Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Amon and I have never talked about this before. We weren’t really friends when he and I ended up in the Marine recruiting office in Charleston together. We were just neighbors trying to get the fuck out of this place as quickly and efficiently as we could. Of course, he knew what I’d done, but he never asked me about it and I never offered it up.
Murdering a man in cold blood felt like a really important thing about myself back then. Like a defining thing. But now? It’s just one among many things that have defined me over the years. So there’s been no real reason to rehash that shit.
Until now, I guess.
“Redress,” I say. “That’s what Jim Bob called it. Something about redress, and he told me to look it up in the dictionary. So I looked it up. Figured he wouldn’t have said that unless he wanted me to understand the details. And it came up as the correcting of an error, or a fault, or an evil. Which I don’t much like the sound of, ya know?”
“Yeah. Anything with ‘evil’ in it has got to be… evil.”
“Not just that, but what I wanna know is, am I the one correctin’ an evil? Or the one being corrected?”
Amon doesn’t answer right away. Just blows out a breath. But when he does answer, he’s switched the subject, avoiding that last question completely. “The fourth point on the cross. It’s gotta mean there’s, obviously, another entity involved. Who could it be?”
I shrug. “I got that feeling too. But it came off like a feud, or something. There’s definitely someone else involved in all this business. And whatever agreement Jim Bob has hammered out with them, whoever ‘they’ are, it’s tenuous. That was my major takeaway. Everything they’ve got set up around here looks really solid but at the same time, it feels kinda fragile.”
Amon huffs a little air. “Agreed. But we both lived here for eighteen damn years and never once did I ever hear anything about a feud. Do you think it’s got something to do with Revenant?”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s… you know, Revenant.”
“Yeah, but… it’s fake. Just like the Revival. We’re not really feudin’ with Revenant, Amon.”
“Maybe we are and we just don’t know it?”
“I don’t think so. Jim Bob was swearin’ up a storm at some printer over there because the new program you were so fuckin’ happy about this morning might not have been printed on time. I heard him yelling about this yesterday. So he’s not afraid of no one in Revenant. Plus, I got family over there. I saw Lucas today.”
“Fuck. Little Lucas. I haven’t seen that boy in… well”—Amon laughs—“twelve years.”
“He’s not little anymore. I think he’s actually running the MC.”
“No shit?” Amon pauses to consider this. “That’s quite a role. How old is he?”
“Twenty-two, twenty-three? Somewhere around there. ’Bout the same age as Olive, I think. Maybe a year older, I guess.”
“Hmm.”
“He invited me to come by the bar. Said the drinks are free.”
“Well, it’s a good place to start, don’t you think? We should take him up on that. Let’s make a date. How about Monday?”
I nod at Amon. “Sounds good. Not like I’ve got anything else to do during the week. We’ve got jobs lined up. Just waiting for the construction to be done and the people to show up on my end now.”
Amon’s nodding back. “But you want me to go with you, though, right?”
“For sure.”
“OK.” He blows out a breath. “It’s a date. We done?”
“One more thing, since we’re here. How did you screen the guys we’ve hired?”
Amon narrows his eyes at me. “Whyyyyy?” He drawls that word out. His accent has gotten a lot thicker since we came home.
But so has mine. “I dunno. I just got a feeling about that guy you sent to watch the north gate for me.”
“What guy?”
Now it’s my turn to narrow my eyes at him. “What do you mean ‘what guy?’ The one who was standin’ at the gate when I got there after my meeting with Jim Bob.”
“When was this?”
“Fuck’s sake, Amon. You saw me in Lowyn’s tent during the Revival. And then I came up to you after my meeting and that’s when I told you I needed to talk to you in a SCIF.”
“Yeah. But I didn’t assign anyone to take your place at the north gate.”
I blow out a breath. “He said his name was Siah. Josiah.”
“Disciple boy?”
“No. He said not. But his granddaddy was or something.”
“What’d he look like?”
I shrug. “Kinda like Lucas, actually. Same age, same build—no tattoos that I could see. Blond hair, blue eyes. He knew who I was. Said…” I pause here to think back. “Something like… ‘You come to take your place, Collin?’ Something like that when I walked up. Then he just… left. Came off as nervous.”