At All Costs (Whiskey Bend MC Series)

by KJ Dahlen

All eyes swung to Charlie.

  His eyes were only on Luna. “I received a call from Sam Reed. He told me Cooper knows you found out what he is. He confronted the police Captain and Kyle Matthews is dead. He wanted you to know Cooper is coming here to kill you and anyone who stands in his way.”

  Luna trembled in her seat. Her eyes were haunted at this news. She’d only met the man one time but this news was tearing her apart. She looked over at Charlie. “Are Sam and Molly ok?”

  Charlie nodded. “Yes they’re ok for now but Cooper has been watching them all day. They found more evidence about what you told them and you were right, Cooper is the killer. They were able to trace him back fifteen years. Everything Mike told you about was the truth.”

  Luna shook her head. “That didn’t help Kyle Matthews and it isn’t going to help me when he gets here is it?”

  “He won’t get close to you.” Aries growled. “He’ll have to kill me first.”

  Lucifer looked irritated at his announcement. “Are you claiming her then?”

  Aries slowly turned his head to glare at his president. “Yeah, I’m claiming her. Do you have a problem with that?”

  Lucifer stared at him for a moment. “Don’t be an ass. If she is what you want why would I say anything about it? You have to live with your decision I don’t.”

  “Please stop.” Luna cried out as she felt the tension building to an all time high. She turned to look at Aries, reaching out her hand she cupped his jaw. His beard felt so soft against her skin. “I will not come between you and your brothers. I can’t. You offered me a safe place and I appreciate that but I can’t come between you and them.” She leaned toward him and whispered in his ear. “I loved the time we had together but I won’t drag you into this mess. I don’t want you hurt while defending me. I couldn’t bear it.”

  Aries grew still. “Is that all we had? You were using me for safety?”

  Luna closed her eyes. “God no, what I feel for you is very real. So real in fact that I would die if because of me, something bad happened to you or your brothers. I’ll walk away before I let that happen. I don’t want to but I will.”

  “Stay with me,” he whispered.

  “I need you to live. I can’t watch it if this killer comes for me and you stand between him and me. Please don’t ask me to do that. I care about you too much for that.” She got to her feet and turned to Charlie. “Can you give me a ride home?”

  Charlie looked at her then to Lucifer and Aries.

  Both men looked like they were going to explode but neither of them said a word.

  Charlie got to his feet and ushered her to the door. As they walked out to the car, he ignored her sobs. He put her into the car and as he drove away, they both heard a loud roar of a yell from the clubhouse.

  ~*~

  Aries got to his feet and watched as she walked to the door. Every beat of his heart told him he shouldn’t let her just walk away from what they had. For the first time in his life, he wanted a woman with every fiber of his being. For the one day, they were together his life felt complete like it never had before.

  A moment after the door closed behind her, Aries let loose his rage. He shouted with a roar as he picked up the table and flipped it over. Cups of half drank coffee flew all over the room.

  Men scrambled out of the way. The only one that didn’t look away was his President Lucifer. He got to his feet calmly almost lazily. With his height, he towered over Aries and said, “If you let that woman go, you will regret it every moment of the rest of your life. Don’t be a dumb ass.”

  Aries frowned. “I thought you didn’t like her. Didn’t want her here!”

  Lucifer shrugged. “She’s not so bad. She doesn’t suit me, but I don’t have to live with her. I see that she is good for you, despite you being an animal about it just now. I never thought either of us would find any sense of peace after our time in the sandbox. I know I didn’t then suddenly Jessie came into my life and I needed her in the same way you need Luna. Whatever choice you make here brother, we will stand behind you.”

  Aries looked around the room and each brother there nodded in agreement with Lucifer. “I can’t lose her. I sure as hell won’t lose her to this mother fucker.”

  Lucifer stepped even closer to him. Poking him in the chest, he grumbled, “Then you go get her brother. You storm whatever walls she’s thrown up and you get her back under our roof. She’s alone out there right now and she’s not safe.”

