Page 99 of Catcher

A strangled sound tears out of me. I drop to my knees and scramble to my dad’s side. “Daddy?” I whisper, then louder, shaking his shoulder. “Daddy, wake up. Please… please wake up.” That’s when I see it, his gun lying near his hand. My gaze drops to his stomach, and I suck in a breath so sharp it burns. His shirt is soaked, the blood pooling beneath him. I glance at the man beside him, and my stomach churns. There’s a dark hole in the center of his chest, and his eyes are open, staring at nothing.

My hands fly to my mouth. “Oh, God.” I gasp. I fumble back, nearly slipping in the blood, and force my legs to work.

My phone. I need my phone. I need to call 911.

I turn and run, bare feet against the tiled kitchen floor, the darkness swallowing me as I rush back toward the bedroom. I’m two steps from the bedroom doorway when an arm snakes around me from behind and yanks me back hard enough that I stumble. My scream gets cut off as a gloved hand clamps over my mouth.

Terror grips me, and my fight-or-flight instincts kick in. I choose to fight. I throw my elbows back, stomp and kick, twist and claw for anything I can grab. All I can think of is my baby, protect my baby, don’t let them hurt my baby. Then I think about my dad lying on the living room floor in a pool of his own blood. I think about how my mother wouldn’t be able to go on without her other half. We can’t lose him. Then I think about Garrett and all he has endured. This can’t be it. He can’t come home to find me and our baby dead, just like he did with his wife. I refuse to let that be my fate.

With as much strength as I can gather, I rear back and land an elbow to my attacker’s gut, causing him to stumble back, taking me with him. We slam into the wall, and pain shoots through my shoulder.

“Fuckin’ cunt,” my attacker sneers, his hot breath washing across my face. I manage to wrench my mouth free long enough to suck in air, but the attacker’s fist flashes out and catches me across the face. White sparks burst behind my eyes.

I taste blood instantly and swing blindly, my nails raking skin, and I hear a grunt. For half a second, I think I might actually get away. Then his fist connects again, a brutal punch to my cheek that snaps my head sideways. My knees buckle. I try to curl around my stomach, try to make myself small, but another blow lands hard, and the hallway spins.

My last thought is a plea I don’t get to speak out loud—my baby.

And then everything goes black.

23

CATCHER

Church has been going for two hours, maybe longer. Time gets strange inside this room when business sits heavily on the table. The world outside the clubhouse keeps turning, the Mississippi keeps rolling past, but in here, everything narrows to names, routes, guns, debts, and the kind of trouble that doesn’t disappear just because it goes quiet for a while.

Quiet has been the problem for weeks now. It’s been too damn quiet. No sign of Crowley’s men in New Orleans, and no movement from Baton Rouge that screams they’re coming. Just silence. The kind a man wants to trust but is smart enough not to. Quiet like that is just a snake coiled under leaves.

Riggs sits at the head of the table, calm as ever, but there’s nothing relaxed about him tonight. His fingers rest near the stack of papers Wick printed out of names and addresses and grainy stills from cameras.

I’m sitting near the middle of the table with my phone face up beside my fist, the screen black. Normally, phones don’t sit on this table during church. Normally, nobody touches one. Tonight, mine stays where I can see it because Ruby is at home. I left her there two hours ago after Riggs called us in, and because even with the silence hanging over everything, I still don’t trust quiet enough to turn my back on it.

“Easy says Crowley’s people are moving differently,” Riggs says, voice even. “Not through their usual Baton Rouge routes. They’ve shifted out toward the old industrial roads, smaller vehicles, fewer drivers, more caution.”

“They outnumber us,” Wick says.

My hand tightens. And that right there is why we haven’t done shit to eliminate the threat lingering over our fucking heads. The one person they want is still breathing because his sister still holds out hope for the asshole. Robby has been breathing clubhouse air for weeks, locked in that bare room with no phone, no freedom, and nothing but the weight of his own choices to keep him company.

Ruby asks about him daily. He’s alive, only because she asked, not because he deserves it.

Lockdown lifted a couple of weeks ago, at least officially, but none of us eased up. Not really. Families started moving around again, and I’ve been sleeping at Ruby’s every night since she came home.

Life looks different.

That thought hits me in the quiet moments, usually when I’m driving back to her house after club business or when I wake before dawn and find Ruby curled against my side, one hand tucked under her cheek, her stomach showing the growth of our child beneath one of my shirts. The room always feels different in those seconds—darker, softer, like the whole damn world finally shut up long enough for me to hear her breathing. Sometimes, I lie there and watch the rise and fall of her chest, the way her hair spills over my arm, the weight of her pressed into me as if she trusts I’ll still be there when morning comes. That kind of trust does something ugly and holy to a man like me. Different in ways I never believed I’d get again.

“You with us, Catcher?” Riggs’ voice brings me back.

I lift my eyes. “Yeah.”

He studies me for half a second, then nods. “Word on the streets is he still wants his debt paid and his pride stitched back together. Men like him don’t take a public hit and walk it off. They bleed somebody for it. They make an example, leave bodies where people can find them, and call it business. That’s how bastards like him climb.”

“They want Robby,” Fender says in an even tone.

“We all know this bastard wants more,” I say. All eyes come to me, but my voice stays level, even though the thing under it isn’t. “They’re waiting, watching, and staying quiet for a reason.”

Wick nods slowly. “They want leverage that comes with makin’ a move on Kings’ turf.”

The room stills.