Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35443 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35443 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
"Anyway," Crow continues. "They're Yanktonai. Up north here." He nods his chin, vaguely indicating which cardinal direction that is. "I stayed there a while, but then they sent me down here."
"They sent you here?" Diesel asks.
Crow nods.
"Why?" I ask.
"Because… you know." He shrugs. "They run the Canadian border. Same way Badlands was running the Yellowstone River corridor."
"The Yanktonai sent you to spy?" Ratchet asks. He's Northern Cheyenne, so this tribal shit interests him.
"Listen," Crow says. "Medicine Line runs their own shit. They are not co-opted by the Feds. They didn't know Brick was. And once I found out, I sent word back to stay clear and they just… said I couldn't come back."
I can tell it hurts Crow to admit this last part. He finally found a place where he belonged, finds some good intel, relays it, and… they cut him loose.
It hits with me too. "So you joined up with Badlands," I say. Words all flat and unemotional.
Crow nods.
"So where does the cartel come in?" I ask. Since that's the whole point of this fuckin' oversharing time.
"We were on a run one day—me, Brick, and Roach. We met up with a bunch of cartel members and some guy called Aaron pulled me aside later and started askin' questions."
"What kind of questions?" I ask.
"About where I grew up. And… I recognized him at that point. We came in to the cartel the same way as young boys. He never got out."
"Did he tell them who you were?" Ratchet asks.
Crow shakes his head. "He never did. We still talk a little. Every few months, he texts, or I text, and we have a beer or whatever."
Well that was a loaded fuckin' story I don't ever wanna know more about.
But it's good enough for me. "I want Dusty and Crow as joint secretary/treasurer." Crow tries to object, but I put up a hand. "You don't have to interact with them, Crow. You're never goin' back, if that's what you're worried about. And if they ever come for you, they gotta go through us. But you're gonna help Dusty navigate this because they're gonna eat that kid up and we need him. Got me?"
Crow lets out a long breath, but nods. "Yeah, Demon, I got ya."
I look at Diesel. He calls the vote.
Every hand goes up.
Then I pound my fist on the table to end it. "Now… let's have ourselves a fuckin' patch party."
CHAPTER 8
The next several days pass with a kind of certainty that only comes from patterns.
Which is a very human thing. How we find rhythm in the strange and call it normal.
How we let the odd settle into routine until we can't even remember what it looked like before it clouded up.
Two things happen that help this pattern recognition along.
First, the weather.
It's unseasonably warm, and in eastern Montana that's not a small thing. Fall here doesn't knock, it arrives like a creditor. Sudden and unapologetic. And it has been known to show up in the dead of August with an attitude.
We are long past August now. And yet the ranch is still warm in the afternoons, the sun is still comin' up every morning like it means it, and the cool nights have no bite to 'em.
The second thing is Marcus and his sick brand of devotion. Which has taken on a frequency and a fervor that I can only describe as… presidential.
Which is to say, performative, relentless, and completely divorced from any consideration of what I might actually want.
He starts leavin' daily threats like he's committed to a new-year-new-me routine. Texts, and voicemails, and emails, and snail mail—actual envelopes, hand-addressed, stamped and dropped through the slot like it's 1987 and his feelings are a utility bill I've neglected to pay.
You name the channel, he exploits it.
He speaks it, sends it, mails it, types it in all capital letters at two in the morning like the caps lock is doing the emotional heavy lifting he cannot manage himself.
I read every single one. I don't know why. Maybe because my mother taught me that ignoring something doesn't make it disappear—it just means you didn't document it properly. Maybe because I need to know the temperature of him, the way you check a wound not because you want to see it but because you need to know if it's getting worse.
It is getting worse.
His obsession with me is so thorough, so perfectly engineered, it's—and I say this with the kind of clarity that only comes from distance—both frightening and genuinely impressive.
That's a terrible thing to admit, and I understand this. But wrapping an ultimatum into the syntax of devotion, making a threat sound like a love letter, dialing the frequency of control so fine you can't look away—that's a talent.
Half the women I know would scroll past it and call it romance.
Marcus has that talent. Apparently.