Redemption Hills: The Complete Collection

38. Trent

THIRTY-EIGHT

TRENT

The lock buzzed as it disengaged, and the heavy door swung open. I shuffled out into the light of day after spending more than twenty-four hours in a tiny cell that might as well have been a coffin.

Jud was there.

Waiting for me.

Relief on his face while torment blistered through my being. I stumbled out, down the three long concrete steps, disoriented and trying to find my footing.

Jud placed a hand on my shoulder. “Trent, brother.”

My head shook. “How the fuck…?”

Couldn’t even finish the thought before I whirled around and slammed a fist into the red-brick wall of the police station where I’d been being held.

Pain splintered up my arm as the skin on my knuckles split. I reared back and did it again. Let the hatred and the sorrow and the confusion fly.

How?

I went to punch it again when Jud grabbed me by the wrist and rumbled at my ear, “Don’t, man. Not gonna change a thing.”

On a pained groan, my forehead dropped to the rutted wall. I rocked it back and forth, agony slicing through. “Who the fuck would do this?”

Who the fuck hated us so bad that they’d slaughter a woman as bait?

Fucking meat to drag me out from the shadows?

It seemed more than likely, though, that someone had been trying to frame me.

At least, that’s what Rudy Espinoza, my attorney, assumed. Way it was set up. Cops showing a few minutes after I got on the scene.

But I got this tremulous sense that it wasn’t that.

It was just a harbinger.

A prelude.

Something to fill my guts with fear and loathing.

Something to drive me to the edge.

Taunting me into fury.

Main thing pointing to that truth was it hadn’t taken much for Espinoza to get me out.

If someone wanted to frame me?

They would have done a fuckton of a better job than that.

There’d been no evidence to hold me other than my fingerprints on the bag of money where the contents had been strewn across the floor.

Stacks of cash.

Same bag I’d brought to pay her off a few weeks before.

Yeah. That didn’t look so good, either.

Because of it, Espinoza had warned I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Charges still might be brought against me. He’d instructed me to hang tight and lie low.

What he didn’t realize was I was standing lost in a forest where the demons prowled through the trees.

What’d I expect? That I could get away with turning my back on my sins? Bury my transgressions? Just walk away and act like my fucked-up past didn’t exist?

Go on like I deserved to be free?

Find love?

Happiness?

Nah. Karma wasn’t a bitch.

She was just.

Only she wasn’t always swift.

She had bided her time until I’d almost hoped to believe that I could be something better.

I’d known better.

I’d known better.

I’d had one fuckin’ reason, and I’d lost sight of what that was. Got distracted. Got greedy. Wanted for myself what I had no right to claim.

And it ached.

Fuck, it ached.

All of it.

So fucking bad it nearly dropped me to my knees.

Jud squeezed tighter. “Come on, man, let’s get you home. Gage has been asking for you nonstop. We keep tellin’ him you’re working, but he knows something is up.”

My chest tightened.

Kid was smart as a whip. Full of life and light. No way he’d be immune to the darkness that had descended.

I climbed into the front seat of Jud’s truck, and he took to the two-lane road and headed back toward Redemption Hills.

While I was slammed with a million thoughts. Endless questions.

“Harmony. Eden’s sister.” It fell from my tongue like a whispered confession.

Harmony was Eden’s sister.

Eden.

Sweet fucking Eden who just kept getting in the middle of this.

“She loves you,” Jud said.

Tension bound the cab, and I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter.”

A scoff flew from Jud’s mouth. “Doesn’t matter? Don’t fucking do this, Trent. Know you’re getting ready to run. Can feel it.”

I glanced at my brother from the side. “Don’t see much of another option, do you? Someone’s out there, Jud. Someone who has no qualms with shedding blood.”

Someone seeking retribution.

Revenge.

Retaliation.

I should have known it in Juna’s voice when she’d called. The way it’d shaken. Whoever it’d been? I’d bet my life they’d been there when she’d made that call. Most likely with a gun to her head forcing her to make the call, coaxing her with what to say.

Yeah, I’d spent a lot of years despising Juna Lamb. But I’d heard the desperation. Should have heard the warning, too.

Frustration rippled from Jud. “You want us to pack up and leave? Tuck tail? We all have lives, man. Lives we like. Homes. And so do you.”

Swallowing felt impossible, the way my heart had taken up residence at the base of my throat. This thud, thud, thud that suffocated.

Snuffing out hope.

Snuffing out life.

“You think I’m going to stay there? Put my son in danger?”

Air huffed from my brother’s nose. “No. We figure this out. Together. But you’ve got to be tired of running. Of always looking over your shoulder. God knows I am.”

I fidgeted with the outside seam of my jeans, gaze tossed out the passenger window at the scene that passed in a blur of browns and greens and yellows.

Like those autumn eyes were watching me.

