by A. M. Myers
He sighs. “What the fuck is going on, Rowan? You don’t sound like yourself and you’re really starting to fucking worry me.”
“I promise I’m okay, Linc, and I’ll tell you all about it as soon as I’m in Louisiana, okay?” I bite my lip as he lets out another heavy sigh and I wonder if he’s actually going to let me get away with this. Lincoln tends to be overprotective, especially after our sister Nora was killed by her crazy ex-boyfriend eleven years ago, and I know that even if he lets me off of this phone call without telling him what is going on, he’ll worry himself sick about it until I get to Baton Rouge and spill my guts. Finally, he groans.
“Fine, but you bet your ass that as soon as you step foot in Baton Rouge, you are going to tell me everything.”
I roll my eyes and fight back a smile. “So fucking bossy. Hasn’t your wife broken you of that nasty habit yet?”
“Girl, I fucking wish!” Tate, Lincoln’s wife, hollers from the background and I laugh, feeling lighter than I have in days.
“Shut up before I shut you up myself, woman,” he growls at her. I bite my lip to hold back the giggle as I shake my head. Tate is not a woman I would ever want to mess with but apparently, my brother likes playing with fire.
“You’re getting stupid in your old age, Archer.”
“Who in the fuck are you calling old, woman?” he yells and I can’t hold back my laughter any longer.
“Okay, well, I’m going to let you go deal with that but I’ll call you before I hit the road,” I tell him and he hums in agreement.
“Damn right, you will. I want constant updates so I know you’re safe, you hear me?”
After promising to call him with nightly updates and reassuring him that I can take care of myself at least four times, I finally manage to hang up. As I step out of my car and turn toward the hotel where I’m staying tonight, I’m surprised by how hopeful and excited I feel about this move and I can only hope that it turns out to be just the thing I need to heal all this hurt I’ve been carrying around.
Chapter Two
Travis
“Fuck. This can’t be right,” I hiss, staring at the social media profile I just stumbled across on the screen in front of me before releasing a heavy breath. For months, my brothers and I have been doing everything we can think of to find the asshole that has been targeting the club and coming after women we have helped in the past but I may have just found something that rules out the only suspect we’ve been able to come up with. Mitch Harris was married to Dina, the first girl that was killed, and after we came to her rescue and helped her escape him, he lost his goddamn mind. When she was murdered, we all just assumed that he was the one that did it. The problem was, we didn’t have any proof and when two other girls were also killed, we turned our focus away from him. But then Fuzz suggested that he was still behind it all, killing people close to us in an act of revenge for our role in his wife leaving him and since he is such a shifty character, it wasn’t much of a leap. Plus, he didn’t have the best alibi for the night Dina died but if what I just found is true… there is no way he is behind these deaths.
Scrolling through the profile, I shake my head. I was lost, looking for any kind of lead when I decided to go peruse Mitch’s social media and noticed his new girlfriend. She likes to tag him in her check-ins every time they go somewhere together and as I was scrolling through her profile, I found a check-in for the date the latest girl, Sammy, was killed. Shaking my head and hoping like hell this is somehow wrong, I click the like for the little diner she checked in at and start flipping through photos on their page. In one photo, I spot a security camera and grin as I open a new window to hack into their system. It is surprisingly easy and I roll my eyes at how lazy and complacent some people can be. For fucks sake, it is not hard for someone like me to gain access to someone’s system but they make it even easier on me when they don’t change the password from the default code from the factory.
Sighing, I scroll through the dates listed until I find the one I need and click on it, selecting the camera in the dining room. The video starts at midnight so I fast forward through the entire morning until just after lunch when Eve, Mitch’s girlfriend, checked in to the diner. As the video begins playing, I hold my breath and hiss a curse when Mitch walks in with Eve on his arm. Chucking my pen across the room, I lean back in my chair and it smacks against the wall, falling to the floor as I watch Mitch and Eve slip into a back booth and start making out.
“Goddamn it!”
“Problem?”
I glance over my shoulder as Storm walks into my room and arches a brow in question. Nodding, I release a breath and point to my computer screen. “Only if you count discovering an alibi for Mitch a problem.”
“Fuck… seriously?”
“Afraid so.” I turn back to the screen and sneer at Mitch pawing all over Eve in the corner of the booth. “This is him and his new girlfriend, Eve, making out in a diner an hour away from here while Sammy was being murdered.”
“Shit.” He turns away for a moment before turning back to watch the video. “What about the other two murders? Does he have an alibi for them as well?”
“He has a shaky alibi on the day Dina was murdered,” I say, clicking back over to Eve’s profile and scrolling down until I find the date in question and resist the urge to smash my fist into the table. “But, he was with Eve again on the day Laney was killed.”
“Doing what?”
I point to the check-in. “Bowling. Apparently, they won third place.”
“Can you verify that?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest and I nod as I click the link for the bowling alley and bring up their website. I jump over to the winner’s page and scroll down until their picture pops up on the screen. Turning back to him, I point to it and he sighs.
“Fuck.”
