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  “The sex of the babies, Deck. Now stop being being a Gentry pervert.”

  “You married a Gentry pervert, princess. And I can tell you’re smiling.”

  Saylor gave a little giggle and then switched tactics. Her voice grew serious. “Please, Declan. You’re family. We all want you here.”

  “All right,” I grumbled, a little bit touched and embarrassed.

  “Be there at two,” she said happily before I ended the call.

  Saylor McCann Gentry was an Emblem girl and knew everything about the trashy clan of motley relations who shared my last name. We had occupied this corner of the desert for generations and I supposed we always would, in one form or another. A man with the last name of Gentry was apt to be violent, strong and the owner of a dick the size of a saguaro cactus. Living in Emblem, Arizona was pretty unimpressive in and of itself. Maybe that’s why folks who were already low needed us to be even lower, spreading the most heinous lies their small minds could think up. I’d broken more than one jaw in my youth to punish gossips who said that we Gentrys knocked up our first cousins and buried dead relatives in the backyard. Jesus, our shitty histories were bad enough without a bunch of made up crap stacked on top. And all those upstanding critics might want to check their own fucking closets for skeletons; just because the bodies had stopped stinking didn’t mean they had disappeared.

  Some Gentrys really were terrible. Others weren’t. But that was the way of it with all people.

  A car honked at my back but I didn’t accelerate. I let him go around me and refused to react when the grizzled driver shouted an obscenity out the window. By this point I was long past Tempe and on the two-lane State Route 79 en route to Emblem, my bare hands virtually frozen to the handlebars of my bike. There was snow falling out of the black sky. Actual fucking snow in the desert. It was a Christmas miracle, or else somewhere pigs were flying. I only remembered one other occasion where it snowed in Emblem and that was a hell of a long time ago. I wondered if anyone ever told my cousins that it was snowing the night they were born. Probably not.

  Creedence had cornered me before I left his brother’s house. My cousin wasn’t a talker but these past few months he’d been calling me regularly. He always wanted the same thing, for me to leave Emblem behind. After all, he’d done it. About thirty seconds after the triplets reached their eighteenth birthday they had run like the blazes out of our hometown. I’d done that too, five years before them. I joined the Marines and stayed gone for six years. Those years seemed to pass in a heartbeat as I moved from place to place, doing whatever I was told to do. The only thing I should remember was the thing I couldn’t bear to remember. Anyway, I’d done one thing differently. I’d come back to Emblem.

  “You need some cash?” Creed asked in his gruff, awkward way.

  For fuck’s sake, I had my hand in a lot of cookie jars and enough cash to buy a small town. I raised an eyebrow at him. “You serious, asshole?”

  He shook his head and gave a small, sheepish smile. “Nah, I know better. Just trying to figure out why you want to stay down there and live next door to a maniac.”

  The maniac in question was my uncle, Benton Gentry. He was the father of Creed and his brothers, Cord and Chase. I hated him as much as everyone else did.

  But instead of answering I changed the subject. “Your girl is looking better than ever.”

  Creed paused long enough to stare at his girlfriend, Truly, as she kept a hand on Saylor’s pregnant belly and exclaimed over how much the babies, both girls, were kicking around inside.

  “She’s better than the best,” Creed said quietly. I had figured from the beginning that Truly Lee must be more than a fine piece of ass to find a way into Creed Gentry’s heart.

  “Good for you,” I nodded. It was tough to believe, looking at him now, that there was ever a time when Creed needed me to protect him. But he had needed it badly and I’d done it for as long as I could, in more ways than I would ever tell him about. All three of the boys had grown up to be strong men, but Creed was the biggest. I’d seen him in a fight and figured he could probably even beat me if he wanted to. That fact gave me a weird sense of satisfaction.

  His brother Chase interrupted. Chase asked me to take him for a ride on the back of my bike.

  “Hell no.” I shoved him. Then I nodded to his feisty little girlfriend with a lewd grin. “I’ll take Stephanie though.”

