by Isabel Wroth
“What are you doing here?”
Tara licked her dry lips and sucked in a wheezing breath, feeling like someone had her lungs in a vice. “I have information about Ghost. I don’t have a lot of time. I think he knows I’m here and if he doesn’t, he will soon. If he has Saint, you all need to know what I know.”
Pen looked at her skeptically, his expression daring her to lie to him. “You know who Ghost is?” he asked doubtfully.
Tara swallowed thickly and nodded, bracing herself, forcing the words she swore she would never speak of again from thick lips. “My husband.”
*****
Ripley sat at the head of the table in the conference room at the Perdition compound with a cold cup of tea in her hands, staring into the greenish liquid blindly while chaos reigned around her. Top had barked at her to put some clothes on and ‘get her shit.’ Then he pushed her onto the back of Pen’s bike, and took her to the compound. Ever and Athena had burst in not long after Ripley had sat down in the conference room.
She thought the two of them were trying to comfort her and offer her support, but she was just so numb with fear that all she could do was sit there and stare. The hospitals had all been called, the police stations, the morgue. Nasa was trying to track Damon and Saint by their cell phones and the GPS chips in their boots.
Nasa was downstairs in his basement command center, so pissed off by the total lack of info, Ripley could hear the rapid fire clicking of the keys on his keyboard while he ran his searches.
Nine hours.
It had been nine hours since the last contact anyone had had with Saint or Damon.
Nine hours in the clutches of a brutal killer.
Ripley sat there with the images of what that monster had done to Pike and Susan rioting around in her overactive imagination. Torture, pain, helplessness. Her breath hitched as she choked back a keening moan, fighting the horrific reality that she might not ever see Saint again.
There was a sudden change, a difference in the air that brought Ripley out of her stupor. She looked up to see Pen escorting Tara into the conference room, followed by every one of the brothers who weren’t pounding the pavement. Tara looked as frightened as Ripley felt, her skin so pale it looked gray, flinching as Pen ordered her to sit.
Ever immediately leapt to sit beside her friend, shooting a glare at Pen. “Tara? Are you okay?”
Ripley glanced up as a pair of new faces came into the room, a tall man with dreads and a short, curvy woman with platinum blonde hair who looked remarkably like Daeneyrs Targaryen. Ripley recognized the look of terror in the other woman’s eyes as she clung to her man. Terror, that someone she loved heart and soul was dead.
The couple must have been Damon’s people.
“Tara says she has some information about Ghost.” Pen bit out, his jaw clenched so hard the scars slashing down his cheek blanched white.
Everyone frowned in confusion, except Ever. Compassion filled her expression as she curved her arm around Tara’s shoulders. It seemed to steady Tara enough for her to speak, but with so many eyes focused with laser like precision on her, Ripley was amazed that Tara wasn’t cowering.
“Spill it, shortie. We’re running short on time.” Top ordered, and something about his tone was the push Tara needed to speak.
Her swallow was audible. “My name is, Wren. Not Tara. Ghost is…I’m…”
Tara, Wren, struggled to speak and flinched hard when Pen spat out harshly, “His wife.”
Ripley frowned at the accusatory way Pen snarled the word, frowned harder at the way Wren, if possible, paled even further. Roar growled from across the table, glaring first at his wife, then at Wren.
“You knew we were looking for him this whole time, and you said nothing?”
Wren shook her head at Roar’s accusation, her eyes on the table top, shrinking back into the chair like she could make herself even smaller.
“I didn’t know he was here until my handler called an hour ago and told me they were coming to move me to another location.”
Top came around and pulled the chair out next to Wren, sitting down with a look at Ever to back off when she would have jumped to protect her friend.
“You’re in Witness Protection?” Top grated.
Wren nodded quickly, almost jumping out of her skin when Top reached over to take her hands, his unrelenting gaze boring into Wren’s with such intensity, Ripley swore she could smell ozone burning.
