Redemption Hills: The Complete Collection

33. Jud

THIRTY-THREE

JUD

Guiding his bike along the deserted path, Jud eased up behind the car that stopped along the backside of an abandoned warehouse. It was well beyond midnight, and a thick, murky darkness hung low on the city.

A dull glow pushed against it, rising up from the eternal lights that glinted from this place that was nothing but a festering cesspool.

He hated it there—hated it because he’d sworn he would never return to walk these cursed streets, and there he was, doing the bidding of the perverted.

Jud killed the rumbling engine of his motorcycle and kicked the stand.

His nerves rattled. An unsettled feeling that wafted through the cool night air as he swung off his bike at the same moment Marcello and two of his men, Tony and Kolin, climbed from the car.

They were quiet.

Too quiet. Too guarded.

Intuition lifted the hairs at the back of Jud’s neck. His fingers twitched as he was hit with the uneasy awareness that had kept him alive for years. A sense of foreboding that told him he had walked into an ambush.

Something was off.

Tony and Kolin went to the trunk where they pulled out four cans of gasoline, their seedy guilt clear as they scanned the area.

That feeling writhed, tendrils climbing through Jud’s nerves and winding around his neck.

His heavy boots barely made a sound as he edged forward. The short-barrel rifle strapped to his back burned like a brand as he strode their way. Every step ensured he was walking straight into a trap.

This was bad.

Really fuckin’ bad.

He could feel it.

Marcello angled his head in silent communication for them to follow. The four of them slinked along the dense foliage that broke open to the edges of a park. They kept low as they prowled along the short fence that ran the backside of a neighborhood.

Alarm swept through his bloodstream, a pound, pound, pound that drummed as he followed Marcello and his men farther along the backside of the sleeping houses. Marcello looked at them, his eyes dim as he indicated for them to ease up the side of the cover of trees. They paused about five yards beyond the back fence line of a small house.

Anxiety wound through Jud. Those tendrils of alarm closed off his throat as they all knelt within the cover of night beneath the shelter of those trees.

“Just who are we pressin’, Marcello?” Jud’s teeth gritted as he hissed the question below his breath.

Marcello cracked a smug smile. “There’s been a small change of plans. We are now on a retrieval mission. We are here to return a boy child to his rightful place.”

Confusion stormed while rage spiked. That disquieted anger pumped through his veins and sizzled across his flesh.

He’d anticipated bullshit.

But this?

What exactly did that mean?

A recovery mission of a child?

Whatever it was, it didn’t sit right.

It was all off.

All wrong.

Marcello knelt lower, dropped his voice quieter. “There will be two officers standing guard. One inside and one out. Jud, you are here to ensure clear passage into the house. Do it quiet and quick. I will get the child. Kolin and Tony, you ensure no one else gets out.”

They nodded as if they had already been prepped for their roles.

While venom burned on Jud’s tongue, the world starting to spin, the truth that he’d indeed walked straight into a trap.

Coerced into deviance.

“Why am I here? Why would you come all the way to Redemption Hills to drag me back here?” he demanded, attention flicking around, trying to figure the score. What the fuck this was about.

Marcello had hundreds of men at his disposal.

“This mission is of the utmost importance. One in which failure will not be tolerated. Under the dire circumstances, I was charged to find the best. You are the best, no?”

It was pure provocation.

“Who is the target?” Jud demanded, angst lining his bones.

Marcello knew the charge.

Jud only killed if the killing was earned.

“That is none of your concern.”

“You know I don’t do jobs blind.”

“You do now. I’d not question that, if I were you.”

Marcello gestured for them to proceed.

Jud warred. Unsettled. A rattled sensation climbed through his conscience. A warning that called out low at the back of his head. Marcello was manipulating him. It was all bullshit.

The men remained angled down as they crossed the fence line and into the house’s yard. Jud followed, prepared to bolt.

Ready to turn his back and walk.

Shun this life the way he’d promised he would do.

Fuck Marcello and his family.

He had a choice. They didn’t get to control him.

He was prepared for a fight. For this to go south when he walked. He would most likely have to battle it out, but it would be a war worth fighting.

Only he stilled when he caught sight of a silhouette through the window.

A woman.

She paced, back and forth, back and forth. His insides clenched when he saw the clear outline of a child swaddled in the well of her arms as she paced.

His guts twisted and curled.

Nausea swam.

Marcello gestured to move, and the reality of his instructions warbled through Jud’s mind.

Ensure no one else gets out.

“Are you fuckin’ crazy?” Jud spat, his voice still held quiet. “There’s a woman in there.”

A mother.

“Do your job, Lawson,” Marcello stated low. “Ensure my passage and do it now. Five minutes and this is to be done.”

Tony and Kolin started to douse the backside of the house in gasoline while Marcello crept along behind them, looking for the best way to enter.

