“I’m here,” I growl. “I’m ready. Let’s do this.”
We set off as soon as our Road Captain, Gunner, arrives. We ride in formation, with Angel and Gunner at the front, then Beast, our VP, and the rest of the officers, then the other full members. Ghost, our Sergeant at Arms, rides at the back. I haven’t been on a long run in a while, and if I didn’t feel like shit, it would be a good ride. But I do, so it fucking sucks.
But I deal with it.
The address Tank has for where Cady used to live with her ex turns out to be in a leafy neighborhood south of downtown Charlotte. It reminds me of Ember’s neighborhood a little bit, only richer and snobbier. It’s the kind of place where a well-off family engaged in organized crime can hide in plain sight — free of the suspicion or scrutiny of neighbors who are naive enough to think having money equals having good character.
It’s also the kind of place that wouldn’t look too kindly on a bunch of bikers driving down the street in full leathers, but that’s gonna work to our advantage. Once Tweak rides ahead and confirms that Cady’s ex is home, we drive up, engines revving, and surround the place. Angel, Beast, Tank and I walk up to the front door, and Beast pounds loud and hard on it until it opens.
“Jesus Christ, what —” a guy who must be Cady’s ex starts to say, but when he sees us standing there his eyes bug out and he moves to slam the door shut. Beast kicks the thing wide open, sending the guy sprawling backward. He and Tank grab Cady’s ex by the arms and pin them behind him.
“Guessin’ from your reaction, you’re Kurt Sawyer,” Angel says casually as we follow them inside. “We would have called ahead, but we wanted it to be a surprise.”
Behind us, the rest of the Lords troop in and spread out, guns drawn.
“What the hell?” Cady’s ex struggles and kicks, trying to free himself. “Who the hell are you?”
“You got any muscle around here?” Angel demands. Just then, there’s a loud pop and a yell over to our right. I turn just to see Thorn dropping an unconscious man to the floor.
“This one tried to sneak up on us,” he says simply. “Any other guards around?”
Cady’s ex pinches his lips into a thin line, then shakes his head.
“You sure about that?” Angel asks. “If you’re lying to us…”
Beast wrenches his arm up higher behind his back. Cady’s lets out a yelp. “There’s no one else!” he yells. “Who are you guys, anyway? What do you want?”
“We’re friends of Cady’s,” Angel answers. “We’re here to give you a message.”
“What message?”
Tank steps around to face him, and before the guy can react, punches him hard in the gut with his right, then gives him a solid uppercut with his left. The crack of his jawbone smashing against his upper skull echoes in the room.
“Fuu—!” Cady’s ex screams, doubling over. “Whah you do tha fah?”
“That’s the message,” Tank spits. “Maybe you didn’t hear it. You want me to repeat it?”
Cady’s ex, still doubled over, shrinks away and screams again.
“What my brother’s trying to say,” Angel continues, “is we’re gonna need you to stop fucking with Cady and her lawyer, and make sure anyone else in the family stops, too. You’re gonna give her the divorce, no questions asked, and let her go free. She’s no longer part of your family.”
“Whah you mean?” he asks, in between heaves. I think he might be about to be sick. Blood and saliva are streaming from his mouth.
“We know you and Cady’s stepdad have people lurking around Tanner Springs. It ain’t gonna scare Cady out of divorcing your sorry ass,” Tank says flatly.
Cady’s ex shakes his head, still working to stand upright. “I’m not a pussy,” he pants. “If I did that I wouldn’t fuckin’ deny it. Cady isn’t worth my goddamn time.”
“If it’s not you or your people, then who tossed her lawyer’s house a couple days ago?” I demand.
He seems legitimately surprised. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he shouts. “Why the fuck would I do that?”
“Don’t play us, asshole,” Beast warns.
“I’m not playing you! I swear! Fuck Cady! She’s a loose cunt who can’t keep her legs closed!”
Tank’s right fist connects with his gut again. Cady’s ex doubles over and heaves.
“You’re lucky I don’t fuckin’ kill you for that,” he snarls.
