6. Light a Match, Not a Candle

Chapter Six

LIGHT A MATCH, NOT A CANDLE

Bramley

“ H ey, what’s this asshole doing?”

I squint as I look in the direction Zeke is pointing, both of us watching what appears to be a set of taillights creeping ahead of us toward the turn for Obsidian Falls.

Gripping the steering wheel tighter, I inch closer, tailgating the fucker who’s riding dangerously close to my town without an invite.

We don’t get many visitors, not in a long fucking time, and anyone who casually strolls in is usually met with a less than warm welcome.

It’s not like we run people out of town or some shit, it’s just the last time we had a bunch of new people move in, the entire omega population was wiped out less than a year later, so we get a little goddamn leery when Obsidian starts getting more traffic than we’re used to.

Especially in the middle of a two-month long blizzard that only now has dropped to heavy snow.

Our town is a mountain town, set weirdly deep against the Appalachians, hidden by the forests and wildlife, and some windy uphill roads that suck to navigate on a good day let alone in the elements unless you’re used to them.

I’d almost guarantee this truck is not.

Neither of us recognizes it, we know all the vehicles and who they belong to.

Obsidian is too small not to know everything about everyone, and getting a new vehicle, used or not, is a big deal. We would notice that.

I would notice that, and since I don’t know who the fuck this is, I’m gonna make sure they know me.

I’m not entirely sure why they’d even consider venturing that way.

The snow is gradually letting up but if I weren’t familiar with the terrain, I can’t say I’d be taking any risks right now. Plus, it’s two in the goddamn morning. Who the fuck goes sightseeing at this time of night?

“Butch,” Zeke warns as I pick up speed. “Don’t, man.”

Ignoring him, I get right on the dark colored Ford’s ass, mentally making note of the plate while trying to burn the details into my mind.

Black on black, matte, lifted. Chains on the tires. All the windows are tinted to an illegal shade. Trailer hitch, mud flaps. Looks like the bed is weighted.

Yeah, this fucker isn’t from around here and I need to know where the hell he thinks he’s going.

I speed up a little more, my own Ford getting so close my grill is about to kiss this guy’s bumper. Something he notices judging by the way he picks up the pace, his tires spinning in the snow and kicking up a mess.

“Dude, knock it off. No one is gonna come all the way out here to pull us out of a ditch because you decided to play town sheriff in the middle of the fucking night.”

Scowling, I slow down a little as the truck goes past our turn, but I don’t stop following.

It’s too easy to find a back road around to double back here.

“Jesus,” Zeke huffs. “You are a special kind of dickhead tonight.”

Shooting my brother a quick look, I go back to the truck ahead of us. “You don’t think it’s fucking weird that there’s some asshole lurking around this close to town right now?”

“Considering this is as close to a main road as you can get out here? No.”

“And you’re not at all worried about someone randomly showing up?”

“Not really. Unless it’s a bunch of dudes in white coats finally coming to pick your ass up.” Zeke laughs to himself as he lights a cigarette. “You’re almost as bad as me.”

Well, that’s unsettling.

My brother has had a wicked case of paranoia with a hearty dose of conspiracy theorist for well over a decade now, and he’s usually the one who’s wigging out about this kind of thing. Hearing him say I’m getting close to his level isn’t exactly a compliment, and it definitely reinforces everything Nash and Clay have been saying for months.

I blow out a breath as I slow down, reaching up to pull my mask back up over my nose. “Sorry,” I grunt. “Not sure what my fucking problem is.”

“You’re an asshole, Butch, and the closer you get to forty, the worse it gets. That’s your fucking problem.”

“Fuck off.”

Zeke cackles next to me then clamps a hand down on my shoulder. “That’s how I like you. Big, broody, and unhinged as fuck. I’m just not real keen on having to call for help when the back of this truck is carrying two dead bodies.”

I let off the gas and let the truck put miles between us, the taillights disappearing into the night like it was never there to begin with.

He’s got a point.

Everyone in town knows what we do, but it doesn’t go beyond that.

