I wish I could say I didn’t go down without a fight.

The fact of the matter was I was in no condition to defend myself. Lucy was right—I’d done a goddamn number on myself. I should’ve been more careful. I shouldn’t have pushed so hard. I’d gotten reckless, thinking that I had nothing to lose.

Now the truth was staring me in the face: I had a lot to lose here. A whole lot. And so did she.

Delfino’s men had separated me from her immediately. He’d shoved the folder she took back in his filing cabinet and given her this look of pure, unadulterated murder. That was the only time I’d struggled, pushing against my captors to try to wrench Lucy away from Delfino’s grasp. The way he gripped her arm would leave bruises. I was sure of it.

My efforts had been rewarded with a nightstick to my injured ribs. There was a crack that I heard as much as I felt, and the ensuing agony had brought me to my knees. They’d inflicted another fracture on me—I was sure of it. While I was gasping for a good breath that might clear my head and make my vision stop swimming, one of them zip-tied my hands behind my back and another one shoved a sack over my head. Next thing I knew, I was being dragged out of the church and tossed unceremoniously into the back of a police cruiser.

At first I assumed they were going to take me somewhere secluded and put me out of my misery. Maybe it’d be a swamp teeming with alligators, or maybe I’d end up face-down in a shallow grave. No need to spend too much time getting rid of my body when no one would ever coming looking for me—wasn’t that what Delfino and the sheriff had said they were betting on back at the body shop? I couldn’t contain a furious, self-loathing snort. So, it was all going according to plan.

No matter what I did, this bastard and his hillbilly brute squad were one step ahead of me. Maybe I wasn’t as smart as Lucy, but I wasn’t an idiot either. How the hell were they doing this? We’d been so careful…

Well, minus my breaking the church window. And kicking down a door. And screaming obscenities when doing that did exactly the kind of damage Lucy had told me it would. Goddammit, I was a grade-A moron—always letting my attitude get the best of me. But how had they gotten there so quickly?

“You’re not real smart, for a city boy,” Sheriff Rigby—I’d heard him talk enough to know his voice by now—drawled from the front seat. I was sitting in the middle between the two other deputies, the weight of their bodies compressing my ribs to an excruciating degree. “Don’t they got those fancy silent alarm systems where you come from?”

I closed my eyes and bit back a curse. Sure, Lucy’s proclamation that most people in Pleasant Lakes wouldn’t bother with a security system made sense—but Delfino wasn’t most people, and what he was hiding in there was worth protecting. My face heated under the fabric of the sack. I was honestly embarrassed for myself. I’d made a careless, cocky, rookie mistake, and the worst part was that I couldn’t even argue with the sheriff when he called me stupid.

When I didn’t answer, the rest of the ride proceeded in silence. Sheriff Rigby seemed to take a special joy in hitting every pothole and speed bump on the way to wherever it was we were headed, jostling me right into the elbows of the men at my sides. I tried not to react, but each time a stifled grunt escaped me, a low chuckle sounded in stereo. Oh, how I wish I’d saved my strength. All three of these fucks could’ve used a swift kick in the mouth.

Finally, the cruiser came to a stop. It was abrupt enough that the lap belt cut hard into my hips and the momentum threw me back against the seat, sending searing currents of anguish through my entire left side. A few moments later the buckle came undone, the back doors opened, and I was hauled out onto an expanse of gravel that made it hard for me to get my footing.

As I listed and stumbled, the business end of another nightstick slammed against my solar plexus. I doubled, wheezing. “Straighten the fuck up and walk,” a new voice said. I growled, but could do little else other than obey.

It felt like I was walking that infamous green mile, like every step took me a little closer to the gallows. I couldn’t see a goddamn thing ahead of or around me, and that made my guts coil. There are few things worse than being surrounded by enemies and not having one good goddamn clue what their intentions might be. Bonus points if you can’t even take a deep breath because between your hubris and their cruelty, you’ve been brutalized beyond functioning.

