Twisted Hearts

by Keta Kendric

  After a pause, I spoke quickly. “I’ll come down in the morning to sign my paperwork. Thank you.” I hung up before the woman started another speech because I had much more concerning things to think about than ending my lease early.

  8 Aaron

  Sleep eluded me. My mind kept telling me that I was on to something. This was the same anxious sensation that rode my bones when I tracked down people for the MC. It was like my body knew I was close to something or on the right trail.

  I glanced at my watch that showed 2:05 a.m. It was the perfect time for me to go back to those centers and see what Beverly Hudson and Laura Parker were hiding.

  In all black, I crept to my truck and headed toward the centers. There may as well have been a damn block party going on outside the center Beverly worked at. Teens, young adults, grown ass men and women, and even stray cats and dogs, all mingled.

  The earsplitting sound of loud music booming from the interior of cars that likely cost more than houses, filled the air as weed, alcohol, and all manner of illegal substances were being passed around.

  Although the streets were alive with the sound of young heartbreak and the start of many nightmares, the center Beverly worked at was pitch dark on the inside and locked down. I pulled my cap low over my eyes as I searched for a spot to turn around without hitting anyone.

  The crowd was so amped up that groups and individuals danced and shouted over each other as some couples appeared to be one grind away from needing a condom.

  I managed to turn my truck around without calling attention to the fact that I didn’t fit in, not that some of them would have noticed me in the drug and alcohol induced state they were in.

  As I left the scene in my rearview, I observed my surroundings with a keen eye to figure out the best way of getting into the center. My brakes squeaked as I slowed my truck to get a better look at a tight dark alley about half a mile away from the gathering. The alley was wedged between a heavily barred pawn shop and a restaurant with a lopsided sign on the front that read, Henry’s. The dark smelly alley lined with overflowing dumpsters was the perfect spot for me to park my truck.

  With nothing but a few tools and a small Maglite flashlight, which at the highest setting could outshine a headlight, I traveled back towards the noise of the crowd. To avoid being spotted by anyone, I ducked into a dark dusty alley a few buildings away from the center and hopped a fence to gain access to the center’s back door.

  A tethered wooden fence with missing sections and rotted wood separated the back of the center from the backyards of residences that I prayed didn’t have dogs running loose.

  When I’d visited the center earlier, I noticed the locks were deadbolt, which was good news for me. Bricks, bars, heavy locks, and alarm systems were not going to keep me out of a place if I wanted in. The military had dropped us in some of the most vicious places imaginable, so we’d had to do whatever was necessary to survive. I’d became a professional burglar, an arsonist, a hitman, and even a fucking carpenter when it was necessary.

  With a small tension wrench and a lock pick, I made quick work of getting the deadbolt on the back door open as my flashlight sat between my lips. D had taken care of the toughest job. He’d hacked into the security company’s database and gotten me the four-digit alarm code, otherwise I would have had to find and cut the alarm feed. I eased the door open and close it behind me as the alarm chirped with each passing second. After I entered the code, it gave a final double-chirp before going silent.

  A half-hour search of Beverly’s small office hadn’t turned up a damn thing. I woke D up, so he could talk me through hacking into her computer and emails, but the search ended in disappointment. Beverly’s emails were clean from what I could tell.

  Praying I would have better luck at my next stop, I left the center the same as I’d entered it, resetting the alarm and securing the lock to the back door.

  The area outside the center Laura worked at was in direct contrast to the scene I’d just left. The streets were deserted, and darkness enveloped the neighborhood, giving it an eerily skin-scratching vibe like danger lurked just out of sight. I drove passed the center to find a place to park before creeping back to the building.

  The sign outside the glass on the front door of Laura Parker’s building said the center didn’t open until seven o’clock. Since it was a little after five, I was going to have to make this search a quick one to avoid early arrivals.

  Laura’s office was as clean as Beverly’s, but going through Laura’s emails brought a smile to my face and had D chuckling on the other end of the line. The email files she hadn’t cleared from her trash looked suspicious. When I started to read them, my jackpot radar went off.

  One of her oldest, trashed emails confirmed that she’d been having an ongoing conversation with someone named Kelli Hunter about pretending to be the Jefferson Rehab facility. This was the same facility that Megan had claimed her sister was in and D discovered had no information about Megan or her sister, Jennifer. How many fucking aliases did Megan have? How many lies had she covered up?

  Laura had likely been the woman my father had talked to who’d provided Megan’s alibi about her sister being in rehab. Why lie? What did Megan get out of infiltrating our MC? Why would someone knowingly place themselves in that much danger and not get anything out of it?

  Her plan had undoubtedly been to get into our MC. What I couldn’t fucking understand was why? I didn’t know what piece of the puzzle I was missing. She hadn’t outed us to the cops. Hell, she couldn’t. She’d killed someone too.

  It came to me like a flash of lightning had driven the idea into my brain. Research! Or could it have been for some type of sick fetish or gratification on her part? The crazy-ass woman had concocted this elaborate plan to infiltrate our MC to get firsthand knowledge of the internal workings and illegal activities of an MC such as ours. No!