I forced out the words. “I have to go, Jud. At least until I know it’s safe for my son. I won’t take that chance.”

My cell started to ring.

Eden’s name lit up the screen.

My chest felt like it was gonna blow.

Girl had to hate me. Had every right.

Her sister…was gone.

And fuck…that sister was Gage’s mother.

The truth of it twisted through my insides until nothing worked quite right.

This fuckery that distorted and destroyed.

This messed-up life bending and bending until it broke.

I let it ring, didn’t answer, couldn’t bring myself to talk to her.

“Harmony brought you to her, man.” Jud’s voice had softened.

Harmony.

Wanted to rip my goddamn hair out. Instead, I scoffed out a sickened laugh. “I’m pretty sure she didn’t mean for it to go down like that.”

No doubt, she hadn’t meant for me to fall for her sister.

Fucking fall fast and hard.

My phone beeped with a message, and I was the masochistic fuck who lifted it and listened, put the girl’s voice to my ear.

Little Temptress.

“Trent…” She choked over a sob. “I…I don’t even know how to navigate this. What to say. The only thing that makes sense right now is…I need you. God…I need you.”

Misery thundered through my veins. Poison as potent as her sweet words.

Because I needed her, too, and the only thing that had done was get her wound up in a perversion she didn’t deserve.

I tapped out a message, losing life as I did.

Me

Warned you I would taint you. Ruin you. I’m sorry, Eden. Fucking sorry for who I am.

She had to see it now. See me for the monster that I was. For what I’d done.

It blipped back.

Eden

Please.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Jud spat as he sped around the winding curves.

My head hit the back of the headrest. “Love her, Jud.”

And some things you loved enough to know you had to let them go.

Silence fell over us as he raced back toward the small city that had been our home for the last five years.

Anxiety and apprehension held tight in the dense air of the cab.

Jud’s breath harsh and hard.

Almost as jagged as mine.

When he made it to the outskirts of the city, I looked over at him. “Want you and Logan to go with me…just temporarily. I’m not asking you to give up the life you built, but I am asking you to stand at my side until we can end this. Until we find out who wants me dead.”

They did.

Knew it to my soul.

And I was going to have to do the one thing I’d promised myself I’d never do again.

Nothing but the fool who’d thought he could outrun who he was.

Ghost.

“Then you two are free to do whatever you want. I won’t ask you to follow me. But I can’t lose either of you to this bullshit.”

Jud’s nod was tight. “I know, brother, I know. Just can’t stand to watch you give up on your joy.”

I looked back out the windshield. “Never really was mine to begin with.”

Because Eden was light.

Goodness and grace.

And a demon like me didn’t get that kind of beauty.

Because there was no redemption for a man like me.

“I’m going to grab a few things that Gage will want. I’ll meet you at Logan’s in ten.”

Jud hesitated at the front door. “You sure this is what you want to do?”

“Don’t have another choice.”

It didn’t fucking help that Eden kept calling. Leaving me these messages that she believed in me. Other times weeping over her sister. Others pleading for us.

Warily, he nodded, then he slipped out into the late afternoon and clicked the door shut behind him.

Before I lost my fuckin’ nerve, broke down and did something stupid like go after the girl, I bounded upstairs, grabbed a duffle bag, and stuffed it full of Gage’s favorite toys, some clothes, his album of pictures, then I moved into my bedroom and grabbed anything of necessity.

Gage’s birth certificate and other documents. Some cash from the safe as well as two guns and ammo that I locked in their case.

Did my best not to look at my bed.

Bed where I’d lost this black heart to a fierce little kitten with the purest soul.

Before I cracked, changed my mind, went soft the way she’d been making me, I raced back downstairs, needing to get the fuck out of town.

Get my son where it was safe so we could put a stop to this threat.

End it.

Give Gage the best life that I could, even when every step I took felt like I was coming unglued. Surrendering another piece that no longer belonged to me.

One reason.

Needed to remember.

My phone rang from my pocket. I pulled it out as I opened the door that led into the garage.

Eden.

Sweet Eden.

My spirit thrashed. I stumbled a step and squeezed my eyes closed against the assault of need.

Go.

Fucking just go.

You can’t have her.

She never was yours.

In the darkness, I jammed at the button for the garage door. It slowly lifted, the burn of the day blinding. I jogged for my car, popped the trunk, and tossed in the duffle bag and plastic case.

I slammed it shut and started for the driver’s seat.

Only to freeze.

The hairs at my nape lifted in tiny spikes of dread.

In awareness.

In sickness.

Everything trembled.

My vicious hands and my sickened heart and the hatred that would never end.

Slowly, I turned around, very fucking aware that my guns were locked in the trunk as I squinted through the rays of glaring light at the silhouette that stepped forward.

He edged forward and came into view.

My father.

He cracked a menacing grin. “Good to see you, Ghost.”