by Leigh, Lora
Jonesy didn’t have family, with the exception of a daughter that rarely spoke to him, and the only friends he had worked at the bar. He was always snarly and grouchy, but lately, he had been extreme, tense, and hard for anyone to get along with.
“Lea quit last night,” he informed her.
Somehow, that didn’t surprise Rogue.
“Then hire someone else,” she told him as she looked over the liquor that lined the wall and the shelves beneath the bar.
“It ain’t that easy,” he ground out between clenched teeth.
Rogue straightened and stared back at him suspiciously as he towered over her.
“What would make it easier, Jonesy, is if you didn’t scare your bartenders away,” she told him. “You’re like a rabid junkyard dog and the employees get tired of taking it.”
She should have done something about him before now. She’d always convinced herself that Jonesy was just like that. It was a gruff exterior, and it didn’t mean anything. But now, she was beginning to wonder if it didn’t go deeper.
“Pussy-faced employees are what they are,” he snapped. “None of ’em have a lick of sense. I told you to let me take care of hiring them, but you have to just stick your nose in it, don’t you? You tell me to take care of hiring, then you turn around and get all nosy and bossy. What good does it to do me to even consider anyone?”
“Jonesy, what the hell is your problem?” She swung around on him, anger beginning to beat harshly inside her. “What makes you think you can tell me how to run my life or my bar? And what in the hell made you think you could manhandle me the way you did the other night? Are you losing your damned mind?”
He stared back at her in surprise now, his face flushing before he turned away and ran his hand over his bald head.
“I didn’t mean to get rough with you,” he snarled, his back to her. “It was an accident, and I shouldn’t have touched you.”
An apology from Jonesy?
“Then why did you?”
He turned slowly, his expression fierce as he stared back at her. “You don’t listen anymore, Rogue. You’re tramping yourself out to that sheriff knowing damned good and well he won’t stick around no longer than it takes for him to get his rocks off. Just like Joe and Jaime. I told you they were bad news. Always in here bumming beer and sucking up to you. You were going to give them part of the bar, weren’t you? I heard you talking about it.”
That had been her plan. Joe and Jaime had loved the bar; Rogue had known she was growing discontented with it. But she wanted it to remain in Walker hands.
“Joe and Jaime loved the bar, Jonesy,” she said, a sense of sadness enveloping her. “They helped me a lot here.”
“They got in your damned way and conspired to take this damned bar from both of us,” he snarled, his beefy arms crossing over his heavy chest. “They were good for nothing, Rogue. You just couldn’t see it. Just like that damned sheriff. He’ll get you killed as dead as he got his wife killed.”
Rogue stared back at him in surprise.
“Zeke had nothing to do with his wife’s death,” she shot back furiously. “She was killed in a car accident while he was still in L.A.”
A flash of cunning glittered in his gaze for a second.
“Well, there’s a piece of gossip you didn’t know,” he chuckled coldly. “No, little girl. Zeke Mayes’s wife was murdered because he was sloppy. He was working an investigation in L.A. into the bondage scene. Good ole married detective Mayes was bopping pain whores and one of them found out who he was and what he was doing. His wife died and his son almost died. He was the reason she died, just like he’s going to be the reason you die.”
Pain whores. It was a term Rogue had heard used for women who liked sexual pain. Whips, chains, multiple sexual partners, cutting, the list went on and on.
“Where did you hear this trash, Jonesy?” she asked in disgust. “Zeke is not into giving pain, and I doubt very seriously if he did anything to cause his wife’s death, no matter why or how she died. And you need to stop this now, before I call Alex Jansen and have you escorted off my property.”
“Gonna fire me, are you?” He snorted, dropped his arms from his chest, and moved farther back along the counter. “Check it out yourself. Ain’t many people that know what happened, but I was here when he came back with that kid of his, and I was here before his old man died. His daddy blubbered the whole story into his beer one night, whining like a little girl ’cause his boy was a failure.”
