Chapter 16 - Collin

Ithink about the shower Lowyn and I took the whole drive back to the compound. I told Amon thirty minutes, so we didn't have time to do much more than soap each other up and wash each other's hair, but it was enough.

More than enough.

The thing that stands out, though, is how comfortable it feels. We never did this kind of shit as kids. Kissing, a little fooling around with my hand up her shirt. Her hand in my pants. That one time up in the hills in the tent. It was truly teenager stuff. There was no showering together. No getting naked in front of each other. No oral, either.

But everything about us being together right now feels like that. Like no time has passed. Like high school is just right behind us. Like everything is the way it should be.

And it's just weird how two people who didn't even part on good terms can fall back into a life together so easily, even though the life we're fallin' into didn't even exist until now.

There are a lot of romantic notions wrapped up in these thoughts. Something about soulmates, maybe.

When I glance over at Lowyn, shadows dancing across her face from passing under the occasional street light, I find her looking at me. "What? What's on your mind, Low?"

"You. There's nothing on my mind but you right now, Collin Creed."

I smirk at this. "You're thinking about tonight, aren't you? You're thinkin'…" She's already giggling. "You're thinking… ‘How in the world am I gonna last three hours without his mouth between my legs?'"

She huffs out a breath. "I swear to God, I had no idea you were a dirty talker in bed, Collin."

I grin, then wink at her. "This is OK with you? Or shall I be poetic or somethin' instead?"

"Nothing wrong with both."

Now I'm practically giggling. "Is that the only note you have for me? Your request list is dirty poetry. Is there anything else I can improve upon?"

She hums a little. Which, I'm not gonna lie, comes out pretty fucking sexy. Enough to have me wishing I didn't ask for this stupid SCIF meeting with Amon. "Well, I have to be honest here, Collin. I wasn't aware you wanted notes when we got started earlier, so I wasn't in a takin'-them frame of mind. But I tell you what. Next time I will pay closer attention and then we can discuss it when it's over, how's that?"

"Peaches." I say this with a dead serious face and voice. "If you give me notes on what I can do better, I swear to the fuckin' Mother, I will go above and beyond."

She's biting her lip when I look over, but she's grinning too.

"Am I scaring you?"

Lowyn slowly shakes her head. "You wish, Collin Creed. You wish."

"That feels like a challenge."

Her eyes are all squinty, she's smilin' so big. "You can take it any way you want."

And so I do. So I do.

When we pull in to the compound it's already almost eight o'clock. Earlier I was thinking we'd get here right after shutdown, I'd have my little meeting, we'd grab some barbecue, and we'd be home pretty early. Long before the party Ryan, Nash, and Amon are throwing for the new hires really got started.

But the sex kinda threw that timeframe to the wayside and now we're arriving in the thick of it.

"What the hell is going on here?" Lowyn is turning around in her seat trying to take it all in.

"The new hires. They're gettin' the welcome treatment."

"Did you hire every unemployed man in the state of West Virginia or what? There are hundreds of people here."

She's right. Every time I come to this place we seem to have more and more people on the fuckin' payroll. "All of West Virginia and parts of Ohio too, by the looks of it."

It's a slow crawl to get past everyone and up to Nash's house, which is the first one you come to when you pull in, so getting to my house—not that there's any reason to go there—would be nearly impossible. But I manage it and pull my Jeep right up to Nash's front porch.

Lowyn laughs at this. "You never did care much for driveways and parking lots."

I turn the engine off and shake my head. "Don't see much point when there's empty spaces everywhere. But I will not park on your lawn, Low." I take her hand and kiss it. "Don't worry."

We get out and make our way up the porch stairs and into Nash's house. I see Amon first. He's got a beer in his hand and he's talking to a group of men, a couple of whom I saw today working the Revival. Not Lowyn's teenagers, other guys. A little bit older.

I catch Amon's eye and nod at him. So he excuses himself and comes over.

"Hey, Low." He pokes Lowyn in the ribs, making her squirm. "Lookin' good, peaches." Then he winks at her.