The secret got out early, not that I wanted it to get out at all. But some things can’t be helped, and this was one of those things.

We found out the day we buried our mother that the Harden’s were responsible, that those sex trafficking bastards were the ones who ruined the lives of hundreds of people and changed the entire future of one small town.

The Harden’s had been running shit for such a long time, an underground circuit producing omegas to any alpha willing to pay, providing a service that was second to none. If you were a piece of shit who didn’t believe in the natural order of things, anyway.

Three generations of Harden assholes had been trafficking omegas, kidnapping them from their homes, taking them right off the street, and sending them directly into the pits of Hell. Everyone within one hundred miles of the ranch knows about it and what they do there, but their pockets run deep, and no matter how terrible they were, everyone turns a blind eye to anyone carrying that last name.

Over time, things only got worse and with the creation of the internet, Bryce Harden brought the family business into the 21st century, putting them on the map in a national way, and creating an even bigger demand than what they had before.

Thus, also creating the tragedy that took place in our town fifteen years ago.

And once I found out just how close to home that slimy motherfucker and his business got, I made it my personal mission to make him and everyone he’s ever met pay.

A mission I was fortunate enough to start almost immediately following my mother’s funeral.

Nash and Clayton took me hunting, an actual hunt—for deer and not people—to try to let off some steam and start to cope with what happened. It was a good idea, even if I didn’t think so at the time, and that’s why I agreed. That and the fact that I owed it to my partners to try to decompress and start to process things while giving them the time to do the same.

I didn’t exactly make it easy for them.

An hour into the trip and I was already a brooding bastard, but the universe was on my side that day because that was the very moment The Butcher of Obsidian Falls was truly born.

We stopped for gas, and so Clayton could buy his weight in junk food, and while I was filling up the camper, fate intervened.

None other than Stewart Harden pulled up to the gas pump next to ours during that very pitstop, and I thought we hit the goddamn jackpot.

I debated on using him as bait, taking the son of a bitch and trying to draw Bryce out by letting him know we had his baby brother, but I couldn’t. I needed answers, I needed vengeance, and it didn’t matter how big the fish was at that moment, someone was going to fry.

Needless to say, the hunting trip was cut short, we followed him all the way to some stupid fucking resort, and I took him right out from under the Egyptian cotton sheets while he was sleeping in his five-star bed.

My original plan was to find out what they did and why, to pump him for all the information I could get so we could shut their entire operation down, but the longer he pleaded for his life, the less I gave a shit. And I decided to show Stewart Harden the same kindness he’d shown my mother because of it.

We went home and the second our camper was parked, I stripped him down, chained him up, and dragged him through town then ran him up the flagpole by his fucking dick and let every single person who’d lived through the horror his family brought to ours take a swing on him. Once they were finished, so was he.

I beat Stewart to death with my bare fucking hands then left his rotting corpse swinging in the wind until his limbs started to fall off.

It didn’t quell the need for justice, though. Not even when I packed up his decaying remains and anonymously sent them to Bryce.

Ultimately, I knew all that I needed to know; the Harden’s infiltrated our town, they became our friends, then they struck when our guard was down.

But killing him didn’t make me, or anyone else feel better.

It didn’t change what happened, it didn't bring my mother back.

What they did was unforgivable, it was heinous and thinking about what actually happened still makes me angrier than I thought I would ever be.

How could I respond in any other way?

Any omega who was packed up, who had mates and a fucking family, they were slaughtered. Annihilated. Wiped the fuck out.

I still don’t know how they did it, but I suspect it was tampering with scent blockers, the ones almost all of them took when they were working or when they would head to another town to shop. The bastard tapped into a fucking prescription that was vital for most of them, something they used to stay safe in an environment where an unmated alpha could be present at any given moment, and they did it while they smiled and waved from neighboring yards and businesses. Do we know that for sure? No, and I’m not sure we ever will but poison was the only explanation because there was nothing evident in any of the autopsies performed, and there was not one physical symptom between the last time an omega was seen alive, and when their alphas started finding them dead.

