by Jessie Cooke
“Good. Fuck. What a fucking mess. Hawk has no fucking clue what he just started here.”
“Cassie called me. She said they tore the clubhouse apart. Any idea what they were looking for?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. He just declared an all-out war.” He looked down the long dirt road toward the clubhouse. He could see flashing red and blue lights all along the road. “I hope everyone had time to store their junk before those guys rolled up.” Handsome just nodded at that too. The ranch was rife with more marijuana than was legal, weapons that felons shouldn’t have access to, and God only knew what else. They kept most of it locked down in the root cellar, and that wasn’t easy to find. Each house had its own hiding place as well, but most of the men had still been at the bar when the police got there. He could only hope they hadn’t had any probable cause to go in any of those houses…or most importantly, the storage sheds.
“What are you gonna tell that cop?”
“That I wasn’t here and he’ll need to talk to the people that were if he wants to know what happened. Why don’t you go check on the girls and the rest of them?” The old guys and the prospects were all there. Dax prayed there weren’t any other casualties. Bruce James had been a nice older guy who couldn’t ride because of an old injury to his right hand, but he was still a productive member of the club and he’d be sorely missed. He wished now that he would have spent more time with the old guy rather than letting him feel like he’d just been put out to pasture because he couldn’t ride. He waited until Handsome spoke to the officer blocking the road and got on his bike, headed toward the clubhouse, before he went over toward the “command post.” Captain Banks saw him coming and walked over toward him.
“We can have a seat inside if you like.”
Dax looked up at the mobile command RV and back at the captain. “No thanks. I can stand.”
Banks nodded and said, “Do you mind my asking you where you were this morning?”
“I was in Hartford, at my girlfriend’s place.” Dax wasn’t sure what the look was on the captain’s face at that moment. While he tried to figure it out, his attention was distracted by another car pulling up. This one wasn’t a cop car, so he was curious. A guy about his age with blond hair and in street clothes got out. He had a badge attached to his waistband and a shoulder holster on. The captain was looking at him too, and with another strange look on his face he said:
“I’m sorry, Mr. Marshall, can you excuse me for a minute?” Dax gave him a nod and watched as he went over to talk to the new arrival. Something about the guy looked familiar. He was sure he’d never seen him before, but the guy reminded him of someone and he couldn’t place it. He watched curiously as the man and the captain argued, quietly, and then finally the blond-haired man stormed back over to this car, got in, slammed the door, and left rubber on the road as he left. The captain came back over to Dax and said:
“Sorry about that.”
“Who was that?”
“One of my detectives,” the captain said.
“Do you mind if I ask his name? He looks familiar. I’m just trying to place him.”
The captain raised an eyebrow and said, “Maybe he’s arrested you in the past?”
That anger Dax had been working so hard to contain seeped out into his blood and it heated up. “Listen, I’m doing all I can here to be polite and cooperative, but if you’re going to be an ass, I might just wait until my lawyer gets here to talk to you.”
The captain nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry. His name is Detective Brady. He’s supposed to have some time off for personal reasons unrelated to anything that happened here today. I told him to go home. Now if you and I can get back to what we were talking about?”
“Fine. But like I said, I wasn’t here. I’m not sure what I can tell you.”
“Your boy over there.” The captain jerked his head over to where Garfield still sat. “He said that this was the work of Grant Benning and the rest of his crew.”
Dax nodded. “That’s what I was told as well. It makes me wonder why you’re wasting your time talking to me and not picking them up.”
“I’ve got men on it, you can be assured of that. Do you know what it was that they wanted here?”
Dax shrugged. “Who knows what that crazy bastard Hawk is going to do?”
“So there was nothing you had here specifically, or no person here that they were after…that you’re aware of?”
“No. Not that I’m aware of.”
“Your clubs have had a lot of conflict as of late.”
“And each time shit goes down, the Sinners are the ones with their hands dirty…yet me and my crew are still treated like the criminals. Just because a man has a past, doesn’t mean that’s the same path he’s still on.”
The captain raised another eyebrow and then with a strange, concerned look he said, “I’d really like to believe that.”
“Is that all you need from me, Captain? I’d like to check on the rest of my friends.”
“For now, yes. I might need to give you a call later.”
Dax pulled out his wallet again and took out one of Nathan’s cards. “You can call him,” he said. “No offense, but most of my experience with cops has been negative. I’d like to have a friend with me the next time we talk.”
The captain took the card and said, “You’re free to go. You just won’t be given entrance to any of the buildings that are still being processed.”
Dax nodded and went over to this bike. His phone was vibrating in his pocket as he straddled the hog. He pulled it out and saw that it was Angel and for some reason when he saw her name on the screen, a vision of the blond guy popped into his head. It was those eyes. He had those deep green, almond-shaped eyes that Dax loved so much about Angel. Fighting off another bout of suspicion he took a deep breath and answered the phone.
“Hey, baby.”
“Hey. Is everyone okay? Are you okay? Should I come out?”
“I’m not sure yet about everyone else. Bruce was shot at the front gates. He didn’t make it.”
“Oh, shit! I’m so sorry!”
