He realized where they were headed long before they got there, and his heart started to pound. He hadn’t even driven by the old house, not since he was a kid and he and his parents had moved away, and certainly not since he’d been in Castello. He’d been so happy to find out that Jessie’s place was on the other side of town, and that to get there from Delilah’s Do, they didn’t even need to go past the streets that led back to the house where he’d grown up.

 

He’d thought about it often enough. About going back, meeting whatever family lived there now. Maybe there would be a kid, about his age, and he’d befriend the kid, and lead him through all kinds of life-trials like some kind of made for TV movie that would end with him finally redeeming himself for whatever horrors he’d experienced as a kid himself. But he’d been forcing himself to grow up these past few years. That kind of shit only happened in movies, not in real life, and after all, the crap he’d done as an adult was vastly worse than the small league shit he’d done as a kid. Because Jessie was right. Danny’s death was the fault of Pedey, and whoever had ordered the hit. No one else. And they were going to sort this fucking mess out. After what had happened at the bar, things weren’t going to go according to the smooth plan he and Eddie had laid out, but he was going to figure something out.

 

Because he loved Jessie. Because she deserved some peace. And because he deserved to feel like he was worthy of her affection and her love.

 

She’d been tight to his back the whole ride down to their old neighborhood, so he was sure she hadn’t sent some kind of warning text to her mother. It had to be coincidence, then, that Janis Hendricks was sitting out on the front porch, in the same old rocking swing that had been there a decade before, swaying softly underneath the stars, soft bluegrass music drifting out of her front window. It was late enough that he was surprised she was still up, but then, she wasn’t as old as his own mother.

 

She stood up when she heard the quiet roar of the bike’s engine, and he could feel her gaze as Jessie directed him to pull up and park in their garage. She didn’t step down off the porch to greet them, but she did stand up. That was something.

 

Jessie dismounted first, and Tex found himself sitting still for another long moment, teasing the handlebars with his fingers, trying to figure out what to do, or what to say. He hadn’t been allowed to go to Danny’s funeral, so he’d never said the right thing. He’d spent years practicing in the mirror, planning for this moment, but every script he’d ever created had now flown entirely out of his head.

 

But there was Jessie, holding her hand out to him and smiling. “Come on,” she said. “It’ll be okay.”

 

He followed her, pushing himself to trust her. These were her stomping grounds, after all; he could trust her to protect him, just like she had trusted him to protect her back in the bar. That was the give and take that everyone always shouted about, and yes. Yeah, he could do it. He could be that guy.

 

He threaded his fingers through hers, and then followed her out of the garage, around to the front of the house, where Janis was still waiting. She had her arms tight around her middle, like she was trying not to cry, and the gaze that was fixed on his face was bright with tears. He stretched out his free hand to take hers. “Mrs. Hendricks,” he started, ready to at least blurt out this is a lot of years too late, but I’m so sorry for your loss, which had to be the most awkward sentence ever spoken, but at least it would be something to acknowledge what had passed between them.

 

Only she didn’t give him a chance. She opened her arms and stepped up to him, reaching for him with the same gentle grace she’d shown him as a child. “I told you a lot of years ago, Tex Brewer,” she said, and his heart sang when she used his chosen name without a pause, “that I’m nothing but Janis or Mom to you. There’s nothing in this world that can change that. You hear me?”

 

“Yes, ma’am. Janis.” The word felt foreign on his tongue. She’d said this over and over when he was a kid, and he and Danny had laughed it off. But there was no better invitation she could have given him now, no more eloquent way she could have told him that it was fine that he was riding around with her daughter, being with her, living together. Of course, that little demon voice in his brain reminded him, she didn’t know what had gone on tonight.

 

“Well,” Janis said. “Is it too late to offer you two dinner? Can we go straight to pie?” She drew back from him, but her smile was bright, even though he could see the faint tracks of tears on her cheeks.

 

“Pie sounds great, Mama,” Jessie said, and Tex smiled and nodded.

 

They went inside, and they ate a sweet apple pie that somehow went beautifully with the dark stout Janis had resting on the counter. She cut up cheese and some vegetables, brought out a loaf of sourdough bread, and they ate. She asked him what he’d been doing these past few years, and he made up stories to go with the true stories, making both mother and daughter howling as they tried to guess which one was which. Tex got to sit back after a while and watch the two women talk. When they’d all been kids, Jessie had bantered with her mother, but Janis had always been a parent-figure, never a friend. Hell, she’d been more of a mother to him in a lot of ways than his own parents.

 

As they laughed together over a joke that traced back in time almost twenty years, he was struck with a visceral memory of the moment when the paramedics arrived and began to examine Danny, trying to determine if there was anything they could do to bring life back to his body. Janis had put her arm around Jessie, drawing her back from her brother’s body, but she’d reached for Tex, too, turning him away so he didn’t have to watch the things that were being done to his friend. The sounds were more than enough. Most people didn’t know that appropriately applied CPR could crack ribs.