“Keep it movin’,” one of the deputies rasped in my ear. Every cell of my body wanted to rebel, to shake off this hood and these ties and make it my business to rip every single one of these punks a new asshole or two. But I wasn’t in any position to do much more than shuffle along and hope they didn’t let me run into anything. I was completely at their mercy. I was utterly helpless.

Rarely had I ever known such impotent rage and despair. This was how I’d felt on my way here before I’d crashed my bike: like there was so much that was beyond my control. Like I’d been tossed around by fate and fortune and had come out all the worse for it. Maybe I was supposed to die that night in the middle of the road—it would’ve been a fitting way for a biker to go out—and maybe this humiliation, all the suffering I’d endured since then, had been the price I had to pay for cheating death. Maybe my survival hadn’t made anything better, not for me, and sure as hell not for Lucy. Maybe I’d fucked up even further back than that—maybe I should’ve never come here at all.

Dark thoughts. And in my heart, I knew none of them were true—knew that if I hadn’t come for Lulu, she’d still be pining away at the window, Delfino’s every move serving to extinguish the light she held inside her. But she’d be alive, wouldn’t she? And wasn’t that better? God only knew if that was still the case now…

A hard shove on my back caught me off-guard and I pitched forward, just barely maintaining my footing. My face collided with a wall, stunning me something fierce as two men grabbed hold of me and sat me down on what felt like a wooden chair. My arms were flung over the back of it in a way that made my shoulders feel like they were on fire, and someone linked one end a pair of handcuffs between the zip-ties and my hands, clasping it shut, while the other snapped closed around one of the slats on the back of the chair. Immediately I tried to stand up, but the chair wouldn’t budge. It must’ve been bolted to the floor, which meant I was well and truly stuck.

Shit. This can’t be good.

Sheriff Rigby ripped the hood off my head. Even though the lights in this cell—that’s what it was, a holding cell—were ancient, flickering, and dim, looking at them felt like I was staring into the sun. I blinked, hard, and squinted up at him. Without the sack sticking to my face, I could feel my nose was bleeding.

“What a sorry sight,” he murmured, shaking his head with a pitying look that made me want to gouge his fucking eyes out. “I mean really, boy. You should see yourself. You look a right mess.”

I spat at his feet in reply. There was no point in talking to this fucker. He wasn’t even worth the time it would take for me to say “fuck you.” Blood bloomed on the concrete floor—I must’ve split my lip, too, but right now I was too furious to feel it. I ran my tongue over my teeth to make sure they were all still there. Adrenaline and rage can do funny things to a man, even divorce him from his own body. Right now, my anger had me feeling like I was filling up the room, a cloud of black smoke that could smother these motherfuckers if I could just get my hands free. I knew that wasn’t gonna happen, though. No, they’d got the drop on me. I was on their turf now.

Rigby spared a glance at his buddies, a group that just barely looked like they were competent enough to be called deputies. Sure, they all had that ballsy swagger, that same head-up-my-own-ass stance as all cops do, but there was something green about them, too. I didn’t imagine Pleasant Lakes was a town that saw much action. And yet here these assholes were, all decked out in their utility belts and mirrored shades, looking like the cats who’d got into the cream. Pretty damn pleased with themselves, they were. Like one lone wolf biker was some kind of score.

My lip curled. I couldn’t help it. Guys like this disgusted me—the ones who’d never held power before, but had always craved it. Piss-baby psychopaths, made brave by a shiny gold badge. I glowered at them all from beneath my brow.

“You got something to say, boy?” Rigby asked me. The lilt in his voice was confident, amused. “Well, go on, then. Out with it.” He snapped his fingers. “Hey, I know—you can tell us what you want carved on your headstone.” A rolling tide of laughter spilled over the small crowd of spectators both inside and outside the cell. “Not that you’re getting a headstone, of course.”

There was a lot I could have said. A lot that I wanted to say. Most of those things involved obscenities in some form or fashion, some real creative cursing, and liberal use of the term “shit gibbon.” But it occurred to me that would get me nowhere. What could I do to back up my tough talk, really? Throw a kick or two? They had the upper hand, and I got the feeling these pricks were just looking for an excuse to start beating on me.

