At All Costs (Whiskey Bend MC Series)

by KJ Dahlen

  “What are you going to do about Joel’s sentencing?” Luna asked. “How much more time do you have to get that done?”

  Charlie smiled. “Judge Walker for Morgan County is reviewing the case as we sit here. He’s calling court in three hours.” Shaking his head he said, “Despite Ben’s efforts and Cooper’s hair trigger, Joel Grant will be sentenced and his brother is going to join him.”

  Sam smiled. “Then there is more good news. We were able with a court order to get a DNA sample from Cooper when he first got to the hospital and we were finally able to track down his real identity. We’ve also started running down his DNA to try for find out if there’s a match somewhere in the system.”

  “So who is he?” Luna asked.

  “His real name is Jeffery Candles. He was born to a single mother Sherrie Candles out of Albertville, Minnesota. He’s thirty-four years old and he had a criminal record up until eighteen years ago. He left home at the age of sixteen when his mother overdosed. He’s been off the grid as far as the law was concerned. As far as we know, he’s kept his nose clean and out of trouble since then. We have been able to put together a sort of time line and we’ve found seven different places where he’s worked in some sort of law enforcement jobs.”

  “Wow, he can fit right in can’t he?” Luna asked.

  Sam shrugged. “So well in fact, that no one has ever questioned him before this time.”

  “So what is our next step?” Aries asked.

  “All we can do is wait for him to slip up,” Charlie informed them. “Either we find him by chance or he’ll call Luna. Personally, I think he’ll call her.”

  “Why is that?” Lucifer asked.

  “I think he’s hung up on Luna,” Charlie told them. “For some reason, she’s the only one that got away from him. I think that made an impression on him. Besides, he’s always finished a contract before. He can’t help himself. He has to come back for her.” Charlie looked around the room. “This time you guys better not miss.” Then he looked around the room again with a twinkle in his eyes, not making eye contact with anyone in particular. “Oh, did I say that out loud? Sorry guys.”

  “Fucking Charlie.” Demon smiled.

  ~*~

  After Charlie and Sam left, Luna and Aries moved to his bedroom in the club. Lucifer didn’t want them in Aries’ cabin alone and unprotected which was fine by Luna.

  Lucifer then introduced her to his wife Jessie and Demon’s wife, Shiloh. They were in the kitchen enjoying a cup of coffee later that morning.

  “So, what is it like?” Luna asked.

  The other two women stared at her.

  “What is what like?” Jesses asked.

  “Well, you know. Umm, being here. All these huge men around you? Like with the tats and the walls of muscles? Like was it hard to get used to?”

  Shiloh laughed.

  Jesse smiled as she shook her head.” At first, it was kind of daunting. But underneath, all of them are teddy bears.”

  Shiloh laughed aloud.

  “T-teddy bears?” Luna felt shocked. “No way.”

  “Yes, way. I mean I know that Lucifer looks like a raging mountain. Like he might breathe actual fire any second but inside, he is the sweetest...” Her voice trailed off as her eyes softened and she held her cups to her lips as she sighed.

  Shiloh laughed some more at her friend’s dreamy look. “And I know that being with a man with the name of Demon sounds scary. But he’s just and angel in disguise.”

  Luna’s mouth popped open.

  The other two women busted into laughter at her expression.

  Geno came in and stared at the women as they laughed.

  Shiloh and Jesse straightened up in their chairs and again, lifted their cups as they gave each other secret looks and winks.

  Geno shook his head. “I found something interesting on that flash drive.”

  “Oh yeah,” Luna questioned. “Like what?”

  “Cooper had a profile of possible candidates for being his father and I ran across a name on his list that has a connection to your case.”

  Luna frowned. “My case?”

  “Do the names, Daniel Killpatrick, Jesse Grant or David Cuban mean anything to you?” he asked and watched for her reaction.

  Luna startled at the name Jesse Grant. Her hands trembled and she rushed to put her coffee cup down on the table.

