Prologue

Here, hold my morals. I have some sketchy shit to do.

-Parker, age 15

Parker

29 years ago

“Do it or I do your sister.”

I wanted to throw up.

My stomach hurt so bad that I knew I probably would.

I’d done this to myself. At least, that’s what everyone kept telling me.

My sister, who’d been the one to get me into this mess in the first place, looked at me with fear filled eyes.

I didn’t know what to do.

What he was telling me was something I never ever wanted to do. I thought it’d be fun, being in this gang. But I’d been wrong. So, so wrong.

Now, here I sat, with the most impossible of tasks.

Either slit this older boy’s throat, the one who wanted out, or they do the same to my sister.

It was a lose-lose situation. Either way I looked at it someone would die. My sister, who got me into this nightmare. Or a boy—like me—who just wanted out of the same mess.

Raglan, my sister’s gang banger boyfriend, dug his knife in a little deeper. The first trail of scarlet snaked down my sister’s throat.

I watched with morbid fascination as it slid down her collarbone and bled into the white fabric of her shirt.

Then my sister started to cry.

“I’ll do it,” I croaked.

***

16 years ago

“You have two options,” my father said. “Either go into the Navy or go to jail. It’s as easy as that.”

I’d finally hit rock bottom. I’d done things I wasn’t proud of—not at all.

I’d hurt my family. I’d hurt a young kid—slit his throat—to protect my sister. I’d fought. I’d stolen. I’d hurt old ladies and defenseless men.

Honestly, the only thing I hadn’t done was actually murder someone—and it was heading there. It was only a matter of time before I was forced to do it.

I stared at my father as fear climbed its way up my throat.

I knew he was right. I knew it, yet I couldn’t make myself take that final step away from this fucked up path I’d found my way onto—gangbanger life —unless I took the lifeline that my father was holding out for me to drag myself out.

I swallowed. “If I leave, they’ll kill Emmie and her son. He might be that douchebag’s kid, but they won’t care. And Mom won’t be safe, either.”

My dad shook his head. “They will be safe. I promise.”

My father was wrong, so wrong. The moment I was gone, so were they, my Mom and sister, anyway. Murdered. Their throats slit just like Raglan said would happen.

***

5 years ago

“Have a good day at school, buddy,” I said to the little boy, my nephew’s son that looked so much like my sister that it hurt.

Jett, my sister’s son’s boy, laughed. “My name’s Jett, not buddy!”

Jett was the spitting image of his daddy. When he was born, I thought for sure Gunner would fuck him up. He was seventeen, and I knew Gunner wasn’t ready for a kid. He was still in school, and he’d wanted to be a professional baseball player. Hell, he could still become one. At twenty-one, Gunner could still become anything he wanted to be. And that was all thanks to my father, who’d raised Gunner the way that he should have raised me. But I wasn’t bitter that Gunner was getting what I never did. I was happy that he had someone taking care of him after his mother’s murder.

Especially seeing as I was still busy looking after myself.

“Love you, Uncle Park,” Jett declared. “Don’t forget that today is party day! We get to have tacos for breakfast!”

I grinned. “I won’t, buddy. I’ll be here.”

Jett gave me a thumb up, then bailed out of my truck. The teacher who’d opened his door gave me a small wave. “Have a good day, Dad!”

I didn’t correct her. It was easier to wave and smile than tell her that Jett’s actual father was busy going to his own college classes and unable to take his son to school at this particular time in the morning.

Besides, it wasn’t often that I got to take him. I was here so rarely that it was nice to spend so much time with them when I could fit it in.

As I pulled away, I drove to the store and got the stupid fruit tray that Gunner had signed up for—then forgotten about.

His mom had been forgetful like that. Always running and forgetting what she was running for. Emmie. My sister. My everything.

I’d follow her to the grave—and almost had a time or two. But I had one sick and twisted guardian angel that refused to let me die, even though I’d done my level best to force his hand a time or fifty.

Yet I was still here.

And as I drove to the store and got a fruit tray that was thirteen damn dollars, I realized that Jett was probably why. Jett and Gunner.

I wasn’t here for my dad. I wasn’t here for his new family and my half-siblings. I was here for those two.

I had a smile on my face as I walked back up to the school’s front door. “Just come on in. There are so many parents today that we’re not requiring IDs. You remember where Jett’s class is?”

I nodded.

I had a steel trap for a memory. I could remember every goddamn thing I ever did. Which was also my curse.

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.

She winked and waved me away.

The teacher that had let Jett out of my truck this morning was in front of me, and she slowed to come to a walk at my side.

“I just love Jett,” she gushed. “I was teaching a lesson the other day. I was asking the class to show me on their fingers how many five was. Well, all of the kids held up one hand, with all five fingers up. But Jett,” she grinned. “Jett held up three fingers on one hand, and two on the other. I then got to teach a lesson to the class that I wasn’t intending to teach this early. That there are sometimes multiple right answers.”

I found myself grinning.

