by Penny Dee
Cade wasn’t in the bar. And he wasn’t in the kitchen or the meeting rooms either, so I made my way past the showcase corridor and headed toward his bedroom. The door was closed, which wasn’t unusual, but as I stepped up to it, I felt an overpowering sense of foreboding wash over me. Shoving it aside, I pushed the door open and came to a stunned halt.
Seeing the honey-blonde sprawled naked on the bed was like electric shock therapy zipping through my brain. She was tangled amongst the sheets—sheets that were messed up by some seriously active lovemaking by the looks of them.
In that instant, my heart obliterated like confetti.
It was like all the air left the room and I couldn’t breathe.
No.
Please, no.
The years peeled away, and suddenly I was eighteen years old again, walking into this very room, and finding the love of my life in bed with another woman.
But this time he wasn’t in bed with her.
This time he was walking into the room from the small bathroom, fresh from the shower and securing a towel around his waist.
When he looked up and saw me, he paused. His beautiful mouth parted, but then closed again. He wasn’t even going to try and deny it. And why would he? It was quite obvious what had happened in this room.
“No.” Was the only word my grief-soaked brain could form.
Cade didn’t even offer me anything. He just stared at me, raising his arms slightly before letting them drop at his side.
A bomb of agony detonated inside of me, blowing me apart. A thousand broken promises rushed at me, the splinters twisting my insides into a tight coil until they burned with the pain of his betrayal and I could no longer breathe. I stormed toward him and slapped him so hard across the face his head whipped to the side and my hand stung. He didn’t move. Didn’t fight me. So, I slapped him again. And again he didn’t move. His jaw tightened and flinched, and his teeth gritted with the pain. But still he said nothing.
“What?” I screamed at him. “You’re just going to stand there and watch me break?”
I smashed my fist into his chest.
“Why? Why?” I cried. And I pounded him in the chest again. Asking him for a good reason. Asking him who he was. Because my broken heart was begging me to find out why he had done this to us. She needed a good reason so she could at least process it while she slowly pieced herself back together again.
But then my agony overwhelmed me and the cold ache in my throat made it impossible for me to speak anymore.
I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t be in the same room as him and her. I didn’t know how I was going to survive his betrayal, but I knew that surviving it started outside of this room. So I stepped back, tears streaming down my face, and stared at him. I wanted to sear his face into my memory, because when I walked away from him, it would be forever.
And then I fled.
Only then did he react. I felt the rush of energy behind me, heard him call my name as I ran through the corridors of the clubhouse, but I didn’t stop, I kept running, blindly, until I ran straight into Caleb’s broad chest.
“Hey, whoa!” he said, grabbing my arms. “What’s wrong?”
“Let me go!” I screamed at him. And acting on instinct, I slammed my foot down on his boot so he would let me go because no one was going to stop me from fleeing the clubhouse.
“Hold up!” He came after me, but I didn’t listen, I kept running, pushing through the doors and bursting into the afternoon sunlight.
I knew Cade’s car would have the keys in it, so I ran straight to it and climbed in. Just as I’d thought, the keys were in the sun visor. They dropped into my hand and I shoved them into the ignition, and then gunned out of the MC compound, narrowly missing Cade and Caleb as they ran out of the clubhouse just in time to see me flee.
Out on the street, I didn’t fare much different. After nearly running into a streetlight because I was blinded by my tears and crazed by my emotions, I pulled over. I needed to collect my thoughts. I had just committed assault and grand theft auto. But fuck it. I had just caught my lying, cheating husband in bed with another woman.
A tornado swirled in my mind and I couldn’t stop my brain from rehashing walking in and seeing the gorgeous blonde in his bed. I gripped the steering wheel and squeezed my eyes shut with the pain. Random conversations and memories rushed at me. He had fought so hard for me. He had me in his every breath, in every beat of his heart, in every thought. Last night he had tenderly and lovingly made love to me, moaning into my neck about how much he loved me.
Seriously, it made no sense at all.
“I’m so in love with you.”
He had pursued me with ferocious ambition only months ago when I’d came back for my father’s funeral. He loved me like no man could ever love a woman unless he worshipped her with every beat of his heart. How could he just throw it away as easy as he did? I just didn’t get it.
“I’m all yours. All of me. Forever.”
He had really said that…
I played with the crown pendant around my neck. I was his queen. He was my king.
Why could he just throw it away?
He would have known I would catch him…leave him…
I looked up.
Fuck. Me.
My breathing evened out and I exhaled angrily. My hands squeezed tighter on the steering wheel until I was white-knuckled.
I’d been had.
CADE
It took every ounce of my being to not react. My heart was already broken, but as I watched her burn with heartache in front of me, it broke all over again. I longed to take her in my arms, to kiss away her tears, to gather up her broken heart and piece it back together again. To tell her it wasn’t true. To tell her that I loved her, and her only. That I didn’t want or need another woman. Ever. But to keep her safe, I had to break my heart and then break hers.