  Jessie and Shiloh noticed immediately and reached out to touch her.

  “Are you ok?” Shiloh asked.

  Luna nodded then looked up at Geno. “Jesse Grant is Joel and Ben grandfather. He’s a real bastard of a man.”

  Geno looked almost apologetic. “I know, I looked him up. He raised Ben, Danny and Joel after he took the boys away from his son twenty years ago. He claimed his son was an unfit parent.” Shaking his head, he commented, “He sounds like a really standup guy.” Sighing loudly, he said, “Anyway, I ran him for a record and found he was arrested thirty four years ago in Albertville for DUI and at the time they used blood tests.”

  Luna looked stunned. Raising her hands to cover her mouth she asked, “His father is Jesse Grant, isn’t he?”

  Geno tightened his lips and nodded. “Yes, it’s at least an 87 percent match.”

  “Damn,” Jessie swore.

  Geno shook his head. “I’m on my way to let Lucifer and Aries know what I found. I just thought you would want to know too.”

  Luna nodded. “Thanks.”

  When Geno left the kitchen, Shiloh and Jessie looked at her.

  “What are you going to do now?” Jessie asked.

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” Luna shook her head. “I need to talk to Sam and Charlie.”

  “Well, we are here for you,” Shiloh said. “Being in the place with all these men is great and we always feel safe here, but we women gotta support each other too.”

  Luna looked at them both.

  They nodded and reached out to pat her hand.

  “Wow. Thank you so much. I-I never...” Luna’s voice faded away.

  “Never what?” Jesse stared at her.

  “Had...friends, really.”

  The two women smiled at her.

  “Well, you got em now.” Shiloh nodded.

  ~*~

  A little while later, Aries found her in their room. She looked up but didn’t smile when he came into the room. “You heard already didn’t you?” he asked.

  Luna nodded. “I did.”

  He came over to her and pulled her into his arms. “Do you trust me? Trust us?”

  Luna nodded immediately.

  “Then trust us that we won’t let him come near you,” Aries assured her. “We will do everything within our power to stop him before he hurts anyone else.”

  Luna snuggled into his embrace. “I can do that.”

  Aries tipped her chin up and looked into her eyes. “Can you? Can you give your trust to a bunch of guys you barley know completely?”

  Luna smiled. “Yes, I can. You listen to what I have to say, you never put me down. You believe in me and you’ve given me hope. That’s something no one else has ever done before. You give me things from your heart. I know that’s not easy for you but I love that you try so hard to please me. I-I love you, Aries. ” She paused then added, “I hope that someday you could maybe feel something for me.”

  Aries hugged her tighter. “Luna, you’re my woman. Of course, I love you.” He hesitated then added, “You give me a sense of peace I didn’t know I needed. You know I told you about our last mission and being taken hostage for four months right?”

  Luna nodded.

  “That gave me terrible nightmares. I couldn’t stay here with the rest of the guys because I would scream in my sleep. That four months was pure hell for us. But in case you hadn’t noticed since you came into my bed, I haven’t had one single nightmare. That my sweet lady is a record for me. You hold off the nightmares I’ve lived with for the past five years.”

  “Glad I could help you.” She snuggled
closer. “ I will be there whenever you need me too.”

  Aries exhaled. “I have to tell you something and I really don’t want to.”

  Luna shook her head. “Just tell me then.”

  “Sam, Molly and Charlie are coming over tonight. They said they needed some sort of plan to bring Cooper out of hiding.”

  Luna stepped away from him and began pacing. She stopped and glanced at Aries. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. I think we need to fight back.”

  “How do you propose we do that?”

  “We take away his secret.”

  “What are you suggesting? How are you going to take away his secret?” he asked.

  “I’m saying we tell the world about who Cooper really is. If we tell the world about Cooper, he won’t have anywhere to go. He’ll feel exposed to the whole world.”

