Wrench: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Inked Hunters MC) (Unbreakable Bad Boys Book 1)

by Sophia Gray

  “Her clothes,” she murmured to Arsen, who hovered next to her rather than sitting down and eating.

  Arsen leaned over her shoulder to look, staring at the picture for a moment before shaking her head. “I don’t see it…what’s wrong with her clothes?”

  “Nothing,” Maya said. “That’s the point. There’s nothing wrong with them. They’re impeccably clean, except around the chest. They’re freshly laundered. That…most killers don’t do that, even if they keep their captives for longer than a few days. Most killers will let their victims just sit in their own filth, getting dirtier and dirtier as each day goes by. This guy…this guy didn’t do that. He cleaned them.”

  Maya’s heart started pounding in her temples, feeling like somebody was taking a baseball bat to each side of her brain. She felt like she was going to throw up. He cleaned them, she kept thinking, on a loop within her mind. He fucking cleaned them.

  That was the worst thing, looking back on it all, the way Maya’s captor had taken care of her, the way he washed her and kissed her. For years after the event, she struggled to shower, to press a damp washcloth against her body without thinking about it. He’d beat her up, do things to her, and then take a towel to her body, cleaning off any dirt or grime or dust from her skin. “You’re my good girl,” he had murmured to her, kissing the top of her head. “You’re my good, clean girl.”

  “Excuse me,” she murmured as she bolted upright from her seat. She had intended to rush to the bathroom, but she forgot that she didn’t know where it was in this new apartment. “Where…I…” Maya stuttered out, words failing her as image after image of her own captivity returned to her.

  “Hey, hey,” Arsen said, putting a hand around her back, just like he used to do when panic attacks struck her in the middle of the night for no reason. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay. It’s okay here. It’s safe.”

  Maya collapsed back down into the chair, her knees too weak to do anything else. “I…I…” She swallowed again, trying to clear her throat so that words could come out, but none of them did. She realized belatedly that she didn’t even want to talk. She didn’t want to tell him what she’d been seeing behind her eyelids. It was too shameful, too dirty, too wrong. I’m dirty. I’m wrong. I’m gross, the old mantra in her head chanted. I’m dirty. I’m wrong. I’m gross.

  Maya’s head fell forward into her hands, her breath puffing out painfully as her lungs worked overtime to get oxygen to her heart, which pumped hard, like it was about to be cut out itself. “I’m…fucked-up,” she finally murmured, talking more to herself, to the voices in her head, than to Arsen.

  But Arsen was there in a second, placing his strong hands on her shoulders, massaging her muscles with his fingers. Maya rocked back into his touch, leaning her head back onto his stomach, her breathing starting to come out more and more slowly and regularly than before. “I’m not strong enough for this,” she whispered, saying her fear out loud.

  “Yes, you are,” Arsen said back, his hands digging harder into the flesh and muscle of her back, skimming over her spine as he moved downward. “You’re the strongest woman I know.”

  “You must not know a lot of women,” Maya said reflexively, laughing a little, even though she hadn’t meant it as a joke.

  Arsen returned her laughter, but then a second later, he leaned over her neck to whisper something into her ear: “You know you’re the only one.”

  Maya flinched back out of his touch, springing out of the chair like she’d been stung by something. “No, don’t,” she said, walking backwards until the back of her legs hit the kitchen counter behind her.

  “What’s wrong?” Arsen asked, and for a second, Maya was terrified that he was going to approach her, to walk across the room and close the distance between their bodies, but he didn’t, staying behind the chair that Maya had just vacated.

  Maya’s breathing gradually slowed down, the panic ebbing like a wave, little by little as the seconds went by. “I, just, you can’t touch me like that,” she finally replied as soon as she was capable of speech again.