“Marshals must be stepping up their game. Nasa checked you out and his checks are harsh. Tell us what you’ve got. Start from the beginning.”
Wren was shaking visibly even as she clung to Top like he was her last available life line. Ripley held her breath, watching the horror on Wren’s face, the tears that silently tracked down her cheeks as she recounted her life as the wife of a psychotic hitman.
“His name was Andrew Stanfield when we married. I thought he was a writer.” No one in the room noticed the blood drain from Ripley’s face. “That’s what he said he did, wrote e-book murder mysteries. He always had me read his chapters aloud to him once he finished something.”
Bile rose up to choke her, her hands fumbling and shaking as she reached for her phone and fought the urge to throw up anything and everything left in her body.
“Is this him?”
Ripley slid her phone across the table for Wren to catch, repeating a litany of prayers in her head as Wren studied the image of Sam. She studied it hard, tilting her head this way and that before shaking her head.
“I don’t think so, no. He is unbelievably good at changing his features, so it could be. You wouldn’t know it without touching him to feel the difference between body prosthetics and the real thing.”
Every member of the club looked at Ripley when she pressed her hands to her face and let her head drop to the table. Ripley was suddenly so glad she knew the way Sam’s lips felt on hers. Glad to know what it felt like to have wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight. Felt the hardness of his muscles beneath the thin t-shirts he was prone to wearing.
Wren went on, not asking why Ripley might have thought Sam was Ghost.
“I was eighteen when we married, and I was twenty three when I started to question the long weeks he would spend away on a writing retreat. He always came back with chapters and chapters of the most disturbing shit. What he said were royalty checks just kept getting bigger and bigger, the gifts he would bring me got more expensive, the trips we took together, more extravagant.
“I had no idea I was reading a…transcript of his murders in such terrible detail. Not until I was alone one weekend watching the news and a picture of a missing banker and his wife flashed across the screen.
“I remember thinking it was so weird that a beautiful woman like her would marry a man so much older. But I figured all the diamonds she wore were enticement enough. I flipped the channel to something else, and a few days later Andrew came home after being gone for almost a month with a fresh new chapter. We were in bed and I was reading the story aloud.
“A story about a rich old man and his trophy wife. The old man had screwed a brutal gang out of their money, stolen from them, and needed to be taught a lesson. I stumbled over the words when I got to the part where the gang’s ghost, ripped the diamonds and jewels off the trophy wife as he raped her in front of the old man.
“Andrew asked me if I was okay. I told him it was just so disturbing. His best work yet. It must have been flattering enough that he didn’t press me, he just pulled me into his lap and told me to keep reading. It was the first time his touch left me cold.
“I didn’t know anything about the Leviathans except that they were a figment of Andrew’s imagination and the antagonists of his novel series. But the novel about the banker and his trophy wife made me curious, suspicious I guess. I did a search for his novels, but I couldn’t find them.
“So I searched for murders I had stupidly thought were fictional. I found more than I bargained for, but even with the proof of wh
at my perfect husband had done, I refused to believe it. He was…perfect. So perfect.
“He cooked, did the laundry, rubbed my feet after a long day at the expensive, fast-track nursing program he was paying for me to go through. He even helped me with my homework and took me to goofy couples pottery classes or long romantic rides on his motorcycle. My life was perfect, why mess that up when Andrew had probably just seen the news and used those missing or murdered people as inspiration?”
Wren had the full and complete attention of everyone in the room, and despite sympathizing with the other woman. Despite knowing how hard this must be for Wren, Ripley was fighting to keep from screaming at Wren to just get to the part where she knew how to find Saint.
“I didn’t believe it until a few weeks later when I came home from a shift at the hospital and walked in to find Andrew had made dinner. Did the whole candles and flowers thing and, over dessert, he gave me a gift.
