Page 107 of Till The Sun Dies (Checkmate 2)

“I dunno.” She nervously pushes her glasses up when they slip down her nose. “I just meant, digging my toes into the sand would feel nice. Swimming at sunset. Looking at the stars at five in the morning.” A second shrug. “Sounds like heaven to me.”

She’s not wrong; with her, it would be heaven, but until I can get my shit under control, being lazy is better than rocking a fucking boner while she swims.

One sure way to break whatever tentative happiness she clings to right now is to walk around the way I did the first day at Spence’s.

A boner. At a fucking gun range!

Could I be more inappropriate?

“Oh.” She leans forward and turns the music up. “I love this song.”

After dropping in for coffee and gas at Dolly’s, we hit the road and drive for hours.

We drive through town after town, and every single time we pass the ‘welcome’sign, Kane resurfaces from whatever filthy things he’s doing to Jess and demands we stop.

Each time we’ve stopped, it’s always been fifty or so feet from the sign. He’d jump out, sprint across the space, defile the sign, then come back with an odd grin on his face, and each time, whatever he wrote was too small for me to read.

But Laine’s learning. She anticipates his request at each town, which means she parks closer and closer, and now we all watch with narrowed eyes while we try to make out what he’s writing.

“He’s gonna love this.” Snickering, Kane jumps over the side of the car, plops in beside Jess, and goes back to eating her neck.

“Who’s gonna love this?” Jess pushes him back. “What are you writing? Who’she?”

“Jay.” Opening a bag of potato chips, he stuffs his mouth full, and when we don’t go back to minding our own business, stops mid-chew and frowns. “What?”

“Jay?” Jess pulls his face around. “What are you writing for Jay?”

He pulls a chip from the bag and offers it to Jess. “Drive, Twink. We’ve got more towns to defile today.”

Laine rolls her eyes, but she pulls back onto the road.

“Jay was always the one that had a problem with authority,” Kane starts.

“Really?” I turn. “You’re kidding me, right? There were two of you, andyouwere the more law abiding of the two?”

He snorts. “Well, I mean, neither of us let a motherfucker disrespect us. But of me and my brother, he was the one who needed a little more direction. He was easily tempted to do bad shit.”

“He was DEA!”

Kane grins. “Yeah. He was a good guy, and he wanted to do good things. He joined the force with plans to take the filth off the streets, to save people from the dangerous stuff. He was doing it. He was a good agent. Jay was directly responsible for removing more than sixteen billion dollars worth of ecstasy and cocaine off the streets over his career. Sixteenbillion.He was good at what he did, but still, he didn’t gel well with superiors that had sticks up their asses.”

“Mmm.” Jess teases. “I wonder if that runs in the family?”

He snorts. “Shush. I guess we could say Jay was more of a vigilante cop. He was employed legitimately, but he did things his own way when he could get away with it. Which was often. Our army dad pushed us toward something important, so I was ATF, and Jay was DEA. Since Jay and I trusted each other and not many other people, we were often pushed together, with Eric as our handler. He was just someone we picked up in our travels. Lucky for us, he had reach. Lucky forhim, he had no stick up his ass.”

“Okay…” Jess steals the bag of chips and leans back until Kane pulls her feet into his lap. “So Jay had authority issues?”

“He really did. He didn’t have a problem with the law as it stands, but he had a problem with how it was enforced. People are let off because of lawyers,” he tickles under Jess’ knee, “or Eric would pull us back for one of a billion reasons that Jay disagreed with.”

“So he was a cop, he disliked law breakers, but when he had to break the law to get justice…”

“Exactly.” Kane slides his hand along her leg. “So I’m defiling public property for him. This vacation is all about healing, right?” He meets Laine’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Let’s call a spade a spade. We’re living on borrowed time, we’re escaping the shit, we’re going to the beach, and we’re gonna stand in the ocean until we get all the poison out. The Twink has her demons, but she’s shaking them off like a fucking boss. Jessie lived through bad shit last year; she needs to decompress. I’m here to mourn my little brother. And I don’t know your secrets, man…” His eyes meet mine. “But I see the fire in your eyes. I know you’ve got ghosts, and I know they dig in deep. You’re a giant ball of repressed shit, and you won’t feel better till you let it out. I know you guys have other friends back home, I know I’m thebogie,but the four of us share something in common; we’re like prisoners of war, and we’re finally seeing the real world again. It’s time to live. It’s time to start fresh until the air we breathe is clean again.” He digs a hand into his pocket and pulls out the marker. “And since Jay can’t do it, I’m gonna help him break the law one last time. A last hurrah. It’d make him smile that I’m pissing on every town we pass through.”

“That’s kinda beautiful.” Jess leans forward and pulls him in until their lips touch. “I love you a little bit more for doing this. Can I do the next one?”

“The next stop?”

“Yeah. He saved me. He carried me away and saved my life. I wanna do one for him.”

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