  She heard her name and looked over at us as she pushed her curly blonde hair behind her ears. Chase waved and made a kissing noise. Stephanie rolled her eyes and returned to listening to the girls chatter and squeal over baby-related shit.

  Chase smacked his lips. “I’m the only one allowed to take that girl for a ride.”

  “Well, then I hope for her sake you’re fucking doing it right.”

  “He tries,” Creedence laughed, dodging his brother’s right hook. Then he walked away to go hang on Truly, who appeared pleased with the attention.

  “No complaints yet,” grinned Chase and then he drew close to me. I knew he was going to ask about his folks. “How’s it going back there?”

  He needed to let it go. Of the three brothers Chase was the only one who still held onto hope about their mother. I couldn’t lie to him though.

  “It’s still shit, Chasyn. It always will be.”

  He winced. “She was so weak last time I saw her. Sometimes I’ll just stop in the middle of whatever I’m doing and think, ‘My god, how much longer can she last?’ But then, I’ve been wondering that for years.”

  I stayed silent. I didn’t have any comfort to give because none existed. Since I was a kid I had wondered the same thing. I wished the boys remembered their mother as she was before Benton and her own mind destroyed all that. When Maggie Gentry was a young bride she was absolutely fucking golden and I was this scruffy little kid who tried to tag after her everywhere. My own mother was too worn out from working two jobs and battling with my father to track me down most of the time. Maggie’s husband, Uncle Benton, was a prick with no patience who once backhanded me for knocking his beer over. I forgave him for that though. I forgave him for everything when he brought me Aunt Maggie.

  Cordero joined us while I struggled for something, anything, to say to Chase. But there was no reason to dredge up good memories because there were too many awful ones that followed it.

  “You know,” Cord mused, rubbing the back of his neck, “I think the weather reports might be right. Temps have dropped about twenty degrees in the last hour. It’s got to be below freezing out there. Anything that falls out of the sky tonight will be ice.” He cocked his head at me. “You sure you won’t stay, Deck? Couch is plenty comfortable and Say loves to play hostess.”

  I was already hunting down my leather jacket. “Yeah, man. Thanks for the offer though.”

  They all followed me outside. I straddled my biked and gunned the engine. As I watched the triplets wave to me in the cold dusk, I was proud that they were my blood. I was also relieved that they were now grown men. There were times when I hadn’t been sure the three of them would get the chance. I waved back and left them behind.

  Long before I reached the boundaries of Emblem I could see the lights of the prison yard. The fences faced the street so during daylight hours you could see the prisoners in their telltale orange jumpsuits as they slumped in corners, milled around aimlessly or practiced odd forms of tai chi. If you spent enough time in town they just became part of the scenery. You might happen to look up one day and be a little startled to notice that they were real. That place had housed its fair share of Gentrys over the years and likely held one or two distant cousins even now. I probably even knew them. That was usually the case.

  Someone had hung a bleak ‘Seasons Greetings’ banner over Emblem’s Main Street. I was surprised it hadn’t been torn down and destroyed yet. I drove slowly through the dark center of town. Other than the rather lackluster Main Street banner there wasn’t a damn thing that was festive about Emblem. Maybe prison towns wer
e never pretty.

  I was chilled to the bone but that wasn’t why I stopped at the Dirty Cactus. I just didn’t want to head back to my trailer. There was nothing there but coyotes and emptiness. And maybe Uncle Benton if he decided to knock on my door, hoping I had a forty lying around.

  The bar was packed. The holidays brought out a lot of things in folks, not the least of which was a tribal kind of need to be around other people. I rolled the bike next to a pair of Harleys I recognized as belonging to the Corragio brothers. When I shut off the engine and finally released my half frozen fingers from the handlebars I didn’t climb off right away. Instead I looked out across the parking lot and faced the desert. There was a soft beauty to the falling snow. I remembered the way I felt the first time I ever saw snow. It happened to be on the grim January night that my three cousins were born. It was also a night of screaming, of flashing lights and of the sad agony of my own mother as she rocked me in her arms and admitted that Uncle Benton had hurt Aunt Maggie.

