Wife. Mother. Leader. In this stunning sophomore novel by the author of Bull Mountain, hell hath no fury like a woman. It's been more than a year since a rogue government agent systematically crippled the Burroughs family's criminal empire on Bull Mountain. Two of the brothers were left dead, and Clayton, the youngest and only surviving member of the clan, is broken and haunted by wounds that may never heal. Just three months after the birth of her infant son, what should be the happiest days of her life soon become the darkest when Kate Burroughs realizes there is no one left to carry on the family's legacy, and the people of Bull Mountain are looking to her for leadership. And for good reason: The wolves are circling. One year ago, Kate survived the darkness that almost killed her husband, and she used that same darkness to avenge him. Now, in order to protect her home and preserve the birthright of the one true heir to the mountain-her infant son-Kate has to tap into that darkness again . . . but this time it would seem she's developing a taste for it.
Release date:
April 30, 2019
Publisher:
St. Martin's Publishing Group
Print pages:
320
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The Chute: Somewhere off the grid in the woods of North Georgia
Present day
The initial blast turned the front door of the infamous mountainside barn-turned-pool hall into an explosion of splinters and kindling, but the jam-packed, sweaty crowd inside didn’t seem to notice above the music. It was the second roar of buckshot that peppered the ceiling and shattered the disco ball that got their attention. The music scratched to a halt, and shards of mirrored glass, acoustic tiles, and plugs of pink cotton insulation rained down all over the dance floor. Gun smoke and drywall dust filled the bar with a dense blue fog, thick with the smell of cordite. Within seconds, the main lights popped on. A man decked out in black tactical clothing, with an over-stretched leg of tan pantyhose pulled over his face, racked the shotgun in his hands for a third time.
“All y’all sons of bitches get yer peckers on the floor, or I swear by God somebody’s liable to get one blowed off.”
A room full of statues gave him a collective blank stare, but the man appeared at ease, pleased to finally be the center of attention. “I’m not fuckin’ around here, people. The last one of you queer-baits left standing is gonna have a real bad day. Now stop staring at me all slack-jawed and drop.” The gunman made a sweeping motion with the barrel of his Mossberg toward the cement slab at his feet. The floor was slick with freshly spilled Jägermeister and stank of stale beer, but the patrons of the late-night hideaway began to understand what was happening, and as the smoke cleared, they started to drop, one by one, to their knees.
The bar was a ramshackle building that used to be an old marijuana dry-house. It was built on a cement slab, a simple stick-frame made of two-by-fours, Sheetrock, and plaster, and it made its reputation in the Blue Ridge Foothills for its complete disregard for the moral majority. In this region of North Georgia, the joint was a rare breed. The place also made buckets of cash on a nightly basis. The clientele of Tuten’s Chute, or just The Chute, as the locals knew it, were mostly a mixed bag of vagrants, deviants, curious college students, and fetish chasers from other parts of the state. They were the kind of folks who didn’t fit in at the more traditional whiskey bars found around Helen or Rabun County. They were the kind of folks most people didn’t care to know. The man with the gun moved farther into the club, as three more men with stocking-smeared faces, dressed in similar paramilitary clothing, filed into the bar behind him. All three of them moved in a practiced pattern as they flanked the crowd and spread over the wide-open dance floor, taking inventory of the club’s layout and its occupants. The main gunman bounced his stare from one set of eyes to another, waiting for a pair that would hold his own, until he found some.
“That one, right there,” the gunman said, pointing to a big hoss with an oversize shaved head. He was the only one who hadn’t dropped to his knees. Another gunman came up behind him and brought the butt of a rifle down hard between the man’s shoulder blades. The blow knocked the big boy to his knees.
“The man said get down, ya fuckin’ retard.”
The big man grunted like an animal as he fell, but quickly shook off the pain and began to get back up. A second hit from the man with the rifle stopped him, and this time he sprawled out across the floor on his belly. Everyone in the bar cringed in disbelief as the man with the large head began to get up a second time. The main gunman pressed the barrel of his Mossberg hard into the doughy flesh of the man’s neck and pushed his head back down flush to the floor.
