Page 88 of A Brother At My Back

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Zeb…

I asked Nox to phone ahead to the club. We rode back to it in the back seat of the black Escalade the club kept for things like this. Archer drove, Rush sat shotgun, and Nox sat behind me and and Tiff in the third row of seats. Tiffany had retreated inside her own head and stared out the window on her side of the cage. I wanted to hold it together and wanted to hold her at the same time, but I knew the two were at odds with each other.

She’d shot Silas at a pretty close range and was probably covered in all sorts of forensic evidence. We needed to deal with it, and quickly, which is why I’d had Nox call ahead.

“Pull around back, eh?” I said to Archer when we got close to the club and he grunted. A wordless acknowledgment of what I’d said. That was just Archer, though. He was always a bit of a grump.

I dismissed it, rather than being a bit of a dag for once. I was more concerned with getting home and hosed with Tiff. The mission was only half done. No one ever stops to think about the cleanup efforts or the after-effects of your first time killing someone. I wouldn’t be surprised at Tiff going bush for a while over this. I had my first time, but in the end, I was too much of an extrovert to stay away from people for too long. Tiff wasn’t the same as me, though. I was afraid if she went bush, she wouldn’t come back from it. I couldn’t tell which way she’d go, though.

“Everybody out,” Archer declared when we pulled up on the track. Off to one side, Blue, Thirteen, and Data stood warming their hands over a fire in the pit.

“Come on,” I urged Tiffany out of the back seat and toward the flames.

“I don’t really feel like being social,” she said gently and Archer huffed a laugh.

“Ain’t about being social, it’s about covering your damn tracks. Do what he says.” I frowned at him and made a motion behind Tiff like he should pump the brakes. He scowled back and walked away muttering some shit about amateur hour under his breath.

Nox and Rush looked on in our direction with twin looks of worry plastered on their twin, but very different, faces.

“She’ll be right,” I told ‘em and Nox nodded, giving his twin’s jacket sleeve a tug. They followed their older brother in the back of the club.

“There they are,” Thirteen declared when we came ‘round the cage, then cheerfully said to Tiffany, “Best get to doing what you do, girl.”

“What?” she asked, and her face smoothed out into confusion that almost looked like surprise.

I worried about her. I think she was going into a bit of shock over what she’d done, but she was in good company. Wasn’t a soul among my bros that would judge her poorly for killing that wally.

“Strip,” Data explained to her. “All of it, in a pile, right there,” he said and pointed to the snow beside her.

“What? Out here?”

“Don’t need you tracking DNA up inside the club, Sweetheart. Git her done and Zeb’ll get you into a hot shower in no time.”

“Just trying to keep us all safe,” Blue said gently and captured Tiff’s eyes with his own. He had a way about him, calm-like, that tended to rub off on everyone else. Especially when the shit was flying.

Tiffany nodded and stripped bare, shivering in the frigid snowfall.

“Come on, quick,” I said and she trotted across the snow making a beeline for the outbuilding.

She said through chattering teeth, “I hope there will never be one, but next time, remind me to murder someone in the summer.”

I barked a laugh at her black humor and felt my shoulders loosen up with relief. If she were coping with dark humor, then she had the constitution for this. She would make it.

I turned on the hot in the washroom and told her, “I’ll be back. Going to grab you a flannel and a couple towels.”

She practically dove under the spray letting out a little “Ah, ah, ha!” at going from such an extreme cold to warm.

“You good?” I asked, making sure, and she nodded, letting the water soak her hair.

I made quick work of striding up the hall and keying my way back into my room. I went for the supplies in the top of my closet and took it as a sign that there were just enough of my towels left that I could shower with her. I stripped down fast and pulled on a pair of shorts to make my way back to her but when I entered the washroom, it wasn’t how I’d left her.

She’d waited until I was gone but she’d finally cracked and now she sat on the shower floor, hugging her knees and sobbing. I set the things on the bench, locked the washroom’s door, and got in there with her, going to the shower floor and pulling her into my lap. Holding her while she wept and just letting her go, letting her cry. She earned a good cry, I reckon.

* * *

Sometime later,we were laying in my bed, nude and wrapped in each other, but I hadn’t tried to give my ferret a run. She didn’t need that. She just needed contact and hadn’t seemed to mind we were skin on skin. We’d lain there silent for the longest time and was almost dozed off when her voice startled me awake.

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