The Shack series

Chapter 9

Delaney was obviously awestruck. "This is amazing."

I sensed moving back to the trailer would be a very hard sell. Hell, the cabin was twice the size of the trailer. Delaney wouldn't have been impressed by a mansion, she'd grown up with money, but the cabin overwhelmed her. She must have made six cups of hot chocolate on the woodstove, and just sat in front of the fireplace most of the evening.

When Delaney had finally spun down and went to bed, Sheree and I sat on the couch watching the fireplace.

"Why'd you have an apartment in town?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Electricity, heat. Didn't have to worry about bein' snowed in. Us'ta be the power lines were farther away, cost too much to run it out here."

"I bet it isn't that much now. Those new lines back at the main road aren't that far away. I could cover that. If it's too much we'll get some damn solar panels or some shit."

She nestled in a bit more. "It felt too empty before. But with the three of us..." She trailed off.

"It'd be nicer than the trailer."

"The trailer was always fine."

"This would be better."

I could feel her smile.

***

The next morning I pulled out Asshole's phone. We had to start somewhere and if he hadn't bothered to put a lock on his phone, he was either careful enough not to have anything useful on it or he was a complete i***t.

He was a nearly complete i***t.

Friends, check in locations, every Damm social media platform ever designed. Dammer probably still had a MySpace account. It wasn't hard to tell the g**g members from casual friends, either. Massive "NCWB" neck tattoos made it pretty obvious. So did all the pictures of Glock handguns being waved idiotically around over piles of cash. I wondered how many of the idiots had managed to shoot their own houses up on accident.

I had to have Delaney decode the Damm slang though. Even with her help I didn't understand what the Damm "Yeet" meant.

I also had to stop Delaney from changing his Tinder profile to say he was a "goat-felching strap faggot with a My Little Pony fetish." Twice. I finally gave the phone to Sheree at that point, while Delaney giggled almost uncontrollably from the couch.

Sheree looked over the messages and posts on the phone. "When's the next Tar Heels game?"

"Saturday, I think."

She pulled up some messages. "It looks like they have 'Boyz Only' night at 'the Pad,' wherever that is. They do it whenever there's a game."

Finding "the pad" wasn't difficult, either. He hadn't turned off the GPS so it wasn't a challenge to map out all his travels for the last 60 days. Every game day, it was the same trip to a place outside Durham.

Sheree looked at me. "Whatcha gonna do?"

"Depends on what the Sheriff gets out of the Asshole. If he doesn't get anywhere I'll just look into things over there."

She looked over at Delaney who'd wandered off to fix herself another hot chocolate. "I don't like this, Les. I can't remember ever being this happy in my life. Now this happens."

"Nobody's gonna take this away from us. I won't let them."

*****

Monday morning the Sheriff was at the yard before I was, sipping a cup of coffee.

"Morning, Needles."

"Morning. What's up?"

"Just a heads up. Your Asshole came up hot on the system with g**g affiliation and stack of Failure-To-Appear on traffic charges. Durham County isn't interested in extradition on those FTAs, so it's catch and release on that. But there's no way Judge Warner is going to grant bail to an out-of-state g**g member with a stack of FTAs."

"What next?"

"The g*n was registered and the Escalade isn't his, but it wasn't reported stolen. Prosecutor is kind of on the fence about it, but I think he's going to offer him a plea deal this afternoon. Thirty days for simple assault."

"Really? Think he'll take it?"

"He'd be an i***t not to take the plea; any lawyer on the planet will tell him that. The prosecutor could nail him for resisting arrest and attempted assault on a minor, but he reviewed the body cams and he'd rather not take a chance. Your Delaney's got a mouth on her. It shouldn't matter, but the wrong jury and they'd cut him free. Took him a half-hour to stop laughing, though."

"Glad we could provide some entertainment."

"Look, this is reality. Trials are expensive and if he ends up with jail time instead of prison, well, that costs money, too."

"Yeah, I Damm get it."

He got up and glanced down at his feet for a second, then looked up at me. "Needles, seriously. I know you. Not in my house. I don't want any blood on the ground here unless it's self-defense."