Jonesy didn’t lie. He was mouthy, he was pissy, but he wasn’t a liar. He believed what he was saying. Rogue refused to accept it. Zeke’s wife might have died because of his involvement in an investigation, but it wasn’t because he had failed. She knew him too well for that. His steely control wouldn’t have allowed for such a failure.
“Jonesy, don’t make me fire you.” She faced him, shoulders squared, fury beginning to build inside her. “Don’t push our friendship any further.”
“In other words, don’t tell you the truth about that jackass you’re fucking?” he sneered.
“If that’s how you want to see it,” she replied coldly, “then that’s exactly what I mean. Because the next time this trash comes out of your mouth, you’ll be out of here.”
With that she turned away from him and began making the order list for the liquor. An hour later she was in the kitchen in the back getting the order list the cook had left last night before moving to her office to make the necessary orders.
She still had her own financials to go through and get in shape for monthly taxes, and those for the Mackay restaurant were waiting for her to complete as well.
She had a full day ahead of her, and one little side trip to make to the sheriff’s office before she headed to the restaurant. Zeke, like Jonesy, would find out just exactly how much she thought of tattlers. Which was nil. Zero. And she was getting fed up to her back teeth with autocratic, arrogant men. It was time to do something about both of them.
That evening Zeke ran his fingers over his short hair and stared at the reports the county and city coroners had submitted. The county coroner, Jay Adams, sat in the visitor’s chair on the other side of the desk, his lined face creased into a worried scowl as Zeke read the report.
Long minutes later Zeke lifted his head and pinned the other man with his eyes. “You sure about this, Jay?” he asked quietly.
“Gene and I both ran the same tests and came back with the same conclusions, Zeke. I don’t know who killed those boys, but they were unconscious before the shots were fired. Both boys were pumped full of heroin, not just Joe. Evidence shows they were nearly dead before those shots were fired. I don’t know what you have going on here, but I’m ruling it a double murder and I’m using those grounds to justify holding their grandmother’s body for an autopsy as well.”
Zeke rubbed his hand over his jaw and shifted through the reports before blowing out a heavy breath.
“Why?” He lifted his gaze back to Jay. “Why go to these lengths to hide a murder?”
Jay shrugged. “Hell, it looked like a murder-suicide, Zeke. Chances were, we’d never have run these tests this in depth. Even with your suspicions I wouldn’t have normally justified it myself. It was a damned slow week though, so what the hell. Whoever did this, they almost pulled it off. We had to look for this.” He waved his hand to the report. “It didn’t come easy.”
Zeke stared down at the file and he knew, knew in the pit of his stomach, that the Walkers had been killed by the Freedom League’s killer. The why of it was driving him crazy. There were no answers to be found, no way to tie Joe or Jaime to any one particular woman, or to pinpoint if this was simply a League hit and the woman was an incidental.
“The Walkers were rumored to be courting one particular woman,” Zeke said. “They told their grandmother they had a date with her that weekend. The day of that particular date they’re killed. According to their sister, their grandmother was trying to contact me in regard to that girl’
s identity. She never called, but she ends up dead the same day.”
“Sounds like you’re looking for a very smart little girl, or a really pissed off husband or lover.” Jay shrugged as he rose to his feet. “If you learn anything let me know. Until then, you have our reports and your evidence to continue the investigation. Good luck on that.”
“Thanks, Jay.” He nodded as Jay turned and left the room.
He shook his head as he closed the files and slid them into the drawer at the side of his desk. It was time to figure out exactly what had happened to those boys.
Zeke had questioned everyone he could think of that were close to the Walker boys. He knew they were supplying DHS with information, but Zeke knew Cranston and the Mackays. Unless the Walker boys had let that information slip, then no one else had known it. And from everything he’d learned, Joe and Jaime hadn’t talked. But their grandmother must have.
Running his fingers over his hair, he tried to narrow down the choices of who Callie Walker would have chosen to talk to. Lisa hadn’t had any answers for him there, and Zeke wasn’t coming up with his own.