“I know, babe. Don’t come out. It’s a mess, crawling with cops right now. I know you had a rough night. Stay home and rest. I’ll call you when I finish up here.”
“Okay. Please be safe.”
“I will. Hey, Angel?”
“Yeah?”
What was he going to say? Do you have a brother? Is he a cop? Did you tell him where we would be yesterday? Fuck. He knew it needed to be said, but now wasn’t the time, or at least that’s what he told himself.
“Never mind. I’ll talk to you soon.” He ended the call and for a second stared at the phone while the anxiety about that ate through his stomach. He finally forced himself to tuck it away for now. He needed to deal with the matter at hand. He started the bike and revved the throttle, and as he drove past the police barriers he felt all their eyes on him. He knew what they thought about him and most of the time he didn’t give a fuck. Other times, like now, when he’d been doing everything in his power to stop the war between the two clubs and he got no fucking respect for it, it pissed him off.
31
Two weeks later
Kyle got out of the car in front of the dilapidated house on the south side of town. The neighborhood was sketchy and this house in particular looked like it should have been condemned long ago. He saw Chris Matheson standing near the front of it. The captain had appointed Chris to take over as lead on the task force after Kyle’s father was killed, and he was so pissed off about that, he could hardly see straight. Chris was an okay guy, but this gang stuff was Kyle’s specialty. He’d taken every online class, training, and seminar he could find on it. He could recite who belonged to each gang, what their tattoos meant, and practically nearly everything they were all involved in at the present moment. He’d been on this task force since the beginning and he’d lost his father to it. Yet Chris Matheson was suddenly the captain’s golden boy. He
was an okay detective, Kyle guessed. But he didn’t think the guy had the balls for this.
He grabbed his weapon out of the car and tucked it into his holster before making his way across the cracked cement and through the weeds up to the lopsided front porch where Matheson stood. Matheson gave him a chin nod. Kyle nodded back. “What do we have here?”
“One dead Sinner, on his way to hell no doubt.”
Kyle raised an eyebrow. “Do we know who sent him there?”
“I reckon my guess is as good as yours, or exactly the same. But there were no witnesses…surprise, surprise. No weapon and so far, no evidence. Hell, we can’t even identify him at this point, other than the patch on his vest and the tattoos on his neck and arms.”
“You can’t identify him? Why?”
“Take a look,” Chris said, cocking his head toward the door. Kyle showed his badge to the officer posted there and stepped inside. He was immediately assaulted by a smell that told him the body had been in the house for quite some time. The closer he got to where the flurry of activity was happening, the more his stomach turned from the foul odor that seemed to permeate all his pores. He stepped up behind the M.E. and one of the crime scene techs who was taking pictures, and looked down in front of them. He’d been a cop for ten years and never once had he thrown up at a crime scene…but this day was going to come as close as he ever had. He covered his retch with a cough and the medical examiner looked up at him.
“Nasty mess,” the older man said. Kyle nodded and forced himself to look back at the body…or what was left of it. Decomposition had set in and the bugs were having a field day, but that wasn’t the worst part. The body had no head and no hands. They’d left enough to identify him as a Sinner, but barely as a human being.
“Cause of death?” Kyle asked.
“Don’t know. Since they found a bullet hole in the floor underneath where his head should be, I’m guessing a shot to the head at the moment, but that’s just a slightly educated guess.”
“Any ideas how long he’s been here?” Kyle asked.
“As close as I can tell from the larvae and state of decomp”—those words made Kyle’s stomach roll again—“maybe a week…or two.”
Two weeks. It had been two weeks since they’d collared Vince Miller. Two weeks since one of the animals in the club his little sister wanted to be a part of had killed their father. Two weeks since the Sinners declared war on the Skulls by terrorizing their ranch. Kyle had seen Dax Marshall there that day. He’d been home by order of the chief, grieving the loss of his father. But sitting there looking at all the reminders of his dad in the house had been killing him and when he heard the call out to the ranch on the scanner, he’d got into his car and headed out there. He called Angel on the way to make sure she wasn’t there. She told him that she was at her apartment in Hartford. When he got there Dax Marshall had been talking to the captain. The captain admonished him for being there and told him to go home. He was in no frame of mind to work. In the back of his mind, Kyle knew he was right, but it still pissed him off. The captain had threatened to suspend him before he agreed to leave. As he got into his car he felt Dax Marshall’s eyes on him. He looked over at him and Dax didn’t turn away. He had a look on his face as if he knew who Kyle was, and for the first time it dawned on Kyle how much he and Angel looked alike. He admonished himself all the way home, praying he hadn’t done anything stupid to get his sister hurt. The past two weeks, things had been quiet except for the pain-in-the-ass FBI sniffing around. Kyle wasn’t fooled by it, though. He’d known it was the calm before the storm, and when he got the call about the body in the house, he knew the torrential rains were about to begin to fall.
He forced himself to look at the bloody patch on the vest. It was so covered in blood that he couldn’t see what it said, other than that it had the Sinners’ emblem, the silhouette of a holy man—a black-robed monk—with the face of the devil shining out underneath it. He moved his eyes up to the mutilated neck where there was a tattoo of a pair of lips that had “Lita” underneath them in black script. “Motherfucker!”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Kyle said to the M.E. The task force wasn’t going to believe this. This was going to change everything. What the hell was going on?