Lowyn grins at Amon nearly the same way she grins at me. "Why, hello there, Amon. This is a nice place you got here."

"Isn't it?" Amon looks at me. "It's home now, huh? Even though you're not even living here."

"It's hard to live in a house with no windows, Amon."

"For sure. That's why the windows are missin' in the first place, Collin." Then he looks at Lowyn. "You can thank me later, peaches."

Lowyn laughs. Shakes her head a little.

"All right." I blow out a breath. "Where's Nash and Ryan? I need someone to keep Lowyn company while we talk."

"The SCIF is in the bunker," Amon says. "And you made me save all that junk for Lowyn to pick through, so she can just come with us and do that while we're downstairs. No one will bother her in the church. It's all been reinforced. We just finished it up this afternoon."

"How about it?" I ask Low. "You wanna pick through junk while we have our meeting?"

"Pick through your junk, Collin?" She raises an eyebrow, then laughs. "Yes. That sounds perfect."

We walk back outside and Amon is amused. "You two seem to have picked up right where you left off."

I take Lowyn's hand as we head for the church and silently agree. We sure did.

We stop at the front door—which, just a few days ago, was made of wood and there were two of them. A nice, churchy double door. But now there is just one and it's made of solid steel, making the front side look more like a bank vault than a house of God.

"I'll give you the code to the door downstairs, Col." Amon is punching in his code as he says this.

"This is some door you've got. Are those shutters over the windows?" Lowyn is craning her neck to see around the porch.

"Stained glass on the inside, solid steel on the out." And with this statement, Amon opens the door. "After you."

He waves us through, so we enter. Then he closes and locks the door behind us.

We get about ten paces in—past the leftover, broken-up statues in the inside vestibule—and enter the nave.

"Wow." Lowyn is looking around. "This is really nice, you guys. Are all these pews original?" Then she's looking down at her feet. "Slate floors, my God. They're incredible."

"She's gonna be just fine in here, I think," Amon says.

"You gonna be fine, Low? It'll only take about fifteen minutes, I think."

She's already let go of my hand and has started walking towards the nearest pew. They are all crowded with junk for her to pick through. "Better than fine, boys." She waves us off. "Go do your thing. I'll be right here when you get back."

I follow Amon down the middle aisle of the church, then into the back, where we find the stairs that lead to the bunker. "There's a brand-new door down here too," Amon says.

And even though I can recall two small windows on the way down the last time I was here, there are no windows now. Just bricks. "Shit, you guys have been busy since I've been gone."

"Feelin' guilty for slackin' off?"

"Not a bit."

Amon laughs. "Nor should you." He stops at the new stainless-steel door and looks over his shoulder at me. "I told you when we started putting this together last year, I'm gonna handle it. You do your thing, Ryan, Nash, and I will take care of the rest. How'd you like Mercy?"

"The dog? Yeah. She's no trouble. She did her thing without comment. Well, she did shoot me a look once."

Amon is smilin' as I talk about his dog. "What kind of look? Rolling her eyes kinda look?"

"Maybe more like… ‘Yes, sir.' But with a mocking tone behind it."

His whole face lights up when you talk dogs with Amon. And his eyes get all excited. "Yup," he says. "That sounds like Mercy." Then he opens a black box sitting on a table just next to the door. "Put your phone in there."

He drops his in, I drop mine in, and he closes the lid.

Then Amon opens the door, waves me though, closes it, and turns to me. "The whole room is secure. You say whatever you want in here, Collin. You know we don't have permission for this, and it's never gonna be accredited, but Ryan did it right. No one's gonna hear nothin'. I'd stake my life on that."

A SCIF is a room you use when you absolutely want to make sure no one else will ever know you said a thing. It's built special with electromagnetic shielding. What's said in the SCIF stays in the SCIF. Unless someone blabs, that's it. But neither of us will be blabbing about nothin'. And maybe what Jim Bob told me earlier doesn't exactly warrant this kind of security, but then again, maybe it does. And it's always better to be safe than sorry.

"I trust ya. And anyway, this isn't that big of a deal. I just need to tell someone something, and you're my someone."