Disgust burned a hole through Jud’s middle. Conscience screaming. World shouting. His gun was out and cocked.

Marcello grinned back like the bastard thought Jud was doing his bidding. Only Jud pointed the barrel at him. “Not gonna happen.”

Fury burst in Marcello’s expression. “You dare point a gun at me?”

“It’s an honor, actually.”

Marcello’s men dropped the cans and rushed to pull out their guns. The cans clattered against the dry earth, ringing out like an alarm for the guards inside.

A voice echoed from the front. “Possible breach at the rear. Securing perimeter.”

A split second later, it was a blur of disorder. A man dressed in a suit who had been posted out front came around the side of the house. A gunshot rang out from Kolin, hitting the officer in the head.

He went down.

Pandemonium.

Inside and out.

Shouting.

Jud fired.

Kolin froze then fell flat on his face.

Gone.

Jud had hit Tony in the thigh. He cried out in misery as he dropped to the ground.

Jud ran for Marcello who crawled along the ground on his belly like the serpent that he was.

“Don’t move, asshole.”

Marcello flopped around, leaning up on his hands as Jud stood over him. The barrel of Jud’s gun was pointed down at the monster who was there to enact the unthinkable.

The unforgiveable.

Surprise knocked Jud off balance when Tony suddenly rammed into him from the side. He fumbled, fell to the lawn, his gun sliding just out of reach.

With his gun in one hand, Marcello scrambled to get on top of Jud.

Jud fought him for it, squeezing his wrist to knock it loose.

Tony was back on his feet, and he kicked Jud in the ribs. Pain splintered through his side. He gasped out but managed to knock the handgun from Marcello’s hand while Tony continued his assault.

Kick after kick.

Pain lanced through Jud’s body, but he refused to give. To let either of them see this through.

He tossed Marcello off, and he grabbed Tony’s ankle and twisted it hard when Tony went to kick him again. The man screamed in agony, falling back at the same time Marcello managed to get to his feet to scramble for his gun that Jud had tossed aside.

Jud kicked out, sweeping Marcello at the ankles and dropping him flat to his back.

Jud jumped up, darting for his gun and sweeping it off the lawn.

He fired a shot at Tony who was lumbering to his feet.

Blood splatted as the impact flew him back, another monster in the ground.

Both Marcello’s soldiers were slain, and it was just Jud and this piece of shit.

A piece of shit Jud was going to be all too happy to rid the world of.

Marcello was on his ass, and he pressed back on his heels, scooting himself backward. “You’ve made a grave mistake.”

Jud sneered as he encroached, his aim clear. “Pretty sure that’s you.”

A shout and cry echoed from inside.

It distracted Jud for the barest second—a second that allowed Marcello to flick a lighter and get to his feet.

“He’ll assume it was you.” The words were vile. Cruel and careless and without mercy. “You won’t walk away from this.”

Marcello went to toss it, and Jud rushed. He knocked Marcello back to the ground, had his foot on his throat with the barrel aimed at his face. “Don’t.”

Marcello cracked a grin. Tossed the lighter behind him.

The demon writhed.

There was no remorse when he pulled the trigger.

When blood splattered and his body slumped and Marcello no longer existed.

But it was too late.

The cans caught.

A whoosh.

A flame.

An explosion.

Heat blasted across Jud’s face as the inferno sparked to life in an instant.

“No!” he shouted.

He dropped his gun beside Marcello’s lifeless body and ran for the flames.

They had already consumed the back wall, eating up the wood and lapping at the ceiling.

Smoke billowed. A heavy darkness that filled the air and choked out hope.

Consuming.

Disorienting.

A black plague that annihilated everything in its path.

Still, he broke through the back door, searched, fumbled through the abyss from one room to the next.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Fear crushed, as suffocating as the smoke that filled his lungs. He pulled his shirt over his face, his eyes wide and unseeing, the world a blur of fire and white-hot pain.

It didn’t matter.

He pressed on.

Pushed.

Forever passed.

A second.

A moment.

Misery the time that ticked on the clock.

A roar rose from the depths of him. “Where are you? Please. Fuck. Can you hear me?”

The whooshing of the flames screamed back.

No, this couldn’t happen. He wouldn’t let it.

He pressed deeper into the smoke-filled house.

He was on his knees. Blind as he searched.

A bed.

No.

A crib.

He felt along the spindles.

He gulped when he felt it. When he knew. When he curled his arms around the limp body.

So light. So small.

He took it into his arms, pushed to his feet, and stumbled through the flames.

Searching for a way out.

A window.

He lifted his boot, kicked it, busted through.

Glass shattered and rained and tore his flesh. But he didn’t slow. He lumbered out into the night.

Refusing the pain.

Refusing the agony.

The fire raged behind them, and he ran to the edge of the yard.