 

They wandered into the living room when Janis wanted to pull out some old photo albums she had. For the first time since he was a kid, Tex found himself piecing through photos of his best friend and himself as a child. It tore open old wounds and finally let them bleed. It was a quiet, reassuring sensation.

 

Jessie fell asleep leaning against the arm of the couch. She hadn’t given her mother so much as a hint of what their night had been like before they’d arrived. Janis passed him a light cotton blanket, and he covered her up, watching as Jessie tightened the blanket around herself without waking.

 

“So, you and her, huh?” Janis said, after they’d sat in companionable silence for a few minutes.

 

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. It seemed the right thing to say.

 

“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen you around here,” she continued. “When you all were kids, I used to watch you with Jessie and think it was going to be awfully hard for the three of you to make it to adulthood as friends, if things with you and her kept going the way they were. But, at the same time, I was so glad to see Jessie taking up with good boys, not—” she cut herself off, shaking her head.

 

He was fairly sure he knew what she was getting at. By all accounts, John “Smokey” Hendricks had been rotten to the core when he was a kid, but he’d also been handsome, owned a motorcycle, and leaned against things, all molten sexuality, just like James Dean. He’d been selling drugs in high school, and he’d moved on to making meth once he was old enough to buy the chemistry equipment online. The problem was that Smokey was thick as two short planks, as Tex’s grandmother had been fond of saying. It was possible to make meth without killing yourself, but you had to have the precision of a bomb maker. Smokey was an idiot, and he had grown fond of sampling his product to “test the purity.” He’d run off on Janis long before Danny was killed. The primary lead Tex had been following up pointed to Smokey as the reason for his son being killed; some idiot had missed the mark on just how much the dirtbag cared about his family.

 

It was no wonder that Janis wanted to see her daughter hanging out with good kids. And he had been that. It had infuriated his family that he’d spent so much time with the Hendricks kids, who they saw as jumped up white trash, but he’d never cared. Danny was fantastic, daring, and so full of life, while Jessie kept up with them, never chickened out of stuff or whined that she couldn’t follow them because she was going to break a nail, and had been a real beauty even then.

 

“Are you wondering if I’ve turned into your ex-husband?” Tex asked. He’d noticed from the way that Jessie talked that no one mentioned Janis Hendricks’s estranged spouse, ever, but if they were having this conversation, they’d have it. Get all their cards on the table.

 

“Have you?” she asked. Her gaze was unflinching. He respected that. It was something he loved about Jessie, and he was glad she’d gotten this from her mother.

 

“No, ma’am,” he said. “When I first started riding, I did some things I’m not proud of, but I’ve never been involved with any club whose main business was drugs or guns. Mostly, I spend my time with guys — people — who don’t fit into the nine-to-five world and don’t care to. A lot of them are vets. A lot of them are just…not comfortable surrounded by the same four walls every day. But we take care of each other. We’re a family. In fact, part of the reason we’re in Castello right now is that there’s another club that may be making a move on the town, trying to set up a base of operations that put them closer to a bunch of different areas. Plus, there’s not a lot out here — as you know — but with the tourist traffic coming through, they could potentially do a brisk business.” He watched her for a moment. “But you know it never ends there.”

 

“It never does,” she agreed. “So what happens next? With you and Jessie?”

 

He looked down at the woman, asleep on the sofa next to him. “We’re not looking too far ahead yet,” he said, choosing his words carefully. Wasn’t this a conversation the two of them were supposed to have together? But then, what were the odds of Smokey Hendricks turning up on his doorstep and asking about his intentions?

 

“She’s all I have left,” Janis said, her voice calmer than he would have expected. “Just promise you’ll be careful? You won’t break her heart on purpose.”

 

“I will not.”

 

“All right, then,” she said. “That’s what I needed to know.”

 

He tried to think of something else to say, but before he found the right words, someone pounded on the door so hard that it shook in its frame.

 

“What in the name of God,” Janis said as she stood up.

 

Tex stood up faster. His heart, still beating too fast from the earlier panic, throbbed in his chest. Had someone followed him here? Had he put these two women into some kind of danger through his negligence? He forced himself to push away the fear, the indecision that wanted to creep in. He would absolutely not allow himself to fail Jessie twice in one night. He gently put an arm in front of Janis and pushed her back towards her chair.

 

The banging came again, and she fell back. Jessie stirred on the couch under her blanket, moving sleepily as her eyes opened. “What’s —”

 

Janis shushed her, then turned her gaze towards Tex.

 

“Are you expecting anyone?” he asked, even though he already knew the answer. It was late, the middle of the night for all intents and purposes, and if Janis had a gentleman caller, as his grandmother would have said, that person was about to learn how you did and did not indicate your interest.

 

Janis shook her head.

 

He edged towards the front of the house. There were small windows set to either side of the front door, but they were frosted, and the light was off outside the front door anyway. He debated for a moment before turning it on. There was something oddly intimidating about having the light flipped on over your head, but at the same time, but he wasn’t sure he wanted whoever was out there to have the advantage of proper lighting. Still, on the off chance that he would need to see well, he turned it on.

