Tore Up (Mississippi Smoke Series Book 1)

“Get the doctor here,” I told Linc, pacing outside the door of the small cabin he kept hidden on the back side of his property.

I’d called him thirty minutes ago. What had taken him so long?

“What did you do?” he asked me, his eyes narrowing.

“What I was supposed to do. Find out who’d killed my brother.” I pointed at the door where I’d left the girl responsible for his death. “She’s pregnant, and I need to know if it’s Crosby’s. I can’t kill her if it is.”

Linc stalked past me with a stern expression. “What the fuck, Bane?! I didn’t tell you to go take the girl. How do you know she’s pregnant?”

He jerked open the door to go inside the cabin. He stopped when he saw her. “And why the hell is she tied up like a goddamn criminal?” he barked.

There was no reason for that. She hadn’t fought me once. I’d just wanted to hurt someone. Knowing her pregnancy and lack of protection and common sense were why my brother was dead had made me fucking livid. I was mad at Crosby, too, but he wasn’t here to yell at. Fucking around with someone like her? He’d have known to use a condom.

“Tell him!” I yelled at her.

She blinked and lifted her eyes to Linc. “I’m pregnant.”

Linc looked back at me. “Seriously? That’s why she’s in there? She told you she was pregnant and you lost your shit? Why does the side of her face look like she’s been slapped?”

I glared at her. Hating that she existed. That she was what my brother had lost his life over. He knew the answer to that.

“She’s the reason Crosby was killed. Her brother found out she was pregnant. Assumed it was Crosby’s, just like she did. When we all know a girl like that one gets knocked up, she’s gonna choose the guy with the most money to call the daddy. That could be anybody’s kid. I might have already killed the daddy.” I seethed, thinking about it. “And I slapped her to shut her up. She was losing her shit.”

Understanding was clear on Linc’s face. He wasn’t looking at me like he thought I’d lost my mind anymore. “I see,” he said, then walked over to the chair I’d tied her in.

“Hello, Halo,” he said to her. “My name is Linc. If I untie you, are you planning on attacking me or using one of your hidden weapons to harm me?” he asked sarcastically as he cut his eyes at me to prove his point.

She shook her head, looking so fucking forlorn. Her golden ticket was dead. Of course she was upset. I was about to prove it wasn’t my brother’s kid. Crosby would have used protection. He would have known better. She would be without his money and her life if Linc didn’t take her and hide her from me. Unless that brother of hers showed up. He was who I really wanted dead.

Linc untied her wrists, then squatted down and untied her ankles. He looked at me as he stood back up. “That was a little tight, don’t you think?”

She had some marks on her skin. So what? Crosby was dead because she was a lying slut.

He looked back at her. “I’m going to call and have a doctor come take your blood to test for the paternity of your baby.”

She barely moved her head in a nod.

“Results aren’t immediate, although I can have them expedited. Until then, it’s best that you don’t go home. If I let you call home and give an excuse to your parents, will you say exactly what I tell you to?”

She dropped her gaze back to her lap. “I don’t have parents or a home.”

He swung his gaze back to me.

“Her house is empty. She said her family moved.”

Linc was being annoyingly nice to her. I didn’t like it. She didn’t deserve any kindness.

“Can you explain that to me?”

A small sigh made her shoulders rise and fall. Her wounded-bird bullshit wasn’t gonna work on me. Linc needed to get past her looks, and he’d see the act.

“My stepmother and three younger siblings moved out while I was at work. I hadn’t been unaware of it until I came home and everything was gone. My father was out of town, and when he came back a few days later, he saw they’d left, and he left too.”

Linc frowned. “Where did they expect you to go?”

She shrugged. “They didn’t care. Just not with either of them.”

That right there told you she had to be a bitch. Why else would her own father not give a shit? They all wanted to get rid of her.

Linc looked at me as if I were the cause of this, and then he turned back to her. “What was your plan? You’re pregnant.”

She twisted her hands in her lap. “I was working on that. But things kept happening, and now, I’m here.”

Linc shoved his hands into the front of his jeans. “When was the last time you saw Crosby?” he asked her.

At the sound of his name, she flinched and closed her eyes tightly. “Two months ago,” she said just above a whisper. “He was coming to see me after work. I’d told him when my period was late, he gave me money to get a test, and it was positive. I called him that morning to tell him.” She stopped and swallowed hard.

“When he didn’t show up, what did you do?” he asked her, although we both had read the texts. We knew she’d texted him a few times about not showing up.

“I borrowed my sister’s phone and texted him. He didn’t respond. I tried again a few more times, then left him alone because I thought—” She covered her face with her hands as her shoulders shook, and a gasping sound came out.

Linc’s concerned frown swung to me. He was buying this. The man was weak when it came to beautiful women. It was his downfall. The reason his wife had left him years ago. Although I wouldn’t call Halo a beautiful woman. She was still a girl. A real fucking attractive one.

“She’s a female. What her brother did isn’t her fault. We will find her brother, and you can get your vengeance. But understand me—this is not an eye-for-an-eye situation. She’s a female. A young one who is pregnant. Regardless of whose baby it is, she is pregnant, Bane. She’s not the one who dies. She didn’t pull the goddamn trigger.”

She was wiping at her face again, her head bent forward. Okay, fine. Maybe killing a pregnant girl wasn’t actually something I could do. But I wanted her to watch her brother die. Let her see him suffer. I didn’t tell Linc that yet. But the day was coming, and when it did, she would be there to witness it.

“Okay,” I replied.

He looked back at her. “No one can know about her until the results come back. If the baby is Crosby’s, then the painful truth comes out. It’ll devastate your parents and the Rices. Especially Saylor. But if it’s Crosby’s kid … she has nowhere else to go. We can’t just leave her to figure it all out alone.”

I scowled. “She’s not staying with me.”

Linc raised his eyebrows in a challenge. I’d pushed him enough, and his patience was thinning.

He looked at her. “Until the results come back, you can stay here in this cabin. It’s not much, but it has all your basic needs. I’ll bring food out here for you. Will you do that for me? I don’t want to tie you up to make sure you stay.”

She looked at me warily, then back at Linc. “The cabin is fine, but how—I mean, will I be safe?”

She thought I was gonna come kill her when he wasn’t looking. Her hand went up and touched the bandage on her neck.

“No one will hurt you, I swear,” he replied, and then he bent his head to look at her neck. “What happened there?” he asked, pointing at her bandage.

She said nothing, and Linc turned to me.

“What the fuck did you do?” he demanded.

“She’s being dramatic. That bandage is overkill,” I told him.

He turned back to her and took the edge of the bandage, then began to ease it off her. She closed her eyes as he did it, not saying a word.

When he took a look at it, he said, “Tell me you didn’t do this.”

“I was getting a point across.”

Linc turned her to me and pointed at her neck. There was a crusty red line where my blade had been. I’d done more harm than I had meant to. I didn’t react.

“But she didn’t die,” I replied, then made my way to the front door. I’d had enough of this bullshit.

I heard Linc mutter a curse, then start reassuring her that nothing like that would happen again. Truth was, I hadn’t meant to cut her that bad. Just a small nick to scare her. But I wasn’t going to feel bad about it. She was alive. Crosby wasn’t.