Dillon's Universe: A Perdition MC Novel

by Isabel Wroth

  A glance over at Dillon now brought a smile to his face. Even with the ergonomic chair he'd picked for her, she'd chosen to sit beside Elka on the fluffy dog bed. Dillon had all the real-estate papers he'd printed off for her spread out in a circle on the floor.

  He'd given her a secure laptop to work with, but Dillon said she liked the feel of paper in her hands. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, and for a minute, he watched her flip back and forth through the pages before setting the packet aside to pick up another.

  Nasa didn't want to tell Dillon how and why Portia died, knowing it would hit close to home.

  He could have interrupted her and gotten it over with, but he had plenty of other questions that needed answering, such as tracing the girl who'd escaped Rhino and Twister's less than loving hands and why they went to such great lengths to get her back.

  With a rational excuse to put off the inevitable, Nasa dug into the security footage at the Seton hospital Portia Thomas had worked at.

  It didn't take him long to find the slick black Charger that rolled up into the ER and dumped the pink-haired girl out like a sack of trash just after 2 a.m. on June 5th.

  Nurses rushed out to scoop her up, and Dillon hadn't been exaggerating as to the girl's physical state.

  The Charger had no plates to trace, but Nasa recognized it as a vehicle seen around the grungy biker bar the Leviathans had claimed as their own.

  While he thought through why a Leviathan would help get the pink-haired girl to the hospital only to chase her down later, Nasa worked his way through the hospital system to find the girl's medical file.

  The intake form she'd filled out after her initial treatment had the bare minimum of information: a fake name—Jennifer Lawrence—her birthday, and nothing to indicate she had allergies of any kind.

  What stood out to him among the mile-long list of injuries she'd sustained was the presence of an infected tattoo just above her pubic bone.

  A large, tribal blue octopus, confirming she'd been branded as one of the Leviathans' 'stock.'

  He looked over to share this small triumph with Dillon in time to see her twist her arms up behind her head and stretch.

  The dark circles under her eyes were a reminder of her sleepless nights, and though she'd confirmed she wasn't dreaming about having shot Twister and Rhino, she still hadn't told him what the nightmares were that woke her up in a cold sweat.

  This morning, when she'd come downstairs with him after breakfast, she'd been the one to reach out and slip her hand into his without thinking.

  In an effort to keep from spooking her, pretending like that reach hadn't been a big deal was the highlight of Nasa's nonexistent acting career.

  She'd been quiet after his suggestion someone in her network of protectors might have ratted her out. Withdrawn, because the very idea of betraying someone she'd risked her own safety to protect simply didn't compute.

  Dillon was the kind of woman who'd been faced over and over again with the cruelty one human being was capable of inflicting on another and still rejected the idea she might be betrayed by someone driven by self-preservation. At least Nasa could tell her now it wasn't by choice.

  After everything she'd been through, there was still such a beautiful innocence about Dillon. Gentleness and compassion wrapped inside a steel core of honor and integrity.

  Without a doubt, she was a true blue, ride or die kind of person.

  Dillon looked up and over at him, her eyebrows pinched together in a cute little frown. “Is that the only choice with bikers?”

  “What?”

  “To ride or die.”

  Nasa must have spoken aloud without realizing it, and even focused like she was, Dillon heard him.

  “No. We get snacks, have a few beers, and raise a little hell before we go out in a blaze of glory. How's it going over there?”

  Dillon lifted her shoulder in a short shrug, getting up to stretch again before bending down to put her shoes back on, which made the denim of her vintage wash jeans pull tight across her ass.

  Nasa stared appreciatively, liking the way she'd tucked her black tank top into her pants. He could see a hint of blue lace peeking out from under the wide shoulder of her shirt, and a fair amount of the scars along her shoulders.

  More than the fact he found her ass delectably round and wanted it in his hands, it thrilled him to know she felt comfortable enough to bare the skin of her back.

  Up until today, Dillon had only worn shirts that completely covered her scars or the lounge sweater he'd bought her to cover up.

  Progress.

  “It's going. Have you made any headway in determining if someone ratted me out to the Leviathans?” Nasa winced before he could stop himself, and Dillon paled slightly. “You did. Who was it?”

  “Come sit.” Nasa swiveled in his chair to face her, flipping the armrest or her to sit comfortably on his lap.

  He considered she might refuse, and just barely managed to hold back the sigh of relief when she came to him without so much as a blip of protest.

  Nasa felt like howling in triumph when she settled sideways across his thighs. He took a moment of silence to appreciate how the act of physically curling into him signified the growing bond of trust between them.

  She turned to him, settled into his arms, knowing he would hold her steady.

  Which made it that much harder to tell her what he'd found. “I don't have the whole picture yet—”

  “Who, Nasa?” she whispered, searching his face with sad, wounded eyes.

  Like a Band-aid, he ripped off the painful truth in one go. “The nurse, Portia Thomas, but she wasn't given a choice.”

  “They killed her?” Dillon hissed even as the color rushed back to her cheeks in an angry flush, and though her eyes glimmered wetly, she didn't let a single tear fall.