  “I’m sorry,” Arsen said, and for a long moment Maya was utterly convinced that she’d imagined it. Arsen, apologizing? When had that ever happened? He always acted like he ruled the world, like every choice he made was deliberate and justified, that nothing should or could stand in his way. What was he doing apologizing to her, apparently sincerely, only an hour after they’d reunited?

  “You’re sorry?” Maya echoed, feeling like she needed to hear it again to make sure that she hadn’t totally hallucinated his last statement.

  Arsen nodded to her, a small smile spreading across his lips. So clearly he wasn’t that apologetic. But he said, “I am. I am sorry that I scared you. I was just trying to make you feel better. Come sit back down and eat. You need to get something in your stomach. That’s probably half the reason you panicked a minute ago.”

  There was some truth to what he was saying. She used to go days without eating sometimes, just because it felt nice to ignore the pains and pleasures of her body, and then the panic attacks would come, overwhelming her until she finally stopped being stupid and ate. Maya slowly walked back over to the chair now, staring at Arsen and wordlessly ordering him to move. She waited for him to comply, stepping back a few feet, before she sat back down and stared again at the pictures he’d spread out in front of her.

  “It’s the clothes,” she said, picking up her fork to twirl more pasta around before bringing it to her mouth and forcing a heavy swallow. “The clothes. They’re clean. He’s cleaned them. He likes to pretend that he takes care of them, that he protects them. They’re his art and his children at the same time. He doesn’t think he’s punishing them,” she said, feeling her vision go blurry and unfocused as she continued to speak. Her brain and her body were detaching themselves from each other, letting her look at the pictures without panicking. Good, she thought. It was better to be numb than to be alive, if the price of the latter was so high.

  Arsen nodded quickly, his eyes glued to the photographs rather than looking at Maya. “Good. That’s good. I hadn’t…I hadn’t thought of that. What about…?” He paused as he pulled the first photo back and pushed the other four closer to Maya. “What about those? Anything special about them?”

  Maya didn’t answer for a long minute; she just stared down at the four pictures. “The girls are different from each other,” she murmured out loud, her eyes flicking back and forth from the different photographs. “Black, white, Asian. He doesn’t stick to one type.”

  Arsen leaned over the table, at what must have been an uncomfortable angle for his back, as he pointed out a detail on the third picture. “He made a weird engraving here, on her skin, just below the knee. It’s not the best picture of it. Clearly whoever was photographing the crime scene didn’t notice it or he’d have gotten a close-up. But what do you think it is?”

  Maya hadn’t noticed it at first, either. She supposed that was probably the killer’s point, to make it hard to see. But now that she looked at it, she could see that it was a spiral, carved out of flesh, a looping figure that started with a small coil, then got bigger and bigger as the killer went on. “Too soon to tell,” Maya murmured. “But it bolsters the idea that he sees what he’s doing as art. He’s an artist. He’s making a point, maybe a political point, to the world. He wants someone to figure him out. He wants to be appreciated.”

  “Sick fuck,” Arsen muttered under his breath, finally sitting back down across from Maya and attacking his dinner with his fork and knife. Maya stared at him for a long moment, watching how he messily ate, dripping pasta sauce and seasoning down the front of his shirt without even noticing. In the past, it would have made her giggle and wipe down his shirt for him. She would have leaned over him, just as he did over her a few minutes before, and given him kisses on his neck. Maya practically shivered in her seat at the memory. It felt so real, so close, like she was watching her life unfold in front of her, looking back on her past.
>
  She had to say something, do something, to erect a boundary, something that couldn’t be crossed, otherwise she couldn’t stay here. That much was clear. And Chuck, she thought. What would Chuck think, seeing me eating dinner with my ex like this?

  Maya cleared her throat before she spoke. “You can’t do that, you know, what you did earlier. Touching me like that, talking to me like that. You just can’t. I’m engaged now,” she reminded him.

  Arsen looked up from his dinner, his fork frozen in midair as he looked at her. “I’m sorry,” he said again, but the words came out a little too quickly, like he’d been rehearsing them beforehand. “I just…I just wanted to help you feel better. That’s all. I promise.”