We have no hard proof, nothing solid after years of picking them off, but the shit Zeke started to find the second he gave in to the most logical conspiracy theory he’s ever had, it all but confirmed the Harden’s were behind it, and they did it to further expand their incredibly illegal and unethical business that had been booming for decades.

Then they kicked us when we were down.

Using grief and pain as a veil, the motherfuckers swarmed Obsidian Falls about six months later, came in like a fucking swat team, and they stole every omega who was still there, the few who had just found out their designation, and the even less who remained and had managed to stay safe from the mass murder that no one had begun to heal from.

That time, they didn’t bother hiding who they were or what they were doing.

They walked in like they owned the place, took what they wanted, and once again, they killed a lot of fucking people to do it.

Twice those bastards upended our town.

Twice they destroyed everything it had been built on and worked hard to become.

Twice was more than enough for me to make sure nothing like that ever happened again.

For fifteen fucking years, my brothers, my partners, and I have put our sick skills, our twisted talents, and our darkest depravities to work. We have tirelessly researched, hunted, and ended anyone we could find that was part of what happened here, and it became a mission to expand into shutting down that fucking place for good.

Killing has always been a part of my life, something we’ve done forever, but now? Now it’s something I crave and when this vigilante shit finally comes to an end, I wonder if I’ll be able to stop.

It was a fluke in terms of timing; the urges I’d always fought were getting harder and harder to handle, especially when I fell for two men with the same kind of urges at varying levels of hidden, but having a target, an end goal to focus my energy on, it worked out for the best.

But now I see it starting to spill into other aspects of my life, bleeding beyond the pages of vengeance and into the uncharted territory of necessity.

It’s made the never-ending supply of dirty fucks from the ranch both a blessing and a curse.

I don’t have to worry about my proclivities beyond what I’m doing, but I haven’t finished what I set out to do all those years ago, and that feels like I’m disappointing my mother, as well as the rest of the omegas we lost.

And that feeling has only fueled that anger, it’s nurtured that rage, and I’ve been stuck in some fucked up catch twenty-two that has seemingly spiraled into plotting the murder of motorists passing by the turn for Obsidian Falls.

“You are so fucking wound,” Zeke says with a laugh as he pulls me from my thoughts. “You didn’t hear one goddamn thing I just said to you, and I’m not even going to bother trying again solely based on how white your knuckles are right now.”

I look down at my hands, holding the steering wheel so tight my fingers momentarily lock up, then loosen them before they break. “What?”

He shakes his head with a smirk. “The long and short of it is, we lost the truck, and we really need to dump these bodies before it gets too much later. Your boys would jump my shit if they knew what I had you out all hours of the night doing.”

He’s not wrong about that.

After Clayton’s little explosion a few weeks ago, I’ve made a better effort to be less controlling and allow them both to be present in all aspects of what I do the way that I used to.

We went hunting together for the first time in a long time, got a few of Harden’s newer scouts, and we were able to spend some long overdue time alone together while we did it. I didn’t tell either of them he was right but Clay was, and I’ve tried harder to include both Nash and Clayton in more than just my shop or whatever because of it. As much as I don’t want to admit it, I missed having them with me, and it was a breath of fresh fucking air honestly because we work so much better as a team.

Zeke and Titus, we work fine together, but the three of us killing people when we have such different methods turns everything into a shitshow rather quickly, someone ends up fighting with someone else, and I need an immediate and semi-long break from my brothers after the fact.

Tonight was different.

They wouldn’t see it that way, I know without having to ask, but it was different for a few reasons and I didn’t want to bring them into it.

Zeke actually asked me not to.

I didn’t like it, not really, but I understood it.

When he told me that Walker—Bryce Harden’s son, and my brother’s best friend—was involved, that he had a direct lead that put him at serious risk, I wasn’t going to argue with Zeke.

So, I wound up sneaking out of my own goddamn house at midnight, after my partners were dead asleep courtesy of the tequila shots we were doing for some made up reason Clayton had, then walked two miles down the fucking mountain to meet my brother so we didn’t wake them up. All so I could follow a lead from his friend who’s a double agent because Zeke didn’t want anyone else brought into it if shit went south.