The only thing he was certain of was that this had to do with the Freedom League and the killer that seemed to shadow his life. The same killer that could threaten the one woman Zeke had promised himself he would always protect.
Rogue wasn’t going to leave town, even for her own good. He’d accepted that sometime in the middle of the night as he stared up at the ceiling, his dick pole stiff, his balls tormented with need.
She was just that damned stubborn that she would stay come hell or high water. Or death.
He rubbed his hands over his face as he considered the fact that he may have even made an error in judgment in calling her father. But at the time, nothing had mattered but her protection. Someone was killing Walkers, and she could be next. This investigation into Joe and Jaime’s deaths could possibly bring that danger closer to her door. Just as his mother’s association with his father and the League had brought death to Zeke’s life in L.A. His mother had died when flames had engulfed her small house, but the coroner’s report had stated she had been dead long before the fire started.
Elaina had died in a car wreck when her car has sped into traffic on a busy interstate, straight into an oncoming semi. She had been drugged, not with heroin but with a toxic mix of narcotics that she wouldn’t have survived even if she had managed to live through the wreck.
On the day of Elaina’s death he’d received a short, printed note. We protect our own.
It was the League’s motto. He’d known the minute he read it that his wife had died because of his past, because of his hidden investigation into certain members of that League once he made detective.
He’d thought he was being so careful, that there wasn’t a chance that anyone could have known what he was doing. And he’d been wrong. He hadn’t protected his family as he should have, and now Rogue was being drawn into the same fire.
It was time to call Cranston, he thought. He’d protect Rogue, and Cranston and the Mackays could help with this investigation. He couldn’t risk her. God help him if he allowed anything to happen to his Rogue.
And he knew, the danger was drawing closer.
Zeke could feel it, that sixth sense, that awareness that the killer wasn’t going to stop; he would only get cockier. Whoever it was had a taste for murder and for giving pain.
A light knock on his door had his head lifting; a second later it opened and Gene stepped in.
“I’m heading out on patrol,” Gene told him, a light frown on his brow. “I just saw the coroner leave. Do we have the report on the Walkers?”
“Both boys were murdered,” Zeke answered as he waved Gene into the room.
The deputy stepped in and closed the door behind him, scowling.
“Well, hell,” he breathed out roughly. “I’m damned sorry for what I said now, Zeke. It’s hard to believe someone wanted to kill those boys.”
“Well, someone wanted to and they accomplished it.” Zeke rubbed the back of his neck tiredly. “The part that confuses the hell out of me is how they pulled it off this slick. It would take experience and balls to make that look as close to a murder-suicide as this one did.”
Gene plopped down in the chair in front of his desk as he gazed back at him thoughtfully. Zeke hated the suspicion that roiled in his gut now, the feeling that Gene was somehow a part of this.
“Experience would be the hard part,” Gene said. “We don’t have a lot of folks that I know of that would have that except our new chief, the Mackay boys, and that DHS agent that seems to be loitering around the Mackays, Agent Cranston.”
Zeke shook his head. “No motive and out of character. Whoever did this, it has to do with the woman the Walker boys were sniffing after.” That and their work with DHS. Zeke kept that to himself. If Gene was involved in this, then he didn’t need to know that Zeke suspected him of it.
“How so?” Gene grunted. “Hell, those boys always had a woman they were sniffing after.”
“Lisa said their grandmother was trying to contact me the day she died, to tell me who she thought the girl might be.” Zeke leaned back in his chair and shook his head slowly. “She didn’t call here or my cell phone. I have a feeling what she did was call someone else. The wrong someone else.”
Gene stared back at him in amazement. “Hell,” he finally breathed out. “She was confrontational as hell; she would have done that.”
And if Gene was involved in this, then he was a better actor than Zeke had given him credit for.
“I have a request in with the job for a subpoena of her phone records; maybe I’ll figure something out there.” Zeke tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair. “The way she died is sitting about as well as the way her grandsons died. She didn’t decide to take a bath on her own.”