  “Dios ella y los bebés ayudar,” she’d whispered and I only half understood since she didn’t often speak Spanish in front of me.

  “What, mama?” I asked, staring out of the boxy window of the trailer as the snow fell lightly outside. I was transfixed by the sight of the powdery flakes and the way they turned red as a nearby ambulance shrieked to life. Only a little while earlier I had been so excited by the snow. But suddenly I just felt sick. I wanted my father. He was big and strong and even though he went away a lot he always came back. There was something very wrong. There was something was very wrong with Aunt Maggie and the babies she’d told me about, the ones inside her big belly. I didn’t know what it was, but it was all Uncle Benton’s fault.

  My mother pressed her tearful cheek against my dry one. “God help her and the babies,” she said and then began to cry.

  A month passed before Aunt Maggie came home and she didn’t look the same. Despite the faint bruises on her face she was still the prettiest lady I’d ever seen but there was something else missing. I saw it in the way she shuffled around and couldn’t smile at me anymore. Uncle Benton was still gone when she came home but my father had returned. He was the one who brought me over to see my cousins for the first time.

  There were three of them, all boys, and so tiny they fit into a single bassinet. My mother was tucking blue cotton blankets around their little bodies. She smiled when I walked into the room.

  “Declan,” she said, beckoning to me. “Come meet Cordero, Creedence and Chasyn.”

  Of course I’d seen plenty of babies before and they never impressed me. Yet when I peered over the rim of the bassinet, all three of the triplets opened their big blue eyes and seemed to fixate on me. I slowly reached inside the bassinet. My hand looked enormous beside them. Suddenly the baby in the middle, the one who was slightly larger than the other two, grabbed my finger. For such a tiny person his strength was ferocious.

  “Hello,” I said softly and had the same twisting feeling in my gut I remembered from when I’d once found a lost, starving kitten under Uncle Benton’s car.

  “These are your cousins,” said my father in my ear, his warm hand on my shoulder. “See how small they are right now, how helpless? They’re going to need a big, strong boy like you to help take care of them.”

  I nodded. I understood. These little babies were my cousins. My blood. The closest thing to brothers I’d ever had. My five-year-old heart was eager to fight anyone I needed to fight to keep them safe. That was a feeling I would never shed, no matter how big they grew.

  The snow was still falling when the girl burst through the door of the Dirty Cactus. She didn’t see me.

  “I’m not your babe,” she said haughtily and tossed her black hair behind her shoulder as she stalked out to the edge of the parking lot. For a second my entire body seized because although her hair color was too dark, from the rear the girl looked just like her. Just like Amelia. It wasn’t Amelia though. Amelia had been dead for nearly nine years and I’d spent every day since then trying to forget she ever existed.

  “Shit, you gonna stand out here all night?” The voice was male, plaintive and grating. The punk it belonged to slid out of the shadows and approached the girl. He looked familiar, in the way that everyone in Emblem looked familiar. But I couldn’t place the girl.

  “I might,” she declared without looking at him.

  He wrapped his arms around her and without pausing for breath she belted him right in the gut.

  “Fuck!” he yelled. “What the hell is up with you?”

  She had turned around by now and I could see her face. Indeed she wasn’t Amelia, didn’t look anything like Amelia. She was a spirited little thing though. My eyes went reflexively up and down her body even though I had already dismissed her as being too young; too young to be in a seedy dive like the Dirty Cactus and definitely too young to lie down with. She crossed her arms and glowered at her pathetic companion. “I didn’t fucking ask to be touched by you, that’s all.”

  He was getting ready to do something stupid. He would grab her, probably haul her off to his shitty truck and force her to do what he wanted. I’d be fucked if I let that happen. I stood up.

  She noticed me before he did. She looked a little startled, then she glanced at the other man. He had gone noticeably pale and I fixed him with a hard glare. If he wanted to make this ugly then I was game. I would wipe Main Street with his saggy ass and no one would dare to stop me.

  “Fine, bitch,” spat the little prick, already retreating. “You can stay here by your damn self. Let’s see how long you stay untouched.”