Amon shoots a finger at me. "Got it, Sarge. Let's hear it."

"Don't call me Sarge. Not in here, not out there."

"Sorry. Habit."

"And that's Master Sergeant to you, soldier."

"Well, excuse the fuck outta me, Master Sergeant." He salutes me and clicks his fuckin' heels, eyes going serious as he stares off in the distance.

"Shut the fuck up."

Amon relaxes and punches me. "All right. What's up?"

So I tell him all about my little meeting with Jim Bob this morning. The little bits and pieces I was given, anyway.

"Well, of course I knew he was holding out, ya know," Amon says. "I knew there was something about your sister in the whole you'll-learn-the-truth-at-the-end-of-your-contract bullshit. But what it all means?" He scoffs. "I don't know. And that shit about the cross having four points? What the hell? Is it code? Is he talkin' in some code?"

"I don't know, Amon. But it's weird, right?"

"Agreed. It's weird. But…" He pauses to think a little. "In the grand scheme of things, is it any weirder than everything else around here?"

I blow out a breath and huff. "Well, someone tried to kidnap my sister and I blew his head off over it, so I would not exactly call that normal weird."

Amon looks past me for a moment, like he's thinking about something. Then his blue eyes lock with mine. "I've thought about that, ya know. How that guy came into your house and grabbed your sister like that. And I've got four little sisters myself. So back then I would think… what would I have done? And ya know what, Collin? It would've ended the exact same way. Even if he did put his hands up. Fuck. No. No one gets to come into my house and touch my sisters. I don't know if you did the right thing, but it doesn't even matter. People wanna fuck around and find out? Good. Let them. This is what happens when they step over the line. And now everyone around here knows exactly where they stand with you."

Amon and I have never talked about this before. We weren't really friends when he and I ended up in the Marine recruiting office in Charleston together. We were just neighbors trying to get the fuck out of this place as quickly and efficiently as we could. Of course, he knew what I'd done, but he never asked me about it and I never offered it up.

Murdering a man in cold blood felt like a really important thing about myself back then. Like a defining thing. But now? It's just one among many things that have defined me over the years. So there's been no real reason to rehash that shit.

Until now, I guess.

"Redress," I say. "That's what Jim Bob called it. Something about redress, and he told me to look it up in the dictionary. So I looked it up. Figured he wouldn't have said that unless he wanted me to understand the details. And it came up as the correcting of an error, or a fault, or an evil. Which I don't much like the sound of, ya know?"

"Yeah. Anything with ‘evil' in it has got to be… evil."

"Not just that, but what I wanna know is, am I the one correctin' an evil? Or the one being corrected?"

Amon doesn't answer right away. Just blows out a breath. But when he does answer, he's switched the subject, avoiding that last question completely. "The fourth point on the cross. It's gotta mean there's, obviously, another entity involved. Who could it be?"

I shrug. "I got that feeling too. But it came off like a feud, or something. There's definitely someone else involved in all this business. And whatever agreement Jim Bob has hammered out with them, whoever ‘they' are, it's tenuous. That was my major takeaway. Everything they've got set up around here looks really solid but at the same time, it feels kinda fragile."

Amon huffs a little air. "Agreed. But we both lived here for eighteen damn years and never once did I ever hear anything about a feud. Do you think it's got something to do with Revenant?"

"Why do you say that?"

"It's… you know, Revenant."

"Yeah, but… it's fake. Just like the Revival. We're not really feudin' with Revenant, Amon."

"Maybe we are and we just don't know it?"

"I don't think so. Jim Bob was swearin' up a storm at some printer over there because the new program you were so fuckin' happy about this morning might not have been printed on time. I heard him yelling about this yesterday. So he's not afraid of no one in Revenant. Plus, I got family over there. I saw Lucas today."

"Fuck. Little Lucas. I haven't seen that boy in… well"—Amon laughs—"twelve years."

"He's not little anymore. I think he's actually running the MC."

"No shit?" Amon pauses to consider this. "That's quite a role. How old is he?"

