by Paula Cox
Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. Nash’s contact confirmed quickly that Phillip Crest had been the one to organize the hit. He paid for it in cash. The evidence was caught on the bike-mounted camera of one of the freelancers present, who then sold the footage to Nash’s contact—who then had Nash buy it from him, and it didn’t come cheap.
But he had the info now to pull the suspicion off Darryl Truman. All things considered, Eliza’s dad probably wasn’t even involved. As Nash stared at the video again, dumbfounded that he had started all of this around an innocent man, he knew he had to make things right. Sure, Darryl might have been an asshole, and maybe he played the political game well in the university sphere. Not all of his money movements were legal, but hell, he wasn’t paying off hitmen to kill any of the Steel Phoenixes.
No, that privilege fell to Phillip Crest.
Pushing away from his desk, he all but ran to the front door and yanked it open, ready to brave the fierce storm outside if it meant saving Eliza’s dad. She had been right all along. He should have fucking listened to her.
Because the real villain was still at large, under no surveillance by Nash’s MC, and if he didn’t act fast, Phillip Crest would surely kill again.
Chapter 35
“Come on, you fuckers,” Nash Reeves groaned into his phone. He’d been pacing so fast and so hard that he’d probably worn a track into the fake hardwood flooring of his apartment. If he heard one more fucking ring, he was going to lose it. “Pick up the phone you drunk assholes…”
It was unlikely that anyone would answer. It was almost three in the morning and the bar would be in the midst of closing, but he knew that some of the guys in the Steel Phoenix Motorcycle Club would be around doing closing duties. This wasn’t like a fucking retail store. If someone was calling the bar at closing time, something had to be up. He’d already tried to get ahold of Micky to share the revelation that Darryl Truman, Dean of Blackwoods University, wasn’t the guy they were looking for. Instead, they needed to turn their murderous gaze to Phillip Crest, vice-dean and all together asshole, who Nash had just discovered was responsible for all the deaths in the motorcycle club over the last year.
Phillip Crest, just some suit, was the puppet master behind all the shit that had gone down in the mid-sized town of Blackwoods, and whomever he was working with, they were trying to run the Phoenixes out of town by any means necessary. Killing their guys. Stealing their coke. Whatever they had to do, Phillip and his associates—because there was no way some suit-wearing asshole who smiled and waved while cutting a ribbon at the opening of a new campus building was doing all of this alone—were behind everything.
And Nash had sicced his fellow MC brothers on Dean Darryl Truman, the father of the woman he was steadily falling in love with. For all he knew, one of them could have been on the dean’s trail right now, ready to break his kneecaps and leave him in a gutter somewhere—and that would just be the start of it. Nash wanted revenge and retribution for his fallen brothers just as much as the rest of them, but not at the cost of an innocent man’s life. He wanted to see justice delivered fairly, not dealt out to any random asshole. Sure, the evidence pointed to Darryl, if you looked at it in a certain light, but tonight, as a storm raged outside his window, Nash Reeves finally learned the truth, and he had to share it with someone—anyone—who mattered before an innocent man was hurt.
Before Eliza lost her father because of a mistake Nash made. Before she lost the only family she had in this world. He would never, ever be able to forgive himself if he hurt her like that. And she was all that mattered. Her dad was a bit of an asshole—controlling and harsh, keeping Eliza on a tight leash and well under his thumb. If someone sucker-punched him out of the blue one day, Nash wouldn’t shed a tear. Maybe the guy would learn some respect.
But he cared that Eliza had all the key players in her life still. He cared about her happiness—that she wasn’t alone in this world. After all, they had lost each other recently, torn apart by this fucking mess Phillip Crest had dragged them all into…one way or another. She’d suffered enough. Nash owed it to her to tell her that she was right—that her dad had actually been innocent of the crimes Nash accused him of all along.
“Pick up the phone!” Nash shouted into his cell when the answering machine kicked in. “I know you fuckers are there!”
Seeing red, he pulled the phone away and slammed his thumb over the disconnect button, then hurried for his coat. If he couldn’t reach them over the phone, he’d just have to do it in person. However, as he was rushing out the door, Nash realized he couldn’t go to the club big shots, which Nash had thought he was a part of for a long time, without any evidence. They already thought his judgement was compromised because he was with Eliza for a time. If he walked into the club’s bar, Phoenix Rises, with nothing to back up his claims, they’d all assuming he was protecting Eliza still. Apparently, his word didn’t count for what it used to.
Which was fair. He had taken ten fucking years to find the perp behind all the murders. His club brothers had a right to treat him how they were treating him, but no more. He had the monster responsible for all those unnecessary deaths now. The madness was going to stop—tonight, if Nash had his way. Shouldn’t be too difficult to find Phillip Crest’s home address.
He was halfway through moving all the necessary files onto a USB stick when his phone started to buzz. Without looking at it, Nash snatched it off his cluttered desk, swiped his finger across the screen, and then pressed it to his ear.