 

When the light flicked on, the pounding intensified. For the first time, Tex identified the voice outside the door. “This is Sergeant Eduardo Pedroza,” he heard, “And I need to speak to Tex Brewer. I’m sorry about the hour, Mrs. Hendricks, but this is an emergency.”

 

Tex yanked the door open. “Eddie, what the hell,” he said, but then his voice choked off in his throat. Eddie stood at the door, but he wasn’t alone. With an iron grip on a shoulder, he held Smokey Hendricks in front of him. The deadbeat had fewer teeth than the last time Tex had seen him in Los Angeles, but he wore the same weasely expression he’d had for years.

 

“Yeah,” Eddie said in reaction to Tex’s surprise. “Sorry to bother the lady of the house, but we need to come in.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Right the fuck now.”

 

He heard Jessie before he saw her. She tore up the hallway and pushed Tex fiercely out of the way. No small feat, given their relative sizes, and how easily he could lift her. She launched herself at her father, a wordless cry tearing up her throat. Eddie yanked Smokey back at the same time Tex caught Jessie around the waist. Her momentum swung her up in the air for just a moment before she sagged against him, the fight or the fury fading.

 

Which meant that there was no one left to stop Janis Hendricks from walking out of the hallway and slapping the jackass right across the face. By the sound of it, she got some good contact, too. Smokey winced, shifting his jaw like it hurt. “You’ve got some nerve bringing him here, Eduardo,” she said, her gaze fixed on her estranged husband. “Still, you’d better come in before I decide to murder him on my front porch.”

 

Eddie shifted past her, pushing Smokey like a prisoner. And maybe he was. He couldn’t figure out any other reason the man would be back in town. He hadn’t shown up for his own son’s funeral; he sure as hell wasn’t stopping by for a visit.

 

But Janis wasn’t anywhere near surprised enough. And Jessie was sobbing openly in her arms. She’d been so determined not to be affected by his suspicions that her brother’s death had to do with her father’s crimes, but it was as if a dam had broken deep inside of her, and grief she’d never expressed was winding its way out.

 

He toed the door shut with his boot and just held her while she cried herself out.

 

“I want to go,” she said, as the sobs died down into sniffles. “I don’t know why that piece of shit is here, but I want to go.”

 

His gut clenched. Eddie wouldn’t have brought John Hendricks into this house, looking for Tex, if he hadn’t needed him, and needed him right away. “Baby, I have to talk to them.”

 

She drew back from him, all the softness draining away from her in between one heartbeat and the next. “What did you just say to me?”

 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Eddie wouldn’t have brought him here if he didn’t need to speak to me now. There’s something going down, and I need to talk to him. It could get dangerous.”

 

“That man,” she said, her jaw locked tight and harsh, “was horrible when I was a child, left me and my brother to be raised alone, and didn’t even come home when his own son died. He might have been why I grew up without my brother. You think I am going to sit in a house with that — that — monster and just let you talk to him?”

 

“Baby—”

 

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that. Don’t you dare pull out some kind of pet name like I’m a child you can talk down to, and pretend it’s all okay.”

 

He took a breath and pushed down the panic that still wanted to expand and take over his brain. “Okay. Jessie, I’m sorry. I told you we might have to do things you wouldn’t like. You said you were ready for whatever came. This is one of those things that comes.”

 

“No,” she said. “No. Absolutely not. You need to fuck some porn star from your past, I will cope with it, but you don’t talk to that man like he’s a goddamn human being. Not while you’re telling me you love me.”

 

He felt his heart crack. “I don’t have a choice, Jessie. I swore on everything and everyone I considered holy that I would get revenge for Danny, and I need to do that. I need to find out why they’re here, and then I may need to take action.” She was staring at him, her eyes blazing with anger. He thought he might die before the next words came out, but he had to say them. “I don’t want to choose between you.”

 

She staggered back like he’d slapped her. “Which means you already have.”

 

He didn’t speak; there was nothing he could say.

 

“You are actually choosing that tweaker fuck over me.”

 

He could say he loved her, but that was manipulative bullshit. It might be true, but she wasn’t wrong, and she had the right to be angry. God, in her shoes, he’d be livid.

 

“Get away from me,” she said. “Get out.”

 

“Jessie. I have to talk to him.”

 

“I don’t want you here anymore. This is my home.”

 

“No, it’s mine,” Janis said from the entrance to the living room where everything had been so peaceful, just a few minutes ago. “Tex, we need you.”

 

Jessie let out a choked off little scream and spun on her heel. For a minute, Tex thought she would yank the door open and walk right out, but instead, she disappeared farther into the house. He heard the heavy slap of a hand on the wall, followed by the angry curses of someone who didn’t know how to punch hitting something hard. He winced for her hand and hoped she hadn’t broken anything. He hoped she’d speak to him again, when all this was over.

 

Then he turned down the hall to face the man who had been responsible for killing his best friend.