Page 31 of Wrangled
I watch Riggs haul a box from the back of the last van. “No, I’ll figure something out for myself. David’s going to call you.Make sure you give him a credit card for me. I want a system with all the bells and whistles.”
“Calliope—”
“Talk to you later, Jen.” I hang up feeling frustrated. She only has my best intentions at heart, but even so.
As Riggs reaches the top step, he looks my way and nods, and I do something really rash for me. “Hey, Riggs, you mind sitting for a minute?”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No. Not at all.”
He hesitates for a moment before taking the chair closest to the swing and places the box next to his feet.
“Clipboard guy said you’re filling in today because he was shorthanded. What do you usually do?”
“A little bit of everything. I can’t say I’m fussy.”
I rub my hands on my thighs, feeling nervous. This is beyond stupid, but something compelled me to give this guy a shot. And if he blows it, I can always take care of it later. “Do you have a permanent job right now?”
He clenches his teeth, looking away for a second before squaring his shoulders and turning back to me. “No ma’am. Turns out folks around these parts don’t much like hiring ex-cons.”
“Don’t take offense. Folks around here don’t like much of anyone. Me included.”
He blinks, clearly having not expected my answer.
“You live locally?”
“About two hours away. I’m crashing on a buddy’s couch right now, trying to figure out what’s next.”
“What about conditions on being out? Do you have to stay where you are or check in with a parole officer?”
“What? Oh no. I’ve been out for five years now. I don’t have to check in with my PO anymore, and I’m free to come and go asI please. The staying with my friend thing is new. I got laid off at my last job, and nothing else has come up.”
I cross my arms. “You hurt women?” I ask him softly.
His face clouds over, his voice coming out in a boom like thunder. “Fuck no. I did time for running drugs and boosting cars, stupid shit. Look, I was a soldier. Uncle Sam gave a kid a gun and trained me to shoot people without blinking. And I was good at it, too. Then some bad intel got me, and my team was captured. We were all tortured.” He touches his eye patch, lost in his own world. “Out of five of us, only two survived—Hamish and me. We’d been home two months when Hamish put a gun in his mouth and swallowed a bullet. I was a mess, and I still am, to be fair. It’s no excuse. I fell in with the wrong crowd, but I did my time. And when I got out, I left the city for a fresh start.”
“But it’s hard to find a fresh start when people won’t let you forget about the past.”
“Exactly.”
I lean back and study him. “Have you ever killed anyone, Riggs?”
He leans forward, his forearms on his thighs as he studies me. I can see him wrestling with whether he wants to tell me the truth or not. “Yes, I have.”
“Any from when you weren’t in the army?”
His jaw is clenched so tight it has to hurt, but he nods anyway.
“I’ve never killed anyone before,” I admit, checking to make sure nobody else is around. When he doesn’t react, I realize he doesn’t know who I am. “I’m planning to, though.”
His eyes snap to mine. Yeah, I thought that might get his attention.
“Who?”
I smile that he asked who and not why. “The man I just spent fifteen years in prison for murdering.”
His mouth drops open as his brain processes everything I said. I give him a second. It’s not every day something like that gets dropped on you. Initially, I hadn’t planned on telling anyone this because, let’s be honest, a secret is only a secret until someone else knows. But there will always be things I won’t be able to explain away, things that a smart person will put together. And the last thing I want is that person running to the cops. Something a man like Ryan or Greg would do. It’s why I wanted someone who wasn’t afraid to break the law. It’s risky, having a man like this in my life and trusting him with knowledge that could easily see me spending the rest of my days behind bars, but right now it feels like a necessary risk to take.