“Yeah,” he said absently, his eyes fixed to the little download bar as it recorded how much he’d transferred over from his desktop to the memory stick. The little thing didn’t hold a lot, but as long as he could get the video of Phillip meeting with one of the freelance hitmen, he should be good.
“A very good morning to you, Mr. Reeves,” an unfamiliar man’s voice crooned through the phone. Nash sat up straighter with a frown. For some reason, his stomach knotted. Unfamiliar, and yet…
“Who is this?”
“I think you know who this is.”
“It’s too fucking early for guessing games.”
“But you’re up anyway, so why not give it a try?”
He gritted his teeth, eyes narrowed at the screen, and then snapped, “I’m hanging up—”
“Surely you know who this is,” the voice continued, smooth and calm, oblivious to Nash’s spike in temper. “You’ve recently acquired a video of me that should have stayed private.” Nash’s eyes widened. “I’d like to assume you can put two and two together, Mr. Reeves. Nash Reeves.”
“Crest,” he growled, sitting back in his chair. His gaze did a quick sweep of the room, as a paranoid thought that somehow Phillip was watching him swept through his brain. Nothing seemed out of place, but they could fit cameras into just about anything these days.
“I’ll be brief with you,” Phillip Crest went on, very much sounding as if he was bored with the whole conversation. “My image was never supposed to fall into your hands, and the person responsible for the leak will be dealt with severely. You know who I am now and what I can do…”
“You murdered my—”
“Your what?” His laugh was even more obnoxious than his tone, and Nash pushed himself to his feet to pace again, ready to wear another track into his apartment’s flooring if he had to. “Your brothers? Your drug runners? Your underlings? Please don’t pretend those men meant something to you. I can’t stomach hypocrisy.”
Nash gave a cold, humorless laugh. “Cut the bullshit, man. What do you want?”
“Fine, let me be frank, Mr. Reeves,” Phillip said with a heavy sigh, his breath blowing out and making a crinkling noise in Nash’s ear through the phone. “My involvement in these circumstances was never supposed to come to light, but now that it has, you can’t very well forget about it. My options are limited, but effective. I could have you killed.”
“Try it,” Nash sneered. Just then he jogged over to his front door to double-
check that it was bolted shut, then began to steadily move through his place to check all the dark nooks and crannies for any unwelcome visitors courtesy of Phillip, who was laughing.
“You see, I thought about it, but I feel you’re more use to me alive than dead. It’s shockingly difficult to make any of you Phoenixes turn on your club. No amount of money seems to persuade you.”
“Because we’re loyal to our family,” Nash hissed, pushing open the door to the linen closet, which was empty, then slamming it shut. “You can’t buy a Phoenix.”
There was a brief pause, followed by chuckle. “No, but you can blackmail him.”
“Ah…” He snorted. After a very quick but thorough check, Nash knew he was alone in his apartment. “Unless you’ve got a sniper with his sights on me, or are steadily filling my building with gas, I think I’m fine.”
“Oh, I don’t need to hurt you in order to blackmail you.”
Nash rolled his eyes, unwilling to be swayed by such hollow threats. He had no family here. All his friends were in the Steel Phoenixes, and Phillip had declared war on them already. Nash planned to make him pay.
“I believe you know a Miss Elizabeth Truman, do you not?”
And that was when the world stood still. Nash’s heart practically dropped into his stomach at the mere mention of Eliza’s name. He stumbled, needing to lean on the wall for support, though his suddenly weak knees were on the verge of buckling.
“I take your stunned silence as a… yes?” Phillip mused, his tone tinged with amusement. Hearing him speak again suddenly brought reality back to Nash with startling focus, and instead of cold fear, a searing hatred pumped through his body with more ferocity than before. How dare that piece of shit even say her name? How dare Phillip Crest even think about Eliza?
“Listen to me, you son of a bitch, if you even think about hurting her—”
“Save me the boorish speech, Mr. Reeves,” Phillip said with a sigh. “Your threats fall on deaf ears. I already have her in my custody.”
It was a strange sensation, to be totally speechless. While Nash wasn’t a man of many words, he always had something to say when the time called for it. His dialogue was purposeful, meaningful, and in that moment, knowing that Phillip fucking Crest had Eliza in his grasp, he knew he should have said something—anything. But he didn’t. For a few fleeting moments, everything had gone blank, save for the pounding of his heart.
“Mr. Reeves?” Phillip’s voice sounded very distant, like he was shouting to Nash from across an arena. He didn’t even clue in that the man was talking to him, or that he was barely holding his phone up to his ear anymore. “Nash?”
“Don’t you fucking touch her,” he snarled once he finally found his words again. White-hot rage clouded his vision, and he suddenly had the overwhelming urge to put his fist through a wall.
“Well, you see, that will depend on how you respond to my demands,” Phillip insisted, still sounding bored. Nash couldn’t wait to put a bullet in this guy’s skull.
“What do you want, you fucker?” Each word was an effort to get out through Nash’s nearly gritted teeth, but he managed.