  “Yes.”

  She didn't resist when he tipped his chair back and urged her to nestle against him. She leaned in, resting her forehead against his throat, sighing when he pushed his fingers into her hair and massaged her scalp while he shared with her everything he’d pulled together so far.

  He could feel Dillon frown against his throat.

  “That makes no sense. Why take the girl to the hospital only to turn around and kill someone to find out where she is?”

  “No way to tell for sure at this point. She was there for nine hours, and it looks like Portia was on her case the whole time.

  "I haven't finished going through it all, but so far there weren't any suspicious characters who came in looking for a beat-up girl.

  “My thought is they went old school and called in pretending to be a concerned relative searching for their missing daughter, or a cop checking to see if she was ready to give a statement, and someone made an innocent mistake in confirming the girl was there.

  “Once that happened, the Leviathans tracked down Portia, got what they needed from her, then headed to the shelter to try and bust in.

  "They got nothing from Patti, but for whatever reason, Patti didn't press charges, and by some divine miracle neither of them had any active warrants out for their arrest, so the bastards walked

  “The DNA and fingerprints they left behind at Portia's house wasn't processed until seventy-two hours later, or they wouldn't have been able to come at you.

  "I assume Ghost got involved once he heard his boys got swept up by the cops and used the opportunity to get to you first.”

  Dillon rubbed her cheek against his shirt, her voice tight and angry. “Patti should have pressed charges. It's protocol. Why wouldn't she have done that?”

  “I don't know,” he answered, giving her a squeeze. “I didn't find anything suspicious on her background check, no unusually large deposits into her account to suggest a payoff, no digital trail to follow to bank accounts in a relative’s name, no phone calls to any number I can tie to the Leviathans to say she had connections to them.”

  “Is there a detective listed on the missing person’s report Patti file
d?”

  “The same detective who came around to take Patti's statement after the Leviathans came to the shelter. Bolton, why?”

  “Rain Bolton is part of Vanguard. She would have told Patti that Portia had been killed, and Patti should have tried to get in touch with me.”

  Nasa frowned into Dillon's hair, massaging at her back, thoughts whirling through his mind.

  “Portia was killed on the tenth, the shelter was hit the day after, and Patti didn't call your burner until the seventeenth.

  "She didn't leave messages and didn't file the missing person’s report until ten days after making the calls to your burner.”

  “I'll ask her why she waited so long after I call Rain and let her know I'm still alive. Can we sit here for a minute?”

  Nasa turned his cheek to hers, reveling in the knowledge Dillon needed comforting, and was asking him to give it to her.

  “As long as you need.”

  *****

  She was glad Rain didn't ask how Dillon knew about the missing person’s report. When Rain did ask where she was, Dillon found herself looking to Nasa.

  “I'm just outside Austin scouting property.”

  Nasa gave Dillon a thumbs up, still in his command chair, knees spread wide in a comfortable sprawl.

  While Rain went on to say how the suspects who'd killed Portia were still at large, Dillon found her mind wandering.

  She wasn't a stranger to sex, and there had been a moment when Fifty Shades was all the rage that she'd picked up a copy just to see if it lived up to the hype.

  Reading the story through the lens of her own experiences, Dillon found the book in general, disturbing. Not sexy in the least. She hadn't been able to finish it.

  However, right at this moment, Dillon had the strangest urge to walk over to Nasa and sit on the ground between his spread knees.

  He hadn't asked her to, they hadn't talked about his sexual needs as far as BDSM went, but it had been on Dillon's mind ever since having sat in his lap the first time. It was on her mind now to discover what it might feel like to rest her cheek on his thigh and lean against his calf.

  “Dillon, are you still there?” Rain asked a little louder, making Dillon wince.

  So focused on watching her, Nasa's eyebrows went up in a silent question as to whether Dillon was okay, and she found herself blushing furiously.

  “Yes, I'm sorry. I'm still in shock about Portia. Did I hear you say you know who killed her?”

  Rain heaved a deeply frustrated sigh. “It's not my case, but yes. The two men are known members of a seriously nasty biker gang. They call themselves, Leviathans.”

  Dillon did not like having to lie, but it helped Rain wasn't here to look at her face. “I was just going over the security footage from the shelter and saw two men come in to threaten Patti.

  “I was going to ask you about them because they were wearing vests that said 'Leviathan MC' on the back, and she didn't call me to say they'd come around. You know how I am about the shelter security; did Patti say anything to you about it?”

  “That is actually my case, and I'm glad you brought it up,” Rain answered, her voice noticeably turning sharp. “Those same two men who busted into the shelter are the same ones responsible for killing Portia.

  “I've gotten my ass chewed by the department chief for letting the bikers go, but they're so violent, even the cops don't mess with them unless we have riot gear.

  “Last year, they had some beef with a rival gang down in Austin. The Leviathans were responsible for a drive-by shooting, and they used rocket launchers to blow up the rival gang's clubhouse. Patti and I talked about it extensively, and she didn't want to press charges and risk retaliation.”