Yeah. They had all the power, and they knew it. But what they didn’t know was what to do with it. I had them pegged back when I said they’d never had any power, but had always wanted it. They were inexperienced. Wet behind the ears. And, if their loyalty to Delfino was any indicator, easily manipulated.

So instead of snarling out a few choice phrases—as cathartic as that might prove, right before the rain of batons against my bones started—I lifted my chin defiantly and leaned back against the chair. “You’re not gonna kill me.”

This gave Rigby pause. He lifted his brows. “That so?” Another snicker, though this time, his minions sounded less certain.

I shrugged. “If you were gonna kill me, you’d have done it by now. You had the means—I was just as helpless in the back of that cruiser as I am cuffed to this chair here—and the opportunity. But you didn’t take it. Instead, you’ve got me sitting here in a cell. That tells me you’re waiting on something. What, does Delfino want to do it himself?”

Rigby snorted. I knew that sound. I’d heard it come from my dad every time he realized he didn’t have me cornered the way he’d thought—every time he realized he wasn’t the smartest man in the room. Guys like Rigby, these cops… nothing was more sacred to them than being able to dominate other people. The idea that they couldn’t made them see red. And I knew, intimately, just how stupid pride could make a man.

“You’re a smartass, aren’t you?” Rigby said. Empty words—the kind of shit someone says when they ain’t got nothing else.

I stared impassively at him. “Just stating the facts, officer.”

“Sheriff,” he corrected, as I knew he would. “You blind, boy? Look at the badge.” He pointed out his star-shaped shield. “That look like the kind of thing a deputy wears to you?”

I smiled. “All you pigs look alike to me.” Before he could rear back and deck me, I added, “You’re just mad ‘cause I figured it out, aren’t you? Maybe you country folk aren’t a whole hell of a lot smarter than us city boys, after all.”

It was a gamble, sure. I was toeing the line between baiting and antagonizing, and one misstep could land me in a world of pain. Men like this were all about ego. It was their soft underbellies, the masks beneath which lurked a bunch of scared little boys who probably wet the bed until they were sixteen. If there was anything I’d learned from dear old Dad, it was how to play that weakness like a fiddle. How to exploit their need to be the center of the universe—the guys with the upper hand.

If I was right, Rigby would scowl and strut and make it out to be a plan a simpleton could’ve seen through. If I was wrong, he’d lord it over me like I was a particularly slow child. Either way, I’d have some idea of what was in store for me, which was a hell of a lot better than having no fucking clue.

Rigby’s eyes went cold, but his face turned strawberry red. I could see a few of his buddies weren’t taking so kindly to my line of dialogue, either. A few had their hands on their belts, silently threatening to pull out their batons or their mace and teach me a lesson in “civility.” But most of them were looking at the sheriff, either for guidance or out of a sense of keen interest in what the hell he was going to do. He was the alpha male here, after all. Whatever he did next could make or break him.

“Nah,” he said slowly, “you’re still a fuckin’ idiot. And guys like me and Delfino? We don’t waste our time on pissants like you.”

Then he leaned close, his eyes roaming up and down my body, sizing me up. Even bound to this chair, I was a bigger and badder man than he was, and he knew it. There was a hollowness in his voice when he whispered, “You ain’t shit, Richards. You were born wanting. You lived wanting. And soon, you’re gonna die wanting. Christ, I don’t think there’s one damn thing you’ve ever done that you did right. Coming back here was sure as hell a mistake.” His gaze flicked up to meet mine at last. “What do you think, boy? You think you’ve ever done something worthwhile? Do you have what it takes to pull something off that’d make even your whore momma proud?”

My grin spanned from ear to ear as I leaned in close to Rigby’s face, close enough I could smell his fear. It smelled an awful lot like buck-fifty aftershave and delusions of grandeur. “Let me out of these cuffs and we’ll find out.”

He made a fist. Threw a hook I knew was nothing more than a feint. When I didn’t flinch and he didn’t connect, I thought he might actually try to hit me. Instead we held eyes a long time, a variety of micro-expressions flickering over his face, ranging from outright hate to pseudo-apathy. Oh, he cared all right. Cared a whole lot that he’d been made a fool of in front of his peers. Cared that, for some reason he had yet to reveal to me, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it.