I can appreciate that, but I don’t like lying to Clay and Nash, and when they undoubtedly find out what happened tonight, I’m not going to.

Which means both Zeke and I will end up in the doghouse, and Walker will make their shit list, too, just for being the informant.

It was a good hunt, though.

Not great, and not quite what Walker expected, but we bagged two fucks on Harden’s payroll, and one of them happened to be the guy in charge of the inventory so now we have a list of all the omegas on the property.

A solid hunt that is almost worth the ass chewing I’m going to get when I get home.

“Those tracks are fresh,” my brother says quietly as I pull behind the blind along the dump site. “Real fresh.”

Nodding, I put the truck in park and hit the lights, staring at the tire tracks that can’t be more than an hour old. “Walker wouldn’t?—“

“No.” Zeke shakes his head as he grabs the door handle. “He’s three hours away.”

Right.

I forgot he was out of town.

That’s usually the only time he’ll give us the major leads he gets, that way Daddy dearest won’t suspect anything.

“The guys were asleep, right?”

I nod again, following back to where the tracks start, noticing two sets of boot prints alongside them. “They’d sooner tear me a new asshole from the comfort of our bed than drive all the way out here to do it. And they sure as hell wouldn’t have left before they got to.”

We get out of my truck slowly, reverting to hand signals, relying on our knowledge of the area and our time spent doing things in the pitch black of the night. He goes north up the side road while I go south, both of us searching for any fresher signs of company or what the hell anyone would be doing out here so late.

Aside from us, because body dumping is the only reason I can come up with and I don’t particularly like the idea of someone else knowing where our site is, or using it for whatever they might have used it for.

After a solid twenty minute search and follow, we were able to determine that the vehicle was headed north and was long gone at this point, but we decided to wait another half hour or so before we got down to business. Had to be sure we were alone before we started tossing shit down the hill into the ravine.

“You think the bears get tired of mostly hands and feet?”

I drop the cooler by the side of the road and stare at my brother like he’s finally fucking cracked. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Zeke shrugs as he pulls the second cooler from the bed of the truck. “It’s not often they get a meal like this”—he motions to the coffin-sized containers—“since you usually take care of the meaty parts at your shop. Hands and feet aren’t much, I imagine they don’t get very full when that’s all we’ve got for them.”

Blinking slowly, I open my mouth but not one damn thing comes out.

Why the fuck is he even thinking about this?

Who gives a shit if the bears are happy about their free food, I know I don’t, I just appreciate the way they take care of the scraps when hydrofluoric acid is hard to come by. Or ordering it raises a few too many red flags.

“You’re a dumbass,” I finally grunt as I grab the handle of the metal cooler and drag it to the ledge. I really think he needs a vacation.

Either that or he’s long overdue to get laid.

“I’m just saying…”

“Yeah, I know what you’re just saying. You’re fucking losing it, brother, and I think?—“

“Cooler’s falling.”

I frown and straighten up. “What?”

Zeke points as a stupid grin forms on his face. “Your cooler is sliding down the hill.”

“Fuck.” Sure as shit, when I drop my eyes to where the container was just fucking sitting, I don’t see anything but a thick, flat path in the snow, and my cooler going for a goddamn ride straight into the ravine.

Goddamnit.

“If you hadn’t been flapping your fucking gums about bears and shit…” I flip my hood up and tug my mask a little higher, then follow the stupid box I wouldn’t even be using if it wasn’t for my brother.

Who is currently standing on the side of the road watching me climb down the hill the best I can without falling on my ass.

“Stupid fucking weather.” I skid a few feet, leaning back and using a hand to keep me upright before sidestepping my way down a few more. “Piece of shit, dragging me out in the middle of the damn night.”

Grumbling the rest of my journey down the steep, sloping terrain, I finally stop a few seconds after the cooler does, the thing thumping against none other than a blue tarp rolled up like a carpet.

