Page 57 of The Bad Brother
“Okay.” Giving me a single head bob, River opens her car door, climbing out of the passenger seat to shoot Ethan some wary side-eye on her way across the parking lot. As soon as she gains the porch steps and is within Cade’s reach, he shoots me a quick look—what are we doing here?
Giving him a quick chin jerk aimed at the building behind him, I watch Cade’s gaze narrow down to a glare,his grip tightening around the bat for a second before he does what I’m asking and turns to follow River inside the bar.
I can hear Ethan laughing on my approach. “You’ve got him trained. Can you get him to sit up and beg too?”
Stopping a safe distance away from him, I keep my arms loose while I watch the surrounding parking lot in my peripheral. “He killed someone with a bat just like that, not too long ago,” I remind my brother in a neutral tone. “He goes to work on you, I can promise he’s not the one who’ll be begging.” When I say it, I have the distinct pleasure of watching that insolent grin die on his face. “What do you want, Ethan?”
“Is that what you’re driving these days?” he asks, ignoring my question to tip his chin at my shitty little hatchback. “I thought that old hillbilly you latched onto after you got out of prison left you a truck when he died.”
“Tank wasn’t a hillbilly,” I tell him, forcing casual indifference into my tone. “He was a redneck and he did. Someone put it in the Barrett a few weeks ago.”
Ethan gives me a look of mock confusion that barely covers up the psychotic glee that flits across his face. “Now, who’d go and do a nasty thing like that?”
“Someone who’s too stupid to leave well enough alone,” I tell him, my tone heavy with warning. “You gonna tell me what you’re doing here?”
“I heard about what happened last night,” he tells me, his expression folding into the perfect caricature of concern. “I just wanted to make sure my big brother was okay.”
Just wanted to assess the damage you caused and gloat, is more like it.
“No need to worry about me, little brother.” I give him a shrug that pulls at the stitches holding my back together. “Wasn’t even worth a trip to the hospital.”
“That’s good to know,” he says, the expression on his face saying something else entirely. “But you should be careful, just the same. Sounds to me like you’ve pissed the wrong person off. There’s no telling what they might do next.”
“Is that more of yourbrotherly concern?” I know it isn’t. It’s a threat. He’s not done with me. He’s just getting started.
“Pretty girl.” Ignoring my question again, Ethan cocks his head to the side, indicating the bar we’re standing in front of. “Young too—she even old enough to drink?”
River’s twenty-four and five years sober but instead of answering his question, I just give him another shrug because I know what this is. It’s another threat. “I don’t really know,” I tell him, my tone laced with indifference. “She’s just a waitress who needed a ride in for her shift.”
The grin on his face sharpens. “You fuckin’ her?”
Disgust curdles my gut and I have to fight tooth and nail to keep it from showing on my face. “Like I said, she’s just a waitress.”
For a long moment, all we do is stare at each other before Ethan smiles again. “I bet this place gets crowded on the weekends, huh? Hard to tell who’s coming in and out. Can’t really tell who’s doing what. Bet it gets pretty dangerous around here.”
“See that camera?” Lifting a hand, I point at one of about fifty exterior security cameras I had installed this morning. “For every one you see, there are ten more justlike it that you can’t—insideandout,” I tell him, issuing a warning of my own. “You might’ve gotten the jump on me once, but it’s not going to happen again. Next time, I’ll see you coming.”
Ethan’s face splits into a wide grin. “Pretty sure it was more than once.” Before I can answer him or maybe just finally snap and break his fucking neck, he drops his arms away from his chest while levering himself off the hood of his car. “See you around, brother,” he says before turning to open up his car door. “Oh—almost forgot.” Door open, he turns back to look at me. “Found this in the dirt,” he says before tossing something small and flat in my direction. Instinct has me lifting my arm to snatch it out of mid-air. Closing my hand around it, I feel the bite of something sharp. Opening it, I look down to see a razor blade in my palm, smudges of something rusty along its edge that looks a hell of a lot like blood.
My blood.
“You might want to properly dispose of that.” He gives me another psychotic grin. “Those things are dangerous. Someone could get hurt.”
Before I can react, Ethan slams his car door between us and drives away.
SOMETHING JENSEN SAID TO ME LASTnight keeps replaying in my head.
…my brother hates me enough to send someone across the river to open me up with a razorblade.
I don’t know who his brother is or why he hates him so much but I know this—as inexplicable as it seems, he’s from Clearwater.
That means Jensen Barrett is from Clearwater.
His last name alone disproves my theory. What little I know about the history of the town tells me that the Barrett family is its founders. Settled here in the early 1800s, they built a town on the banks of a river they named after themselves. When Texas became a state and was eventually divided into counties, they named that after themselves too.
It wasn’t until investors bought the land on the other side of the Barrett river in the 70s and developed it into a posh, idyllic town where rich men can play golf between oildeals while their trophy wives and mistresses shop at Louis Vitton and Cartier, did they have neighbors.
My stepfather’s family, along with Ethan’s and a few others, were on the original investment team and they wasted no time in turning the open land north of the Barrett into their own personal, private playground. I can’t imagine their invasion sat well with the people who lived in Barrett.