I nod in agreement. “Yep.”
“All right…” he says, running a hand through his hair. “We’ll deal with that later. Veronica is downstairs in the war room and she might have new leads for us. You coming?”
“Absolutely,” I answer, closing out of the websites and grabbing my phone off of my desk. He nods, turning to leave and I follow behind him as he walks out of my room and down the hallway to the stairs. The low murmur of multiple conversations greet us as we descend the stairs but I can’t make out anything that is said since we are literally packed to the rafters in here these days.
The Bayou Devils MC wasn’t always the family friendly environment it is now. In fact, it used to be a real outlaw club with its members running guns, drugs, women… anything to bring in the cash but everything changed when our President, Blaze, was shot by a rival dealer and one of our members, Henn, was sent to jail for seven years on a drug charge. Blaze started to see the error of his ways and backed away from anything illegal to open a legitimate business and when a terrified woman crashed into him in a gas station, we kind of fell into the work we do now - helping those that have nowhere else to go. Or, at least, that’s the way it started. These days, we’ve made quite the name for ourselves and we’ve taken on other jobs like security and P.I. work. I didn’t join the club until things had turned around and I was drawn here by their mission and I knew my computer hacking skills would come in handy but I haven’t been a whole lot of help lately with this threat coming after us.
Veronica, the woman we’re meeting with today, went missing almost a year ago on her way home from class and we were tasked with looking into her disappearance when Detective Rodriguez, a local cop we work with often, hit a dead end and was ordered to focus on other cases. We didn’t get much farther than he did, though, and we were all shocked as hell when she stumbled into the clubhouse two weeks ago, disheveled and terrified out of her mind. She had a message for us, from the man who has been targeting the club and it set us all on edge – even more so than we already were. Blaze immediately ordered everyone and their families to come stay here, at the clubhouse, so we can keep this little family we have built safe but
it hasn’t been easy.
I am just getting started.
I shudder as I remember the message she delivered that day. It’s haunted me day in and day out as I try my hardest to come up with answers for my brothers but I hit a wall every time. No matter where I look or what angle I try to take, I always come up empty and I can’t help but feel like this fucker is toying with me. Like he knew who I was and he knew what I could do when he went about making this whole damn plan so it’s tailored to drive me out of my mind. Scoffing, I shake my head.
God, how fucking narcissistic is that?
Pushing the thoughts from my mind, I follow Storm as he walks into the war room and as soon as I’m in the room, he shuts the door behind me, locking it as I slip into my seat at one end of the table. Across from me is Blaze, our president, at the head of the table and Storm takes his seat to his left with Smith, our sergeant at arms, to his right. Veronica sits in the middle of the table to my left, looking nervous as hell as we all turn our focus to her.
“You all right, darlin’?” Blaze asks her and she nods, her gaze flicking around the room like a scared animal.
“Being back here just reminds me of…”
I nod in understanding as do the rest of my brothers. The last time Veronica was here, she had just been dropped off by the man who kidnapped her and she has absolutely no idea what she was walking into.
“Just know that we’re all here to help you in any way that we can,” Blaze assures her and she nods, sitting up a little straighter as she sucks in a breath. “Are you ready to tell your story?”
“I am.”
Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I open the voice memo app and hit record before setting it down on the table. “Just start at the beginning.”
“Okay,” she breathes, glancing over at me as she nods her again a little too much, almost like she’s hyping herself up and I can’t stand it. When I think about how many lives this guy has torn apart, messed with and used, it brings up shit that I would rather forget and makes me feel like putting my fist through a wall. All I want to do is end this but I can’t help worrying that the ending won’t be as pretty as I’m hoping. Veronica wraps her arms around herself as she stares down at the table and shifts in her seat, obviously uncomfortable.
“What do you remember about that day?” I ask, hoping to just get her talking. I’ve noticed that the hardest part for most people, after a trauma like this, is where to begin. They have so many thoughts running through their heads and so many emotions that they quickly become overwhelmed into silence. She sucks in a breath.
“It was so normal, you know? Like, shouldn’t days where your life is going to change come with some kind of warning? Shouldn’t there be some kind of sign from the universe that you need to pay attention?”
I scoff, fighting back memories. “I fucking wish.”
“Did you go to class that day?” Smith asks and she nods.
“Yeah. I have… had English on Thursdays and it let out early that day so I decided to go home and try to relax before my next class.”
Blaze scowls. “So, you deviated from your normal schedule that day?”
“Yeah.”
My mind spins with scenarios and possibilities as I study her. If class let out early and she did something that she wouldn’t normally do, that means he was watching her for a while, waiting for the perfect moment to strike but why pick her? She wasn’t associated with us at all and there is no way he could have known Rodriguez would catch the case. It could have easily gone to a different detective and then we never would have known about it.
“What happened next?” I ask and she shudders.
“I was walking down the hallway to my apartment and all of the sudden, it felt like someone was there with me. All the hair on my arms stood on end and when I heard footsteps, I started walking faster, telling myself that I was being ridiculous because it wasn’t uncommon for other people to be in the hallway but this time… it was just different.”
