Chapter 12 - Ares

12

Ares

I am fury.

I am rage.

I am war.

There’s a powerful creature in my body that’s roaring for blood. I want to shoot Sheriff Jackson dead. Send his brains splattering all over his fucking windshield.

It’s what Delaney wants and, now that I know the truth about what he’s done to her — probably for years, probably ever since she sat herself down at my kitchen table — I want it too.

But I can’t. I can’t betray Griff or the brothers. If I kill the Sheriff, there will be no end to the repercussions for the Wastelanders. The logical, rational part of me fights for control as I send Delaney away. I manage to hold myself back until I hear the bedroom window squeak, until I hear the soft thump of Delaney landing on the other side of the trailer.

Then I count to three.

I kick open the trailer door and start shooting. It’s dumb, it’s fucking reckless. It’s so dark out I can’t see anything beyond the glaring headlights of the Sheriff’s patrol car. Still, I fire, my finger squeezing the trigger again and again.

Luckily I catch the Sheriff off guard. He shouts something and scrambles for his door, flinging it open and ducking down behind it as bullets whizz through the air.

Any second now and he’ll return fire. I’m out in the open, bathed in light. I’m dead for sure.

I stop running. Steady my hand. Aim.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

One front tire on the patrol car explodes. One headlight, then the next.

“You’re fucking dead, Warner!” Sheriff Jackson screams into the darkness. “You and the slut!”

Hopefully his ears are ringing just like mine. Hopefully he can’t hear what direction I take off in, can’t hear my feet sliding on the gravel.

I run to the other side of the trailer and sprint to the woods, running blind, my feet stumbling over branches and thick undergrowth. I just shot at Sheriff Jackson, and even without killing him, I know I just threw the Wastelanders headfirst into the shit.

Still, with that bouncing around in my head, the only thing I care about is Delaney.

I make it several yards beyond the treeline before I stop to see if he’s following. He’s not.

Breathing hard, I look around. It’s impossible to see much of anything this deep in the woods.

“Delaney? He’s gone, kid.”

“Ares?” Her voice is muffled, but close.

“Yeah.”

There’s movement to my left and I spot a fallen tree, the sides rotting and coming apart. After a moment, Delaney rises from the inside, a ghost of the forest prying her way out of the dead tree. There’s a crown of twigs and leaves caught in her hair and even though her face is shadowed, I can already tell she’s glaring at me.

“Not a kid,” she spits angrily. She clambers out of the tree trunk and wipes her hands on her jeans. “Why the fuck aren’t you dead? I heard shooting.”

“That was me.” I look down at the gun in my hand, then tuck it into the back of my jeans.

“Oh,” she says. I feel her brain whirring.

“He’s alive,” I tell her. “Didn’t even graze him.”

“Did you try?”

I ignore that. I have to. Did she cling to that hope, hiding out here? The hope that I would put a bullet between her father’s eyes? Is she disappointed in me?

I don’t like that feeling. It twists in my gut, like I’m ashamed of myself for letting her down.

“You got your bag?” I ask. But really I’m asking if she has the coke. It’s possibly the only leverage we have left.

“Yeah,” she replies after a moment, like she’s annoyed I didn’t answer her question and was thinking about pushing it. She turns and fishes something out of the tree stump. It’s the backpack. She brushes off the canvas and slings it over her shoulder. “What do we do now?” she asks.

“Now? We walk.”

***

It’s slow going. I don’t want to take out my phone and use the flashlight until I’m sure Jackson isn’t following. I don’t think he is. Guy like that wouldn’t stomp through the woods in the middle of the night if he can get someone else to do it for him. Finally I take out my phone and light our way.

Delaney is pale and her dark hair swings into her face with every step, her eyes cast firmly on the ground ahead of her.

“How did you know that would work?” she asks, like she knows I’m watching her. “Like… I’m assuming you weren’t trying to kill him.”

“Just figured I’d give you enough time to get away.”

“He could’ve shot you.”

I shrug and grunt. Not much else to say. It’s true. He could’ve. And then Delaney would have been out here alone. Probably would’ve served her right for starting this whole thing.

A dull rush of panic goes through me. Not at the thought of me dying — I’m resigned to the fact that a life with the Wastelanders isn’t always a long one — but at the thought of Delaney out here, lost in the woods, with her sack-of-shit father on her tail.

“He’s not used to people fighting back,” she says, interrupting my thoughts. “Or challenging him. I think he expected me to just walk out the door. You took him by surprise.”