  Arsen was never much for promises, Maya remembered. He’d always say, “What will be will be.” But now he was promising to respect her boundaries. It was the best she had, for right now at least. Maybe we can be professional, she thought as she resumed eating. Maybe we can really be friends, work friends. That would be nice. After all, she and Arsen had started out as friends, at the courthouse where they’d met, both testifying against her captor. Arsen brought pictures of his little sister to present to the court while Maya brought her own scarred body as evidence. They’d bonded that day. It would be a shame to lose that connection forever, right?

  Chapter Five

  Arsen’s heart thumped in his throat, pounding against his Adam’s apple. He stabbed at his food, eating as quickly as possible, willing his heart to calm the fuck down. But he’d been close to Maya, really close to her—physically and emotionally—for the first time in over a year. How else was he supposed to react?

  Underneath the table, Arsen’s free hand sat in his lap, his fingers crossed. It was an old habit, an unfortunate holdover from his childhood that stuck around. Whenever he lied or wasn’t sure that he was telling the truth, he’d cross his fingers, as if that made it better. His fingers were crossed now for the sake of his “promise” not to push things with Maya. He just couldn’t help it. It was like his fingers had their own agenda, and what they wanted was to touch her again. Even now, mere minutes after he’d comforted her, his fingertips itched like they physically needed to brush up against her skin.

  Even still, he knew that he had to keep up appearances, despite what his body wanted to do. If Maya knew that he still had feelings for her, she’d flee. He knew she would. She was a survivor, through and through, and sometimes, that meant that when things got dangerous, she ran away. It wasn’t like he could blame her, not really. She was in a relationship now, after all. Arsen hadn’t expected that. When he’d first e-mailed her, he assumed that she was living somewhere alone, just like him. It stung, knowing that she was able to “move on” so quickly. No matter how many women Arsen bedded over the past several months, he couldn’t get Maya out of his mind, not even for a second. It really hurt to know that the opposite wasn’t true for her.

  For now, at least, he smiled at her, giving her the big megawatt grin that always made her melt. He still knew how she operated, even after all this time. She was still the same Maya, despite everything. She smiled back for a second before it fell from her face. Arsen figured she hadn’t meant to smile at him, but it just came naturally. That’s the way things always worked with them. They never had to force their feelings for each other. I wonder if it’s the same for her and this new guy, he couldn’t help but think.

  He was tempted to ask her about her fiancé, but instead, he found another way to keep the conversation going, even though the silence that fell between them as they ate was far from uncomfortable. It was almost nice, sitting with her in the quiet the way they used to. But it was a little too familiar; it might scare Maya off again if he wasn’t careful. Better to focus on the case for now. “So, um, the girl whose parents hired me, Roxie Greenwood… She’s only been gone for a week now, but The Blade left his symbol in her room for her parents to find. It’s him.”

  “He wants the attention,” Maya said, flipping her fork between her fingers like it was a coin. It was hard for her to sit still, Arsen knew, when her brain was working overtime the way it had been tonight. But it wasn’t done yet. He still needed to get more information out of her if they were going to solve this case in time to save Roxie and the other girl. “But instead of leaving a sign for the cops…he does it for the parents? He wants to hurt people. The pain is important to him.”

  “Go on,” Arsen prompted her, pulling out a pen and a notepad from his pocket to keep track of her thoughts.

  “It’s personal. He…he must have chosen her specifically, targeted all of them for some reason,” Maya said, a little line appearing between her eyebrows as she concentrated. Arsen loved that line. In the past, whenever she was too focused on a case, obsessing over the details, he’d lean in and kiss her right in between her eyes to smooth the tension away. Most of the time, it didn’t work. Maya’s anxious energy defeated any and all foes, but he liked doing it anyway, trying anything to help her relax.