  He hustled his way out of there without looking back but I waited around until he had driven off. The girl and I stared at each other as Christmas music floated out of the bar. Damn, she was nicely packaged and I felt my dick stir as my eyes settled on the pert breasts barely covered by her low-cut shirt. But I had never liked ‘em young, not even when I was young. I wasn’t interested in teaching lessons when I fucked around. I headed into the bar and left her out there. She would come inside when she got cold enough.

  CHAPTER THREE

  JENNY

  There were few things more depressing than standing around in the cold darkness without a friend in sight. It was getting late and people were starting to stumble around more as they grew drunker by the minute. I considered asking one of the haggard women if I could borrow a cell phone because it seemed safer to ask a woman. But they eyed me with hostility as they clung possessively to their men. Ally hadn’t returned and I doubted she would.

  It was tough to think straight with my teeth chattering so I headed into the bar. With every passing second I wished like hell that I was covered in something more substantial, not just for warmth but because some of the men looked me over and indiscreetly rubbed their crotches.

  I sat on a newly vacated stool at the bar and stared at my bare legs as they peeked from beneath my short skirt. As a girl born among the Faithful Last Disciples and Saints, I grew up only seeing my own legs when I bathed. The rest of the time, in all seasons, my legs were covered by dresses that reached to the ankle.

  “You can’t sit at the bar,” the man next to me announced. He had a thick, raspy voice and smelled sour and smoky all at once. Instinctively I edged away from him and he grinned, showing the garish gold caps on a few of his teeth.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, sliding off the stool. I wasn’t up to another Adam-type grabby confrontation.

  But this man wasn’t Adam Doria, a mama’s boy who acted tough once in a while. He had tattoos on his neck and a harsh glint in his eye that told me he was used to doing as he pleased to whomever he pleased.

  “Stay,” he said, firmly grabbing my elbow and forcing me back into the seat. He leaned closer. “You didn’t let me finish. I meant you can’t sit at the bar unless you have a fucking drink.” He snapped his fingers at the bartender and watched while amber liquid was immediately poured into a shot glass. “So drink.” My arm was starting to ache bec
ause he hadn’t relaxed his iron grip. I tried to push the panic away and gave the bartender a beseeching look. If he saw my distress he didn’t let it show. His moon-faced flat gaze quickly washed over me and moved on to something else.

  The man was waiting. He wasn’t going to release me until I drank. That wouldn’t be the end of it though. He had plans. I stared at the meaty claw attached to my elbow and was instantly enraged. For most of my life I’d been under men’s thumbs. I’d been raised to believe that was the proper fate for a woman.

  I knew better now.

  To hell with the Faithful elders and the Adam Dorias of the world. To hell with sons of bitches like the mouth-breathing meathead beside me who assumed they could navigate every move I made. I took the shot glass and moved it to my lips. Then I abruptly turned it upside down into his lap.

  “Whoops,” I said mildly as I replaced the glass on the bar.

  The guy went absolutely bug-eyed. He looked at me, looked down at the wet spot on his filthy jeans where the alcohol had soaked through, then slowly raised his head. Despite the fact that his expression had gone to pure murder I felt like laughing. It was suddenly hilarious to be sitting in some crappy bar in the middle of nowhere on Christmas night beside a man who looked like he wouldn’t mind killing me. A few nearby people suddenly showed interest.

  “Shit, she sure creamed ya, Willie!”

  “You come in your pants or did you get bested by that little girl?”

  As Willie’s face reddened I didn’t feel like laughing anymore. I just wanted to be somewhere else; my room at school or safe in my sister’s house. Even the freezing parking lot was more appealing. Though the jeering was directed at Willie, there was an undercurrent of drunken hostility all around me. My skin tingled and every muscle in my body was poised for a reaction. I’d learned about this phenomenon in high school biology. It was the surge of adrenaline resulting from one of the few remaining natural instincts in modern humans; the fight or flight impulse. I was alone in a strange place with no phone and no transportation, and surrounded by unfriendly people. I wasn’t physically strong. Grimly my mind had begun to catch up with the reality of just how precarious my situation was.