Stitches (Insatiable Series Book 5)

by Patrick Logan

  As the man hurried back to the bike and waiting driver, his head tilted and for a second—a fraction of a second, less than the time it took to blink—Jared locked eyes with him.

  His face was different; it was a mottled, purple-blue color, one eye seeming incapable of opening all the way, and his skin was like a cotton sheet pulled tight over an acute metal frame.

  But it was him, of that, Jared was certain.

  It was Seth Grudin. It was the man who had left his family to die while he and Oxford searched for help during the blizzard. The man who Jared had never been able to locate, the one who he hoped, despite what he had done, had somehow survived the storm, but at the same time never wanted to see again.

  And yet he was here; Seth was in Askergan of all places—and he was with them.

  Now that his heart had jolted to a start, it sputtered and coughed before firing on all cylinders.

  Jared felt as if he were having a heart attack.

  What the fuck is he doing here? What the hell is going on? Why. Is. He. Here?

  And then it wasn’t just his heart that throttled, but the bikes as well. Before he could take a full breath, they peeled away sending a swirling cloud of dust and exhaust spiraling his way.

  Jared gaped, the acrid fumes burning his nose and throat. The cloud cleared, but the darkness prevailed, the events past year or more weighed down on him.

  And Corina.

  Corina was out there somewhere, with Seth of all people.

  Why is he here?

  The door to the police station suddenly burst open, and three men rushed out.

  “—the fuck was that?” Coggins shouted at the ailing sun. The other man, Deputy Williams, bent and picked up the bag, while the Sheriff, gun drawn, surveyed the road, his eyes quickly following the trail of dust left by the motorcycles.

  As Williams tore the bag open, Reggie and Dirk stepped out of the station, also with guns drawn.

  Maybe it wasn’t him… maybe…

  But it was him. Jared knew the last boyfriend he had through and through.

  He knew that it was him.

  And yet the pressing question prevailed: why? Why was Seth here?

  Williams stood bolt upright, holding something mechanical in his hands.

  “It’s a—it’s a leg, I think?” he said tentatively.

  Sheriff White turned to him.

  “A what?”

  “A leg.”

  The metallic object in his hands reflected the dusty orange sunlight.

  As Williams passed the object to the Sheriff, who began to investigate it closely, Jared realized what it was.

  “No!” he shouted, unable to control his visceral reaction.

  Coggins strode forward, the gun aimed at the tree Jared cowered behind.

  “Who the fuck is there?”

  Jared’s breath caught in his throat, and he slunk even lower. With his back pressed against the trunk, he closed his eyes, trying to come to grips with what was happening, with what he had seen.

  It was Corina’s artificial leg, of that he had no doubt. And it had been Seth Grudin who had thrown it.

  Seth, Corina, Coggins… the Crab.

  Tears spilled down his cheeks, and he wiped them away. Sniffing, he took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the tree.

  “Coggins? It’s me, Jared,” he croaked. “And that’s Corina’s leg you’re holding.”

  Chapter 17

  “Seth? You’re ex-fucking boyfriend, Seth? That Seth?” Coggins shook his head dramatically, while the Sheriff stared, dumbfounded.

  “Yes,” Jared whispered. “That Seth.” The man was a shell of his former self, of the man who had helped them rid the county, or at least most of the county, of crackers.

  And that was saying something, considering how desperate and broken he had looked when Coggins had pulled up to the station firing his rifle out the passenger window.

  “I—I don’t understand what he’s doing here. I haven’t seen him since… since the storm. I thought… I thought he was dead.”

  He had a vacant look in his eyes, as if he were trying to focus on a floater that crossed his vision.

  Coggins grabbed the man by the shoulders, and Jared raised his head to look at him.

  “Question is, what are you doing here? I thought you left…” his sentence trailed off, and when he continued it was clear to everyone in the room that the rest was rhetorical, or in the very least a personal query. “Why does everyone come back here? What is it about this godforsaken place that you just can’t leave?”