He made his way around the crime scene techs collecting evidence and dusting the practically rotting house for prints, and went back outside. Matheson looked at him as soon as he stepped out the door. Kyle hoped his face didn’t look as green as it felt.
“Any idea from his tats who it is?”
Instead of answering his question Kyle asked one of his own. “Who owns the house?”
“Grant Benning.”
“Shit.”
“What? Who is it?”
“You’re not going to fucking believe it.”
“Try me,” Matheson said.
“Maximillian Lewis.”
“What? No fucking way!”
“It’s Mad Max, I guarantee it.”
“Jesus fuck. What the hell was he doing in a Sinners vest, and in one of Grant Benning’s houses?”
“No clue,” Kyle said. “I don’t know what the hell any of this means. We need to find Dax Marshall and bring him in, though. Like now.”
Dax was watching Angel as she put on her make-up. She smiled at him in the mirror. “You have a funny look on your face. What’s up? Is everything okay? Hawk hasn’t…”
“No. He still hasn’t been resurrected.” After the morning that the Sinners hit the ranch, they all disappeared. Dax told Angel that if he had to guess he’d say they’d scurried like cockroaches into the city. They had been neck deep in working for a drug cartel in New York, providing the guns and firepower, before this went down. He told her that was what he’d heard on the street. When Angel reported that to Kyle, he already knew about it. He had all the information on the gang they were working for as well. Sometimes she wondered how her brother had room in his head for so much information. “I still think they’re lying low somewhere in New York, waiting for the police and the FBI…and us…to stop looking for them.”
She put down her mascara and turned to face him. “Are you going to?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Stop looking for them? Hell, no. You think I should let Hawk get away with what he’s done? He killed Bruce…”
“No, of course I don’t think he should get away with it, but the police are looking for him too, right?”
“And I’m going to find him first and he’s going to look at me with the respect he should have given my father, right before he dies.”
Angel winced. She hated when he said things like that to her. She knew he was a good man at heart, but she also knew that he had the spirit of a warrior and now that his “family” had been threatened and his “home” invaded, that warrior had a taste for blood. If Grant Benning turned up dead, she’d like to have no knowledge of how he got that way.
“Where are you going?” he suddenly asked her, changing the subject.
“I have a meeting, at work.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll give you a ride.”
She tried not to show the tickle of anxiety that suddenly filled her stomach as she said, “Oh, that’s okay. I have some errands to run afterwards. I don’t mind driving.”
“Angel.” He’d been sitting on the side of the tub. He stood up behind her and his presence completely filled the room, almost suffocating her. “What are you hiding from me?”
She put the make-up brush in her hand down and turned around to face him. “What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t want me to go to Massachusetts with you last week for your uncle’s funeral. You disappear on me sometimes all day long. You just haven’t been acting like yourself…or at least the Angel I’ve come to know.”
“I’m sorry about the funeral. I just didn’t think it was a good time for you to leave. I thought I was doing that for you. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings…”
“It didn’t hurt my feelings. I
t made me suspicious.”
She sighed. “Well, I definitely didn’t mean to do that. What exactly are you suspicious of? Do you think I’m cheating on you?” Her insides were shaking. What would she do if he decided to follow her today? She’s supposed to be at a task force meeting in three hours. She’d have to call the surveillance van and have them follow him to make sure that he wasn’t following her. Shit.
He changed tack again, or so she thought, and asked an odd question: “Do you have a brother?”
“A brother? No. Remember that I told you I’m an only child.”
“Yeah, I remember that’s what you told me.” She was looking up into his blue eyes. They had an accusatory look in them and suddenly she was even more worried. Did he find something out about me? Did I do something to blow my cover?
“Dax, I don’t understand where any of this is coming from. Have I done something to upset you?”
“I saw a man a couple of weeks ago and I couldn’t help but wonder where I’d seen him before. He looked so familiar. I kept thinking about it, racking my brain, you know? And you know what I finally came up with?”
“What’s that?”
“It was you. I didn’t know him. I’d never seen him before. It was your face I was looking at. I mean, fucking exactly. The same color and shape eyes, the same color hair, the same skin coloring. He could have been your twin, if he was a girl.”
“Wow.” Fucking Kyle. Where did Dax see Kyle? “They say everyone in the world has a twin.” She smiled. Dax didn’t. She couldn’t believe Kyle hadn’t thought about how much they looked alike. Despite the age difference even, they could be twins. People had told them that their entire lives.
“Angel, I couldn’t stand it if you were lying to me. You know? I just couldn’t take it.” She closed the space between them and put her hand on the side of his face.
“Dax, I’m with you, body and soul. I don’t know why you suddenly have these suspicions about me, but I’m telling you that I am a hundred percent loyal to you.” She hated herself for lying to him. She knew that wasn’t what it was supposed to be like when you were undercover. You lied when you had to, in order to save your own ass and get the collar. She was lying to save her own ass alright, but ninety percent because the thought of losing him made it hard for her to breathe.