Cradling the tiny frame, he dropped to his knees and gently set it on the ground.

The boy child.

His arms shook.

Shook and shook.

While the flames roared and wood crumbled and the structure gave.

No hope for life from within.

Torment wailed.

As loud as the sirens he heard coming in the distance.

Frantic, he breathed against the child’s mouth. Breathed and breathed. His hands too big and clumsy against his tiny chest.

Tears blurred, burning down his ash-covered face.

No. Please. No.

Heavy engines roared up the street, sirens blaring, flashes of light in the night.

“This way! Help! Please!” He shouted it when he saw a paramedic round the side, when the man came up short at the bodies strewn across the ground.

The man’s eyes widened when he saw Jud wailing over the child.

The man jogged across the yard.

One second later, Jud was gone.

Just another monster that disappeared into the night.

I jolted awake to the dream, flying upright. Sweat drenched my skin, and my heart ravaged my chest.

I squinted, disoriented, waking up to the barest light filtering in through the windows.

For years, I’d woken up alone, lost in a nightmare that would forever haunt my life. It tortured me with what I’d been partner to. With what I’d had no power to stop.

Her hands found me in the pinked rays of morning light.

That energy crawled and clashed.

Comfort and torment.

I swung my legs off the side of the bed while Salem crawled to curl herself around me from behind.

The way she’d done before.

This girl with so much understanding.

Way she saw me in a different light. Like maybe she could hold this burden with me the way I was going to hold hers.

“You’re in so much pain,” she whispered, pressing her lips to the marred flesh of my back. Where I’d sustained the burns that had marked me for what I’d done. Scars that reminded me each day of the senseless loss, the kind born of a wicked life.

“She left me when I told her.” Yeah, I’d told Salem this before, but I thought maybe she got it then. My shame. How I was going to ask her to bear some of it. How I needed her to.

She curled her arms tighter around my body. “I see who you are, Jud.”

I could feel her spirit.

Her compassion. Her love. Her worry.

“I hate that she left you over something that hurts you so much.” Her voice was a whisper of compassion. Of strength and belief.

The confession clawed at my throat, though fear tried to snuff it out, to hold it back.

“I’m right here,” Salem promised. “It’s okay. You can talk to me.”

I guessed it was the love in her voice that opened the gates for the words to get free. “Even though Kennedy didn’t know the full details of my past, she’d known there was something.” I huffed out a self-deprecating sound. “Guess it’s written on me. Fact I’m wicked.”

Immorality carved into my spirit.

“You know I don’t believe that.” Salem murmured it. Giving me more of that belief.

I gathered up the hands she had on my stomach and brought them up to press over the uproar going down in my chest. I held them there tight. To the thunder that now belonged to her.

I swallowed around the ball of barbed wire embedded in my throat. “Thought I was doing the right thing—protecting my brother from that life. But it was bullshit…” My voice grew thin as the visions flashed through my mind.

She held on tighter.

“They’d told me I was just supposed to shake someone down. Give them a warning. Get someone back in line who was going off the rails. I swear it. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. When I got there, it was all wrong, Salem. All wrong. They were asking me to do something there was no chance I could do.”

Dread curled through her body, but still, she held onto me, girl wrapping me in this silent support. In this feeling of wholeness that I’d never thought I’d experience again.

“There was a family in a house…they wanted…this boy.” I could barely force the words out. “I was supposed to take out the officers there to protect the family so they could get in and take the baby.”

Shame carved through the confession. Grief and agony that I couldn’t contain. It bounded out into the room from my spirit and echoed back, amplified in the swimming rays of muted light.

I choked on a breath as I forced myself to continue. “Turned out the plan was to set the house on fire to trap the mother inside. Get rid of her. I didn’t know it at the time, until the news reported it the next day, but there were two children in there, Salem. A baby boy and girl. A mom and her children.”

Grief constricted the words, a guttural cry lanced in the middle of them.

“They wanted the boy…but they didn’t want the woman or the girl child to leave that house.”

Her arms stiffened, and she inhaled a sharp, biting breath.

I held her hands tighter to me as I let the confession free. “I tried to stop it. Tried to stop them from taking the boy. From hurting the rest. But no one made it out of there alive. Not one of them survived because I tried to intervene, and I made it even worse.”

She started to jerk away, but I held her closer as the words scraped like fire from my tongue, rushed and pleading, like I could rearrange them into something else even when I knew there was no chance of ever erasing this truth.

“I tried, Salem. When they realized I was going to fight them, it became a battle. I managed to take out all the men who came to end them, but not before the house was set on fire. I tried to get them out—to find them—to help them.”

It left me on a haggard moan.

Or maybe it was just Salem’s.

“Where?” she demanded.

“Los Angeles. Four years ago.”