  Now it was Coggins’s turn to stare deeply at the horizon where the final vestiges of sunlight licked the surface like a desperate tongue.

  “I—I—fuck, they took Corina,” Jared’s voice hitched. “And that’s her leg. I—I—I spoke to the priest and—and—”

  Dirk took an aggressive step forward.

  “What did he say? What did the priest say?”

  Sheriff White, whose eyes were bouncing from the artificial limb in Williams’s hands to Coggins and Jared, and then back and forth as if he was spinning on a nauseating merry-go-round, suddenly found his eyes drifting, and then fixing, on Deputy Dirk Kinkaid.

  He was wrong, Paul realized in that moment. It wasn’t that Dirk mistrusted the priest, it was that he knew the man.

  Knew the man, and hated him.

  Dirk’s dark eyes blazed with a fury of the like that Sheriff White had only seen once before. When Greg Griddle had found out that his son had been killed.

  He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Then he reached out and gently guided Dirk off to one side.

  “Jared, we’re going to save Corina. You have to trust us.”

  Jared’s eyes lowered, and Coggins finally released him.

  “That’s what he said.”

  Dirk stepped forward again, but Paul held out a thick hand, keeping him at bay.

  “What else did he say? What did—”

  “Dirk!” the Sheriff said sternly, stopping the man cold with a stare. The man ground his teeth, but when it was clear that he was going to say no more, at least not for the time being, Paul turned back to Jared.

  “Jared, we’re going to get Corina back. That’s a fucking promise—we are going to get her and Alice back tonight.”

  Jared’s eyes flicked up, confusion on his narrow face.

  “Alice? Alice is at the house with Corina?”

  Sheriff White glanced quickly at Coggins, whose face seemed to melt at the mention of Alice’s name.

  Nancy was there, too, he thought, a knot forming in his stomach. And most of her still is. Just not her head.

  He swallowed hard, trying hard to focus, to concentrate. The words that he had said to Coggins earlier echoed in his head like a mantra, and he latched on to them like a man overboard clutching desperately to the side of a boat that only seemed to be going faster and faster and faster and…

  It’s about the other four-thousand or so Askergan citizens. We need to be strong, we need to finally bury the demon that has been haunting us since the storm.

  “Jared, is Pike with Father Carter? Are they both at the church?”

  Jared nodded briskly.

  “Good. I need to contact Pike—”

  “No, they’re together, but they’re not at the church,” Jared interrupted. “They are at the new site.”

  Dirk stepped forward and spoke again, reaffirming Paul’s suspicions about the man.

  Why does he hate him so much?

  The man gave off a greasy car salesman vibe half of the time, but what priest didn’t? The only difference between the two professions was that while one hawked an actual item, a car, a truck, an RV, the other sold an idea.

  A very, very expensive idea.

  People generally didn’t like car salesmen, but they didn’t loathe them.

  “New site? What new site?” Dirk demanded hungrily.

  “They’re building a new church,” Jared said softly. He dropped his eyes as he spo
ke the next part. “They’re building a new church at the Wharfburn Estate.”

  Sheriff White’s face went slack, and someone to his left let out a dry croak. He thought it was Coggins, but he couldn’t seem to muster the effort to look.

  “What the fuck?” Paul muttered. “Why is he out there?”

  Before Jared could reply, Coggins repeated the query, but while Paul’s had been a whispered, contemplative musing, Coggins’s voice was tinged with anger.

  And fear. Below it all was a brooding, cesspool of fear and anxiety.

  “What the fuck is he doing there?”

  “He’s building a church,” Jared replied matter-of-factly.

  Sheriff White couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Now? He’s building a church now?”

  Dirk chimed in next.

  “The fucking priest can’t be trusted… that fucking greasy scumbag, he—”

  “Easy now,” Reggie interjected. “Father Carter Duke is a man of the cloth, a priest—”

  “The fuck he is. He’s a—”

  Reggie stepped forward, and Sheriff White shot him a look. He was a big man, thick through the chest with arms that bulged from beneath his khaki deputy shirt that was two sizes too small for him—it had been Dana’s old uniform. Reggie wasn’t quite as big as Paul himself, but he was a close second.

