Tore Up (Mississippi Smoke Series Book 1)
Tore Up: Chapter 2

The searing pain inside my chest had taken the place of where my heart used to be. There was nothing that eased it, and if I’d been called down to this fucking underground cell for Linc Shephard to be corrected for my behavior, then I might end up with a bullet between my eyes. I respected him, but I could no longer be sure of my reaction to situations. Not since I’d been told my little brother was dead. There was a darkness eating me alive that wanted revenge, and until I had the fucker who had killed Crosby bleeding out at my feet, it wasn’t going to get any better. Too much fucking time had passed, and every day I didn’t replace who had shot him, the pain intensified.

The heavy, booted steps were singular as they drew closer to me. I stood, waiting with my arms crossed over my chest. I’d expected more than just Linc when he sent me a text to meet him here. His second-in-command, Luther Levine, or at the very least my father.

Linc entered the room. The somber expression on his face didn’t surprise me. There wasn’t good news anymore. There never would be again. Since the day we had buried my brother, all the good had gone with him. Twenty-one fucking years old and dead. My teeth clenched as the urge to slam my fist into the concrete wall overcame me.

Goddammit! I hated the thought of him in a cold, dark grave.

“Did you tell anyone you were coming down here?” Linc asked me.

I shook my head.

“Good. What I’m about to tell you can’t be shared. Your dad doesn’t even know. He doesn’t need this right now, but it has to be looked into, and I think this just might lead us to Crosby’s shooter,” he told me.

The demanding urge for violence that tore through me caused my breath to stutter.

“Who?” The one word was all I could manage.

Linc held up a hand. “What I’m about to tell you requires that you calm the fuck down. Keep your head on straight. This is shit we weren’t expecting. Within the family, it is gonna need to be handled with care, meaning telling no one.”

I’d calm the fuck down when the person who had killed my brother was choking on their own blood, but I nodded.

Linc didn’t look convinced. His eyes narrowed. “I came to you because Crosby was your brother. It is out of respect, but I need your word that you can handle this and you’ll obey my orders.”

I tried to focus on my breathing. The rage that consumed me was hard to tamp down.

“I’ll obey your orders. But I want to be the one to kill the motherfucker.”

Linc’s brows drew together. “I know that. It’s why we are down here alone,” he told me. “Okay, let me explain everything and give you the details before you start planning your retaliation. I said, I believe we have a lead. I do not know for a fact that this is even related, but my gut tells me that it is.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone. He held it up. “This was found in your grandfather’s old farm truck. It was stuck under the seat.”

“Whose is it?” I asked, trying to work around how that had anything to do with my brother’s shooter.

“It was Crosby’s.”

“That’s not his phone,” I told him.

Linc let out a weary sigh. “I’m aware. When it was found, it was also locked, but Levi was able to walk me through how to bypass that. I didn’t want anyone knowing about it until I saw what this was going to tell us. He bought the phone a little over three months ago and used it to contact only one number.”

“Who?” I demanded as I glared at it as if that phone had pulled the trigger.

“Bane, you’ve got to calm down. There is a lot I need to tell you, and the answer to who shot Crosby is not in this phone. It is a lead. That is all.”

I dropped my hands to my sides and fisted them. “I’m calm.”

Linc gave me a look that said he wasn’t buying my lie, but he continued, “The number belongs to a girl, but I’ve not had Wilder run it and see what all he can replace on the person it’s registered to. Like I said, the fewer people who know about this, the better. There is Saylor to think about here. I want the bastard dead, just like you do, but this information would be a massive blow to Saylor, her parents, and yours.”

I shook my head. “My brother wasn’t fucking some other girl.”

He wouldn’t have done that. He’d been in love with Saylor since they had been little kids. They were always together. When the hell would he have had time to fuck someone else?

The tight expression on Linc’s face told me that he didn’t believe the same.

“There is a sex video on here that says otherwise. There are also photos of a girl, naked, asleep in a hotel bed. The same girl in the video with him. And another thing. The video—I am almost one hundred percent positive she didn’t know he was recording it.” He paused for a moment. “There are also many pictures of them together and text messages, where he told her he loved her. They are very, uh, passionate messages.”

My head felt as if it might explode. That wasn’t like Crosby. What had gotten into him? Who was the girl? Had she been married? FUCK!

“Her lover shot him? Is that what you’re saying? He got mixed up with some woman who wasn’t single?”

Linc shook his head. “That’s just it—I don’t know. Crosby took pics of her at work, and I was able to replace her there yesterday. See her for myself. She was there. She texted him the night he was killed, asking him what had happened. He never showed up. After that, she sent three more texts, spread out over the course of two weeks. The last one said she’d be waiting when he was ready to talk, but she wasn’t going to text him again.

“She didn’t have a wedding ring on her finger either. The two men who owned the food truck she works for ended up taking her home after she stood in the parking lot for over an hour. When she left work, I followed her. I have her address. I did a check on it, and I know that a Nick Talley rents the house, but without Levi’s help, looking into the other details, that is all I could get. I trust my son, but the less those inside the family know, the better. It can get spread too easily. Eventually, your father will need to be told. He deserves answers, but if this is not why Crosby was shot, then I don’t see why any of them ever have to know. Crosby wouldn’t want Saylor hurt.”