"Got it."

He looked at me suspiciously. "I mean it. I got no problem with a man defending what's his. But I've heard rumors about why Ronnie Pelton is walking with a cane and working for free down at Big Ed's hog farm. That was pushing it, you shoulda come to me about that."

I nodded. "Got it.

Thirty days was almost exactly the wrong number, just long enough for the g**g to get antsy and decide to send someone else. It'd be all too easy for the g**g to decide to try to cap me in a drive-by shooting to get a clear path to Delaney.

His prediction came true, Asshole took the thirty days as a guest of the county rather than risk hard time.

On Friday, Delaney and I took Sally out of her garage and took her to the cabin.

Delaney looked back at the Mustang as we got out. 'You're going after those assholes tomorrow, aren't you?"

"I'm just taking a look, that's all."

She shivered, but there was more to it than fear. "I hate them."

"We don't know if all of them were in on what was going to happen to you."

We did our Movie Night with no movie, just staring into the fireplace, Delaney was strangely quiet, but slept restlessly.

Late the next afternoon, Delaney retreated quietly to her room when I got ready to head out.

Sheree watched her. "Maybe she'll get some sleep." She turned to me. "You be damn careful, Les. I just got you and I'm plannin' on getting old with you."

"I'm just planning on taking a look and maybe grab one to talk to. I'll be back in no time. You gonna be okay?"

She smiled. "I have the 12 gauge with the plug out, seven rounds of double ought in it and two whole boxes of shells. You jest make sure you don't startle me coming in."

I chuckled as I fired Sally up and punched up "Black Magic Woman" on the CD player, earning a smile from Sheree.

***

Two hours later, just as it was getting dark, I shut the engine down and sat for second, checking my .45. All I had to do was grab one of them and get out, but I'd still grabbed four extra magazines. Nobody ever regretted having too much ammunition in a shootout.

This needed done. Delaney was my responsibility.

Delaney was...I stopped, thinking for a second. Goddammit.

I slid out of the car, walked back to the trunk and popped it open.

"Goddammit."

Delaney stared at me from inside with a stubborn set to her jaw, clutching a two-foot-long wrench. "s**t. How'd you know I was here?"

"You didn't cause any trouble when I left. You Damm had to be up to something. How were you planning on getting out if I didn't open the trunk?"

She pulled a pair of needle nose pliers and a screwdriver out of her pocket and held them up. "Just like you showed me"

"You shouldn't be here."

"This is my fault." She sat up. "You taught me that. If I break things, I have to fix them."

I caught my breath, choking off my response. "Damn it. Some things need to be dealt with by someone else. This isn't like a dropped socket in an engine."

She crossed her arms. "It's my responsibility. Even when I can't fix something, you always make me watch and help."

"You're too damn young for this. You're still a kid."

"Girls used to fight in wars at my age. I listen to all those audio history books you know."

"Damn history books."

"You got them for me."

"Shut up."

She slung her skinny legs around and pulled herself out of the trunk. "So what are we going to do?"

"We aren't going to do anything. You're going to sit in the car until I get back. I should have sent you somewhere safe."

"Safer than with you? You're not going to Damm send me off to some...convent or something!"

"Convent? Hell, I hadn't thought of that. You could become a nun, like Sister Mary Thugbunny or something."

She glared, but I could see a glint of humor. "It's not Damm gonna happen."

"The Pope would excommunicate me and I'm not even Catholic." I shook my head. "Christ. How long does this teenage s**t last?"

Delaney suppressed a smirk. "I think Sheree said about seven more years."

"Dammit. Just get in the car and stay there."

********

A small wooden house stood in front of a metal workshop labeled "Bailey's Welding." I moved as quietly as I could toward a corner made blind by aging stacks of lumber and a couple of old couches that sat oddly on the front porch. I slid toward the house, past a rusted, smoking kettle barbeque standing awkwardly on an uneven platform of cinderblock on the side of the house. As tall and dry as the uncut grass was, I still didn't have to worry about being heard. I could hear laughter and shouting over the blasting sound of a television.