A choked sob ripped up her throat as she struggled to break free of my hold.

I let her go as realization slammed me.

When I realized she saw me then.

The real me.

And she was going to leave me, too.

I didn’t want to even look at her, to see the fear and loathing that would no doubt be written on her face. But I couldn’t stop myself. Not when she scrambled away like she was the one being burned, choking and gasping and heaving out for the breaths that wheezed from her lungs.

“No,” she begged.

“I told you, Salem. Told you it was bad.” I forced myself to look back at her.

I nearly died right there when I saw her expression.

The horror.

The terror.

Tears streamed hot down her gorgeous face, and her mouth was trembling everywhere.

She slipped off the opposite edge of the bed. “No. No, Jud, no.”

Torment clotted my throat. “Would never hurt you.”

She backed away, her hands clutched to her chest, clawing at her heart like she was going to rip it out.

“Darlin’?” I was such a fuckin’ fool because I pushed to my feet and started around the bed like I could be worthy of holding some of her fear when I was the one who’d caused it.

“He…he…f-f-found us.” The words tripped from her tongue.

A frown curled my brow. “What?”

“He found us. No. He found us.” Frantic, she spun in a circle. She suddenly lurched forward, scrambling around on the floor until she found her shoes.

She jerked them on, hopping around to try to keep her balance.

I rounded the end of the bed, approaching her like she was a wild animal that’d been backed into a corner. “What are you saying? Who found you?”

A distressed sob raked from her throat and ricocheted against the walls. “He found us, Jud. Carlo. He found us.”

She may as well have bashed me with a sledgehammer. The way pain splintered through my head. I stumbled and my knees locked.

Sickness, hatred, and dread coiled through the room. A vortex that would suck us in and consume.

“Did you say Carlo ? What are you saying, Salem? Tell me you’re not saying what I think you are.” The demand cracked through the heated air.

Carlo.

Marcello’s piece of shit older brother.

He was the family head. The one who’d called the shots. Gave the orders. He was the one I’d thought I’d have to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for, sure he’d be back for revenge. Thinking one day he’d come for me. Instead, the coward had up and disappeared after it’d all gone down.

The bastard who’d had his wife and babies killed. The one who was responsible for the deaths of the two officers posted to guard them. Not to mention his brother and two of his men who had been found on the scene—only those three had been compliments of me.

Carlo was one of LA’s most wanted. As far as I knew, he’d become dust. Vapor. There had been no sign of him for the last four years.

She backed away. “Did you do this? Oh my god, did you do this? Trap us?”

A disorder blustered through her words, and my brow pinched in pained confusion. “What the fuck are you talking about, Salem? Tell me what the hell you are saying. I would never hurt you. I love you. I fucking love you. Please, tell me what is happening.”

She gasped against my words then rushed for her purse, and she tossed out the words like they made perfect sense. “Not everyone died in that house, Jud.”

“What? Fuck, Salem, tell me what the fuck you’re talking about.”

She flew around to look at me, her face soaked. “The news reported that we all died, Jud. My son…Lucas…he was in his crib. I lost him. Oh god. I lost him.” Her knees nearly buckled when she said it, and her hand darted to the table to steady herself. Her grief was so thick I could taste it. “But Juni and I…we got out.”

Sorrow trapped her in that dark, dark storm.

She squeezed her eyes shut before a rush of words tumbled from her mouth. “I was rocking Juni in the other room. We heard noises, and I went to go for him…I begged to go for him, Jud, but the officer…she forced us out the side door and said she would get him. She promised she would get him .”

The words broke on the last because she hadn’t.

She hadn’t.

Dread sank through my spirit.

Because I had.

I had found him.

Had found him too late.

And there was nothing I could do. Nothing I could do.

The walls spun.

It had been Salem in that house.

Salem and Juni.

And her son. Her son.

Gripping my head, I bent in two.

“Oh, fuck. Salem. No.” Agony clawed through my being. Enough to drop me to my knees.

I managed to stay standing so I could move for her. The only thing I wanted was to wrap her in my arms. Hold her and protect her.

On a yelp, she put her hands out in front of her. “Stay away from me, Jud. Don’t you understand? If you didn’t do this? It was him. It’s a set up. He found us. He’s going to kill us both.”

“No. Won’t let that happen.”

“You killed his brother, Jud.” The plea spilled from her mouth. The truth of what all this really meant.

“I did.”

Terror filled the void between us.

Rippling and shivering.

“I was a fool for coming here. For losing sight of my purpose. I have to go. We have to get out of here before it’s too late.”

“Let me?—”

She shrieked when I reached for her, and I felt it then. The blame. The hate. The truth of what I’d caused. What I should’ve stopped but had been too blind to see.

She backed out of the doorway. “Stay away from me.”

“Salem, please.”

“Stay away. I mean it.”