Hartley disappeared back into her bedroom after Hoyt left. I returned to my spot on the couch, realizing that I might be spending a lot of time on these cushions over the next few days.

I was in a fucking predicament. I wasn’t a lawman, but I was a SEAL. I was supposed to fight to protect my country. I wasn’t sure how I was meant to square that with my current task, but I couldn’t look too deeply into it.

At the end of the day, I was going to protect Hartley. All this bullshit between the mafia and the Caldwells was just a bunch of crap I had to deal with. They were going to get their weed and guns no matter what I did.

This just meant I was on my own. I couldn’t use any of the team’s resources, and I couldn’t call for backup. It was just Hartley and me in this, for better or for worse.

I knew Knoxville, and I knew these guys. I grew up with them, knew how they thought. I almost was one of them, if my life had gone down a different path. If my football superstar brother had survived, I might be in the Dixie Mafia right now, hassling girls just like Hartley.

Or maybe not. I never really got down with that sort of fucking thing. Still, I understood how these guys worked, and I knew I could make all this work out.

The Caldwells were the real problem. I knew Jane Caldwell, but I didn’t know her anymore. I didn’t know her family business or how much strength they had. As far as I could tell, I had no way of getting close to them, or at least not yet.

I gave the girl a few minutes of privacy before getting up and knocking on her door.

“Come in,” she called out.

I pushed it open. She was laying on her bed, scrolling through her phone.

“We should go out.”

“Where?”

“I want to see an old friend.”

“Another old friend?” She frowned at me. “Not another mafia guy?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “His name is Toad.”

She laughed. “You’re kidding.”

“Nah, or at least he used to be called Toad. Can’t say what he goes by now.”

“Why do we need to see a man named Toad?”

“As it happens, Toad has his ear to the underworld. We need to do a little reconnaissance around the Caldwells before we make any moves.”

“All right then,” she said, getting up. “One thing, though. Please keep me informed. No running off and doing things without me.”

I laughed. “Hartley, I’m going to be sleeping on your couch for the next couple weeks. You can keep tabs on me yourself if you want.”

She gaped at me for a second before getting herself together. “What do you mean, staying with me?”

“You heard the man. I’m meant to make sure you stay in town. That means we’re around each other all day long, every damn day.”

“No way,” she said. “No freaking way.”

“Sorry, girl. Those are the rules.”

She looked like she wanted to argue more, and I got a flash of that temper she had. But slowly that disappeared and she took a deep breath. I looked along her body, at her long, perfect legs, and imagined them wrapped around my face.

“Fine,” she said. “Okay. Let’s go see Toad.”

I smirked at her. “I knew you’d be excited to have me around.”

She didn’t say a word as she walked past me, and I let myself enjoy the view.

* * *

Toad lived with his family out on the edge of town, out near Markus. There were two distinct parts of Knoxville: downtown, where the richer people lived, and the hills. People with blue-collar jobs, or really no jobs at all, lived out in the hills. That was where the meth was worst, where the government regularly went to check if their dole checks were getting to the right people.

Toad came from an old family, a really old family. As far as I could tell, his family had been in Knoxville as long as Knoxville had been a thing. We drove down a long, winding road until we pulled up out front of the Toad family shack.

It was a rundown little house with a front porch wrapping around the front. Old broken-down cars, rotting firewood, trash, and other garbage littered the front lawn. I climbed out of the car and an old woman came to the front door.

“Who the heck are you?” she called out.

“Are you Mrs. Trap?”

“Yeah. That’s me. Who are you?”

“Hello, Mrs. Trap. I’m Travis Rock. I went to high school with your son.”

There was a pause, and then she flung the door open. “Travis Rock! My god!” She came out toward me, smiling big. Hartley was hanging over by the car still as I walked over to meet her.

Toad’s momma was short and fat. Her long, greasy hair had seen better days, and she had the skin of a life-long smoker. But she was a good woman, loyal to her family like everyone else out in the hills.

She threw her big arms around me and hugged me tightly. Toad and I had been friendly back in the day, and for some reason his momma had taken a liking to me. Never could explain that one. Maybe it was because I was the only one of his friends who pretended like I didn’t call him Toad when she was around.

“Michael is going to be so happy to see you,” she said.

“How’s he doing?”

“Oh you know,” she said, letting me go. “He’s working when he can. Michael is a good boy, but he wasn’t blessed with the smarts, you know? He’s trying his best, that boy.”

“Good to hear. Is he around?”