  Still, with the wiry Dirk Kinkaid on one side and Reggie on the other, he doubted he could keep them from getting at each other’s throats if they were so inclined.

  “Dirk, you better respect—”

  “Enough!” White bellowed, feeling his face go hot. “Keep it together! You guys are fucking arguing about nothing, while Walter holds the girls and the whole fucking County hostage. Buck up. Buck the fuck up!”

  There was a pregnant pause. After a few deep breaths, Paul continued, this time in a more neutral voice. It wasn’t like him to lose his cool, but for fuck’s sake the last thing he wanted was for Corina or Alice’s heads to be placed in a bag like Nancy’s had.

  Nancy…

  Paul swallowed hard and pushed his feelings aside.

  “Jared, I need you to go to see Father Carter and Pike—”

  “Pike,” Dirk hissed, and Sheriff White whipped around, his massive hands out in front of him.

  “Are you done? Are you fucking done? If you can’t shut the fuck up, keep whatever feelings you have for those two at bay for another fucking day, then you need to leave now.”

  Dirk gritted his teeth and stared at him, holding his ground.

  “Last chance, Dirk. You want to leave, you leave now. If not, shut the fuck up and listen.”

  When the man lowered his gaze, Sheriff White nodded and turned back to the rest of them.

  “Good. Now Jared, I need you to give—” he reached into the bag that Deputy Williams had slung over one shoulder, —”to give Pike a radio. Let him know that the distraction has to wait until we are in place. Tell him, fuck, order him to wait until we give the signal. No one moves until they get the okay from my mouth.” His eyes flicked quickly to Dirk before returning to Jared. “Out of my mouth. No one else’s. Can you do that?”

  Jared hesitated. It was clear that he didn’t want to go anywhere near the old Wharfburn residence, regardless of whether it was a pile of rubble or a new church. After the tale that Coggins had spun, he didn’t blame the man. But Jared had to be the one to do it. Paul needed the other men—even Dirk—for something else.

  For the other part of the plan.

  “Jared, we—”

  “I’ll do it,” he replied softly, holding out a tentative hand. Sheriff White slapped the radio into his narrow palm, but he kept his hand on it as if he were putting a fish back in water and waiting for its tail to flick, for it to show some desire to keep on living.

  “Is she okay?” Jared asked suddenly, and Paul released the walkie. It wasn’t a strong tail flip, more like a dorsal fin wiggle, but it was good enough.

  It had to be enough.

  “I hope so,” Paul answered simply, picturing his girlfriend’s pale, white eyes and blue lips obscured by the thick plastic bag. He felt sick to his stomach. “I really, really hope Corina and Alice are okay.”

  They fucking better be. For the sake of the county, they better be okay.

  Chapter 18

  Dirk was absolutely fuming. It seemed that everyone in this fucking shithole of a county had fallen under the spell of the conman that was Carter Duke. The worst part was that the man hadn’t done anything worthy of their praise. In fact, he hadn’t done much of anything at all.

  It was almost as if all of the citizens of Askergan County were so desperate to get out from under the blanket of evil that covered them all, that they were quite literally looking at him as some sort of savior. And Carter smelled this desperation like blood in the water. The man was nothing if not an opportunist, and Askergan was ripe with opportunity.

  But Dirk wasn’t noseblind; he could smell an opportunity, as well. A chance once and for all to get back at CD who had cost him so much. Looking into the Sheriff and Deputy Coggins’s eyes, he knew that they didn’t trust the priest either, but they were bound by the wishes of their constituents.

  Dirk, however, was not, despite the Deputy shield that had been given to him. And yet he would play his role in this fiasco, in saving the women and ridding the town of the filth that was Walter Wandry or the Crab—the neutered psychopath hell-bent on destroying everyone and everything that came within spitting distance of Askergan. And after he found out exactly where the girls were and radioed that in, he would make his way to the new church site and rid Askergan of its other pestilence while the Sheriff and his other Deputies went on their suicide mission.