“Then we have a triple homicide and no clear suspect.” Gene grimaced. “Hell, you’d think we’d get a break after that bullshit with the Mackays and those terrorists last year. What do you need me to do, Zeke?”
“Keep your ears open, see if you can get a name. I have a few more people to question.” Top of his list was Rogue’s bartender Jonesy.
Jonesy had a daughter that had been in town until the day before. Angie Jones was only eighteen, pretty from what Zeke had heard. Her name hadn’t been linked to the Walkers, but it was an angle he couldn’t overlook. Gene had a daughter as well, one in her early twenties, but she was married and living in Louisville.
“I’ll do that.” Gene nodded, rising to his feet. “And the missus told me to let you know you’re invited to dinner next weekend. Willa and her new husband will be in from Louisville for a visit and they were asking about you.”
Zeke shook his head. “I can’t make it next weekend, Gene. Shane’s supposed to be home and I try to spend some time with him when he’s in,” he said apologetically, though Zeke didn’t regret that he couldn’t.
“Yeah.” Gene sighed. “I figured. Anyway.” He nodded sharply. “I’ll see you tomorrow then. I best head home or the missus is likely to have my hide for dinner. Evenin’, Zeke.”
“See you tomorrow, Gene.” He nodded back as Gene left the office, then rubbed at the back of his neck while rising from his chair.
Picking up the coroner’s report, he moved to the file cabinet, filed it, then locked the tall, gray metal cabinet and glanced at the clock.
Tonight was Rogue’s early night at the restaurant. She would have taken care of paperwork rather than working as the hostess.
Hell. He’d fucked up last night, it was that simple. He was so desperate to get her out of the line of fire and just egotistical enough to think he could make her mad enough, or worse, hurt her enough, to send her running for home.
He should have known better. He had known better; that was the reason he had called her father, because he had known in his gut that wasn’t going to work. Rogue wouldn’t run, not from anything. She hadn’t run from Nadine Grace and Dayle Mackay wh
en they’d threatened her with those pictures, and she hadn’t run from her assailant six months before. She wasn’t going to run now.
And she definitely wouldn’t run when he showed up at the bar tomorrow afternoon to question Jonesy. She’d stick right to the other man’s side and glare at Zeke the whole damned time. He’d get hard, horny, and once questioning was over he’d be trying to carry her to her bedroom. If she didn’t try to kill him first.
SIXTEEN
It was Ladies’ Night at the Bar. This was the reason Rogue made certain she was on-site from seven that evening until after closing. Ladies’ Night, spring and summer, was often the wildest night of the week. Saturdays could run a good close second, but the majority of her bouncers were on duty every Friday and Saturday evening. Wednesday was a bit lacking in that area, as most of her bouncers had second jobs through the week.
She kept meaning to hire more bouncers for Wednesdays, but so far she had been able to handle it with her skeleton crew. She had four bouncers on duty along with Jonesy, and the assistant bartender Kent.
The bar was filled close to capacity. The band was belting out country dance tunes and ballads, and the alcohol was flowing freely. A large majority of the regulars were there as well as a surprising number of tourists in town to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather and the many attractions to be had in Lake Cumberland.
As the day had progressed, Rogue’s frustration had only grown. Her father had called. Ten minutes later her mother had called. After that, her grandparents and her sister. John hadn’t called back, and that worried her more than anything.
Her father no longer suspected that Walkers were being killed; Zeke had confirmed his fears and now Calvin Walker was determined to get his daughter home.
Damn them all. She had been manipulated from the moment she stepped foot into this damned town. By one person or another she had been jerked around until she felt like a fucking rubber band.
She stared around the bar, realizing what it had come to represent, the escape from reality that it had been for all these years. She had raced here after her life had fallen apart, and she had molded herself into a woman that others feared. Men and women alike. She had surrounded herself with men who were ready to fight at a moment’s notice, and they had taught her how to fight.