“What’s up, Rigby?” I asked, cocking my head. “You gonna kiss me, or what?”

Rigby stood up and stepped away, mouth pulled into a thin grimace. The room was silent now in an oppressive way, the kind that made you want to scuff your foot against the ground just to hear the echo. The deputies were staring at Rigby, and he was staring at me, and I was staring back at all of them, trying to lead the sheriff into another trap that would force him to spill his guts.

But before I could, one of the deputies outside the room pushed forward and came to stand beside Rigby. In a hushed, but easily audible tone, he murmured, “Sir… he’s here.”

Rigby looked over at him. “Where?”

“Right out front, sir. He just pulled up.”

I glanced between them. He? If we weren’t talking about Delfino, then who the hell was he?

A smirk slowly bloomed on the sheriff’s face. Just like that, the tension in the room dissolved. I didn’t like that, the way it all just came crashing down—the way the deputies let out their breath and relaxed, returning to their self-assured demeanors instantaneously.

“Good,” Rigby said. “Send him on in.”

The deputy slipped back out through the door as the rest of them dispersed, filtering out into the hall amid a sea of giddy laughter and whispers. Christ, they were like schoolboys who just got told the principal had come to work with a hangover—like there was some hot mess on the horizon that everybody wanted to see.

The sheriff turned to me, smiling with all his teeth. He too looked far calmer than I would have liked and way more at ease. Some burden had just been lifted off his shoulders. I wasn’t sure what it was, but whatever the case, there was no way in hell that meant anything good for me.

“You might wanna ask your new visitor for a kiss instead of me,” he said, beginning to move out of the room himself. “ ‘Cause I’m pretty sure you’re about to get well and truly fucked.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, tracking his retreat with less satisfaction than I’d anticipated. “Yeah? And who the hell is he?”

Sheriff Rigby glanced down the hall. His smile widened. “Let’s just call him an old flame of yours.” Then he tipped his hat at me in what I could only assume was a gesture of final regards and strode down the hall, whistling Sympathy for the Devil. Because of course he was.

Even as the shrill of his song faded, the beat was taken up by a pair of boots treading toward my cell. And then the tune, too, began to waft toward me again, whistled through a different pair of lips. I listened hard, trying to find something—anything—distinctive. The boots sounded leather, but plenty were. The voice was a man’s, but I’d already known that it would be. There was a slight jangle that sounded a bit like spurs, which struck me as not just odd, but oddly familiar. But it wasn’t until the whistling became singing that I realized who I was dealing with.

My blood froze in my veins. Even the trickle of it still trailing down my face seemed to grow colder with the stranger’s approach. Only he wasn’t a stranger, was he? I knew exactly who this man was. Exactly what he was capable of.

When he turned the corner and appeared in front of my cell, he grinned at me like a wolf who’d finally caught up to his long-awaited prey. Every tooth was showing, an array of gleaming white—and a single platinum-coated canine—that made my chest tighten with equal parts dread and the compulsion to inflict violence. My very blood cells demanded it, screaming through my veins with a whiskey burn as I struggled against my bonds in fits and starts, every thrash only making that animal smile in front of me grow wider, fiercer.

“Pleased to meet you,” he crowed, opening his arms wide as if expecting a warm reception or—God forbid—an embrace. “Hope you guessed my name!”

Oh, I knew his name. I wouldn’t ever forget it. That single word had been my downfall, had separated me from my brothers and brought me nothing but ruin ever since.

“Jackal,” I hissed. “I’ll kill you, you bastard. This time, I won’t just beat your ugly fucking face in. This time, I swear to God I will finish the job.”

“Should’ve done that to begin with, Leo,” he said, easing his way into my cell and pulling the bars closed behind him. “But you didn’t have the balls.”

I couldn’t help but agree with him there. And unlike the song he’d been singing would suggest, I was not at all puzzled by the nature of Jackal’s game. I knew exactly what he was here for.