“I’m glad to see you catch on quick,” Phillip said cheerily. “Now, my sources tell me there’s a shipment of coke ready to leave tomorrow from your club. Rather than butchering more of your delivery guys, I want you to just bring it to me now instead.”
“Fuck you—”
“And when you do, you’ll ensure Miss Truman’s safety. Am I clear?”
Nash glared at his reflection in the living room window for a long moment, then shifted his gaze to take in the storm raging outside. Fat rain droplets continued to pelt the window pane, and seconds later lightning lit up downtown Blackwoods. A bolt of light. A bulb illuminating. He had no other choice. Eliza was in this mess because of him, and he would die before letting anything happen to her, especially at the hands of Phillip Crest.
“Where are you?” he demanded tightly. Nash already knew where the coke shipment was stored. He’d deliver half to Phillip and say the man would get the rest when he saw Eliza.
Then he’d tear him limb from limb.
“Grab a pen and paper, dear boy,” Phillip chuckled. “I’m afraid this is going to get a bit complicated…”
Chapter 36
Walking around downtown Blackwoods with a shit-ton of coke wasn’t something of which Nash made a habit. It was too early in the morning for him to get mugged, but the drugged-out homeless were still around, as were early-morning stock and delivery workers. Anybody could make a mint off the load Nash was carrying, and he did his best to keep a low profile.
Well, as much as a guy like Nash could keep a low profile. Given his size, his bike, and his leather jacket, most people had a tendency to remember him. But when he walked anywhere with Eliza, he blended—because everyone was looking at her, and rightfully so. Every time he thought of her in Phillip’s clutches, he came closer and closer to spiraling into a murderous rage. Luckily, Eliza gave him focus. Never in his life would he ever consider robbing the Phoenixes, no matter how much any one of them pissed him off, but that morning it was all he could think about. Get the coke. Go to the address. See Eliza. Kill Phillip. Save Eliza. He had a plan and a gun strung to his hip.
Nash was out for blood.
Plus, if all went according to plan, he’d have the stolen coke back at Phoenix headquarters in an hour or so and nobody would notice it was missing. As he’d suspected, there were club members at the bar still when he arrived, but they were all heavy-eyed and quiet, closing down the bar for the day now that all the patrons had been booted out. No one asked why he was going down to the vaults. Even if he’d lost some credibility lately, most of the guys still trusted him to move about freely around the prized possessions under Phoenix Rises.
Maybe that would be their undoing. Didn’t they know someone was hunting Phoenixes? If anything, they ought to trust no one, especially with their biggest moneymaking drugs.
But here he was. Long gone with a hefty stash of cocaine on his person, headed to the address Phillip had carefully mapped out for him almost an hour ago on the phone. His time was limited, Phillip had said, because Eliza’s time was limited. He had no idea what that psychopath meant by it, but Nash hauled ass, worried that Phillip had Eliza locked in some steadily filling water tank or buried in some coffin underground with her oxygen rapidly depleting.
They were twisted thoughts, yeah, but with all that Nash now knew about him, Phillip seemed like a twisted kind of guy.
The rain had tapered off by the time he arrived at the specified location: a grungy rundown apartment in the east end. There was a guy sleeping on the front step, huddled under the awning, who didn’t rouse to the sound of Nash’s heavy footfalls as he approached. None of the windows hinted at any sign of life inside, no lights or flutter of curtains to be seen, and Nash wondered if the place was on the verge of being abandoned. The east side of Blackwoods was always a little sketchier than the rest, even sketchier than the south end where the bulk of the drug deals went down.
While he would have preferred to take his bike, the roar of his fine-tuned engine wasn’t exactly inconspicuous, and he wanted to hide the drugs from the elements for as long as possible. So Nash drove his car down, the GPS guiding him. Phillip had given the door code over the phone, too, and after hesitating, Nash punched it in at the front door keypad. Seconds later the whole door seemed to vibrate, and then he was in and out of the cold in a dark hallway that faintly stunk of mildew.
Eliza didn’t belong in a place like this. Blackwoods as a town wasn’t good enough for someone like her. Nash wasn’t good enough for her either, but he was damn sure he’d save her life if it came down to it—or maybe even give his life for hers.
Silence settled over him as soon as the door behind him swung shut. Usually the hallway of an apartment building was where one could hear the lives of the tenants inside. Even if the walls were thick, the doors leeched sound like nobody’s business. But in
that moment, the place felt more abandoned than ever, and Nash couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been set up in one way or another. Phillip wanted the coke bad enough, so the guy was bound to be here, but this couldn’t be his base of operations. It couldn’t.
Straightening up, Nash readjusted the bag carrying the drugs over his shoulder, then proceeded down the hall with a hand on the weapon on his hip. Handgun. Legally purchased. Rarely used, if he could help it. Tonight he planned to use it as often as necessary.
Above the hallway lights flickered, the soft yellow glow of dying bulbs guiding him to the elevators—which were of course out of order. Teeth gritted, Nash moved to the stairwell, which was even less lit than the hall, and started upward. Slowly. Cautiously. The address was for a room on the fifth floor, and he planned to get there right on time—not a second before.