Storm nods, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. “According to the police report, your apartment door was open when officers went to investigate…”
“I managed to get the door unlocked but I couldn’t get inside before he grabbed me,” she answers with a nod. “That’s the last thing I remember from my apartment. I must have blacked out and when I woke up, I was in a cabin out in the woods.”
“How did he keep you there?” I ask. She meets my gaze and the haunted look in her eyes hits me in the chest. Whoever this guy is, he held her for almost a year and she could give us vital information about who he is and what he wants but that doesn’t mean it’s not fucking awful to pry these answers out of her.
“There was this thick metal hook lodged in the middle of the floor and he put shackles around my wrists with a large chain connecting the two. I could go anywhere in the cabin and I could even step out onto the front porch but that was it.”
Moose frowns. “He wasn’t worried about alerting someone if they drove by?”
“During the entire time I was there, I never saw another person.”
“What did he look like?” Chance asks softly, leaning forward and bracing his arms on the table. She shakes her head.
“I have no idea. He always wore this white mask that covered his whole face.”
I narrow my eyes. “Like a Halloween mask?”
“No… it was more like a theater mask… like those ones that have happy and sad faces but this one was expressionless.”
“What about his hair?” Henn asks. “Or his eyes?”
She shakes her head, picking at the edge of the table. “His hair and his eyes were both brown and kind of… unremarkable?”
“Right,” I scoff. Every single description we’ve ever gotten of this guy always sounds exactly the same. He’s perfectly average. The kind of guy that easily blends into a crowd which makes him even harder to hunt down.
“I’m so sorry I can’t be more help.”
Blaze shakes his head and leans forward, placing his hand on the table. “It’s not you, darlin’. This guy has just been really hard to find and it doesn’t help that he looks so damn average.”
“Oh… yeah, that’s the thing. Even if he was standing in front of me right now, I don’t know that I would recognize him. Maybe if I heard him speak…”
“I’m sure that was intentional,” I tell her. Why else would he wear a mask for an entire year? “How much time did he spend with you at the cabin?”
She scowls. “Quite a lot, actually. He didn’t come to see me every day and there would be times when he would be gone for a couple weeks before he would come back but when he did stop by, he would stay and talk to me for hours.”
“So, you got to know him, then?” Blaze asks and she shakes her head.
“I wouldn’t say that. He asked me about my life and after a month or so, I was so starved for conversation that I opened up to him but mostly, he just talked about y’all.”
Every chair in the room squeaks as we all jerk to attention and I suck in a breath, my heart pounding in my chest and my stomach flipping wildly.
Holy shit.
This is crucial.
“What did he say?” Fuzz asks, his gaze intense as he stares at her. Her hand shakes as she presses it against her chest, near her neck, and keeps her gaze firmly on the table.
“He talked about how much he hated you and how y’all had taken everything from him…” She looks around the room and when her eyes meet mine, I nod in encouragement. “And he told me that he has so many plans to make y’all pay. He said he wants to watch you suffer the same way he had before he tears this club apart.”
The room is quiet, each of us contemplating what we’ve already learned and wondering how much more there is. We’ve already lost three girls… how much more does he have planned for us and can we really stop him?
“Do you know what he’s planning?” Smith asks and she shakes her head.
“I tried to get him
to talk to me about his plan but he was always very vague… I guess that makes sense now. If he was always planning on dropping me off on your doorstep, he couldn’t tell me anything that would help y’all.” She scowls down at the table before shaking her head. “He did tell me about a woman he met in a bar, though. I got the sense that she had something to do with you guys but when I asked about it, he told me to mind my own business and he mentioned a man he’d met that hated this club as much as he did.”
My gaze snaps to her as I suck in a breath. “He has a partner?”
“I don’t think so. It sounded more like this man…. was inspired by him. He told him it was always better to use pawns to do his dirty work and there was something about a brother but I don’t remember that part…”
“Holy fuck,” Storm breathes, falling back into his seat with wide eyes and every eye in the room turns to look at him. Blaze frowns and Storm shakes his head, looking dazed. “Ian.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
If the man after us also knows Ian and was around when all that shit went down with Storm and his old lady, Ali, then this goes way fucking deeper than any of us thought.
“Was he in jail?” Henn asks and Veronica blinks up at him, shrugging.
“I don’t know. He never mentioned it.”
Storm turns to Henn. “What are you thinking?”
“Just that for this guy to get to Ian, he either had to be in jail or he excels at digging into our most private shit. I mean, he’s got to be on Streak’s level,” he answers, glancing over at me and I clench my teeth. That would explain a few things, like how he’s been able to hide from me so well.
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions,” Blaze says, his voice full of authority. He turns back to Veronica and offers her a warm smile but I can still see the stress creeping into his eyes. “Was there anything else?”
“Probably,” she answers with a shrug. “I was there for so long and he talked so much but I’m trying to remember.”
He nods, holding his hands up in surrender. “No one is trying to push you, darlin’. Just take your time.”