  My mind refused to believe that it was what Megan had been after. Knowledge? However, after we’d killed three men in my kitchen, she’d started talking about getting exclusives and writing and shit. Therefore, she could very well have pulled off this entire scheme in the name of research. The idea blew my mind wide open.

  She’d even gotten to experience some of our most sinful activities, participating in murder and burying bodies. We’d even had hot sex, with dead bodies as our audience. That’s why she wasn’t the least bit shaken by the three dead men that we’d killed in my kitchen.

  Megan was a damn sociopath. More of Laura’s emails supported my suspicions that the Megan I knew was the same person who had killed her entire foster family when she was fourteen.

  “Fuck!” My fist came down on the desk in an angry outburst of rage.

  The bitch was crazy, so why the fuck did I still want to find her so badly? The sensible part of my brain urged me to stay as far away from Megan’s crazy ass as possible. From the sounds of it, she likely had more skeletons than I did.

  I started to speculate. How many other times had Megan done this? How many other organizations had she infiltrated in the name of research? How many people had she tricked to satisfy her sick dangerous fetish? I believed the family she killed had really done a number on her mental state.

  Time was running out, and D and I were only halfway through Laura’s trashed emails. One of the emails asked Kelli about the weather, about if it was truly the Sunshine State as people said. The email was dated four days prior to my arrival in Texas.

  At this point, I closed my eyes as my anger started to boil. There was only one place that I knew of that was referred to as the “Sunshine State.” Megan was right there in Florida. She’d been right under my fucking nose the entire time.

  “D, can you check for Lacey Daniels, Kelli Hunter, or Megan Jones in Florida and see if these emails link back to any specific place in Florida?”

  “I’m already on it,” D answered.

  Seven hours later and after some much-needed sleep, D called me back. Hearing the hint of excitement in
his voice was a good sign.

  “I could only narrow the IP address to an area called Wavy Palms, but one of the emails mentioned something about Kelly shipping a MailEx package. Maybe you can see if you can get any information from one of the MailEx workers at the Wavy Palms location. Try a female employee, Knox. You have a way with them.”

  D laughed, causing a smile to creep across my lips. He and the rest of my old military squad had always teased me about the way some women reacted to me. My smile deepened and turned into a sinister grin when I thought about the lead D had just handed me.

  I had no idea how D did the shit that he did, but as soon as I got back to my safe, I intended to send him a package to show how much I appreciated his help. After I plugged the Wavy Palm’s MailEx office into my GPS, I showered and prepared to get back on the highway to continue my hunt for Megan.

  Hopefully, she was still in Florida. When I found her, I had no idea what I was going to do to her because uncovering her secrets had only heightened my anger towards her. She’d landed herself in my danger zone, and that was not a place she wanted to be.

  9 Aaron

  As I drove back to Florida, the face of my phone showed my father calling. All he wanted was to keep reminding me of how important it was to kill Megan for tricking us. I swiped my screen and hit speaker.

  “Dad,” I answered. I was not in the mood to listen to him right now.

  “You got any leads on that tricky, little bitch? You were right about us not trusting her ass. She was good. I give her that much. That bitch could have killed every one of us, and I fell for her tricks. I want you to put an extra bullet in that black bitch’s head for me. And I want to see the picture. Better yet, bring me the body so I can shoot her ass again.”

  I’d been listening to this type of ranting since the moment I revealed to my father that Megan had played us. He was too embarrassed to share the news with the rest of the MC. Therefore, he and I were the only ones who knew the depth of Megan’s treachery. My job now was to find her and find out who the fuck she was and why she’d gone through such lengths to infiltrate us.

  My brain refused to accept that she’d gone through that much trouble for research. Cutting into my father’s rant, I told him, “I’m on my way back. It looks like she may be right there under our noses in Florida.”

  This bit of information set Shark off even more. He released some type of snort-huff into the phone. “You mean that bitch is right here in Florida? If I knew where she was, I’d go and strangle her ass with my bare hands. And to think, I fucked that conniving little bitch.”

  At those words, I nearly lost control of my truck as I fought the steering wheel and watched my phone slide across the passenger’s seat. I reached across the seat, stretching my arm while struggling to keep an eye on the road. I gripped the wheel with one hand and held the phone up to my mouth with the other.

  “You fucked Megan!”

  “She tricked me. Seduced me. Used me to protect her from the rest of the MC. And my dumb ass let my dick do the thinking.” My father’s words were like acid eating through my eardrums.

  My fucking brain was turning circles in my head as my father’s irritating fucking voice drew on and on.

  That’s why he wouldn’t say her name. When she worked for us, he’d called her everything except Megan. I should have known it. The fucking biggest clue had been there the entire time. My father had this stupid ass rule about not saying a woman’s name again if he’d slipped and said it during sex. That motherfucker!

  My father’s fucking voice came back through my phone, and all I wanted to do at that moment was punch his ass in the mouth. “Let me tell you, it takes a real man to handle that kind of pussy. She would have fucked these young boy’s heads up if I’d allowed them anywhere near her. After she shot Scud, it seemed to make these boys dicks even harder for her, so she and I worked out a deal. I offered my protection, and the only payment I wanted was a taste.”