  And then Askergan would be in his rearview mirror, and he could actually move on.

  For once, after all these years, Dirk could taste the slightly sour taste of freedom somewhere on the back of his tongue. After he disposed of CD, he would be free of the guilt and the fury that had become intractable with his soul.

  Dirk sighed and rubbed his eyes. He was approaching Sabra’s place from the back side, taking a long, winding road up to the hill where he was supposed to park his motorcycle.

  The Sheriff had entrusted him with both a shotgun and a pistol, but he was hoping he wouldn’t have to use either. He was going to help the big black man, but he wasn’t going to fight for him. After all, this wasn’t his war.

  His beef lay solely with Father Carter Duke.

  Maybe with Pike as well, but knowing what he knew, about how the boxer turned bespoke bodyguard had been duped by Carter as they all had, Dirk hoped that the man would stay out of it.

  Slowing to a crawl, he cut the headlight on his motorcycle, and then shut the engine off completely, allowing the bike to coast silently up to its final resting place.

  His first course of action after leaving the ACPD station was to change out of his police uniform, which was too big and smelled funny anyway. It was best if his appearance didn’t raise any suspicion. It was a fool’s errand to assume that the Skull Krushers hadn’t been apprised to the fact that he had flipped—in a county such as this, news spread like a fucking echo in a culvert—but at a distance, he thought he might still pass as one of them.

  Especially at night.

  But while he was hopeful that wearing his jean jacket and driving his bike would keep the Krushers at bay, it raised another problem: the cartels.

  Sheriff White had been less than forthcoming with how Pike planned to mount a distraction large enough for them to sneak inside, grab the hostages, and leave without being noticed, but Dirk wasn’t stupid. And, besides, he had been there at Riot 7; he had seen the cartels, as well as Sabra and the Krushers. Even though Sabra was no longer, he knew that as long as there were drugs, there would be cartels.

  They were involved, somehow; he just couldn’t figure out what Pike or Carter had offered them in exchange for their services.

  Knowing the man as he did, however, he tho
ught that it had something to do with either money or its ultimate consequence: power.

  In Dirk’s experience working undercover for several shady henchmen and mob-types over the years in pursuit of CD, he knew that everything was about power. Money was simply the catalyst for power.

  Dirk placed his feet on the ground and used the bike’s momentum to crest the hill. He spotted a large oak tree that cast long shadows on the dirt path, and moved the bike next to it and lowered the kickstand.

  After adjusting the shotgun slung over his shoulder and making sure the pistol was tucked safely in the front of his jeans, he hopped off the bike and surveyed the scene. A quick glance at his watch revealed that it was coming on seven-thirty.

  Dusk… Sabra’s detail thinned at dusk as the dealers returned with their scores. If Walter kept the same schedule, then Dirk expected that the bikers would be drawn inside the estate in case any of the zit-faced wannabe gangsters tried to pull something, but mostly just to ogle the haul.

  Sabra, despite being constantly high and on the verge of a massive coronary, had been smart. Dirk had observed him over the past year or so and was amazed at how astute some of the decisions he made were. Of how aware the fat man was. Sabra knew that it didn’t matter how big you got, you usually failed when your ego got in the way—when you thought you were too big, too powerful to fail, to be overthrown.

  And Dirk knew this too. He knew that the ego was the antithesis to power, which was why he was convinced that he would eventually get to Carter Duke. After all, it had been the “priest’s” ego that had made him forget all about Dirk.

  How can you forget that you mouthed the words ‘undercover’, that you had sicked Tony on me? That he had cut three fingers off my right hand and would have taken my head off next if Sabra and his men hadn’t cut him down? That Tony placed the call to murder my wife and child?

  Dirk swallowed his fury and crouched in the tall grass.

  Control… you need to keep your own ego at bay.

  When he made it to the embankment that leaned toward the estate, he lowered himself onto his stomach. Squinting hard, he could see the front gate of the estate, and true to form, the bikers had started vacating their posts and heading inside.