It felt like an eternity passed before I hauled myself off the ground and sat against the brick wall. My face was swollen and aching; I couldn’t breathe through my nose and a metallic taste filled my mouth. I spat globs of bloody saliva onto the ground, but it didn’t get rid of the nasty taste.
How the hell did they have the balls to jump me in fucking public?
We’d had the perfect chance to end those assholes at the sideshow; all we had to do was run them off the fucking road. It should have been easy to cause a fatal accident at over a hundred miles per hour. But they’d slipped away from us; that damned El Camino was impossibly fast.
Now Nate had bailed on me, that damn coward. The big man was all talk and no action, but I’d thought he was better than this. Reed had beaten him with one damn punch, then beat him to bloody pulp for good measure.
Fishing my phone out of my pocket, my finger hovered over the Emergency Call button. But after a few moments, I furiously shoved it away again. I didn’t need an ambulance; I needed fucking vengeance and I was going to have it by my own means.
“Fuck those assholes,” I muttered. “Fuck that little bitch…”
This was all Jessica’s fault, the stuck-up cunt. She wasn’t so bad before she switched sides and decided to go be a slut for Wickeston’s freaks. Women like her needed to be kept in line. Being so attractive that men almost drooled over her had over-inflated her ego, convincing her she was such hot shit.
But she was nothing. Just another worthless whore who thought the world revolved around her pussy. I should have done so much worse to her and her stupid little friend.
Someone appeared at the end of the alleyway. Cigarette smoke wafted toward me, and I turned my face away, frankly furious anyone would dare come along and see me like this.
“Fuck off,” I said as footsteps approached. I wasn’t in the mood to be checked on.
“Looks to me like someone put you through the ringer.”
“I said, fuck off, old man!” I snapped.
Once I heard his voice, I knew exactly who it was. It was Reagan, that old man who’d been hanging around Billy’s every day for weeks. He’d offered Nate and I five hundred dollars each for going after Manson and Lucas at that sideshow. He hadn’t explained why; but at the time, I hadn’t needed an explanation.
He came closer, taking a long drag on his cigarette. I glared up at him, but I couldn’t see his face very well when my eyes were swelling shut from bruises.
“I don’t need your help,” I said bitterly, as he stood beside me.
“Didn’t offer my damn help now, did I?” he drawled.
Painfully, I got to my feet. Everything ached; there were sharp pains in muscles I didn’t even know existed before today. “What the fuck is your deal, Reagan? Why are you here?”
“I’m just a concerned citizen.” He offered me a cigarette. I wasn’t much of a smoker, but I took it anyway. “Those men who attacked you today cause an awful lot of problems around this town. I’m simply a man looking for solutions.”
“Solutions, huh?” I scoffed, accepting his lighter when he offered it. As I lit up, I took a more careful look at his face. The last time we’d conversed, we’d been inside at the bar and I’d been drunk. Drunk enough to think that accepting money to try to kill my rivals was a good idea. But as I examined his face, the familiarity of his features struck me.
“You’re Manson’s father, aren’t you?” I said. “That’s why you have a problem with those guys. He’s your son.”
He exhaled slowly, pale smoke disappearing into the cold air.
“I suppose he is,” he said. His resemblance to Reed was uncanny. But something was different. Maybe it was the dullness in his gaze or the hard set of his mouth. It was difficult to pinpoint what it was, but one thing was certain.
When he looked at me, this guy gave me the fucking creeps.
“You want to get back at them, don’t you?” he said. “They deserve to pay for the trouble they’ve caused you.”
“Yeah, they do,” I said, even though his words made a weird chill go over me. “They’ve felt comfortable around here for too damn long.”
He laughed, low and rough. “We’re in agreement, then. We’ll all be a hell of a lot better off…”
He walked away from me, and I watched him in confusion. Shaking my head, I took a heavy drag on the cigarette and immediately coughed. Damn, this was way harsher than a vape…
“You coming or not, boy?”
The old man was waiting for me at the mouth of the alley.
“Are you going to let them walk all over you?” he said. The way he looked at me made me feel ashamed, like I’d done something embarrassing and didn’t have a clue what it was.
Jaw clenched, I said, “No…but what the fuck do you want me to do about it?”
He smiled at me, his teeth all yellowed and rotten. “I want you to follow me and stop asking dumbass questions.”
