I had too much on my mind. I couldn’t currently ponder the shade of Cletus’s gray morals at present, especially since I was relying on them to help my mother.
He took off, heading toward the Foothills Parkway. We passed it and kept going. I bit my lip, chewed on it. Then I chewed on my thumbnail, watching the silhouettes of dark trees speed by against a starry sky. I wasn’t in the mood to talk, and it seemed like he wasn’t either.
I don’t know how long we drove, it felt like hours, but I knew it couldn’t have been longer than thirty minutes. At one point, Cletus pulled into a convenience store attached to a gas station, said he’d be right back, and walked into the shop.
Five minutes later he returned, holding a piece of paper. “These are the directions. You read them and tell me where to go.”
The directions looked like chicken scratch on receipt paper but, miraculously, they worked. Off one of the switchbacks, we pulled up to a fence with a keypad requiring a code. I read Cletus the five numbers at the bottom of the receipt paper and a motorized gate swung open, revealing a ranch house built into the slope side of a mountain. No porch to speak of off the front, but a nice circular driveway for plenty of cars. Or motorcycles.
“Do we . . . wait here? Or go inside?” I asked once Cletus had cut the truck’s engine, positioning it at the end of the circle.
He made a small sound, it sounded frustrated. “I don’t like this. I don’t like the gate, and I don’t like that if someone decides to park in front of me, I’d have to drive over them in order to leave. I don’t like it.”
“What do you want to do?”
“We have a little while. Let’s drive up the road and see if we can park somewhere else. Then we can walk back, check out the fence, the perimeter, assess points of exit and entry besides the gate.”
“You don’t trust Mr. Repo?” I studied him. Even in profile, I could see he’d twisted his lips as though in deep thought.
“I don’t trust anyone. Except you.” He started up the engine again and we did as he’d described, parked a little ways up the road, able to mostly hide the car at a scenic pull-off.
But as we walked back, something about his last statement nagged at me. Walking along the road in our tactical gear, I asked, “If you don’t trust Mr. Repo, should we allow my momma to go with him? I mean, if it comes to that?”
Cletus hemmed and hawed—as much as Cletus Winston was capable of hemming and hawing—and kept his eyes forward as he answered, “It’s not up to me whether your momma goes with Repo or not. It’s up to your momma.”
“Yes, but if you know something about him, about his past that might change the way my mother feels about him, you should tell her. She shouldn’t be running off with someone she doesn’t really know.”
“I am not aware of the extent to which Repo has shared his past with Diane. On that, I haven’t been briefed.”
“Maybe you could make a list of what you do know about him?”
He slid me a side-eye. “Jenn.”
We’d made it to the corner of the fence and instead of continuing on the road side of it, Cletus walked into the woods and along the perpendicular side. “Cletus, this is my mother. I don’t want her going on the run with someone who will mistreat her. If you know something about him that might impact her willingness to leave with him, you have to say so.”
Cletus halted at the end of the fencing. It didn’t terminate at the slope, but instead at several tens of feet before it, allowing us to walk directly onto the property without using the gate. “I don’t know anything about Repo that will lessen your mother’s opinion of him, unless she doesn’t already know he’s an Iron Wraith.”
He thought he was so clever in his choice of words, but I could read between the lines he drew. “Does that mean you know something about Mr. Repo that will improve my mother’s opinion of him? You know something good?”
“I know a few things. It’s up to each person to decide if they’re good or not.”
“But you think they’re good?”
“I think they make him an unusual person.”
“In a good way?”
He turned to me as soon as we reached the boundary of the circular driveway, bringing us to a stop. “I know he’s the money man for the Iron Wraiths and has been for over twenty years. I know he keeps the organization out of human trafficking, and he’s the only reason why they haven’t dabbled in it as of yet. I know he doesn’t allow underage persons in the Dragon, and if a member is caught with a girl under eighteen, they’re branded. If they’re caught with a girl under the age of sixteen, they’re—uh—hurt badly and kicked out.”
I clutched my throat. “Branded?”
“Yes. Branded. But between you and me, I still think they get off easy.”
“Branded with what?”
“With a branding iron he picked up in Texas during his time there.”
“W-what is the brand?”
“It’s a huge ‘I,’ or a Roman numeral ‘1,’ about six inches in length and one inch wide. Each time they’re caught, they get a brand on their lower back. After three times, he brands their—” Cletus made a face, gesturing to his front pants area “—equipment.”
“Oh my goodness.”
“Yep. I’ve been told equipment doesn’t work right after being branded.” If I wasn’t mistaken, Cletus grimaced as he said this.
“That’s . . .” I didn’t know what that was.
“Point is, no one breaks the rules. Repo is a man who keeps his word. In the last twenty years, he’s made the Wraiths rich and powerful. He’s not afraid to fight and he’s tough as a badger, he’s smart and wily, he’s loyal. But he’s also a bad man who encourages other men to do bad things for profit.”
“And we’re trusting him with my mother.”
Cletus took my hand again, guiding me behind an overgrown Lynwood Gold Forsythia, hiding us from view should anyone enter through the gate. “We are not trusting Repo. We are trusting your mother to have good judgment about her own future.”
“How is that different than trusting him? Maybe he’s misleading her.”
Cletus inspected me, long and hard, before saying quietly, “For what it’s worth, I do not think he is.”
“Why? What makes you say so?”
“Repo is leaving the Wraiths for her.”
“So?”
“So, for a man with no family, no home, a man who has spent twenty years with the same club, gone to jail for his brothers, fought for them, devoted his life to them, that’s a lot.”
I chewed on that, staring at Cletus and the sobriety of his features. I then searched within myself. Obviously, I would never join a motorcycle club. For one thing, they didn’t accept females as members typically. For another, the life itself—as described by others—disgusted me on many levels. I then thought about my brother and the choices he’d made. He’d chosen them to be his family, over me, over my mother. He’d chosen them.
“Mr. Repo has no family?” I brought Cletus back into focus. I could see him well enough under the full moon and bright stars.