Something she’d said earlier surfaced and flicked a fin at me.
“Baby, who’s Jojo?” I asked her.
Kat yawned as she spooned against me.
“Jodie Hollister, that cheap slut Laurie’s kid sister; she’s sort of a friend, she told me how much fun a creamy facial was; she wasn’t joking! Oh! I almost forgot, I have something to tell you! Jojo’s pregnant, and guess who the father is?”
I had a funny feeling I already knew.
“Go on, surprise me!” I grinned.
“It’s that asshole Steve Dolan!” she grinned, and my grin got even wider; when the Hollister brothers, marines all, and three of Uncle Sam’s best trained killers, found out what Steve Dolan had been up to with their baby sister, his remaining time on earth was going to be measured in long, endlessly painful seconds, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy…
Kat yawned hugely, and reached back to give me a friendly squeeze.
“I’m bushed, I wonder why, you stud you!” she murmured,
I had just enough wit and energy left to reach up and cuddle her boobs, making her wriggle contentedly against me, and lean over to flick my alarm on, before Kat pulled the covers over us and snapped off the bedside lamp.
“Good night, baby, sleep tight!” she yawned again, nestling up against me and falling asleep almost immediately. I kissed her ear and hugged her, and next thing I knew my alarm was jarring me awake, but this time I felt refreshed, invigorated, at peace with myself at last.
Work that day was, for me, a time for reflection and weighing-up the consequences of my actions with Kat; I was absolutely sure I was in love with her, and her own statements regarding her feelings for me were unequivocal; she wanted me, and felt about me the way I felt about her. This being the case, I felt it would somehow cheapen our new-found relationship if we confined it to our house and kept it secret, like it was something to be ashamed of; I wasn’t ashamed of how I felt about Kat, and I knew she felt the same.
There was no question left in my mind; Sarah had to know, I loved my big sister with a deep and abiding intensity, after Kat she was the most important person in my life, and I wasn’t going to lie to her by keeping silent about us and what we had.
As soon as I made the decision I knew it was the right one; all feelings of guilt or apprehension dropped away; if Sally got angry, she got angry; she’d bite, but then she’d calm down, kiss it better, then put her agile mind and fine intellect to work to help us find a way forward.
I called home before I left the office to let Kat know we were going to see Sally, and arrived home in a state somewhere between apprehension and ‘root-canal day’, but not frightened, not of Sally, despite my panicked, knee-jerk reaction the day before yesterday. Kat was in something like the same state, a little apprehensive, but not scared, and so we drove the short distance to Bixby and Sally’s place.
When I pulled up outside, a burnt gold Firebird with the ‘Firebird’ emblem stencilled on the hood was parked carelessly across Sally’s drive. I knew of only one person in this town with a car like that, and my insides tightened as I wondered what he wanted with Sally. Kat saw me tense up, and grabbed my arm.
“Frankie, what’s the matter, who’s car is that?” she asked, her expression worried. I took her hand off my arm and stroked her cheek gently.
“Stay in the car, baby, something’s wrong, I think Sally needs me. Wait here baby, and lock the doors!”
Now Kat looked frightened, but she bit back any more questions and nodded agreement; good girl.
I slid out of the car and scooted around to the back of the house, avoiding the squeaky step up to the back porch, and slowly turned the handle of the back door. To my good fortune, the door was unlocked, and so I slipped inside, hearing voices coming from the family room. I tip-toed through the house, hearing a male voice; I was right, it was that cocksucker Steve Dolan, and it sounded to me like he was laying down the law to Sarah, the arrogant son of a bitch!
“I don’t care what you say, or who you tell, no-one in this town will listen to you, or lift a finger to help you, Sarah, and you want to know why? Because this is my town; my family built this place, and we own all the little nobodies here; we make the rules, and if they want to keep their jobs and feed their kids, they’ll keep looking the other way. I don’t care if your bastard son is mine or not; I’ll never acknowledge him, he means nothing to me, he’ll never get a penny out of me, and if you need money, you know how to earn it; the same way you earned that kid! I swear to God, if you try and make trouble for me, I have ways of making sure you lose that kid permanently! This is your only warning Sarah, so take heed!”
Even as my blood boiled at this, I looked into the family room to see Sally standing in front of Steve, her eyes flashing like polished gold-flecked granite.