  “That girl has never been safe,” Geno spoke up. “From the day she was born there’s been a black cloud hovering over her.”

  Aries turned around and confronted the other man. “What do you know about her?”

  “Just what everyone in this town knows. I grew up a couple of towns over before we moved away. Her mother got pregnant on purpose to get her father to marry her. He didn’t and that just pissed the woman off. From the day she was born, her mother neglected her. That girl has never had a crumb of decent behavior from anyone in her life. When she was seven, she was taken away from her mother and shoved into the foster system. The people that took her in only wanted the money she brought in. Never her.” He shook his head. “I used to get letters from home with news about what was going on back here. I heard bits and pieces over the years about Luna. She was shuffled from home to home and then when she aged out, she got a scholarship to college. She went for the first two years then stopped going. She worked at home online to get her degree but something happened at her school she won’t talk about. Then she met that jerk Joel. She didn’t want anything to do with him but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. It all came to a head when he got drunk and made his way to her door. He told her then that he’d made a bet on her and he wasn’t gonna lose it. All this came out in the trial but Joel raped her that night and then he went on to stab her countless times. A neighbor broke in and taken him out with a baseball bat or that girl would have died right there.”

  Aries knew some of this but his brothers didn’t and there were several grumbles of discord among them as Geno related his story. “The great Joel Grant went on trial for aggravated assault with the intent to kill. Charlie made that happen and he and his family never expected him to be found guilty but he was. He’s waiting in jail for the sentencing phase of the trial and the judicial time is running out. With the delay because someone murdered the judge that dirty rotten bastard might get off with time served.”

  “Not on my fucking watch.” Aries glared. “He’s a dead man the moment he walks out of that fucking jail.”

  “Let’s get through this crisis first. Then we can deal with Joel Loser Grant,” Lucifer announced.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cooper knew he needed to move up his timetable and his first priority was to collect his things and clear out. He’d had time over the last few years to get a number of hiding places ready for a possible event like this one. He pulled up in an alley 2 blocks from his apartment and shut off Kyle’s car. He wiped down the steering wheel and dashboard. When he exited the car, he wiped off the door handles on both sides, then he walked up the street to his apartment building. He walked to his apartment and was about to enter when his landlord opened the door across from his.

  Cooper impatiently turned to face Ed Lomax. He knew he didn’t have a lot of time for pleasantries, “What can I do for you tonight Ed?”

  “You can tell me why the FBI was here this afternoon? I would have thought being a cop you and the FBI were on the same side.”

  “You would think that wouldn’t you. I have no idea what they were doing here. I just hope they didn’t leave a mess.” Cooper opened the door and stepped into his apartment. He turned to block Ed’s following him and slammed the door in his face. He looked around but nothing seemed out of place. Again, nothing in here looked disturbed. He turned his head and was dismayed to find the closet doors slightly open. When he pushed the doors open, he found the safe door wasn’t quite shut tight. Cooper felt the rage inside him grow when he opened t
he door and found everything gone.

  “Fuck!” He grabbed his clothes. Changing into jeans and a flannel shirt, he shoved his weapon into the back of his pants. Shoving his clothes into a duffle bag, Cooper felt his rage growing. Pushing his arms into his jacket, he growled. He could feel his chest tighten with anticipation. The walls were closing in on him and he didn’t like it.

  He knew he should just leave town and find a new place to start over but he couldn’t do that yet. He needed to finish what he started here. That meant he needed to find Luna Mathias and the federal agents she was with. Packing quickly, he grabbed his laptop on his way out. He took the back stairs to the parking lot. He walked down two more blocks to a city parking lot. When he found the car he wanted, he took a thin metal strip out of the duffle bag and quickly slid the metal down inside the door and unlocked the car.