  “How do you figure?” Aries looked puzzled. Then he held up his hand and suggested, “Let’s take this to the brothers. I think they should hear what you have to say.”

  Luna paused. The thought of all of them staring at her while she spoke and put her idea into the center of this and...

  He clasped her hands with his large ones. “It will be okay.” He gazed into her eyes.

  She bit at her lip. With him next to her, she could do anything. She nodded.

  He kissed her forehead gently, sweetly and embraced her.

  Angels... she remembered what the girls had said. Not devils, not like their names. But the opposite underneath of their names and their hard looks. Yes, she could see that now.

  They joined the rest of the brothers in the main room. Sam, Molly and Charlie were there as well.

  Aries sat down and announced to the group, “Luna has an idea I think we should listen to. She wants to tell the whole world about Cooper’s identity.”

  Luna took a deep breath as she nodded. “Right now, he’s relying on keeping out of sight because no one knows him. If we put his face out there and tell his story, he won’t have anywhere to hide. It was something Mike told me. He said one night Bruce got very drunk and began telling him about a time when he was young. He said as long as Bruce could keep his life a secret, then everything would be okay. If he could hide the dark side of his life from the world he would be all right. The one thing he dreaded was everyone knowing his secret. Mike told me it was at that moment he knew Bruce was going to kill him. He was the only one who knew what Bruce was doing.”

  “So what are you going to tell the world about this man?” Hades asked.

  Charlie nodded. “Whatever you say, please don’t start a riot or a mass panic in my city.”

  “You told me earlier to take back the power Cooper had taken from me. I think a front page story in the paper will do just that.” Luna stared at Sam. “Then we can set a trap for him.”

  “How do you expect to set a trap?” Lucifer spoke up now.

  “What’s the one thing Cooper wants the most?” she asked. Looking around she saw their faces. “Besides me dead? He wants to know who his father is. We found out this afternoon who that man is. What if we hint to him that we know the answer and we can prove it? That would drive him completely nuts. That we found out something in a few days that’s he’s been looking for...for years.”

  “I think you might be on to something here,” Sam agreed. “Can you get it in the morning paper?”

  “Oh yeah, it helps when you know the editor.” Luna smiled, as she again felt relieved that Nathan had lived through his ordeal with a hitman serial killer. She went over to her laptop and began putting together the story that would be in the morning edition. An hour later, she emailed her copy into the paper.

  “Do you think he’ll bite?” Hades asked.

  Luna smiled. “Oh yeah, he’s going to be so pissed at me he’ll tear this city apart to find me.”

  “Was that a wise move on your part?” Demon asked.

  “He won’t be after anyone but me. I’m the only one who knows his deepest, darkest secrets. I worded it so he would want to shut me up. He knows we have his flash drive and he will move heaven and hell to get it back. I worded the piece as to hint at his identity. The threat of discovery is there but it’s not obvious to anyone but him.”

  “Are you sure about that? I mean how can everyone else not see who and what he is?” Charlie asked.

  “He is obsessed with having a certain amount of control over his surroundings. As long as he maintains that strict hold, everything in his world is fine, but if he can’t maintain his hold, he’s lost. He’ll remain lost until he can get his control back.”

  “You’re saying he’s unstable right now,” Charlie said. “That means he might do anything that would get him close to you.”

  “What else did Mike tell you about Bruce?” Sam asked. “I mean we’ve copied everything we could from his flash drive and that will allow us to recreate his life, but did Mike tell you anything else about the man himself?”

  Luna thought for a moment. “Other than the control thing, Mike said in times of stress Bruce liked to disappear for days on end, and when he came back he would show him a hand crafted sword or dagger. Mike asked him where he got it and Bruce just smiled. He said there was nothing as good as making your own weapons.”

  “He makes his own swords? As in blacksmithing?” Demon asked. “Not many people do blacksmithing any more. Did Mike tell you what Bruce did with his swords?”