“Who the hell do you think you are, you piece of shit?” she gritted, her chin lifted proudly. “My son and I want nothing from you and your stinking family! Why don’t you go drink yourself to death like your worthless bum of a father and leave decent folk to get the rancid stench of you out of their noses!”
Steve raised his hand, and at that moment Sarah saw me over his shoulder. Steve must have seen the change in her face, and as he turned, his face a mask of rage, I let him have one, a left hook that came from somewhere near my knees, all my anger and outrage in it, spinning him round and dropping him like he’d been pole-axed. As he went down my foot was already in motion, like a soccer player taking a penalty, connecting solidly with his ribs, apparently with enough force to break some, judging by the sudden look of agony on his face.
As he writhed on the floor, I stepped forward and hovered my foot over his throat, ready to stamp down; for the second time in my life I came close to murdering Steve Dolan, although in my mind it would have been justifiable germicide.
“No Frank!” screamed Sarah, the sound of her voice cutting through the fog of murderous rage and bringing me back to sanity. I looked at her and nodded, letting her know I was past it, and kicked that slimy bastard again, hard, this time in the groin, watching him curl up in agony all over again. I knelt down next to him and slapped him a few times to get his attention, (although what I really wanted to do was keep ramming his head against the floor until I split his fucking skull…) and twisted my hand in his collar to pull him up close enough for me to talk to him.
“Alright Dolan, you remember me, don’t you? I fucked you up once, and I warned you what would happen the next time you crossed me; now you’re out of chances, so next time your body disappears, you got it, you little puddle of piss? If you come near my family again, any of them, after I’ve kicked the shit out of you, I’m telling Jethro, Jonah, and Jeremiah Hollister just who it was who knocked-up their baby sister. You’d better pay real close attention to what I’m telling you; all I’d do to you is beat you into a fucking coma; they’ll strap you to a tree and shove a chainsaw up your ass, you know how they get when it comes to their sisters.”
His eyes widened in fear, with good reason; the three Hollister brothers were gung-ho, super-fit, hard, humorless, trained killers, just one hairsbreadth away from being certifiable psychopaths; they doted on their sisters and rigorously defended their good names, despite the fact that Laurie had more fingerprints on her ass than the FBI had in their files, and they hated Steve and his family with a vengeance, so he had good reason to avoid coming to their attention. I continued, filling him in on how to keep himself alive.
“This is your life from now on, you little sack of shit; you never show your face here again, you never contact Sally ever again, you forget this family ever existed, you stay on your side of town, and you pray to fucking Christ I never see your face or hear of you again, because if I do, you’re dog-meat, got it?”
I shook him for emphasis, watching his head loll like a drunk’s.
“You want to sic your fat fuck of a pet sheriff on me? Try it; the instant I see him or his dogshit deputies I drop a dime, and after the Hollister’s have finished using that moron as a bayonet dummy for what he’s been doing with Laurie, they’re gonna come find you, and they will find you, have no doubt about that. Anyone gets after Sarah or her baby, I drop that dime, and you get to beg Jeremiah Hollister to kill you quickly, understand? You’ve got no friends in this town, Stevie-boy, and plenty of folks who want to watch you strung up with bob-wire and hanged ’til you fucking strangle, so if you want to keep living and breathing you keep your head down, your mouth shut, and your face out of this part of town, are you hearing me, fucko?”
He nodded vigorously, his eyes darting around fearfully, just as I remembered them doing last time I beat the shit out of him, which told me he’d taken my lesson to heart, so I dragged him to his feet, ignoring his gasp of pain from his broken ribs, gave him a head butt to the bridge of his nose, and the knee to remind him just how serious I was, and to make him fear me all over again.
I marched him to the front door with his head held back to stop his spouting nose dripping on Sarah’s carpets, and kicked his ass down the porch steps, watching in satisfaction as he sprawled full length on the drive. A muted, whistling scream of agony burst from him as he jarred his busted ribs and re-broken nose, but he still managed to struggle to his feet and reel into his car. The Firebird wheeled away like all the devils in hell were after him; mind you, I’d rather have all the devils in hell after me than the Hollister triplets, because I wasn’t exaggerating about the chainsaw…
Sally was waiting for me back inside, hugging me as she trembled in reaction. I held her and patted her back, soothing her until she stopped shaking and I could get her to sit down.