"Twenty-two, twenty-three? Somewhere around there. 'Bout the same age as Olive, I think. Maybe a year older, I guess."

"Hmm."

"He invited me to come by the bar. Said the drinks are free."

"Well, it's a good place to start, don't you think? We should take him up on that. Let's make a date. How about Monday?"

I nod at Amon. "Sounds good. Not like I've got anything else to do during the week. We've got jobs lined up. Just waiting for the construction to be done and the people to show up on my end now."

Amon's nodding back. "But you want me to go with you, though, right?"

"For sure."

"OK." He blows out a breath. "It's a date. We done?"

"One more thing, since we're here. How did you screen the guys we've hired?"

Amon narrows his eyes at me. "Whyyyyy?" He drawls that word out. His accent has gotten a lot thicker since we came home.

But so has mine. "I dunno. I just got a feeling about that guy you sent to watch the north gate for me."

"What guy?"

Now it's my turn to narrow my eyes at him. "What do you mean ‘what guy?' The one who was standin' at the gate when I got there after my meeting with Jim Bob."

"When was this?"

"Fuck's sake, Amon. You saw me in Lowyn's tent during the Revival. And then I came up to you after my meeting and that's when I told you I needed to talk to you in a SCIF."

"Yeah. But I didn't assign anyone to take your place at the north gate."

I blow out a breath. "He said his name was Siah. Josiah."

"Disciple boy?"

"No. He said not. But his granddaddy was or something."

"What'd he look like?"

I shrug. "Kinda like Lucas, actually. Same age, same build—no tattoos that I could see. Blond hair, blue eyes. He knew who I was. Said…" I pause here to think back. "Something like… ‘You come to take your place, Collin?' Something like that when I walked up. Then he just… left. Came off as nervous."

Amon stares off in the distance for a moment. "Yeah. OK. I think I know who he is, and I did hire him, but I didn't put him at your gate. He should've been back at the compound. Maybe Ryan or Nash sent him up? I'll ask. And yes, I did background checks on everyone. Penny Rider did them for me."

"Penny from DC?" My eyebrows go up.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Do you think it's a good idea to use DC people for this?"

"It's Penny. She's like… seventy years old. And besides, she likes me. She did them all for free. I sent her a spreadsheet, she ran it through her big fancy computer program, and two hours later I had my answers."

"Did you drug-test them?"

"What is up, Collin?"

"I'm just asking. This Siah guy, I just got a feeling about him. He came off as jittery."

"You think he's on… what? Meth, or something?"

"I don't know if he's on meth, I'm asking you if he's on meth."

Amon lets out a long breath. "I didn't do drug tests. Everybody's testing positive these days, Collin. You know that. They all got a medical marijuana card."

I'm shaking my head as soon as he starts talking. "Amon?—"

But he puts up a hand. "I know. I feel the same way. But I needed a hundred and fifty men. I want this shit done fast and there's no good reason to drag it out in phases like we first planned. We've got the money, Collin. We don't have to concern ourselves with a budget. Get it done, get it over with. And if I had drug-tested every single man I hired, we'd have twenty guys, if that."

"I don't want these guys around. I don't like this. There are way too many locals here, Amon. This is an operation, for fuck's sake. Not a fuckin' employment office for every goddamned jobless man in West Virginia."

"Calm down. That's why I did it this way. They're gonna be gone in like three weeks."

"Three weeks? You told me two."

"Two weeks is a meme, Collin." He winks at me, but then goes serious. "Shit is getting done. I'm telling you, moving up the timeline makes this worth the risk. I'll keep my eyes on this Siah guy. And I'll talk to him. OK? He's not gonna bother nothing. And in three weeks most of them will be moving on. In five weeks the other men will be here and it'll all be cool."

"I hate fuckin' construction."

Amon chuckles. "Why the hell do you think I put you over there with Lowyn?" He slaps me on the back. "You're welcome, by the way." He gets up. "We done now for real?"

"We're done. Just… keep your eyes and ears open. See if we can start to figure this shit out without Jim Bob's help. Because I don't feel like waitin' no year for the truth."