  His next stop was the offices of the Whiskey Bend Happenings. He arrived just in time to catch Nathan Wright walking to his car. Cooper sat and watched as Nathan pulled away from the parking lot. Cooper followed him at a safe distance. When Nathan pulled into a private driveway twenty minutes later, Cooper parked down the street.

  He waited about a half an hour then pulled into the alley behind Nathan’s house and opened the door. He walked up to the back door and quietly tried the knob. When it opened under his touch, Cooper slipped inside and closed the door behind him. He found himself in a mudroom. He peeked around the doorway and found looked into a dark kitchen. The kitchen was clean and the counter tops were empty except for a bottle of Jack Daniels.

  He slipped through the kitchen and stepped into the dining room where he found Nathan sitting at his computer with his back to him.

  Nathan reached out to grab a short glass filled with a small amount of the liquor and ice on the table beside his computer.

  Cooper felt the rush as he took a few steps and came up behind him. Removing his police weapon from the holster at his side, he brought the weapon to Nathan’s temple.

  Nathan lifted his eyes to see Cooper’s reflection in the glass of the French doors leading into the living room. “Can I help you?” he asked nervously.

  “I sure hope so, because your life depends on what you tell me,” Cooper replied.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I need to know what Luna Mathias’s been up to.”

  Nathan swallowed hard. His Adam’s apple moved slowly in his throat. “This is about Luna?” He felt the gun barrel being pushed a little harder into his temple. “Umm, let me see, as far as I know she was meeting with some guy in prison about a story. I don’t really know much about the details yet.”

  “Why not? I thought as her boss you would know everything she’s working on.”

  Nathan tried to nod. “Yeah, well normally I would, but when I tried to talk to her today on the subject, I was told by an FBI agent she was some sort of witness for a case he was working on.”

  Cooper’s fingers tightened on the gun he was holding. “What kind of case?”

  “He never said.”

  Cooper could see the beads of sweat growing on Nathan’s temple. The other man was clearly getting rattled. “Do you know where she’s staying?”

  “Not at the moment,” Nathan said. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of her all day but I can’t seem to find her.”

  “That’s ok, I think I do,” Cooper said. “Come on, we have an errand to run.”

  Nathan got to his feet with a gun in his back. He glanced up and saw Cooper was momentarily distracted. Nathan made a break for it. He rushed Cooper, grabbing him around the waist. He tried to carry him backward into the counter but Cooper brought his gun down on Nathan’s shoulder. Nathan fell to the floor and Cooper snarled, “If you want to live tonight, don’t ever try anything like that again.”

  Nathan groaned and pushed himself up off the floor. When he stood up, Cooper backhanded him. Nathan flew into the wall. When he reached up to feel his mouth, he brought his hand away, and it was smeared with blood. He wiped the blood on the wall and glared at Cooper.

  Cooper motioned Nathan to move toward the door and Nathan complied.

  Cooper saw the bottle of Jack Daniels on the counter and grabbed it on the way out. When they got to the car, Cooper slid in first and pulled Nathan into the driver’s seat. Holding the gun on Nathan, Cooper told him to drive.

  Nathan started the car, put it in drive and drove to the end of the alley. When he got to the street, he asked, “Right or left?”

  “Right. We got a ways to go before we get where we need to be. We need to go to LaDonna and when we get there, we need to drive past the Hampton Motel.” Cooper reached into his back pocket and took out the handkerchief he had there. Uncapping the bottle of Jack Daniels he’d taken from the house, Cooper took a swig of the liquor before he stuffed the handkerchief into the bottle.

  Twenty minutes later, they approached the motel and Cooper told Nathan to slow down. Pulling his gun from his holster he began firing at the room, he’d seen Sam and Molly in this afternoon. He put the gun away and lit the rag stuffed into the bottle. Throwing it at the broken window, he watched as the bottle hit the building and exploded. The whoosh from the explosion burst through the window and the flames spread inside the room. The flames grew as the liquor fanned out.

