Ben (The Sherwood)

Disa leaned over and whispered something to Merci who looked disappointed at what she had been told. Then she resumed eating. Lilah and Merci had gone from being prisoners of Ron Parson to prisoners at my brother’s cabin in the woods. There was little to do there.

I wondered how they were doing.

Heath’s conversation with Matt and AJ caught my attention. They were planning their next move. “Haven’t you hurt Parson enough?” I asked.

AJ shook his head no. “He has to know that he can’t strike us ever again like he did. Do you know what he lost in that explosion?” AJ asked.

“Justin, would you like to go into the living room with me and watch cartoons?” Lilah asked him. She was right, my young nephew shouldn’t be hearing this conversation. He trusted her. My brother’s eyes watched as she rose and took his son’s hand guiding him from the room.

I wanted to go with them. I didn’t want to know the criminal activity of Ron Parson. I had been trying to separate myself from him and kept getting pulled back into his web.

Before I could respond, AJ told me what I didn’t need to know.

One million dollars in heroin. Five hundred thousand in pot. An estimated three million in cash that he was waiting to clean. It was dirty money that he will have to repay, or Ron will have more trouble than the Hatfield’s raining down on him.

“How do you know this?” I asked.

“I know,” Heath responded. “He uses the children of the compound to carry drugs to the outside. No one suspects the children. They meet a target make the drop, go to the five and dime store and buy some candy. Then they return to the compound nobody is wiser.”

I shook my head and gazed at Disa. She didn’t know this. “He never asked me to take anything for him, anywhere.” She looked at Merci.

“I didn’t either.”

“What else do you know?” I asked looking to my brother to enlighten me on Ron Parson’s other acts since he and Heath had gotten started.

“The other Elders didn’t mind the money laundering. They don’t like the drugs coming in and out of the compound. They don’t like the children being used. They definitely wouldn’t mind Elder Ron disappearing or getting killed.”

I frowned. “Heath, you can’t.”

“Why not?” He asked. He was squinting at me. One finger tapped on the table. Had he gone so far into the dark that murdering a man meant nothing to him. This wasn’t war. This was murder.

I looked at Disa. Was I the crazy one?

“AJ? Matt?” I was seeking their input as some voice of reason besides my own.

“Ron has to be stopped,” Matt said.

“But not by us,” I informed him. “We aren’t criminals. What the hell has happened to you guys? Have you all turned into crazy, bitter assholes?”

Matt wouldn’t look at me. AJ was glaring at me and Heath met my gaze head on with a stone-cold stare. They were crazy fuckers. I was convinced of it now.

“You cannot do this,” I declared. “It is illegal to murder a man no matter what he has done. It is also immoral.” I threw in the granddad card. “We had a role model in our grandfather who set a standard of how we should live our lives. I for one regret not living up to that standard until now. Now, when he cannot see me trying to be a good man.”

Matt leaned his elbows on the table. “A lot of good it did me,” he said.

“Matt,” I shook my head sadly. “Man, you lost a wife. There is a difference between losing your woman and killing a man. Killing a man…you lose more than your heart, you lose your soul.”

He shoved away from the table. “I’m going to the living room with Justin.”

“And Lilah,” I reminded him. He flipped me off, the bastard.

I looked at the other two assholes sitting at the end of the table. “Well?”

“Well what?” AJ asked.

“Did nothing I said make any difference to you?”

I wanted them to say that it had. I wanted them to say that they wouldn’t go after Ron Parson. I wanted them to let Hawk deal with this man. I wanted him off the street more than anyone but not this way.