But then she tore out of the clubhouse and away from the compound before I could stop her, and my plan began to unravel. It put her in harm’s way, which was the very thing I was trying to protect her from. Without a security detail. Without me or the club to protect her. She was in danger. I shredded out of the compound on my bike. She hated me and didn’t want me around her, but I had to make sure she was safe while she was leaving me. I didn’t have to go far. A couple of streets away, she was pulled over on the side of the road and I could see her sitting in the driver’s seat, her hands gripping the steering wheel, her eyes squeezed shut. I pulled up in front of her. She saw me and climbed out, and stormed up the sidewalk towards me, her face tight with fierce determination. When she reached me, she lunged at me shoved me in the chest.
“You didn’t lay one hand on that girl!” she yelled. And then she shoved me in the chest again. Hard. “You asshole. You set me up!”
I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. The relief that ran through me was inebriating.
“Stop being an asshole!” she cried, shoving me again. “I know why you did it. You think you’re protecting me. You’re worried something is going to happen to me. So you make me believe you did something unforgivable so I will leave. I get it.”
“Indy—”
“Stop!” Her hands fisted at her side. “This is my choice. Don’t you get it? You’re worried about me. But I’m just as worried about you. Stop treating me like I’m so damn fragile. I’m not delicate! I’m your queen. Let me stand next to my king.”
“I need you to be safe,” I said, desperately.
She shook her head. “You don’t get to do that, Cade. You don’t get to decide what I need and then act on it without my input.”
I ran my hands up the length of her arms. “I need you to be safe. If anything happened to you—”
“Nothing is going to happen to me,” she yelled.
I let her go. “You don’t know that. I can’t risk it. You need to go back to Seattle. Someone is out to destroy us, and until the club gets this thing figured out, we’re all in danger.”
“T
hen we’re all in danger together, Cade. I’m not leaving.” She looked me in the eye, her brown eyes fierce. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you fucked her and I will leave.”
I could lie.
I could tell her that I fucked Sandy. But in that moment, I knew it was a lost battle.
“I didn’t touch her. But, Indy—”
“Shhhhh…” She stepped closer and placed a finger across my lips. Then she kissed me and my body weakened against the touch of her mouth on mine.
“Come back to the clubhouse,” I breathed, holding her tightly against me.
She looked up at me, and slowly, she nodded.
CADE
The plan was to get her to leave me. To get her as far away from here as possible. But fuck my plan. Fuck pushing her away. Fuck everything. When I thought she was gone for good, and knowing she hated me, it was torture.
Pure fucking torture.
So I locked the door and spent the day in bed with my girl. Holding her. Loving her. Making her come time and time again, because God knows I was so damn addicted to her I just couldn’t stop making love to her.
When the pounding came on my door, the interruption couldn’t have been more badly timed. Just as the taut tension in my belly uncoiled and released an explosive euphoria through my body and out of my cock, a violent pounding rattled on my bedroom door.
Waiting for the pleasure to recede, I growled and collapsed against Indy.
“Go away!” I barked.
But the door vibrated with another round of knocking.
“Get out here, brother,” Caleb called from the other side of the wall.
Indy squirmed beneath me and grabbed the bed sheet to cover her nakedness. Reluctantly, I climbed off the bed and put on my boxers, opening the door and coming face to face with my brother’s anguished face.
“What?”
“They’ve found a body out by the water tower.” Caleb’s eyes were dark, uneasy. “It might be Freebird.”
I didn’t need to say anything. Indy was coming with me if I liked it or not.
“Do you think it’s Freebird?” she asked as we drove toward the water tower in her new SUV.
“There’s a good chance. Buckman said the body had been there for a while, so identifying him by sight wasn’t an option. But they could see it was an adult male with long, dark hair.”
After Caleb told me about the discovery of the body, I rang Buckman. We paid money so we could make these types of phone calls. And because money passed over the table to the medical examiner’s office in the guise of generous donations, it meant that when we turned up at the crime scene, Zachariah Sumstad wasn’t going to turn us away. As long as we respected the rules of crime scene contamination, of course.
The Destiny water tower was on the edge of town, at the junction of two watermelon fields known as No Man’s Land. For as far as the eye could see, the beautiful landscape stretched onwards, the dark green fields a stark contrast to the vibrant blue of the sky. It used to be a popular hangout for local teens, they’d come out here to climb the tower and drink their beers and smoke their joints. The view from the top was incredible. It swept past the Destiny borders and out toward the fringes of Humphrey. But after a girl fell to her death a few years earlier, the access via the stairs had been blocked.
When we arrived, Buckman greeted us. Over his shoulder, I saw forensic technicians dressed in dark blue jumpsuits crawling over the crime scene. It was a hot afternoon and the air was ripe, and it was obviously getting to Buckman because he had a handkerchief over his nose.
When Bull and Caleb pulled up, they joined us.
“Who found the body?” Bull asked.
“A county worker performing a monthly check of the water tower. Said he could smell it as soon as he stepped out of the van.”
The smell was violent, and after a few minutes of shifting on her feet, Indy rushed away to throw up.
“Is it Freebird?” I asked, turning to watch Indy as I spoke.
“We won’t know until the autopsy.”
“Any visible signs of trauma?” I turned back to look at him.