  People rushed and stumbled out of their rooms and began gathering near the entrance of the motel. Cooper scanned the crowd looking for Sam or Molly but couldn’t find them. “Shit!” He swore in rage as he told Nathan, “Drive away slowly and don’t cause a scene.”

  Nathan pressed his foot on the gas petal. The car pulled away from the burning building. Cooper told Nathan to slow down and pull over when they were about two blocks away from the motel. They could hear the sirens in the distance. They saw two fire trucks speed past them.

  Cooper peeked in the rearview mirror and watched as the fire trucks stopped at the motel. There was still no sign of Sam or Molly and he was growing impatient.

  He reached for the cell phone in his pocket and handed it to Nathan. “Give Luna a call and find out where she is,” he ordered. He got his laptop out of the duffle bag and typed in a program that would allow him to pinpoint her address. It wasn’t as good as a GPS program but it was all he had right now.

  Nathan’s hands shook as he dialed Luna’s number. He listened as it rang twice before she answered. “Hey Luna, how is the case coming?”

  “We’re still working on it.”

  “Does that mean you’ll be at work tomorrow?” Nathan asked.

  “Maybe, I’m not sure.”

  “Hey, how about if I swing by and have a look at whatever it is you’re working on? I’m interested in seeing what you found out.”

  “Nathan, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not? I might be able to lend an objective point of view.” Cooper heard Nathan hesitate before he asked, “Where are you at the moment?”

  “I can’t tell you. I can tell you I’m safe.”

  Cooper motioned for him to extend the call.

  “At least tell me about the case.” Nathan asked.

  “I’d rather wait until I have the whole story, not just speculation,” Luna told him. After a moment or so she asked, “Nathan, is everything all right?”

  “Sure, why do you ask?”

  “You just seem a little off tonight.”

  “You’re imagining things,” Nathan reassured her. Glancing over at Cooper’s computer, he saw the triangulating of her cell phone position.

  “Listen Nathan, I have to go. I’ll try and call you in the morning.” Luna ended the call quickly.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Luna turned and announced to the others, “I think we have a problem.”

  Sam and Molly had joined her after she left the clubhouse this afternoon when Charlie had taken her from the biker’s compound. They had all been reviewing the case files and police report since then.

  “What kind of problem?” Sam asked. “What else could go
wrong tonight?”

  “I think Nathan is in trouble.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “He just called me and asked me where I was. When I wouldn’t tell him, he wanted to know about the case. He acted like he didn’t know anything about it.”

  “And that’s strange why?”

  “I briefed him on the case when I got back from my road trip. He told me then to check and double check my facts. He knew then what the case was all about.”

  “Do you think Cooper got to him?”

  “I don’t know.” Luna grew concerned. She got up and began to pace while she wrung her hands together. Then she reached for her phone and dialed Freddie’s number. When he answered, she told him, “Freddie, can you do me a favor? I need you to check on Nathan for me.”

  “Why, what’s our fearless leader up to?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I need you to check on him. Can you just drive by his house and check?” Luna asked.

  “Ok, he’s on my way home anyway. I’ll call you back in a bit.”

  Luna thanked her friend and hung up. While Sam was on the phone she felt nervous and afraid as she began to pace.

  Molly glanced up at her from her laptop. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure but I think Cooper is looking for us.” She glanced around the cabin they were in. “I think he’s taken my boss hostage.” After Kyle’s conversation with Sam earlier, they had left the motel. Luna suggested the cabin because no one knew about it. A good friend of hers owned the cabin and had told Luna she could use it anytime she wanted.

  Sam came over to them. “Benny narrowed the area where Kyle’s phone is. It’s not moving so they’re going to check on it.”

  Twenty minutes later Sam got a call back from Benny. From the look on his face, the other man didn’t have good news. When Sam hung up the call, he looked over at Luna and Molly. “They found Kyle’s body. Cooper sliced his throat and dumped him in a remote area. His phone was there but his car wasn’t. The police are going over to Cooper’s apartment to find him.”