Tanya tugged at her arm. “Come on, Romero. The quicker you get your stuff, the quicker you can get away from here. Hopefully, they burn this place to the ground.”
The three of them wove around coroners, stretchers, detectives, and vast pools of blood to the doorway that led to the back. The carnage found its way back there, too. The remains of strippers readying themselves for the customers nearly covered the floor. Eve bit back a scream. Literally. She could hear the squeaks escape from around her tongue. She turned and buried her face in Micah’s chest and then let it go. Her whole body quaked. He gently caressed her hair as he comforted her.
“Eve, what is it?” Tanya questioned.
Eve pointed to the blonde hanging through the black curtain. Half her body dangled into the hall from the stage. Her naked torso was torn apart and covered in blood. “My old roommate, Tabitha. We were close.”
“I’m sorry, doll. Let’s get you out of here. Take these.” Tanya handed her a pair of rubber gloves. “That way your fingerprints don’t show up.”
“Thanks.” She slipped them on. Finding her grip on the dial, she spun the lock at each number of her combination until the door popped open. She scooped the items out of the locker and into her arms.
Taking a deep breath to still her trembling nerves, she nodded toward the office. She wanted to run. She needed to get out of there. But Momma’s amulet… “Where did Deacon disappear to?”
“He’s here. He’s in his office.”
“Arrested? Restrained?”
“Dead. In his chair.”
Eve stared down the hallway as she bit back a sob. Her stomach churned violently. Deacon was gone. She had fucked him. He nearly killed her until Micah bartered for her life. She was free. Micah was free. She could walk away.
They all focused on the broken voice that cut through the static on the officer’s radio. Tanya picked it from her hip. “Romero, I need to get back out there. Finish up and come out. Got it?”
Eve nodded quietly. Tanya offered them a forced smile before she disappeared through the ripped curtain.
Eve pulled from Micah’s arms and then stormed to the end of the hall with Micah on her heels.
“Where the fuck are you going?” he demanded.
“We have to find your mother’s amulet.” She handed her things to Micah and stepped inside. She gagged when she saw Deacon. His head fell behind the chair. She wasn’t sure what held it still to his body, and she wasn’t about to look to find out. The decapitation wasn’t clean by any means. She shot a look at Micah. Without asking, he kept an eye out for Tanya. Eve hurried to examine the office.
The safe beside the desk was wide open. It was filled with piles of cash and bags of cocaine and heroin. A moment of weakness washed over her. Would they miss one bag? Maybe they could chalk it all up to a drug deal gone badly? She shook it off and kept looking.
Her gaze stopped at the computer screen dangling off the desk by its cord. The drawer of the desk was nearly pulled off its hinges and was resting in Deacon’s lap. Momma Hallow’s necklace was displayed majestically on a bed of midnight blue velvet on the blood-splattered computer screen. It must have been some auction website. She gaped at the current minimum bid.
Twenty-three million dollars.
A yellow lined legal pad in the center of the cluttered desk had a series of at least a dozen crossed off numbers on it written in pencil. The number at the top of the pad was twenty-four thousand. The only number not crossed off was at the bottom. Twenty-three million. She grabbed the mouse and closed out the website. Then she tore the power cord from the wall.
“Shit. It’s the necklace,” Eve muttered under her breath.
“What’d you say?” Micah asked.
“Nothing. Give me a moment more.” Eve took a deep breath. There was only one place more secure than the safe. She ran her finger along the drawer of the desk until she found the catch in the wood. She pressed it.
The ruby necklace tumbled to the ground, landing on Deacon’s shoe. Glancing one last time out to the hallway, she grabbed it and slipped it inside her bra. She grabbed the top sheet on the notepad and tore it free. She quickly retreated back to the hallway as she crumpled it and shoved it in her pocket.
“Hold up.” Tanya stepped back into the hallway. “I told you to move it.” She eyed Eve suspiciously and then stepped into the office. Eve’s heart thundered in her chest. She walked back out and pointed toward the back door.