“Out back I think. Last I saw him at least.”

“All right then.”

“Well, whose your friend? Introduce me before you run off.”

“Mrs. Trap, this is Hartley.”

Hartley walked up to her, smiling that winning southern smile. “Good to meet you, ma’am.”

“Oh listen to you, all polite. Nice to meet you too, Hartley. Now you two run on off and find my son.” She turned and headed back toward the house. “Tea is inside if you want any. Don’t be shy.”

“Thanks,” I called after her.

Hartley looked at me. “You’re popular around here.”

I shrugged. “I come from a family just like this. Lived in a house not far from here, actually. These people know me.”

She just nodded and said nothing. I walked to the right of the house and Hartley followed, keeping pace.

There were a few more buildings out back, low and squat things, no more than big sheds. More cars littered the area, plus barrels for burning trash and leaves. As we got farther back there, the sound of country music came drifting up from one of the outhouses. We headed toward it, the music getting louder.

“Toad?” I called out. “That you, Toad?”

The music was coming from the biggest building, more like a garage than a shed. One of the large front doors slowly pushed open, and out stepped Toad in all his glory.

He hadn’t changed much. Five foot four at best, Toad was a scrawny guy. He was thin with long brown hair and a mole on the right side of his neck.

But he smiled real big when he saw me. “That you, Travis?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Holy fuck. Travis Rock.” He came over to me and we shook hands. His palms were dirty, but I didn’t mind it. “Who’s this?” he asked.

“This is Hartley.”

“Nice to meet you, little lady.”

Hartley smiled at him. “Same to you.”

“Listen, Toad, we came to talk to you.”

“All right, Travis, all right. Come on. Come in here.”

We followed him back into the garage. Inside it was a mess of tools and old car parts, and it looked like Toad was working on an ancient Mustang. Half the car was taken apart, but the other half looked like it was lovingly restored.

“This is my baby,” he said. “Been working on her for years. I’ll have her finished one day.”

“She’s real nice,” Hartley said.

I grinned at her and she smiled back, playing the role of the polite southern girl perfectly. It almost made me fucking hard knowing that there was a spitfire lurking underneath that pretty blond exterior.

“What’d you need, Travis?” Toad asked me.

“Well, I came hoping for some information.”

“Not sure I got much of that,” he said, smiling. “I can try, though.”

“Toad, what do you know about the Caldwells?”

His face fell instantly. It was like the mention of that name was an immediate trigger. He went from happy to see me to suspicious without a second thought.

“Why you askin’ me that question?”

I held my hands up. “Come on, Toad, you know me. I don’t mean anything bad by this.”

“I can’t talk about them. It’s real dumb to talk about the Caldwells.”

“I’m new back in town, Toad. Me and this girl, we’re looking to get involved with that family, maybe do a few jobs for them. But I need to know about them before I go ahead and take the plunge, if you understand.”

“I hear you, Travis, but you know I like to keep out of it.”

Toad was a small-time criminal, into petty shit. He sold a little weed on the side and stole cars from time to time, if I remembered right, but he was never the type to get involved with the big outfits. It seemed like that hadn’t changed since I last saw him.

“Just information, Toad. Whatever you can tell us.”

“Please, Toad,” Hartley asked sweetly. “It’d mean a lot to me.”

He sighed and leaned up against the car, eyeing Hartley. “Caldwells are bad news,” he said finally. “I always thought the Dixie was bad, but the Caldwells are worse. They’re smaller than the Dixie, got less men and such, but they’re nasty. Just last month they cut a man’s eyes out for betraying them. Can you believe that? Cut a man’s eyes out!”

I shook my head. “Nasty.”

“Real nasty, Travis. I got lots of stories like that about them, but I won’t tell them. Truth is, the Caldwells are not people to mess with.”

Well that was pretty bad news. I didn’t know what I had expected, but stories about plucking eyeballs out wasn’t exactly it.

“Who’s running them right now?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I said it,” he answered, shaking his head.

“Try me.”

“Really, you won’t.”

“Toad.”

“Janey. Little Janey Caldwell is running the whole show.”

I blinked at him, surprised. “Ray’s old girl?”

“Yeah. That’s her, except she changed a lot after that accident.”

“I left pretty soon after that,” I said.

“You missed it then. Janey went from a sweet girl to cold as ice. Her family started getting into some intense shit, apparently because she was pushing her brothers into it. Well, years later, Janey is the one running it all.”

