Dad digs out his tattered-by-time, brown leather wallet, then embeds two twenties and a ten into Tonk’s chest with a hard slap. “How the fuck did ya beat the Badge?” He looks over, finally letting me out of jail. My father can stare harder than any man I’ve ever met.
Tonk grins, “He scratched the eight ball!” while his wife, Carmen, beams at him like he invented the game. He wraps an arm around her and plants a quick, rough kiss to those smiling lips of hers. Nobody here is as sickeningly sweet as those two. My best friend, Celia, was born from a love so true and filled with gratitude I’ve never heard her parents argue once. Her brother Tonk Jr. is a sad disappointment, however. Not sure how they’re even related. Barely even look alike.
Scythe’s deep baritone chortles as he razzes Honey Badger, “You cleared the table, then scratched the eight ball next shot!”
“Yeah yeah yeah.”
“That’s like riding to—”
“Ah shut up!”
Fuse grabbed a chicken wing while they were going on, and he waves it. “I miss Scratch. Gotta give him a call. Last I heard he had the flu, anyone know if he got better? Wife, you call Mona and check on that?”
“I did,” Melodi nods, wringing a rag out and tossing it by the sink. “He came out of it okay, but she was worried there for a second. He’s no spring chicken.”
“Winter chicken is more like it.”
Dad points at me to demand the name of who I messed around with, but again he’s interrupted. This time by Meg as she hurries into the room with Denita by her side. “Jett, the police are coming up the drive!” She looks at her husband, Honey Badger, who she always calls by his birth name. “Antonio, it’s the same ones who pulled us over last Monday.”
Denita tells her husband, Scythe, both dark as the sky at midnight, “I checked to see if either one of them was that racist bastard we ran into last month, but it’s not.”
We’re a wide range of colors in this house, and never give it any thought until we’re faced with some idiot who hasn’t learned that judging someone by the color of their skin is just plain odd.
Skin color you have no control over.
And really who gives a fuck about things you have no control over?
In this house we judge people by their actions, and how they treat other people. That’s what people can control.
When someone acts like an asshole, it’s by choice. That deserves my judgment.
Curious and wary, the older crew barrels out of the kitchen, all behind my father, Ciphers President. The women go last, and not because we’re weak. We’re not. But it’s a fact of nature that men need to protect women in order to feel like men, and we like them that way. Mom taught me this when I was a young girl.
CHAPTER 3
SOFIA SOL
“J ett, did you hear that?”
Dad snatched his gun from atop the motel nightstand and leapt from bed in sweatpants and nothing else, ears perked, grey eyes alert. In a hushed voice he told Mom, “Let’s check it out.”
She threw the thin comforter off her, wearing a black tank top and matching pajama shorts, strong legs walking to her gun in the saddlebags that sat on the old carpet between our double beds as I watched, sitting up, age twelve and itching to get into the action.
There’d been weird footsteps. I’d heard them and whispered to Mom, found her awake, having caught the strange sound, too. It was like someone was dragging something past our door, and it was struggling, with muffled gurgles.
But what I didn’t understand is why the hell she didn’t just go and check it out herself. Ask him to follow, sure, but she was more than capable to lead the way. She could take down anyone. I’d seen her. She was my role model, so fierce.
Dad silently, expertly, opened the door and angled his head to peer outside. Mom was behind him and my shoulders slumped in an impatient exhale. I climbed out of the bed and she gave me a warning look, pointing to the bed and mouthing, no!
I climbed back in. I knew there was no way I’d sneak by her. Dad nodded to her that it was time to sneak out after the noise-maker. They left the door cracked because closing it might alert the guy they were coming.
In my long nightgown I tiptoed over, jumping in my skin when I heard a scuffle and grunting. Despite the fact that Mom would kill me if she knew I was here, I looked out. Under flickering lights in a desolate parking lot Dad had a big guy pinned, punching him cold while Mom pulled a gag off the man he was dragging, and I recognized him as the clerk who’d checked us into the motel. Gasping for air, he thanked her, eyes filled with terror and relief as they swung to his assailant.
Two doors opened on either side of ours. Tonk exploded out of one, Carmen peeking from the safety of the door. I knew Celia was in bed. With her mother there, she couldn’t do what I was.
The other was Honey Badger, gun drawn.
We were out in the middle of nowhere at one of those shit-holes where the neon sign is from the 50’s and whoever chose the color palettes was blind.
Luke, Honey Badger’s oldest boy, but younger than I was by a couple years, stuck his head and scrawny shoulders out of his room, and we locked eyes. I held my fingers to my lips with a silent shhh. He nodded and ignored his mom as Meg urged him to get back inside, her soft voice worried.
Locking eyes with me, he smiled.
We weren’t the types to wait.
We wanted to watch.
Learn.
Fight.
Atlas, younger than Luke, tried to stick his head out but Luke shoved him back in. He scrambled lower, and managed to spy, too.
I knew