“Sumstad said the head has suffered a lot of wildlife damage.” Even with the handkerchief covering half his face, I could tell he was grimacing. “He thinks they were attracted to the blood and tissue.”
“Any idea how long the body has been here?” Bull asked.
“It’s only a preliminary guess,” said Sumstad. He was climbing out of the ditch, walking toward us. “But judging by the rate of decomposition, I’d say he’s been out here two weeks.”
Irish had been dead two weeks.
“You think he came out here and committed suicide by jumping off the water tower?” Bull asked.
“It’s certainly been made to look that way,” Sumstad said.
“Made to look that way?” I glanced over at Indy. She was vomiting again.
“The placement of the body. The head trauma. It mirrors a fall. But he didn’t throw himself off that tower. He was beaten to death.”
“You sure?” Buckman asked.
“As serious as a heart attack, Sheriff.” Sumstad glanced over at the body in the ditch. It was bloated and black. “This wasn’t an accident or a suicide. It was homicide.”
I walked over to where Indy was leaning up against the car.
“Are you okay, angel?” I asked, gently rubbing the small of her back.
She exhaled deeply but nodded. “I’m fine. It’s just . . . hot.”
I put my arm around her. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”
She paused. “Is it Freebird?”
I shook my head. “We don’t know yet.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but instead of saying anything, she rushed around to the side of the car and dry heaved.
“That’s it, I’m getting you home.”
“No, I’m fine.” She glanced over at the remains in the ditch. “It’s the smell. And the fact that we both know that it’s Freebird lying over there.”
I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her against my chest, my fingers caressing her shoulders.
She was right.
I had no doubt it was Freebird. He’d been beaten and left there to rot in the hot Mississippi sun.
Just like Irish, this wasn’t suicide. It was murder.
I kissed the top of Indy’s head and tried to fight of the real sense of panic knowing that Freebird wouldn’t be the last to be taken out.
INDY
The following morning I met up with Tex’s widow, Dahlia, at the Miller Self-Storage facility just out of town. I had promised her that I would help her clear out Tex’s storage shed. Thankfully, I was feeling better than I had been for the last few days. The long hours at work, combined with the long nights in bed with Cade, were taking their toll and I was prone to bouts of fatigue and nausea.
I took one of the club’s communal pickup trucks so we could easily shift things to either Dahlia’s home or the rubbish dump. Cade had appointed Tully and the prospect to tail me for the day, and even though I didn’t like it, I understood and accepted the need for protection. It wasn’t so bad—two big bikers would come in handy when it came to moving the big stuff out of the storage shed.
Tex was a hoarder and Dahlia couldn’t stand it. That was why he had a storage shed. She hadn’t wanted to clutter their home with all the things he wanted to keep. These included things like old bike parts, mementos from his youth like his old football jerseys and helmets, suitcases full of old clothes, and personal papers. He even had three big boxes of random jars.
I looked at Dahlia. “Jars?”
She chuckled. “Crazy fool loved collecting jars.”
“Really?”
She nodded and threw the stack of magazines in her arms into the back of the pickup. Once beside me, she picked out a few of the jars in the box. “Coffee jars. Jelly jars. Odd, weird-ass-looking jars. You name it. He had a hard-on for jars.” Her eyes filled with sadness. “He was a weirdo. But he was my w
eirdo.”
My heart ached for her. Dahlia was strong. But she was hurting like crazy.
“Do you want to keep them?” I asked.
She thought for a moment and then dropped the jars back into the box. There was the sound of glass breaking, then, without a word, she picked up one of the boxes and threw it into the back of the pickup. She turned to me, squinting in the sun.
“Honey, if I’m to move forward without Tex, then I need to start over now. Ain’t no point taking anymore baggage with me.”
And with that, she walked back into the storage shed.
I threw the two other boxes of jars into the pickup and then set about opening a smaller box that was carefully stored under an old desk. Inside it was a bunch of photo albums and what looked like a scrapbook of some kind.
I knew Dahlia would want to keep the photographs. Or, at least, look through them first. So, I opened up the scrapbook and lost the next ten minutes in club history.
The scrapbook was old, dusty, its pages yellow, the photographs and old newspaper clippings all dog-eared and crinkled. There were clippings dating back thirty years, when Tex had first joined the club. There were articles about fundraising rides and charity barbecues, articles about the crack down on motorcycle clubs in the area during the reign of Destiny’s toughest mayor back in the ’80s. There were wedding announcements, even one about my parents’ marriage, and of course, several clippings about the West Destiny High School shooting.
But the article that really caught my eye was one I almost missed. It was snagged on some old photo glue on the plastic page cover and had folded over. I opened it gently so I didn’t tear it and started to read.
“Girl Jumps To Death From Water Tower”
Destiny police are investigating the death of eighteen-year-old Talia Bennett who was found dead at the base of a water tower in the suburb of Clayton. It is believed, Talia slipped and fell from the tower in the early hours of this morning and was killed instantly. While there were no witnesses to the death, guests at a party at the nearby clubhouse of The Kings of Mayhem Motorcycle Club, say Talia had been drinking and socializing at the party before her death.