“Stay down, Corky, or you’re gonna lose that big-ass melon.”
The man on the ground said something into the cement that no one could understand.
“Stay down, Nails.” There was a new voice in the room, and everyone’s heads turned toward the bar. Freddy Tuten, another tree trunk of a man, had emerged from a small office behind the bar. “Just do what the man says.”
“I’d listen to your girlfriend, Nails.”
The man on the floor did listen. He stopped moving and lay facedown on the cement. The man holding the shotgun lifted it from Nails’s neck and gave his attention to the man he’d come to see. Freddy Tuten was every bit of seventy years old, but he was built like a heavyweight boxer. The gunman only knew Freddy by reputation, but the rumors were true. He’d always heard Freddy was rarely seen wearing anything other than a pink taffeta bathrobe with a cursive letter T embroidered on it. The man with the shotgun didn’t believe any grown man in these mountains would be able to get away with dressing like that until now, because tonight was no exception. Freddy was dressed as described right down to the letter on his lapel. He even wore a light blue shade of eye shadow and bright bubblegum-pink lipstick. But as ridiculous as the old man might’ve looked, the gunman still knew he was a man not to be underestimated. The rumors also talked of Freddy’s weapon of choice—an aluminum baseball bat—and the things he’d been known to do to a man with it weren’t pretty. Freddy stood behind the bar holding that bat loosely with both hands. The three-foot tube of metal looked like it had seen just as many years as its owner, and by the dents and dings, they’d been hard years.
“Well, well, well,” the gunman said. “You must be the famous Freddy Tuten.”
“That’s right, and you must be the dumbest shit-bird this side of Bear Creek.”
Despite the flattened nose and the distorted swirl that the pantyhose made of the gunman’s face, it was clear to see he was smiling. Shotgun versus baseball bat inspired confidence. Rumors be damned. He lifted the Mossberg and pointed it square at Freddy. Tuten took one hand off the bat and pushed his shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair back behind one ear.
“I’d lower that scattergun if I was you, son.”
“That’s some big talk from a fella in a pink bathrobe. What if I just pull the trigger instead? You reckon that bat is gonna stop a load of buckshot?”
Tuten shook his head. “No, I suppose it won’t.” He tossed the bat onto the bar and it rolled off the outer edge, landing on the floor by Nails with an unremarkable thin tink. “I don’t think anything could save me, if that’s what you decide to do, but I can promise you this, pulling that trigger is the only option you got if you plan on leaving this county alive.”
The man with the gun laughed, but it sounded forced and hollow. He was done talking to this old buzzard. They came there for a reason and he needed to get to it. He knew better than to waste time talking. That’s what the old man wanted. The gunman turned, raised his voice, and addressed his men. “Curtis, you and Hutch zip-tie everyone on the floor like I told you. JoJo, you stand over there and watch this old fairy while he opens the safe. If he does anything other than what I tell him to do, blow his fucking head off.”
“Hell, yeah, I will,” JoJo said and trained his rifle on Tuten from the end of the bar.
The man in charge reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick fold of black plastic. A few of the people being hogtied on the floor flinched when he shook open the trash bag and laid it on the bar in front of Tuten. The old man looked more like a disappointed grandfather than an aging drag queen being robbed at gunpoint. He picked up the trash bag and shook his head again. “Stupid,” he said softly, and turned toward the back counter.
“How’s that, old man? What’d you say?”
“I said you’re stupid, boy. Stupid. I mean, you do realize that you just told everyone in here the names of all your buddies—Hutch, JoJo, Curtis. I mean, damn, son. How hard do you think I’m gonna have to work to hunt you fellas down now after all this nonsense is over?”
“Well, maybe that tells you how fuckin’ concerned we are about you and that pink robe of yours knowing who we are.” The gunman tried to sound hard, but Tuten knew he’d just put a little fear in him. He could smell it on him. His voice was shaky around the edges.
“It ain’t my fashion sense you need to be concerned about, dipshit. It’s who the money in that safe belongs to you need to worry about. Who do you think you’re robbin’ here, anyway?”
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