As Cady’s ex continues to heave and cough, Tank raises a brow at me. His meaning is clear. You believe him?
After a second, I nod.
Tank turns to Angel, and cuts his eyes at the heaving man. He turns away and Beast releases Cady’s ex, who falls to the ground.
“Cady isn’t gonna have any more trouble with this divorce,” Angel tells him. “Is she?”
“No! Fuck,” he moans.
“Okay. We’re done here.” Angel signals to Thorn, who is still standing over the unconscious guard. Thorn checks to make sure he’s gonna be out for a while. Then, Angel gives a sharp whistle, our sign that it’s time to leave. Probably just in time, too: a few of the neighbors have come outside to gawk from a distance — though they scurry back in pretty quick when we file out of the house. One by one, we straddle our bikes and hit the ignition. Angel and Gunner pull out, and we file in formation behind them.
On the way back, we stop to fuel up. Me and Tank have a couple minutes to talk while we’re waiting for the others. He’s been avoiding me for the most part since tracking me down the night of the fight, but I guess he needs to talk right now more than he needs to still be pissed at me.
“Looks like Cady’s ex got the message,” he says, but he still seems preoccupied. “You think he was telling the truth?”
“I dunno. He looked pretty surprised. And he also looked too dumb to be that good of an actor.”
“Yeah.” Tank’s face clears.
“There’s only one problem, though,” I continue. “If he didn’t trash Ember’s place, then who the fuck did? They didn’t take anything, they just fucked shit up. So it wasn’t a burglary, or if it was, they were the shittiest burglars on the planet.”
“Has she had any more trouble?” Tank asks. “Any other weird shit go on over there?”
“I don’t think so.”
Tank eyes me. “What do you mean, you don’t think so?”
“I haven’t talked to her in a few days.”
Tank rubs a hand over his face. “Jesus, Strike. Did you fuck it up with her?”
I’m pissed that he goes there right away, and even more pissed that he’s right.
“I’m gonna talk to her,” I counter. “I just needed a few days…”
“To get drunk off your ass and generally act like a shit-for-brains?” he glowers.
I think about arguing. “Yeah,” I admit. “Pretty much. But I’m gonna…”
A loud but muffled metal guitar riff interrupts me. Tank lifts a finger to stop me, pulls his phone out of his pocket, and glances at it.
“Cady,” he explains to me before answering. “Yeah, babe, what’s up?”
Tank listens for a few seconds, and I watch his face as it goes from neutral to confused, and then to something I can’t read.
“Shit. You sure? Jesus. Okay. We’re about to hit the road. I’ll talk to you when I get home.”
He hangs up, shoves the phone back in his pocket, stares at me.
“Cady just got a call from Ember,” he tells me. “Jess OD’ed. She’s dead.”
34
Ember
I hang up the phone, my conversation with Cady still ringing in my ears.
Jessica overdosed. She’s dead.
Wren’s mother is dead. And Tank isn’t her biological father.
Legally, Wren is in free fall.
Tank’s custody of her could be challenged now, at any point. By anyone. Which means that if anyone finds out that Cady and Tank have no claim to her, she could end up in foster care with complete strangers.
&n
bsp; Or worse, she could end up with Jess’s parents.
The shock of the news is starting to wear off a little by now. It was the bartender in Reynoldsville who called me to tell me about Jessica’s death, which he learned about from one of the bar regulars who works in obituaries at the local paper. Apparently, it happened late last week.
I can’t help but wonder if Jess’s overdose is connected to the argument she had with Striker the day we went to find her. The bartender told me the rumor is she didn’t leave a note, so they don’t know whether her death was intentional.
I’m guessing we’ll never know.
Suddenly, I feel exhausted. Exhausted by the weight of Jess’s death, exhausted by how Striker and I are up in the air. Exhausted by everything that just seems so confusing, and upside-down, with no way to right it again.
I should call Striker and tell him about Jess. But I’ve only talked to him once, briefly, since the argument we had days ago, and I just don’t have the energy for it right now. I tell myself that Tank will tell him. And maybe then Striker will call me. Or not.