I fucking knew it.

Whoever was here before us used this same ravine to dump their own dirty laundry, and they didn’t even bother hiding it, or making it easy for nature to reclaim. And they clearly didn’t pay attention to their surroundings because if they had looked close enough, they would have seen the pile of decaying parts already sitting there from our last drop.

Obviously whoever this was is an idiot.

Must have been the fuckers in that Ford.

I bet that’s what they were doing, dumping some bullshit down our ravine because they were too lazy to find something closer to wherever the hell they came from.

This is just another reason Clayton is gonna be pissed. He’ll chew me out for doing this in the first place, then he’ll lose his shit because he’ll feel the need to find a new dump site and…

My brow furrows as I crab walk along the hill, my back against the steepest part of the wall while I slide past the cooler toward the tarp.

Hair.

There’s hair sticking out the opposite end of it, dark and matted, big chunks stuck together with what I’d put money on to be blood.

Son of a bitch.

That’s exactly what I thought.

Outsiders coming out here to dump a fucking body on our turf.

Not on my watch.

Pissed off and ready to pop, I reach for the rope around what must be the ankles judging by the cramped position and where it is in relation to the hair, and give it a hard tug. It’s frozen, the thick twined material stiff and without any give, so I reach into the holster on my belt for my hunting knife.

Hooking it under one side, I saw through the rope with a few rough jerks then toss it aside. I do the same to the piece around the midsection then shove my cooler out of the way the best I can to get to the one closest to the hair.

Sheathing my blade, I rub my hands together then blow on my fingers, the cold making it harder to move them, then look over the tarp again, head to toe.

Whoever’s rolled up in this shit isn’t very big, no more than five and a half feet tall at most, and I’d say it’s female between the overall size and the hair, but I won’t know for sure until I finish opening the tarp. Makes me wonder what kind of asshole was heartless enough to not only kill someone so small but dump them like trash after the fact.

I really don’t need to get involved in this.

It was someone else’s mistake to leave a body wrapped like this, and it’s not up to me to make sure it’s opened up for the animals.

Problem is, that blue is hard to miss and if someone does decide to take a look over the side of the road, they’ll see it, especially in broad daylight. If that happens, someone’s bound to come down here, poking around, and they’ll find whatever we’ve dropped off that hasn’t been eaten or taken away yet.

I’ve spent too many years perfecting how we do things, too many years working my ass off to make sure no one is found, and nothing can be traced back to us. They come digging after finding a body, there’s too much risk of all that falling apart.

With an annoyed grunt, I crouch down by the head, take the flap in hand, and peel back the crunchy plastic.

I suck in a sharp breath as the battered face of a female appears, both eyes black and blue, one of them swollen shut, her lower lip split and caked in blood.

Jesus fuck.

She was put through the fucking wringer.

Shaking my head, I continue opening the tarp, revealing a naked body covered in more bruises and multiple cuts, her chest and arms covered in both. There are stab wounds in her stomach and sides, more slashes to her hips and thighs, and when I have all of her exposed, I realize that she’s not only covered in blood, this woman has hay or straw stuck to her all over, ligature marks around her wrists, and her feet are dirty.

Anger flares as I strike a match from the book in my pocket, looking her over again, each pass of my eyes picking up on something new that has my blood boiling.

A branded mark on her shoulder, a number tattooed on her hip. There are also older bruises on her body, around her hips and thighs, and what looks like healing marks from fingernails. She isn’t underweight and looks relatively healthy aside from the fucking injuries, but her skin has the hue of someone who scarcely went outside. Prison pallor.

This woman was some kind of goddamn prisoner.

Held captive, murdered in cold blood, then left to the elements to be forgotten.

“Bullshit,” I mumble. This is fucking bullshit, and no one deserves a life, or death, like she had.

I grit my teeth as I lean toward her face, brushing a few matted strands from her forehead, and as the light from the match dwindles, I swear I catch sight of a small breath leaving her parted lips.

No.