What did you do, little brother? Fucking hell!

He had better not be six feet underground over a fuck. I’d go to the address and burn the fucking house down with everyone in it.

“Can I see the phone?” I asked. My voice was hoarse. This wasn’t something I’d been prepared for. It was so hard to believe.

Linc handed it over.

I looked down at it as my throat tightened, to the point that it was painful. There he was, with his big-ass smile, but he wasn’t looking at the phone. His focus was on the girl in his arms. She was smiling at the camera, but he seemed completely captivated by her. There was no similarity between the female in that photo and Saylor. Yet he looked like she was the fucking sun and he could see nothing else.

“Fuck,” I hissed through my teeth.

“If that picture is hard to look at, then you might want to stop now,” Linc told me.

He would have married Saylor one day. I’d even asked him once if he thought he’d ever want someone else, and he’d looked at me like I was crazy, then said no.

Who was this girl? Where had he met her?

I didn’t want to watch a video of him having sex. Instead, I went to the text messages. The first one was exactly three months and one week ago. I saw the name he’d saved her number under and winced.

“My angel?” I asked.

Linc let out a heavy sigh, and what he was going to tell me, I could see he didn’t want to.

“I bought a burger from her when I went to replace her. She was wearing a name tag. It said … Halo.” Linc’s voice took an edge when he said her name.

My eyes shot from the screen back up to look at him. “Halo?” I repeated.

“Yes.”

I had to take a minute to remain calm. Halo was the last word he’d choked out. At least, that was what Than had said. We thought he’d misunderstood or that he was so grief-stricken that he’d made it up in his head. The word hadn’t made sense. Than had said he struggled to move and looked panicked, then said Halo.

What had he been trying to tell us?

“Do you think he was saying she was why he’d been shot?” The words came out clipped as my body shook.

“That is something I have questioned. But the text she sent the night he was shot was about him not showing up. Had he been leaving early to go see her? Than said that he’d claimed he had a headache and wanted to go. That he’d only had one beer. From the looks of those texts, it could be he was worried about her. We have to also consider that she is in trouble too. Whoever shot him could be from her past, and Crosby got tangled up in it.”

I wanted to shatter the phone against the wall, but it was all we had. Everyone had secrets, and this was Crosby’s.

I looked back down at the screen.

I skimmed through the texts, unable to keep reading. Not once could I remember ever hearing him talk about or talk to Saylor this way. He had been obsessed with this girl he called his angel. He swore he loved her. Had told her she was all he could think about.

I lifted my eyes to look at Linc.

“Did you read the part about a brother?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “No. I had to start skimming.”

Linc’s eyes darkened. “She has a brother. A grade behind her. She’s nineteen, by the way—Crosby asked about her birthday in one of the texts. Anyway, she mentioned her brother’s temper once or twice and needing to defuse a situation at home for him. I don’t think either of them is close to their dad. There isn’t much about him, but what is in there could be something. I’m assuming Nick Talley is the dad.

“The call log is much more extensive. She and Crosby didn’t text as much as they talked on the phone. It seems he saw her almost every night during his last month.”

Alive. Linc hadn’t said that word, but that was what he’d meant.

I went to the photos and braced myself before scrolling through them. There were pictures of her doing random things. He had taken shots when she wasn’t even looking. She didn’t have Saylor’s lash extensions, always-styled platinum-blonde hair, long and pointy hot-pink nails, or designer clothing. This girl was the opposite of her, it seemed, in every way. Darker hair. Most pictures had been taken at night with a flash, except the ones he took of her at work. Her hair was a unique shade of brown from what I could see. Her eyes weren’t Saylor’s dark blue, but a pale blue instead. One of the close-ups he’d taken was of him kissing her cheek and her laughing, and I could see freckles on her nose.

The messy bed with her hair fanned out over the white sheets made me pause. Had she known he had taken pictures of her naked while she was asleep? Quickly moving past it, I found more, and although it felt twisted and wrong to look at these, I couldn’t deny the fact that she had an incredible body.

I turned off the phone, not wanting to see any more, and held it out to Linc.

“What’s the address?” I asked.

Linc studied me for a moment. “You think you can do this? Keep a straight head?”

This wasn’t a question as to if I thought I could or not. I was going to replace this girl, and I was going to replace her brother. If they were the reason Crosby was dead, then I’d kill her motherfucking brother while she watched and hold her by the hair of her head, forcing her to see him gasp and struggle to breathe as blood gurgled from his mouth. The exact same way it had Crosby’s.

“Yes,” I replied.

“When you have proof, bring it to me. I’ll go with you. You’re not going alone. We don’t know anything about these people.”

I nodded, but said nothing more. The truth was, if I found out that her brother had killed mine, I wasn’t sure how I’d react. There was a good chance the small thread of sanity I was holding on to would snap, and I’d go on a murderous rampage, killing everyone she loved.