  “I might have the answer to that,” Molly said as she joined them. She was holding a stack of papers from Cooper’s flash drive. “Some of what Luna downloaded was part of Cooper’s diary. He said that he once watched a man take a piece of hot steel at a county fair and turn it into a sword. He said he was so fascinated by what the man had done he had to try it for himself. He said he found the actual process very therapeutic. He said beating the hell out of the hot steel released his stress and gave him time to think. He claimed the longer he did it, the better he became. He also said that when his collection began to amount to something he could be proud of, he knew he had to do something with it.”

  “Did he mention what?” Luna asked.

  Molly nodded. “He said he went back to the place where his grandmother was born, his mother’s parents and he bought the warehouse his grandfather once owned and he set himself up. To him that place became home.”

  Sam looked disgusted. “Great, that’s just freaking great. How the hell are we supposed to know where this place is?” He ran his fingers through his hair.

  “Did his diary say anything about where this warehouse was?” Charlie asked.

  Molly shook her head.

  Geno finally spoke up, “We found his real name and that will help with this maybe?”

  Luna went over to her bag and reached inside it for her tape recorder. She had taped her sessions with Mike in prison. Something Molly said sparked a memory and she wanted to see if what she remembered was really there. She turned it on and listened for a moment before she fast-forwarded it. She stopped the tape and listened for a minute then she snapped the fast-forward button again. Stopping the tape, she listened. She turned to Sam and Charlie then walked back to them with the tape recorder.

  “This might help.” She pressed the on button.

  “Did he ever tell you why he started killing?”

  Mike scoffed. “He told me his first kill was his mother.”

  “Why did he kill his mother?”

  “He said he was sixteen at the time and he just wanted to get away from her constant nagging. Nothing he did was ever good enough, and he felt would never be good enough and he was sick of her putting him down all the time. He wanted to get the hell out of the town he hated but he didn’t want to leave her behind. He said she deserved to know the kind of hell she put him through.”

  “Did he ever say what town that was?”

  “A little town in Minnesota. I think he called it Albertville. He said it was right on the Mississippi and he used to watch the riverboats dock and he’d dream about sailing away to a differ
ent place. I asked him where he wanted to go one time and he told me he didn’t care where he went as long as he didn’t have to go back there.”

  Luna snapped the tape recorder off. “Albertville is only about five miles on the other side of the bridge.”

  “If he’s been that close to his hometown why did he have an apartment here?” Sam asked.

  “Because Albertville was his last secret. He would have wanted to protect that place above everything else.” Luna said. “Remember he’s all about secrets.”

  “I wonder what else we’ll discover in Albertville,” Charlie commented. “It’s a small town and there can’t be that many warehouses. Not only that but it’s accessible by way of the river. The Mississippi has an inlet leading right past the town that empties into Lake Holcomb.”

  “Do you think that’s where he is right now?” Molly asked.

  Luna shook her head. “No, I think he’s still here. He’s hoping to catch me alone, for me to come out of hiding. He’s waiting in the shadows like a snake, all coiled up ready to strike.”

  “He must know you’re protected, not only by police and the MC but by FBI as well.” Sam pointed out.

  “He knows but he doesn’t care.” Luna t walked toward the windows. “He’s out there waiting and watching for the right opportunity.”

  “And what would that be exactly?” Molly questioned.

  Luna turned to stare at her. “The right opportunity to kill me and take back the control he’s lost. That can only happen when he kills me. Both he and I know it.”

  Everyone in the room went quiet.

  Aries looked enraged, his fists clenched at his sides.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Cooper sat in his car in the dark, parked down by the river. He had left his grandpa’s house earlier today and ended up here. Looking out the window and noticed how quiet the town was at this late hour.

  He hadn’t even noticed how cool it was getting until now. Shivering, he reached for his jacket. As he thought about the last few days’ events, he couldn’t help but wonder when things went so terribly wrong. This mission had started so well, then went to hell in a hand basket.