But from his father, a still-handsome but aging, beer-bellied man who’d scowl at an old lady for getting in his way in a grocery store, Joker retreated.

This troubled me for obvious reasons.

But mostly because what just happened proved my biker was not good, as he said he was.

He was not good at all.

And that was very, very troubling.

* * *

“Yeah?”

“Linus, it’s Carrie.”

“Carrie, darlin’, what’s up?” Linus asked through the phone at my ear.

I was hiding in the bathroom.

This was immature and possibly hazardous, considering why I was doing it and the fact that Joker might get angry about it.

But I was doing it.

I’d also filched Joker’s phone to get Linus’s number. I had Kam’s and Mrs. Heely’s.

But this had to be Linus.

“Can you talk for a second, Linus?” I asked back.

“Sure,” he said, but that one word was cautious.

I drew in breath.

Then I did what I had to do.

This being whispering, “How bad was it?”

“Sorry, darlin’?” he asked.

“Carson’s father,” I kept whispering. “How bad was it?”

There was a pause before he asked, “Is Car okay?”

“Tonight, we saw his dad.”

“Fuck,” Linus muttered.

“He, well… Linus, he… ran away,” I shared, guilt plaguing me that I gave Joker’s friend that weakness, but something stronger was driving me onward. “My Carson… my Joker isn’t about that.”

“No,” Linus bit off.

“I saw the cigarette burns,” I confided.

“Yeah, Mrs. Heely told me about that,” he replied immediately. “She saw ’em too when Car was eight.”

Oh no.

Eight?

“Before my time,” Linus carried on. “But she told me about ’em. She also told Social Services about ’em. No clue how that motherfucker got off on that one. Just know he did and the burns stopped.”

Eight.

He got those burns when he was eight.

I didn’t want to ask what I had to ask.

But I asked because it had to be asked.

“What else?”

“He talk to you about this at all?” Linus queried in return.

“He doesn’t hide it,” I told him. “He speaks freely of it. You’d think he was what he wants me to believe, over it. But when I saw the burns, he tried to hide it, pull away, pass it off. I… well, I don’t know how to broach it or even if I should, since he’s convinced himself he’s beyond it.” I paused and shared softly, “He’s not beyond it, Linus.”

“Lotsa ways to fuck up a kid, and Jefferson Steele did ’em all,” Linus declared.

My chest depressed.

Linus kept speaking.