A Powerless World | Book 3 | Defend The Homestead Hunt, Jack (read my book TXT) 📖

run off, hide, do exactly as she said, but he was beyond that now.

“What did you say?”

“You heard me. I didn’t kill him.”

“I put you in charge. They were your responsibility.”

“Oh, screw you. Lincoln was a grown-ass man. He knew the dangers. I can’t watch them any more than you can. So go ahead, blame me, but in doing so blame yourself. You sent us.”

She went to slap him a second time, but he grabbed her wrist. It was unheard of. No one did that in their family. “Don’t do that again,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Or what? Are you going to kill me, Jessie? Hmm?”

“Don’t tempt me.”

She pulled her wrist free and charged off into the house without saying another word. Jessie remained on the ATV. He wanted to stay, he wanted to remain there to defy her but he couldn’t. He fired up the engine.

Dylan lifted a hand. “Jessie. Come on, man.”

He never said a word as he turned the ATV around and peeled off into the night, his mind circling between those final moments in Trinity County, and the look in his mother’s eyes. He wasn’t sure what was worse, losing Lincoln or losing his mother’s trust.

Chapter Seven

The rain fell heavy and steady that evening as Nina curled up under multiple warm blankets inside a queen bed. The room was dark barring a small hand-crank lantern in one corner. The home belonged to the Braithwaite family, locals to Eureka, friends of the Stricklands. They, like many others, had headed off to the FEMA camp south of the city but before leaving they’d offered their three-bedroom home to be used by the Stricklands if and when needed.

When she got word of it, she snapped it up in a New York minute.

With a baby on the way, she had wanted a space of her own, somewhere in the heart of Eureka where she knew cops were still patrolling. Somewhere relatively safe. Garberville was too small, too confined, and with county law enforcement spread thin, it made her feel unsafe. Of course, there were other options but they were also problems — the Stricklands weren’t without properties and any one of her cousins would have let her stay with them, but it was more than that. It was Jessie. It was the murders. It was her uncle’s overbearing ways. The constant breathing down her neck. It had all gotten under her skin. Hank had been by earlier that day to ask her to head up to the hills with the rest of them but she’d refused.

Withdrawing all the family only meant trouble and she’d had her fill of it. She had a baby to think about, a future, and nothing, and no one was going to screw that up.

Laying in the silence, she stared over at the revolver on the table, and the .22 rifle leaning in a corner of the room. With all the looting and home invasions, she knew the dangers of living alone but she hadn’t planned on being alone. Her conversation with Jessie was meant to bring them closer together. He was meant to be here by her side.

He wasn’t and it hurt deeply.

She thought he was better than that.

So, because she didn’t want to live alone, her cousin Helen had opted to move in with her. That was until Hank showed up bellowing about running for the hills. Unlike her, Helen wasn’t one to stand up to him, and she sure as hell wouldn’t go against her family. She’d taken her things that morning, leaving her alone.

And she felt it.

The house creaked as the cold worked its way into the ocean-green wooden siding on the outside of the house. Like nails tapping on the ground, the rain beat out a rhythm on the tin roof. She’d close her eyes, drifting off only to hear a sound that would make her heart beat fast. Twice she’d reached for the revolver. Once she nearly shot a round through the door, thinking that someone was walking toward her bedroom.

Hank called her stubborn. Told her that if she was his kid, he would have made sure she toed the line. He blamed her father but that was bullshit, she was old enough to live alone and old enough to make her own decisions.

For years, she’d worked in her father’s business, selling power equipment to towns throughout northern California. She’d always paid her own way. No, what Hank didn’t like was that her father had walked the straight and narrow. He’d gotten sober. Five years inside changed a man. It had made him think very differently about the path his parents had chosen, the path that Hank was on.

Nina ground her teeth.

Hank had screwed all of that up the first chance he managed to get her father back on liquor. It was a vicious cycle. They should have never returned to Humboldt.

A knock on the window and Nina whirled around with the revolver in hand. The curtains were drawn so she couldn’t see who was outside but that was definitely a knock.

She froze, hand out, barrel facing the window.

Another knock.

“You better get out of here. I’ve got a weapon. I’m not afraid to use it.”

“Nina. It’s me. Jessie.”

Nina frowned. “Jessie?”

She pulled back the covers, picked up the lantern and crossed the room in her bare feet, and peered out. Sure enough, it was him. He looked like a drowned rat. Rain trickling down his skin. Shivering. She lifted the window. “What is it?”

“Can I come in?”

He looked distraught. Not his usual self.

There was a moment of hesitation. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to open up that window of pain again. It had taken her almost a month to deal with his words.

“Sure. Go around the front.”

“What about Helen?”

“She’s not here.”

“Probably best no one sees me enter,” he said. He looked down the alley for a second then hoisted himself up and in through the window. She pulled him in, shaking her head. He was soaked to the