“I know your background with heroin, Eve. I had to make sure nothing was missing. Everything is accounted for. Why don’t you slip out the back, so you don’t get mobbed?”
Eve smiled. “Thank you.”
“Stay out of trouble, kid.”
Eve nodded and then spun on her toe. Micah brushed her lower back with his fingertips as they hurried out the door into the frigid sunlight.
Chapter Twelve
Neither of them said a word as they scurried around the building toward the motel. Eve felt like there were a thousand volts of electricity burning through her. What she just saw would be burned into her memory for the rest of her life. It would haunt her worst nightmares. She only hoped they wouldn’t top off the experience by getting arrested.
Micah slowed his pace as they crossed the highway. A rusty, beat-up truck was now parked next to his Jeep, and two men leaned against it. They waved as they approached.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Micah demanded.
Josiah looked at Samuel beside him. “You took off in an all fired fucking hurry without thinking things through. So what’s going on in there?”
Micah shook his head. “It’s a fucking bloodbath. In every literal sense of the word. Everyone is dead including Eve’s old roommate and the son of a bitch who tried to kill her. It was horrific.”
“What about Momma’s necklace?”
Micah turned to look at Eve. She glanced around them to see if anyone was watching them. She wiggled her fingers in her bra to fish for the amulet. She heard a muffled moan come from Samuel followed by a warning snarl from Micah. Finally, she caught a finger around the chain and tugged it out. Wrapping her fist around it, she laid it in Micah’s hand.
He studied it in his hand. “Fuck, I still need to take it to the jeweler to be repaired. The clasp is still broken.”
Eve glanced at the clasp. “No, you don’t. Take it home. If you have a screwdriver, I can fix it. Then you can take it back to Momma.”
He grinned at her. “You’re amazing.”
“Don’t forget it.”
He grinned at her. “Fuck, I love you.”
“I love you more.”
“I hate to break up the foreplay,” Josiah interrupted. “Was there another attack in there? We need to get ahead of this fucking thing before someone figures us out.”
“There were paw prints,” Eve answered. “But they didn’t seem like yours. I’ve seen you guys in beast form. I can’t imagine you could get in that back hallway without causing far more damage than what was there.” She looked at Micah. “Didn’t you think that?”
Micah nodded. “I couldn’t get back there. Abraham couldn’t, and he’s the smallest of us. I doubt it was werewolves. In this case, I think we were framed.”
Samuel huffed. “Who would want to frame us?”
Micah pulled out his phone and opened up his photo app. He held it out to the others. The image of a pale blonde in a pool of blood was displayed on the screen. There were two crimson spots on her neck. “While Meg was hugging her officer friend, I managed to get this. The bodies were torn apart. It was consistent with a werewolf attack. But one of the bodies had this. Those puncture marks are consistent with teeth.”
Josiah cursed. “Holy fucking shit. Vampires.”
“Wait, fellas,” Samuel protested. “Vampires aren’t real.”
“Hey, dumbass.” Micah smacked him across the back of the head. “We’re not supposed to be real either. If werewolves are real, then vampires probably are too.”
&n
bsp; “What purpose would vampires have to massacre a strip club full of people and make it look like beasts did it?”
Eve cleared her throat to stop the bantering brothers. “There was an auction website on Deacon’s computer when I went in his office. Momma’s necklace was on there. There was a notepad too with crossed out numbers. The first number was twenty-four thousand. That’s a little more than I owed Deacon. The only one not crossed out was twenty-three million. That was the minimum bid on the website.”
“The son of a bitch was auctioning the amulet before the fight?” Micah hit the hood of his Jeep with his fist.
Eve shrugged. “Apparently.”
Josiah sighed. “The numbers can’t be a coincidence, but there’s no way to figure out what they are and if they have anything to do with this.”
Eve bit her lip for a second. “If I can get access to a computer, I can try hacking into the auction website. Maybe there is some record of what Deacon was doing or if anyone had bid.”
“Hack? You can hack? We can hack. But you can hack?” Samuel asked incredulously.