Instead, I decide I’m going to give myself a break and take a long, hot bubble bath in my jacuzzi tub with a glass of wine. I go to the kitchen, pour the wine for myself into an insulated tumbler, and trudge up the stairs to start the water. When I get upstairs, my learned reflex is to glance out the bedroom window at the spot where normally, Tank or one of the other Lords is standing watch. I don’t see anyone, but that doesn’t mean no one’s out there. I wonder who it is tonight.
I wonder if it will ever be Striker again.
Ten minutes later, I’m sinking into a fragrant heaven of steam and bubbles, determined to forget all of this for a little while. The speaker I’ve brought into the bathroom is playing soft, mournful music: Chet Baker, one of my dad’s favorite musicians. I close my eyes and take a sip of the cool white wine, as he starts to sing “I Get Along Without You Very Well.” The song makes me think of Striker, because of course it does.
I push him out of my head.
The door to the bathroom is open, of course, since there’s nobody here but me. Out in the hallway, I hear Bert’s familiar limping gait. The tags on his collar knock rhythmically against his cone of shame. I expect to hear his nails clack on the bathroom tile next, as he comes in to pay me a visit. But instead, he stops abruptly, then breaks into an uneven run down the stairs.
I crack my eyes open for a second, wondering what he’s seen or heard down on the first floor that would get his attention. Probably the shadow of a bird flying past the front window. I let my eyes flutter shut again, the dulcet tones of Chet Baker singing of his broken heart lulling me back.
The song ends, and I wait for the next one on the album to start.
Instead, what I hear is a metallic click that at first I don’t recognize.
But when I do, it makes my blood turn to ice.
“Hello, December,” Mark says.
My eyelids fly open. He’s standing in the bathroom doorway, in dark jeans and a black long-sleeved mock turtleneck.
In his right hand is a pistol. And it’s pointed at me.
A scream wrenches from my throat. I sit up in the tub so fast that water sloshes out of it. Frantically, I reach for the towel to cover myself.
Mark chuckles, but the sound has no humor. It’s bitter. Like poison.
“There’s not much point in that, is there?” He indicates the towel. “Covering yourself from your husband. I’ve seen you naked a thousand times, Ember.”
“What are you doing here?” I half-shriek. My eyes ping-pong from the gun to his eyes. My skin feels like it’s buzzing, an electric current of terror running through it.
“You’re not going to fucking ruin me.” His face twists into a grimace. “You little bitch. You little fucking bitch.”
“What are you talking about?” The water in the bath is hot, but I’m already starting to shake. I know it’s from adrenaline. Fear spikes through my veins. “I haven’t done anything, Mark!”
“No, you fucking haven’t!” he rages. “And you’re not going to. Fletcher Hadley is already fucking sniffing around, do you know that? He told me he talked to you at the gala, and that you seemed surprised that I was making him so much money. He called me the next day, and asked me for financial statements. Trust but verify, he said. Then he talked to his friends who were clients of mine and had them do the same.”
“Why was that a problem?” I ask, but of course I know. Deep down, I know.
Mark’s eyes slip off to the side for a half-second, before coming back to focus on me. “I had some investments go bad. A cash flow problem. No one would have ever been the wiser, except for you.”
“That’s why you withdrew all the money from our account,” I breathe. “There never was a plot of land from your Uncle Harold, was there?”
“Hadley wants the statements. When he sees…” Mark falters, the gun in his hand straying from me for just a second. “Get out,” he barks. “Get out of the fucking bath. Now.”
“Mark —”
“Now!”
Trembling, I grab the edge of the tub with one hand, holding the towel over my body with the other to hide my nakedness.
“I said I’ve seen you naked a thousand time!” he roars. “Don’t pretend to be modest, you fucking bitch, when you’re nothing but a cheating whore! You’re still married to me and you’re spreading your fucking legs for that biker!”
I step out of the bath, but I don’t drop the towel. Instead, I wrap it, still dripping, around myself. I want to tell him we’re not married, he has no right to say these things, but he’s so angry I’m afraid he’ll shoot me.