“A locket with a diamond the size of my thumb on the front. It belonged to the banker’s wife, I’d seen her wearing it in that picture on the news. Seen it in the photos I’d researched about her online. He watched me like a hawk, this look in his eyes that made dread claw up from my toes. He knew. He knew I knew.
“I sat there in my perfect house, with my perfect husband, living the fairytale Andrew had woven for me, with a dead woman’s necklace in my hand. I asked him why, and he just looked at me. Tilted his head and smiled. Made me ask the question. Why had he killed them.
“His answer was a shrug, and he said, ‘Old man stole two million from my club and thought we wouldn’t notice. Club paid me half a mil to make sure no one stole from us again. What gave me away?’
“I told him about the news broadcast I’d seen, and he snorted. Tossing his napkin on the table like he was annoyed that a twist of chance was responsible. Then he sighed, and told me to put on my riding jacket. I thought he was going to kill me because I knew now he was a sick, twisted killer. I asked him and I will never forget what he said to me. How he got up, pressed a kiss to my hair and whispered in my ear, ‘Of course not, baby. No one paid me to kill you. Yet.’
“I met the Leviathans that night. They kept me in their basement. I saw things, heard things, but no one would touch me because I was their bogeyman’s woman. The only ones who weren’t afraid of him were the bosses. I learned later I’d been down there almost a month, and I might have been down there for another month if ATF hadn’t done a raid on the compound.”
Top praised Wren for keeping it together. “How do we find Saint and Damon?”
Wren took in a shuddering breath and licked her lips. “Wherever they went missing, Andrew will keep them close by. Somewhere in the building.”
“Ripley’s spa only has one door in and out, no second floor or access to any of the surrounding buildings.” Pen grated, his voice less accusing now.
Wren shook her head, a rueful smile twisting her lips. “They’re close by. Every single one of the murders Andrew wrote about and had me read aloud, he kept his victims close to the place he took them from. In a basement room hidden behind a false wall. A van in the parking garage around the corner. A dry well on the property.
“The panic room he had helped install for a paranoid owner. You ever see that movie with Angelina Jolie and Ethan Hawke? Taking Lives? That’s what he does. Andrew impersonates someone close to his victims.
“He wears contacts, prosthetics, fat suits, whatever it takes to become someone else. Cop, lawyer, plumber, artist, delivery man, it doesn’t matter. He studies the mannerisms and habits of the person he wants to become, and becomes them for as long as it takes to kill his victims.
“It’s remarkable, and if he wasn’t a psychotic murderer, his talent for changing his features would be impressive. His eyes are unmistakable, flawless green with a ring of pale blue around them. He had dark hair when I knew him. He’s six feet tall, built like a swimmer. His features are common enough he could pass for any nationality just by growing a beard or changing his hair color.”
Wren swiped at her eyes and shook her head, looking down at her lap with a shuddering sigh. “He takes his time. It’s not been long, right?”
“Nine hours,” Pen offered tightly.
Wren cleared her throat, but her words still sounded strangled and harsh.
“My handler told me that Saint has been digging around for answers to something for the last year or so and, as a result, fifteen members of the Leviathan gang have gone to prison. He gave me some basics, and, I promise you, Andrew is going to take his time.
“He’ll have been here on and off for months, maybe even longer, studying all of you. Anyone you have let into your house, to your businesses, near this compound, Andrew would have found the ones who frequented the most and used them to get close.
“The cable man. The guy who brings the kegs of beer to stock the bar. The driver of the van who hauls custom parts to and from the garage. One of the stripper’s boyfriends that drops her off at the club and stays for a beer. You all have the same cell phones that you’ve had for more than a year? He got close enough to clone them.
“You left your bikes unattended at the gas station while you went in to pay? He tagged it with a GPS tracker. He knows where you are at any given time. He’ll have done something to one of you, caused an accident or two that seem totally random, just to fuck with you.