That was Emmie coming out in him. She was always that kind of person, thinking outside the box. I’d say we should do something one way, and she’d suggest another. And most of the time her way was better.

“That’s the kind of…”

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

The fruit from my hand dropped, and automatically I was running, reaching for my sidearm as I rushed in the direction of the gunfire.

Only, my gun wasn’t there because I’d taken it off to come inside the school.

Like any sane human being should’ve done.

The gunfire continued, and as I ran, my gorge rose.

Because I was rushing in the direction of Jett’s classroom.

***

Hours later, I knew that I looked as haunted as I felt.

My eyes were dead as I looked at the FBI agent in charge of the shooting.

“Can you tell me where he went?” he asked.

I pointed to the door that I’d seen the shooter flee through.

Never in my life would I have thought that I’d have to choose something so horrible.

Stay and help a classroom of pre-kindergarten children, multiple four-year-olds, who’d been gunned down in their little chairs made just for them, or chase after the man who had gunned them down.

That wasn’t even including the ones that’d been hurt in the class next door.

I’d made the decision to stay once I’d seen him exit the building. Then I’d held Jett as he looked at me with pain-filled eyes and took his last breath.

After his heart that was so full of life just hours before stopped beating and his tiny body went limp, I’d wept big, racking sobs that tore out of my throat with the anguish that was quaking my core.

I could still feel his cooling hands in my own.

Could see the blank, thousand-yard stare in his dead eyes that I’d never, not ever, wanted to see on someone I loved again.

Putting his little body down had been the hardest thing I’d ever done.

I hadn’t wanted to go with the police outside to talk. I hadn’t wanted to explain what had just happened. Yet, here I was, giving the FBI agent everything that I could possibly give him.

“Can you tell me what he looked like?”

I explained, in detail, the man I’d seen. A kid really. One about Gunner’s age.

“Uncle Parker!”

I moaned low in my throat, then turned to find Gunner standing at the police barricade, his eyes panicked.

“I need a minute,” I said to the agent.

The agent took one look at the kid, my nephew, and nodded once. “I’m done. If I have any further questions, I’ll find you.”

I didn’t say another word to him as he walked away.

Instead, I steeled my spine and walked to where Gunner was standing.

He was dressed in baseball pants, a black t-shirt, and cleats.

He must’ve come straight from practice the moment he’d heard.

His shirt was still stained with sweat, and he had caked dirt on both knees.

“Uncle Parker…” Gunner’s voice broke. “Is it…”

I nodded.

It was true.

Oh, God, was it true.

It fucking hurt to nod my head. It hurt so goddamn bad that I could barely find it in me to breathe.

“No,” he croaked. “Please, tell me you’re joking.”

Instead of giving him what he so desperately wanted to hear, that this all was just a sick fucking joke, I walked to Gunner and drew him into my arms.

“Gunner…” my voice broke. “I’m so sorry.”

And that was the moment that I watched my sister’s son—all I had left of her—break apart in my arms.

Never to be put back together again.

We’d literally lost everything.

His mother. My sister. His grandmother. My mother. His son. My nephew.

Goddamn, but there was nothing else to lose but each other.

And I’d be damned if I let him slip through my fingers, too.

***

What felt like hours later but was only about forty minutes, I left the school when my father arrived so Gunner wouldn’t be alone.

Then I started to hunt.

The dogs had already been called, and the manhunt had commenced.

But I had a secret weapon.

Carmen. My MWD—military working dog—that was retired. No one else had faith in her, but I sure as hell did.

And I was going to find the bastard who killed my nephew and make him pay.

***

“No, please! No!” The kid, and he was just a kid, begged. Eighteen, almost nineteen, according to him. “I didn’t mean to!”

“You didn’t mean to,” I repeated cooly.

Carmen, sensing my displeasure, shook her head. It just so happened that Carmen had the kid’s arm in her mouth as she did it, which tore even deeper gashes into the little bastard’s flesh.

Not that I cared.

Because before the day was out, I planned to do a whole lot fucking more than that to him.

***

“Do you want a job?”

I looked at him with confusion.

“I don’t have the educational requirements to be an FBI agent,” I told him bluntly.

The agent grinned. “Sometimes if you have other requirements, we look the other way.”

I read between the lines.

I apparently had skills that he wanted, and he didn’t care if I met the ‘requirements’ or not. He wanted me on his team, and he was going to make sure that it happened if I wanted to be a part of it.

I shrugged. “What will I be doing?”

He looked me dead in the eye. “A lot of what you just handled. School shootings. Shootings in general. It won’t be easy. The lifespan of an agent in this particular assignment is about three years max. Then we will move you into an assignment that will be a little less…taxing. Or you’ll quit.”

After that glamorous description, how could I say no?

Then again, I owed Jett. He believed in me when nobody else did. He saw something in me that I never once saw in myself.

And for him, I’d do this for a lifetime. If I could prevent another person from ever having to feel what I was feeling right at that moment, then I’d do it. Forever if I had to.