  “I’ve got her diary,” Arsen said, getting up from his seat to go dig through his evidence cabinet. “Roxie’s, I mean. I waited to read through it until you were here. I figured you’d have a better sense of what was normal and what wasn’t, having been a teenage girl yourself.”

  Maya nodded and accepted the small, thin book from Arsen’s hands. This time, their fingers did not brush up against each other at all, and Arsen felt a pang of disappointment as a result. As Maya flipped the book open and began to read, Arsen walked over to her side of the table, keeping safe distance but still staying close enough so that he could read over her shoulder, even though she spoke the words aloud. “Dear Diary,” Maya began, moving her finger across the page as if she could feel Roxie’s energy through the marks of her bright red pen. “Today, school was so interesting! I learned about sine, cosine, and tangents. I’m really good at math. Mom always said that I would be, but Dad thought that my brother Ron is smarter than me. That just shows what he knows. Nothing. One day Mom will dump his ass and then it’ll just be the two of us, forever.” Maya stopped reading to clear her throat before flipping over to the next page. “Dear Diary, I want to apologize for how I talked about Dad last time. He was the one who bought you for me anyway. He just makes me so mad sometimes because he thinks I am stupid just because I get bad grades in science and history. They’re boring! It’s not my fault! I always do my homework and study, but sometimes it’s just not good enough. Oh, well. I’m sorry, Dad, that I talked badly about you even though you can’t see it. I love you.” Maya paused, putting the book down on the table next to her now-empty plate. “Jesus Christ,” she murmured, leaning her head onto the palm of her hand. “Fuck.”

  “What is it, what’s the matter?” Arsen asked, even though he was pretty sure he knew the answer to that question. He had a feeling he and Maya had the same reaction.

  “Nothing, nothing, it’s just…she’s so normal. Healthy,” Maya muttered, her voice low, like she couldn’t bring herself to talk any louder in the presence of the diary. “Such a sweet kid.”

  “I found Lizzie’s diary once,” Arsen blurted out, the words leaving his mouth before he even knew that he was going to say them. “I still have it, actually. But I’ve never read it.”

  Maya turned to look at him then, her eyes wide and sad and full of emotion that had the potential to shake Arsen to his core. “Why not?” she asked in a small voice.

  Arsen shrugged, even though he already knew the answer. It felt stupid, saying it out loud. “I know she wouldn’t want me to read it, you know, if she was still here.”

  Maya frowned, her eyebrows scrunched up together. “What’s the difference between Lizzie’s diary and Roxie’s? Do you think we’re…do you think we’re violating her by doing this?” Maya was clearly trying to keep her voice as casual and light as possible, but Arsen could detect the fear hidden between her words. She doesn’t want to do anything to hurt anybody, Arsen thought. Same old Maya, same old beautiful kind loving Maya.

>   “It’s different,” Arsen began, “because Roxie is still alive. She can still forgive us for doing it. But Lizzie…Lizzie will never be able to do that.”

  Maya was quiet a moment, tapping her fingers on the top of the table as she thought. “I think she’d forgive you,” Maya said softly. “I really think she would. It would just be…it’d be you trying to speak to her one last time. That’s not so bad.”

  Arsen didn’t know what to say to that. Sometimes, especially now that Maya was gone, he’d take out the diary from its hiding place, late at night, and run his hands over the brightly decorated covers, dragging his fingers over his sister’s writing, where she’d scrawled, “PROPERTY OF ELIZABETH. STAY. OUT” on the front. What could he do, except respect his sister’s last message to him? Wasn’t that the best thing to do, after all?

  But he didn’t want to argue with Maya, not now, not when she just got here. “Maybe,” he said instead of the flood of thoughts that had invaded his brain.

  “It’s just a thought,” Maya said, returning her attention to Roxie’s diary and flipping to the back page. There were tons of empty pages, lots of room where she hadn’t written anything yet. Maya flipped back until she found writing again, landing on Roxie’s last entry.