  Several deep breaths didn’t calm the cloud of anger and rage that roared through me. My fist clenched around the stirring wheel so tight, I could hardly keep my truck steady on the highway. The red sparks that started to cloud my vision right before I killed someone flashed across my view as pure unadulterated fury started to flood my body.

  I snatched my stirring wheel and skidded off to the side of the road, going way too fast. The loud thrashing of rocks and a cloud of dust flew up into the air as I fishtailed my truck to a noisy stop. My truck bounced with a few loud hiccups before it came to rest.

  When I’d asked Megan if my father had fucked her, she said…she fucking never gave me a straight answer. She told me my father had forbidden the MC from fucking her.

  “Aaron, you there?” my father asked, his infuriating voice projected loud over the phone. “You sound like you’re having a fucking panic attack. I know you fucked her too. Could tell it the moment I saw you. Ain’t no need to be ashamed of it. Shit, wasn’t the first time I was with a black woman, but I’m certain it was yours.”

  My father’s cackling laughter pissed me off even more. It wasn’t that Megan was the only black woman I’d slept with, but that she was the first woman that I’d allowed myself to love. Not only had she played my entire MC and fucked my father, but she’d played a game with my heart. I was unsure at first, but now I had the ammunition I needed to put a bullet in Megan’s head. My father’s irritating fucking voice returned.

  “That’s why I forbid the MC to fuck her, son. Pussy so tight, I damn near had a heart attack. She would have had all of us thinking with our dicks. She would have fucked up all our heads. I mean, look at all the mistakes we’ve already made with her.”

  I cut into my father’s rant, again. “I gotta go. D’s calling me with another update.”

  Click.

  D wasn’t calling. I just didn’t want to listen to him anymore. I closed my hand around my phone so tightly that I had to toss it onto the seat after hearing a low crack. My icy gaze panned the view before me, but I couldn’t identify my surroundings because all I pictured was my hands around Megan’s neck. Blazing fury coursed through my veins, and I intended to aim it all at the woman I now hated more than anything on this earth.

  10 Megan

  The last few days had been my most productive. I’d written over twenty thousand words. As I stretched before my morning run, I stared out at the beautiful beach less than a quarter of a mile away from my condo.

  The neighborhood was runner friendly with its winding little running trails that circled the multi-million-dollar condos.

  I’d been in Florida for nearly six months now, including the month I’d spent with the August Knights Motorcycle Club. This was the longest I’d settled in any place over the last three years. I’d set a rule for myself that I would never settle in one place past six months, but the people here in Florida were friendly and accommodating. Who was I kidding? Leaving Florida would take me away from my flirting desire to reconnect with Aaron’s sexy ass.

  Since September had rolled in, the slight drop in temperature produced the perfect type of weather for enjoying the outdoors. The breezy comfort was easily enjoyable. Today, the sun sat high in the sky, and the breeze off the ocean kissed my skin as soft sprinkles winded their way through the air and licked away the heat of the sun.

  If that wasn’t relaxing enough, the breeze never stopped sweeping my skin with its cool care. This was one of the most relaxing places I’d lived, but I had finally made the decision to move out of the country. I had built up enough courage to leave the United States and move to the Dominican Republic. Although I’d never been to the beautiful island, it was one of three places I’d chosen at random to get lost in.

  My turbulent past was the reason I moved around as often as possible. I also had a propensity for stirring up trouble, playing with fire, and throwing stones at hornets’ nests, while gathering ideas and concepts for my books. But more importantly, I gathered knowledge in the art of survival.

  I convinced
myself that it was journalistic exploration, but the people I used in the process of gathering insight would find it highly insulting if they knew what I was truly up to.

  I’d inherited millions from my husband’s death over three years ago. It wasn’t until after he’d been killed that I found out his family owned seven of the most lucrative pharmaceutical manufacturing companies in the country.

  My dearly departed husband, Eric Christenson, had kept the big secret from me. I often speculated on how he’d managed to take such good care of me on his military salary alone. How he could afford to take me on all those expensive trips. After his death, I found out he had more than ten million dollars in his trust fund.

  He’d defied his family’s demands for him to help run the family businesses and had joined the military instead. I’d met his family for the first time at his funeral, and despite the depressing event, they’d been cordial to me. Although I’d never officially met them before, they claimed that Eric had shared with them that he’d never been happier before his marriage to me.

  When they called me the next week to meet them at their lawyer’s office, I didn’t know what to expect. Eric’s last words were a love letter to me, and the last few sentences left my mouth hanging wide open. He’d left me every cent of his trust fund. The insane amount of money, ten and a half million dollars, hadn’t appeared to faze his family at all.

  When you were sitting on endless millions, losing a little of it didn’t hurt, I’d guessed. His letter had also highlighted the fact that I had no idea he’d even had money.

  Living the life of a millionaire was fun for me—for about three months. When you discovered that there was only so much fun you could have with darkness lurking at your back, you tended to concentrate on more important things, like plotting survival strategies and escape plans. The inheritance allowed me the financial freedom to relocate my life on a whim, and the ability to run from any trouble I stirred along the way.