“You shouldn’t underestimate me.”
“I’ll look into it.”
“You have a brother to train,” Josiah reminded. “Leave the hacking to Eve. She saw the website.”
Micah rubbed her shoulder. “If I’m not on duty, you can use mine.”
“You’re off until the end of the week,” Josiah informed him. “The six of us think you need to rest. And train. Let’s get out of here. There are a bunch of people watching us. Let’s not give them a reason to come visit us.”
“See you at home.” Micah crossed around the Jeep and opened the door for Eve. Once she was secured inside, he climbed in the driver’s side. As he threw it in reverse, they could see the throng of people approaching. They sped down the road, escaping before they were confronted.
»»•««
A fire flickered in the fireplace casting an amber glow through the living room. Eve could feel its warmth in the office where she sat curled up in Micah’s office chair. Dressed only in a pair of baby doll pajamas, she cuddled under the woven blanket. Her fingers flew across the keyboard. She’d fixed Momma’s necklace a few hours ago when they arrived at the cabin. Micah stuck around for a quickie that lasted at least an hour. Feeling him move deep inside her quenched a thirst she thought was going to end her. After he left to train with his brothers, she showered, crawled into her pajamas, and took her place in his chair. She only got up to make the fire and a pot of coffee.
Whoever ran this site had to be loaded. The amount of protection it had was mind blowing and frustrated the shit out of her. The moment she thought she finally broke in, the site sent her off in some other direction. She was near certain its origin wasn’t on this continent. She ended up on the dark web more than once. Some sort of genius Eastern European hacker had to be behind this kind of security.
She looked up as the front door opened and closed. Micah breezed by, blowing her a kiss as he passed. She heard rummaging in the bathroom, and then the water in the shower pounded against the wall. A deep ache inside her begged her to join him. A second shower wouldn’t hurt.
Her fingers struck the keys viciously. She needed to know what the hell happened to the club. She needed to know who killed Tabitha and why. Somehow, that amulet was at the heart of it.
The screen went black. Eve’s mouth opened as a slew of expletives built inside her. This was bad. So bad.
Before she could say anything, the display came back to life. On it was a page she hadn’t seen before. Her eyes skimmed the words as her heart started to race. She was in. After hours of work, she tasted victory.
She was so engrossed in the website she never noticed Micah sneak in until his mouth was on her neck. He knotted her hair in his fist to tilt her head so he could continue to feast. The words blurred as she moaned. Her body burned with lust.
His lips wandered along her shoulder up the curve of her neck. His teeth nipped her flesh. His free hand caressed her breast to press her against him. She opened her mouth to search for his kiss. Instead, he tugged her head in the other direction to feast on the other side of her neck.
Eve tried to stand, to surrender to him. His embrace kept her rooted to the chair. He teased her with a kiss and then another.
As they broke apart, he grinned at her. “Time for bed.”
She blinked at him, dazed, before she came to her senses. “Can’t. I finally got in.”
“What did you find?”
“Nothing. You started kissing, and I got hot and bothered instead.” She turned back to the computer, noticing that Micah never moved his hand from her breast. She typed as she studied each screen.
Finally, she stopped and pointed. “There. That’s what the numbers are. He started with a minimum bid of twenty-four thousand. Someone sent in a bid for one point two million. Then another bidder countered at one point five million. The numbers grew as they tried to outbid each other. It stopped at twenty-three million. Maybe someone got impatient?”
“Can you trace the two bidders’ IP addresses?”
Eve returned to the keyboard. “I’ve got them. The first is from a residence in Greenwich, Connecticut. No name though. The second came from the motel across the highway from the club. The guy who owned the motel was buddies with Deacon. He would give the guy a kickback every time one of us girls took a john there. The guy kept half a dozen rooms open just for us.”
“A dummy bidder. Who bid last?”
Eve typed a bit. “The guy at the hotel. I wonder if the other bidder figured out they were being scammed and came to get the necklace by force? Get a little revenge for Deacon’s greed?”