"Will do, Sarge." Then he salutes, but grins like a fool at the same time, cooling me down before I can yell at him.

When we come back up into the church Lowyn is dragging a huge mirror across the floor, using an old wool blanket to scoot it along the slate floor. She blows out a breath when she sees us, then smiles and points to her treasure. "Look at this. Will you look at this? I love it. Do you think it'll fit in the Jeep, Collin? I want to take it tonight. I know I won't be able to start strippin' it until Monday, but we're here and we might as well, ya know?"

That's when I spy a whole pile of junk propped up near the door. "Woman, we've been gone ten minutes. How'd you get a pile of shit that big in ten minutes?"

"Shit? Collin Creed! I'll have you know I found a Hitchcock chair. They are fancy-fancy. I think there might be another one around here somewhere. People usually got them in pairs." She looks around the church, like this chair is hiding behind a pew or something. "And this mirror? Not famous or nothing. Which is why I'm gonna strip it and paint it. But just look at this thing." She sighs, lookin' up at it. "Isn't it glorious?"

It is a big-ass mirror, that's for sure. Probably seven feet tall and three feet wide. "There is no way that's gonna fit in the Jeep."

Lowyn lets out a disappointed breath and I feel sorry about that. I brought my bad mood up from the bunker with me and now it's ruining hers. "We'll pick it up tomorrow, Low. We'll get your truck and trailer and load it as soon as we can get away from the Revival. OK?"

This makes her smile. Which makes me smile.

"Look at the two of you," Amon says. "Long-lost lovers, finally reunited."

I roll my eyes at Amon as I walk over to Lowyn and start tugging the mirror across the floor. We take it over to her pile and prop it up against the wall and I offer her my hand. "Let's eat. I'm fuckin' starving."

Over at Nash's house the party is in full swing. I just want to go home, but if we leave now, we'll have to pick up food from somewhere. And that's a waste. The barbecue is good, there's lots of beer, and as soon as I get a few of those in me, my mood improves.

But three hours later, I'm also a little too drunk to drive home.

"Give me your keys." Lowyn is holding out her hand. She didn't drink. Not even a single beer.

"Are you the DD?" I wink at her. "Gonna take care of me tonight?"

She nods, trying to hide a smile. "I don't know what you and Amon talked about down there in your secret room, but when you came up you looked like you needed a drink, Collin Creed. And that's all good. But you're not driving home."

I hand her the keys and get in the passenger side. "I'm not that drunk. I'm just in a happy place."

She starts the Jeep, pats my leg, then backs up and we're heading home.

Home.

It's literally home. And all the way there I think about that. How Lowyn McBride is the reason I still have a home in Disciple. And my room is still there.

I look over at Lowyn. She's focusing on the curvy bit of road that leads into the Disciple river valley. Her face is lit up by the dashboard lights, a fingernail tapping the leather steering wheel. "Why are you staring at me, Collin?"

"You're pretty."

She smiles. "I think you might be drunker than you realize."

"I don't get drunk."

"OK." She laughs.

"I've missed you. I mean… I didn't really know I missed you until I came home and saw you in that bar in Bishop."

"Of course you had to go there. Right to the night when I was drunk and you had to drive me home." She chances a look at me, but it's just a quick one. Her eyes go back to the road because she's responsible like that.

"I'm gonna marry you, Lowyn McBride."

She huffs. "Is that so?"

"Yup. I'm gonna ask you to marry me in some spectacular way. And you're gonna say yes. And we're gonna do that in front of everyone. The whole fuckin' town. And then I'm gonna take you somewhere. Somewhere nice. Like… like… I dunno. I'll think of a place. Somewhere you've never been. Never heard of, even. And we'll get a nice room with pretty things in it, and I'll fuck the living shit out of you on that bed."

She starts laughing.

"What's so funny?"

"You. That's all. First you're all dirty-talking me during sex and now you're all dirty-talking me on the drive home."

"Shit." I let out a sigh and look out my window. "This ain't nothing."

"Hmm."

"What's that ‘hmm' for?"

"Your promises are intriguing."