“What about her parents?”

“Her mom is too drunk to care, and her pop don’t care who makes the calls so long as he gets paid.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “That’s hard to swallow, Toad.”

“Would I lie to you, Travis? Would I?”

“No. I know you wouldn’t.”

Jane Caldwell, leader of the Caldwell family gang. Sweet Jane the prom queen, my brother’s old girl, now a violent gangster.

Time really fucking changed things. Though I shouldn’t be too surprised. I went from a petty criminal to a highly trained and lethal Navy SEAL. Was it so hard to imagine that Jane could go through a transformation like that?

“Okay, Toad. You’ve been helpful,” I said.

“Don’t do it. Don’t get involved, whatever you do.”

“We won’t,” Hartley said. “I’m already scared off.”

I glanced at her and then back to Toad. “You heard the girl.” I shook his hand. “Thanks again.”

We turned and quickly left before Toad could launch into more stories, which he no doubt wanted to.

As we put some distance between us and Toad, Hartley looked at me. “You know this girl?” she asked.

I nodded slowly. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

She chewed her lip as we stopped next to the car. “Seems like you know everyone.”

“Knoxville isn’t so big,” I said, “and my brother was pretty popular.”

“Sounds like it. What were you like back then?”

I laughed, shaking my head. “I was like everyone else here: stupid as fuck and trying desperately to get out.”

“And you did.”

“Guess so.”

“What’s this girl like?”

“I really don’t know, not anymore at least. After the accident, after Ray died, I enlisted almost right away. I never saw what she was like after.”

“Still, you knew her before.”

“She was a nice girl,” I said, trying to remember. “She was always nice to me. Not all of Ray’s friends were, back then. I didn’t play football, and so a lot of the guys didn’t think I was worth talking to. Not Janey. Everyone liked her.”

“Cheerleader?”

I laughed again. “How’d you know?”

“They always are.”

“It’s such a cliché, I know.”

“Can’t be helped. Some clichés happen to be true.”

“I don’t know how she went from pretty, popular cheerleader to leader of a drug gang in only a few years. I really don’t.”

Hartley nodded slowly. “I guess we’ll find out.” She opened the door to the passenger side and climbed in.

I smiled to myself. Hartley was perceptive, surprisingly perceptive. I hadn’t much thought about how she was going to work into this thing we had going, but maybe she could hold her own. I basically was figuring that she’d be a liability for most of it and I’d be spending half my time keeping her alive.

But maybe I was wrong. So far she’d known when it was time to turn on the charm and when it was time to hang back. She knew when to step up and drink the damn drink and when to smile.

And so far, she’d set my damn veins on fire every time she so much as spoke. The girl was more and more attractive to me with every second we spent together. I was practically rock hard every second of the day, waiting for the moment I could get her alone.

That was dangerous though, really dangerous. We were playing a high-stakes game here. The Dixie Mafia was no fucking joke, and one wrong step could bring them down on both our heads. Maybe I could survive that, but not Hartley. If we got involved with each other, who knew what would happen. I was sure I couldn’t afford the distraction, though, as much as I wanted it.

Regardless, we still had to figure out how we were going to get this shipment back for the Mafia. I knew Janey, but I didn’t know her well enough just to walk up and ask her. Maybe her connection with my brother was going to be enough to get us in the door, but we needed a plan from there.

Not much we could do today about it, though. I started the engine and pulled back out, away from Toad’s place. I got one last look at the junk-strewn lawn and couldn’t help but feel something, deep down.

I’d never really left Knoxville. No matter what I did as a SEAL, some part of me would always be that poor kid from the wrong side of town. I’d always be that idiot teenager who wanted to steal cars and only dreamed about joining up with the mafia. I’d worked my whole life to get away from Knoxville, but now that I was back, I could feel it all coming back to me.

Toad’s place, Markus’s place, they were just like the house I grew up in. I had never pictured myself staying in town for more than a day or two, but it was starting to look like I was back for a lot longer than that. I was going to need to embrace my roots again if we were ever going to get out of this alive.

That was the last thing I wanted to do. Hartley was a good southern girl, but she had no clue what it meant to live around Knoxville. She was a farm girl, probably knew what hard work meant, but she didn’t know serious poverty like I did. She didn’t know these people, the way they thought, the way they fought and loved and fucked. I knew it all, even if I didn’t want to.

I was going to have to teach her if we were going to get through this. I was going to have to show Hartley what it meant to live this way, whether I wanted to or not.