“We at least have something. We know that someone wants Momma’s necklace. But who? And why?” He flipped off the screen. “But we’re not worrying about it now. Momma has her necklace, and it’s fixed. We’ll deal with this another day. Let’s go to bed.”
Eve stood slowly, her lips wandering his chest. Micah gripped her ass as it peeked out of her shorts. She moaned as she wrapped her arms around his neck to draw herself closer to his body.
He picked her up and set her on the chrome desk. He slowly skimmed the pajama top from her body and tossed it on the floor. He palmed her breast, kneading it in his hand before enveloping the pink nub in his mouth. He sucked hard. Eve cried out at the sensation as she grabbed for the waistband of his pajama pants. She struggled to untie them and then pulled them down.
Micah wrapped his fingers around the waistband of her shorts and tugged. He chuckled. “Uh-oh. Didn’t think that one through.”
Eve braced her hands on the desk and pushed her ass up. “How’s that?”
“Got a better idea.” He grabbed her legs and wrapped them around his waist. Picking her up, he carried her to the living room. She ground herself against his swollen, exposed cock. He growled as he lay her down in front of the fireplace.
The warmth of the fire spread over her as he stripped her bottoms off her and then spread her legs apart. His lips covered every spot of her trembling flesh as he kissed a path from one knee to the other. He slipped a couple of fingers inside her, pumping in and out of her at a steady pace. She arched hard against his hand as she came. She barely came down from her rush before he filled her.
She dug her fingers in the flesh of his ass as he thrust hard. The past week without this had torn her apart. She needed him. She needed him more than the air that she breathed. Her body exploded with pleasure as another orgasm rushed over her. She felt him throb hard inside her as he joined her.
He softly, passionately kissed her again and again. When she finally caught her breath, she spoke. “Are you feeling okay?”
“No pressure. No pain. Never felt better,” Micah answered.
“You don’t have to fight anymore.”
“I’ve come this far. I want to see it through.”
“I’ll be by your side through it all.”
He smiled as he kissed her. He rocked hi
s hips, driving him deeper. He was hard again. She whimpered as she held him close and surrendered to him.
»»•««
Each day for the next few weeks went by almost exactly the same. Micah was out of bed first thing in the morning for a run. Eve slept in as long as her body would let her. She could still feel the drug’s effects on her body even though every day got better. She would trudge through the snow to find breakfast and would end up helping Meg and Momma. She fixed her mate’s lunch and supper. The kisses of gratitude were enough to make her want to head right back to the stove.
When she wasn’t with Momma and Meg, she was in Micah’s office trying to learn more about whoever it was that bid on the amulet. She could trace the IP address to a physical location, a dark, cold mansion. But as hard as she tried, she couldn’t find the name of the owner. It wasn’t like the place was vacant. In the real-time video she was able to tap into from a neighbor’s security system, the place was certainly hopping at night. During the day it was pretty quiet.
Withdrawal outbursts still plagued her. She would start crying for no reason. Her body would ache for days. There were moments when she didn’t want anyone to touch her.
However, when Micah was around the strange force that bound them together dominated every other feeling she had. He took away every pain. The only ache she felt was the need for him. She knew no other addict had quite the recovery program she did. And she wasn’t about to share.
As the next full moon approached, they made their plans for Eve to go to Aunt Edna and Aunt Edith’s. Meg had told her all about these two while they were making cookies one afternoon. The aunts visited Micah once while he was in the hospital. It certainly seemed like it was against their will. Dressed in black with silver hair tied up in tight buns, the two gaunt-faced sisters looked like they belonged in a library. Or a museum. Or a morgue. Take your pick. They definitely didn’t seem like the sisters of the bubbly, excited Evelyn Hallow.
Eve couldn’t let go of Micah when the Hallows met up with Sharky and Littlefoot outside Sharky’s Garage the morning of the full moon. He softly kissed her and then opened the back door of Sharky’s sedan.
Middleweight (Hallow Brothers Book 2) Page 15