“What’s the plan here, Mark?” I say instead, trying to project a calm I don’t feel at all.
“You’re gonna pay me back.” His lips twist into a grimace.
I risk a glance at him. “What do you mean? You’ve already taken money that was half mine.”
“You cost me everything!” he seethes. His eyes are wild, bulging orbs. “It’s your fucking fault. And I’m taking it back, and then some.”
Mark backs out of the bathroom into the hall. With the pistol, he waves at me to do the same. I can’t think of any other options, so I do as he says. I’ve reached the doorway to the bathroom when Bert comes up, wagging his tail. He gives a hopeful bark and plants himself in front of Mark, hoping to play.
Wordlessly, Mark shifts his weight and lifts up his leg. He gives Bert a vicious kick in the chest that sends him toppling down the stairs with a wounded yelp.
“Bert!” I cry. Reflexively I take a step forward, but Mark twists toward me and brandishes the gun.
“Stop!” he grits out.
I glance over at the stairway, and I see Bert’s head peeking up from the third or fourth step from the top. He looks so meek and afraid, and somehow, that’s what finally breaks me. A sob rips through me.
“I’m so sorry, Bertie,” I whisper at him, wishing with all my heart I could go wrap my arms around him.
“You always were a soft idiot about those dogs,” Mark says with disgust. “You never figured it out about Ernie, did you?”
I stare at him, tears running down my face. “What do you mean?”
And then, slowly, it dawns on me what he must mean.
We got Bert and Ernie at the same time, but Ernie was always more “my dog.” He followed me around exclusively, and somehow never seemed to really warm up to Mark. Ernie’s death traumatized me for months. It was the day after a particularly bad fight with Mark. I was at the office in the afternoon, working late and putting off returning home, when I got a call from him saying Ernie had been hit by a car. I rushed to the vet’s office, but when I got there they told me the internal damage was too great and that we would have to put him down.
No one ever came forward to admit responsibility for hitting Ernie. I always assumed it was a cowardly hit and run. It broke my heart to think that maybe if they had stopped and taken him to the vet immediately after the
accident, he could have been saved.
But now, I stare at my husband in that hallway, horrified.
“It was you,” I choke. “You killed him.”
“That night of our fight,” he tells me, his mouth twisting into a leering grin. “You went to sleep in the guest room, with Ernie beside you. Instead of apologizing to me — instead of ending the argument — you went with him.” He waits a moment, to let the full weight of his words sink in. “You chose a dog over me, Ember. A dog.”
“Oh, my God,” I breathe.
“And Bert’s leg?” he continues casually. “Yeah, that wasn’t an accident.”
“You were the one who broke in that day?” I gasp.
“Margot told me the biker was hanging around because they thought you were in danger from some dirtbags they knew.” He clicks his tongue against his teeth. “You didn’t have the sense not to take them on as clients, December. I thought maybe you’d have the sense to drop them once you saw you were in actual danger. But I guess you were too much of a slut to do that.”
“You broke Bert’s leg to scare me,” I murmur, dazed with horror. Even from Mark — even after everything he’s just said — I can barely make my brain take this in.
“Enough talking,” he clips, impatient now. “Get into the bedroom. Go!”
Dumbly, I turn and do as he says, praying that Bert won’t follow us and get hurt again.
“On the bed,” he directs me.
“What are you planning, Mark?”
“You’re going to pay me back, as I said. The insurance money will pay me back.”
And then, I realize what he must mean.
“You… you’re going to what… burn down the house?” I whisper.
He appears almost impressed at my guess.
“Very good, Ember! But don’t worry. You’ll be asleep for all of it. I’m not a complete monster.” Mark reaches into the pocket of his dark pants, pulls out a syringe. “Besides, I have to make it look like an accident. I remember there’s an insurance policy on you, too, isn’t there? And I should still be the beneficiary?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling sick. Desperately, I remember that there should be one of the Lords of Carnage outside. Didn’t they see Mark come in? Or was he careful enough to escape their notice? Has he been hiding in the house all this time, waiting for me?
STRIKER: Lords of Carnage MC Page 22