I smile. Grin, actually. Like a drunk-ass fool. But she's intrigued.

I leave it there, staying silent for the rest of the ride home.

When we get there, and get inside, I realize I do kinda feel buzzed. Not proper drunk, but definitely buzzed. And I'm still running Lowyn's words through my head as she and I go upstairs like we're some kind of couple and this is normal. Like we do this every night. We go out with friends, and come home, and go upstairs, and get in bed, and I get to touch her all over before we fall asleep together. And then wake up and do it all again.

She flicks the light on and her beautiful bedroom appears. The covers on her bed are all a mess, but it doesn't matter because we're gonna be under them any minute now. She stops in the middle of the room and turns to me, reaching for my leather jacket, sliding it down my arms. It's heavy and the zippers jingle a little as she takes it over to a chair that sits in front of a vanity and drapes it over the back.

She's wearing jeans, a tight-fitting t-shirt, and an oversized flannel as a jacket. She takes the flannel off, drapes it over my jacket, and then sits down on a bench at the end of her bed. Smiling up at me as she takes off her boots.

I don't even move. I just stand there and watch.

When she's done she gets up, comes over to me, and starts taking my shirt off.

I hold my breath until it comes up over my head and she's tossing it on the floor.

Then she looks at me. Like really fuckin' looks at me, her eyes taking in my chest. When they slide up my body and meet my eyes, I take a step forward—because that's all the distance there is between us—and then I'm pulling her shirt up too. But I don't take it off. I just hike it up to her neck and start fondling her breasts through her bra, never breaking eye contact.

"Intriguing, huh?"

"What?" She's a little bit breathless.

"You said… ‘Your promises are intriguing.'"

She presses her lips together and nods. "To say the least."

I let go of one breast so I can reach up and touch her face. "Which part intrigues you?"

"Hmm." She hums this out in a sexy way. "All of it, I guess. I don't know you as a man, Collin. I knew you as a boy. So…" She shrugs her shoulders up. "I'm intrigued, is all."

I reach down and pop the button on her jeans. She closes her eyes for a second, sucking in a breath of air, but opens them quickly.

"You don't have to look me in the eyes if you don't want to, Lowyn."

I watch as she processes this statement, not quite sure what she thinks of it. But her answer is good enough for me. "I want to. I love those eyes of yours."

I push one side of her jeans down over a hip and stop. Staring at her.

She huffs a little. "Do you want me to help you?"

I shake my head. "No. I just want you to stand here while I figure out the most intriguing way to take off your clothes."

"Couldn't we just… you know, do it real quick?"

"What's the point of that?"

She smiles big now. "OK." She licks her lips. "I think I might be getting an idea of where this is going."

Now it's my turn to smile. "I really don't think you do." Then I kneel down and start kissing her stomach. My hands on her hips now. Gripping her tight and holding her close.

Immediately her hands are on my head, fingertips threaded into my hair, her breathing quickening and starting to get ragged. I grip the waistband of her jeans with both hands and tug them down to her knees. But that's where I stop.

She huffs again. "You're trying to make this painful?"

I laugh a little, still kissing her stomach. But she's on the right track now. Not painful. Not at all painful. Not in the literal way. I pull back a little and look up. She's got her teeth together but her lips are parted, like I caught her sucking in a breath of air. She lets that breath out, just staring down at me.

"Anticipation, Lowyn. It's not painful, it's just anticipation."

"Hmm. That's… also very intriguing."

"Do you want me to touch you?"

"Oh, man. You're gonna tease me, aren't you?"

"Only if you want me to. Should I tease you, Lowyn?"

She thinks about this because she understands that I'm asking her a real question and her answer is gonna dictate what happens next.

If she says no, I won't. I'll start right in and in a few seconds, I'll have a finger inside her and a few minutes later she'll be coming all over it. After that she can do me, or we can fuck, and then we'll go to bed all snuggled up and cozy.

It's a nice option A. I won't mind in the least if she chooses option A.

But if she says yes… well, that's option B.

And that's when she learns my definition of ‘intriguing.'