“I promise you he was behind the shooting at Ripley’s spa. He might have even been able to break in to your homes, borrow your cut, put it on, and create a disguise to impersonate any one of you. In a few hours, he’d achieve whatever he needed to achieve, put the cut back and you’d never know it. Each and every one of you has talked to him by now. You’ve shaken his hand and looked him in the eyes. He’s that good. He gets off on being that good.
“He’ll leave Saint and Damon alone for a while. Long enough to continue the routine of whoever he’s impersonating. Going to the gym, the office, he’ll have insinuated himself into a job and will do it even after he’s taken his intended victims. It’s never personal, because he has no feelings. He can pretend, but where it counts, he feels nothing.
“He’s loyal to the Leviathans because they protect him and not only allow him to keep on killing, they pay him well to do it. He doesn’t follow their rules and they know better than to tell him how to do what he considers his work.
“They give him a target and tell him how badly they want that person dead. The level of effort he devotes his sick attention to the intended victim depends on the amount the club pays him. It won’t even matter to him that Saint helped put away his fellow Leviathans. All he cares about is getting away with it. Proving he’s better than anyone else and too smart to get caught.”
Wren pulled her eyes off her lap and looked up, pinning Ripley with her stare. In her soft brown eyes, Ripley saw horror. Pain. Fear so deep it was a wonder screams didn’t follow Wren around. Saint had told her about one murder committed by Ghost. Wren had read aloud god knows how many of her serial killing husband’s memoirs, the vivid details of the atrocities he had taken pleasure in, and sat in his lap while she did it.
“He won’t kill Saint until he has you, Ripley. Andrew will want Saint to watch while he hurts you. He won’t take pleasure in the act of causing you pain, it will come from Saint’s helplessness to stop it.”
“What about Damon?” Ripley couldn’t remember the other woman’s name, but the hitch in her voice, the worry and the pain of not knowing what was happening to the man she loved…Ripley understood that all too well.
Wren’s lips wobbled before the pressed them together and took a deep breath. “I don’t say this to be cruel, but if you didn’t find his body, it means Andrew took him for the same reason. Andrew gets paid to send messages and he won’t kill without an audience. He’s alive, but I don’t know for how long.”
“They’re both alive, which means we have time to find them.” Pen stated with absolute conviction.
Top and Pen crowded around
Wren and continued to pepper her with questions, picking her brain for any more details she could give about her husband, and Ripley couldn’t take it anymore. She pushed up from the table and went to where Nasa was taking notes on his tablet. He looked up at her approach, opening his arm to her before she was more than halfway to him, hugging her tight to his side.
“You okay?” he rumbled quietly.
“I need to be doing something. I can’t just sit here.”
His anvil hard jaw flexed while he stared down at her, his eyes searching across her face for something. “Alright. Come downstairs.”
Nasa set her up in front of a computer monitor and pulled up the security camera footage at the spa, from the day that Jerry started working on repairing the damage after the shootout. Her job was to make note of anything that looked suspicious or work being done in an area that didn’t need repairing.
But Ripley was having a hard time keeping her eyes on the computer screen and off Nasa’s impressive collection of bondage furniture. He had claimed the entire twelve hundred square foot basement, making it look like a loft instead of a basement.
One whole wall was bare of any furniture and covered in a forest scene mural. The trees looked alive, and the few potted plants that sat between a pair of comfortable armchairs gave the illusion of being out in the middle of a verdant glade.
The rest of the space was done in pale greens and soothing grays, but nothing could take away from the custom made, orgy sized bed.
Or the spanking bench, or the metal rings hanging from the ceiling, or the padded massage table with manacles draped over the top, or the wall full of BDSM paraphernalia. Oddly, she was not surprised by the enormous biker’s flavor of kink.
The shelf devoted to anal plugs however, did kind of shock her.
Nasa caught her staring and smiled a slow, wolfish smile. “Got something to ask me, sweetheart?”
Ripley shook her head quickly and hunched forward to press play on the videos. About five minutes in, she realized the only places not covered by the cameras were the bathroom and treatment rooms.