“Yeah, maybe. What I can’t figure out is how he found us in the first place.”

Delaney makes a little non-committal sound. A hmm that sets my teeth grinding. I swing an arm around and block her, pivoting so that I’m in front of her and she’s blinking up at me. The flashlight on my phone illuminates our feet, but it bounces up to carve eerie shadows across her face.

“Delaney?”

Her fingers fidget with the straps of her backpack.

“Do you know how he found us?”

“It’s dealt with.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? What, the sick fuck put a tracking device in your arm or something?”

“Something like that,” she replies, her chin tilting down, hiding her face.

“I’m not fucking around.”

She sneers. “What, you want to search me? Pat me down? You already did that at your little clubhouse, remember?”

“Enough with the brat shit. How did he find us, Delaney?”

Her fingers twitch. Her hand makes a minuscule movement to the pocket of her jeans. I lunge and her eyes flash wide.

“No!”

She tries to spin away, but I’m too fast, my fingers already digging in her pocket. My phone tumbles into the dirt and the light goes out. In the dark, I grab her with my other hand and hold her as she thrashes against me. She twists her hips and bucks, swearing at me the whole time.

As I pry her phone from her pocket, she lands a sharp slap to my face and I shove her back. It’s more forceful than I mean to and she hits the ground ass-first. There’s a long beat of quiet.

“You’re an asshole,” she hisses in the dark.

“Yeah, I am.”

I tap her phone to life and use the light to find my own on the ground.

“What’s your passcode?” I demand. She glares up at me, cheeks red.

“There was a tracking app. It was hidden. I found it already, deleted it.”

I don’t say anything, waiting for her to give me the code. I need to check for myself.

“It’s gone,” she insists. “Trust me.”

I scoff. “Fine. I’ll just smash the whole thing.”

I drop her phone unceremoniously to the ground, raise my boot to stomp.

“No!” Delaney screeches. She dashes for the phone, scrabbling in the dirt like an animal. She snatches it up and rocks back on her heels. She clutches the phone to her chest like something precious.

“No,” she says again. It’s quieter. Pleading. “Ares, I… You can’t. Just… please.”

“Why? What’s so important on there that you’d risk Jackson finding us again?”

She swallows hard. She bites her bottom lip. I lunge down—

“Time’s up. Give me the—”

“My sister!”

I pause. It’s something so unexpected, it cracks open my memory like a long-forgotten safe. Sheriff Jackson never charged me with anything that night, even after finding Delaney’s little bookmark in my house. She was safe at home and denied ever coming over. Still, I spent a night in jail and that was enough to get the rumor mill churning. Jackson made it everyone’s business what happened that night. Said that I liked little girls, that little Delaney Jackson never had a chance around me.

The only thing that diverted public attention away from me was the death of Delaney’s mom. In childbirth, I think. All the accusing whispers about me turned into soft concern for Sheriff Jackson, the poor widower who now had an infant and a damaged tween to look after. I’d been so focused on keeping away from Delaney, keeping my head down, that I never even noticed her sister seemed to have disappeared.

“Lilly. Her name’s Lilly,” Delaney continues. She thinks my silence is me waiting for an explanation and not an uncomfortable trip down memory lane.

“She’s seven. She lives with my aunt in Omaha. This is the only way she can get in contact with me. Ares, please .”

This isn’t like her. The begging.

“Goddamnit,” I mutter. I close my eyes for a second. “Fine.”

I flick my fingers at her, motioning to give me the phone. She shakes her head.

“I need the number. I’m going to put it in here.”

I hold up my phone. Delaney softens, her lips parting slightly. She taps in her passcode. Her thumb flicks over the screen, scrolling her contacts. She pulls up the number and holds the phone out. I take it, and add it to my contacts list.

I can’t help but notice the name: Lil, followed by a little purple heart. I can’t imagine a seven-year-old has their own phone, so it must be the aunt’s number. I transfer it over. I don’t add the heart, though, because emojis are fucking stupid. I show it to her. Proof. And she nods again.

“Thank you,” she says. I offer my hand and help her up, then place her phone on a log and look around for a big enough rock.

“Don’t thank me yet, I didn’t say you could call any time soon. For all we know, the Sheriff’s putting a trace on your aunt’s line.”

Delaney nods solemnly, then hands me a hunk of rock. Seconds later, her phone is scattered in bits on the forest floor.

“Let’s go,” I say, turning my back on her. “We’ve got a long walk until we hit civilization.”