There is no fucking way she survived all this, not—there, that was another one. I know I saw it. So, I lean in closer, the match burnt out between my fingers so I quickly strike a second and hold it by her chest.

Watching closely, I see a short, shallow movement at the same time I feel a tiny puff against my cheek.

“Zeke!” I shout as I toss the match and immediately scoop her into my arms. “Zeke, you son of a bitch, get the tow rope!”

Getting to my feet, I turn and look up toward the road, searching the darkness for my dumbass brother while I slide backward a few inches in the snow.

Fuck me, how is she still alive?

I crouch down again, balancing her on my lap so I can open my coat then shift her around to tuck and zip her inside against me the best I can.

“Hang on, honey.” Her breathing is so shallow, and she’s been out here for what I can only guess is a couple of hours but if her will is strong enough to keep fighting, who am I to stop her? “Zeke, you bastard, where?—“

“You know we aren’t supposed to take the bodies out of the ravine, right? They go in and stay there.” He shines a flashlight on us and I can see the exact second things register in that thick skull of his. “Jesus, fuck, ok, yeah hang on.”

He disappears for a few minutes followed by the headlights of my truck lighting up the side of the road above us. I get to my feet as a rope is tossed my way, my brother’s shadow moving back and forth as he secures it to the tow hook. I wrap it around my waist, securing it the best I can around both of us before I hear Zeke get in and rev the engine.

“Go!” I shout as I hang on tight to both the woman and the rope.

He starts backing up slowly, pulling us up in time with my steps, my boots digging into the snow, the tread barely getting enough traction to walk up the hill.

We get there, though. Slowly but surely, Zeke pulls us up and as soon as I breach the side of the road, I unhook myself and hurry toward the passenger side.

“Driver’s seat,” Zeke grunts as he hops out. “You take her back. Tus is on his way, he can help me with the coolers.”

I blink at him, holding the girl tighter for a beat before I nod.

This throws a wrench in things for sure but just because I found a living person amongst the corpses doesn’t mean we can abandon our mission completely.

That would turn all of this into an even bigger mess than it’s become.

My brother reaches into the backseat and pulls out the emergency blankets, laying out over the passenger seat while he waits for me to put her inside. “How the hell did you even notice her?”

I just shake my head.

I have no fucking clue how this unfolded the way it did but I can’t deny that fate must have been involved on some level.

We get the woman in, Zeke holding her for a few seconds while I go around and jump behind the wheel. As soon as I’m seated, I blast the heat then open my coat, my brother not hesitating to position her against me before wrapping the other blanket around the rest of her body.

“You should call Nan,” Zeke says as he stares, eyes bouncing between me and the woman. “And wake up the boys. Don’t hide this from them. They can help, they’ll want to help, even if they’re mad as fuck over what happened.”

I nod as he slams the door, more grateful for my brother in this moment than I have been in a long time. I’m not a fan of leaving him on the side of the road, alone in the middle of the night, but Titus is on his way and I know Zeke is going to empty the coolers so he’s ready when our baby brother gets here. They’ll be fine, I know they will, but I can’t help the part of me that doesn’t like one fucking thing about any of this.

Pulling a U-turn, I gun it toward Obsidian Falls, fishtailing at first before I straighten out and go as fast as I can without losing control, and not just of my truck.

Whatever happened to this female, whatever she went through before nearly meeting a fate similar to the ones I dish out on a regular basis, it has me raging on the inside and the only goddamn thing keeping me level is the slow heartbeat and shallow breathing I can feel against my side.

I tighten my arm around her as I book it to town.

There’s no guarantee she’s going to survive this, that she’ll pull through once I get her home and under Nan’s skillful hands, but I’m gonna try.

I’m going to try because the thought of someone as strong and resilient as a woman who went through Hell and had the will to come out of it alive impresses the shit out of me, and for some fucked up reason, I want, no, I need to make sure she survives.

The poetic irony isn’t lost on me, either.

Sometimes it takes a bigger demon to conquer your own personal hell, and lucky for her, I’m the goddamn devil, and I have a penchant for watching the world burn.