target.
Sprawled facedown and sideways across a narrow, bare mattress on the floor was a shirtless guy with longish black hair and a torso full of tattoos. “Max!” Ghost called, sliding a boot under the guy’s body and forcing him over on his back. The smell of alcohol and weed coming off him in waves could have given them a contact high. Ghost even coughed. “Jesus Christ.”
This was Max?
It was too dark to see very well, so Jared went to locate a light switch, for all the good it did. Only one light bulb worked in the ceiling fan kit, but it was enough.
“Oh, look at this gentleman.” Ghost snapped his fingers several times in Max’s face. “Hey. Hey!” When the snaps didn’t work, he slapped him lightly on both cheeks, then grabbed him by the chin so that he and Jared could plainly see his crooked, purple nose and black eyes. Yeah. He’d taken a hell of a shot. “Hey!” Max’s eyes opened groggily. “Who gave you that love tap, sweetie, huh? Fucking asshole.” Ghost grabbed the guy mostly by his hair and hauled him up off the mattress. Max slurred a protest, the first sound he’d uttered, his knees almost buckling under him, but he managed to use Ghost as leverage and shove himself to his feet.
“The fuck you want?” he demanded, spit flying from his mouth with the f. He wiped an inked forearm across his mouth, glaring at Ghost with pupils blown so wide, they obliterated his irises. True to Starla’s description, he wasn’t a big guy. Less than six feet tall, no bulk. A wormy little shit. Smaller than Jared or not, though, whenever he thought of Max shoving Starla out of his car that night, thought of him putting his hands on her in any way whatsoever, he wanted to finish the job Brian had started and pummel his face to an unrecognizable pulp. He’d take great fucking joy in it.
Starla had given this guy the time of day? This wasted piece of trash? She’d been knowingly coming to hang out here?
Apparently, he wasn’t the only one daydreaming of violence. His ally advanced on Max, and though from his angle Jared couldn’t see the expression on Ghost’s face, it must have been a horror to behold. Max backtracked immediately, stumbling over a table behind him and sending bottles rolling. He windmilled his arms trying to keep his balance, failed, and managed to catch himself on the table just before his ass met the floor.
“Dudes, what’s going on?” Swat had appeared in the door frame behind them.
“Get out of here,” Ghost said, his voice shaking with fury. “It doesn’t concern you.”
“It’s my house—”
“And when in the fuck have you ever cared?” He cut his dark eyes to Jared. “Call them.” Jared reached into his back pocket for his phone, but that got both guys’ attentions. Max and Swat began babbling over each other.
“Who?”
“Call who, man? The fucking cops? Don’t get the fucking cops out here, man.”
“We’re only doing our civic duty. And I’m going to assume,” Ghost began slowly, dangerously, his piercing eyes leveled on Swat, “that you didn’t realize this is the piece of shit who tried to do Brian in when you started harboring him.”
“Wh…what?”
“Bullshit!” Max exploded, launching himself across the room at Ghost. While Ghost was obviously perfectly capable of taking care of himself, Jared caught Max and wrenched one arm up behind his back, taking great pleasure in slamming him into the wall—which obviously didn’t feel good on Max’s broken nose. The guy howled.
“I wouldn’t move if you want to keep that arm,” Ghost said conversationally. “This motherfucker here rides bulls for fun. I doubt a sack of shit like you can throw him off.”
Jared couldn’t resist giving his arm an extra wrench to punctuate those words, thinking of Starla, thinking of her fear, her pain, her guilt, her shame…and Brian, lying in the hospital trying not to die when he should have been at home with his new family… Jared almost didn’t realize he was increasing the pressure until Max’s inane jabbering formed into words. “Okay, man, okay, okay! Stop, you’re breaking my fucking arm—”
“Oh, it hurts?” Ghost asked conversationally, thrusting his face close to Max’s. “Did you think about how much it hurt when you stuck a knife in Brian’s fucking back? Huh? Did you?”
“What was it for?” Jared demanded, barely recognizing his own voice. “Starla? She hates your goddamn guts. I picked her up when you threw her out of the car. If you wanted to kill the one she loves, asshole, you should’ve come for me.”
Except for his wild panting, Max was silent.
“Something tells me you wouldn’t have been too successful at that either,” Ghost said. He caught Jared’s eye. “You good?”
“I can stay here all night.”
“Let’s end this shit.” Ghost plucked his phone from his hoodie pocket and began to dial.
Chapter Twenty-five
Dawn streaked the sky by the time he trudged up his front steps sore and exhausted, but he barely noticed the colors or the still mist in the air. The police had come and hauled Max away for questioning, but Jared had little doubt there would be charges to follow—the guy was cracking. Apparently, he wasn’t such a badass after all; he’d been sobbing when they put him in the police car. Swat had been as meek as a kitten, swearing innocence about knowing Max was wanted. Ghost and Jared had hung around answering questions themselves and stoically enduring their ass chewing for taking matters into their own hands this way. In the end, they were released. It had been worth it.
Jared might have been imagining it, but he thought he’d seen a grim respect in Ghost’s eyes as they shook on a mission well accomplished and parted ways. If Ghost was a perceptive guy, he would’ve seen the same thing in Jared’s. Ghost had stood to lose a lot too because of Max’s stupidity. Hopefully, he would have some peace now—and having Macy at home waiting for him would certainly help with that.
Starla came running and threw herself into Jared’s arms as soon as he opened the door. He’d been texting her the events, but he hadn’t wanted her to come down there.
“Oh God!” she said, so soft in his arms and smelling of coffee and that peachy scent that was entirely Starla. “I’ve been watching from up here. I could see the flashing lights but not much else. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much.”
He buried his face in her hair, his muscles shaking on the verge of collapse. Yeah, he might ride bulls for fun, but he’d held Max immobile for so long, had been so keyed up on the edge of bursting, he felt as if he could sleep for days. His dad would just have to forgive him again. No damn way was he going to work today.
“Are you okay?” she went on, pulling back to look at him and stroking his hair. She was beautiful. “Do you need anything? Name it.”
“A shower. Sleep.”
“I’ll start your shower. You relax.”
He couldn’t. Even when she led him to his bedroom and sat him on the bed. He listlessly pulled off his boots and shirt and watched her move around his bathroom, starting the shower, warming it up, getting towels from the cabinet. She came back to him smiling, but he couldn’t muster the will or the strength to return it from the deepest depths of his soul right now, no matter how far inside he reached.
Lifting his gaze to hers, he had but one question. “How?”
Starla’s jubilant expression began a slow fall. “How what?”
“That…him. How?”
She seemed to be struggling with some inner turmoil—maybe she was trying to convince herself he didn’t mean what she thought he meant.
Except he did. He held her gaze steadily while the slow dawn of understanding spread across her features and, with it, despair.
“What the fuck, are you serious right now?”
All his exhaustion fled in a burst of rage. “I can’t even imagine you with someone like that, or hanging out in some of the places I’ve been tonight. He’s a goddamn drug dealer, Starla. Jesus! What the hell is your problem, getting hooked up with someone like him?”