  A muscle started ticking above Dillon's eyebrow, and there was no faking her feelings on the matter.

  “That's total bullshit, Rain. My foundation has protocols in place for things like this, and if Patti is worried about retaliation, I'd have moved the whole goddamn shelter somewhere else. She knows that.

  “She knows because it's right there in the contract she signed, and any breach of security means Monumentally is on the hook to foot the bill for relocation and a new secure facility.”

  “I know, I know,” Rain placated. “It's rule number one with Vanguard too, Dillon. We press charges, but in this case, the danger as a whole was greater than danger to the one. Patti has twenty women and eight kids in the shelter right now, so I made the call.

  "This gang is being investigated by the FBI, ATF, and the DEA, and if they have access to rocket launchers? No way. I advised Patti to let it go for the time being.”

  Dillon reached up to pinch her nose, sticking to the role she had to play.

  “I hear you, and I get it, but your badge does not trump the fact that the shelter is my responsibility, and Patti is my employee.

  "In the future, I expect if something like this happens again, you will not leave me out of the loop.”

  Nasa made a hissing sound, and while Rain promised not to take such liberties again, he looked at Dillon with such heat in his gaze, she felt singed.

  Dillon had to focus on the fact she was pissed at Rain, otherwise she'd forget all about it and go over there to drop between Nasa's knees like she'd wanted to earlier.

  “Was it also your call to file a missing person’s report on me?” Rain didn't immediately respond, but Dillon could hear a door open and close, the sound of the police station disappearing from the background.

  “Once homicide notified me that the suspects I released were responsible for Portia's murder, I went back to the shelter,” Rain started, her voice lowered to a conspiratorial murmur.

  “I told Patti everything I knew, and she reluctantly told me about the girl you helped get out of Dallas. Patti didn't tell me where you took her, and I don't care.

  “What I care about is the fact the bikers tracked Portia down, killed her, and headed to the shelter.

  "They didn't get anything out of Patti, but we were both concerned about blowback from the gang. I told Patti to keep on business as usual and not involve you unless it was absolutely necessary.”

  Dillon's stomach flipped over, automatically feeling the fear of being found guilty of killing the two Leviathans at her home.

  Veracruz didn't seem like the type to take chances, and if Nasa trusted him to completely dispose of the men she'd killed, then she trusted it was done and would never trace back to her.

  Wasn't that an unexpected twist?

  Rain kept talking, and Dillon turned to restlessly pace off the anxiety nipping at her heels.

  “I worried the Leviathans were out hunting you, but I couldn't go back to homicide and tell them that without putting you, the girl, and Vanguard at risk.

  “I called to warn you the day after they were released, then Patti called a few days later, and when we didn't hear back from you, I tried to track you down through DMV records, but your address came up as an office building downtown.

  “I knew you were private, we all are, but you're totally off the grid. No GPS in your cell, Patti only has a number to your burner, no one in Vanguard has ever been to your place... You're so off the grid the missing person’s was a last resort, and I couldn't file it without my partner asking questions.

  “The only way I could make it happen without connecting you to the series of events leading up to the murder, was to have Patti file the MP because you missed an important meeting and hadn't been heard from since before the break-in.

  “I can't tell you how glad I am to hear you're fine. I'll take care of getting it pulled from the system. Can I call you back at this number if I need to reach you?”

  Dillon agreed, already having discussed what to do if the detective asked with Nasa, and hung up.

  The scuffed, beat-up toes of Nasa's boots came into view a few seconds later, and she looked up just as he settled his hands on her waist, studying her expression intently.

  “What's wrong?”

  Dillon shook her head, n
ot sure if she could properly articulate the emotions rolling through her. She gave him a loose rundown of the conversation.

  “You said the only calls I got on my burner were from Patti, right?”

  “Three calls, all on the same day, from the same number registered to the shelter.”

  Already feeling nauseous and anxious, Dillon swallowed hard as the list of people she could trust dwindled to an all-time low.

  She focused on Nasa and didn't question why his hands on her made her feel better.

  “Then Rain just lied to me, and I don't know why.”

  Nasa's brows slammed down in a hard frown, his eyes narrowed in a nasty scowl. “What did she lie about?”

  “She said she called to warn me the day after the Leviathans were released from county.”

  “No one else has called your burner but Patti,” Nasa repeated, his gaze gone hard and mean with the implications. “I'll dig deep into Bolton's background right now.”

  “Why would she hang me out to dry?”

  Compassion cut through the heat of Nasa's furious expression, his hands gentle on her cheeks. “I'll get answers for you, I promise. If she set you up or gave the Leviathans time to find you on purpose, I'll find out, and I'll make her pay.”

  “I don't understand why they didn't...” The urge to scream at the unfairness of it all crawled up her throat in a rush of acidic heat, cutting off the words she would have said.

  Nasa leaned in to press a slow line of kisses from her cheek to her forehead, his fingers burrowing through her hair to urge her to lean on him.

  It felt like the easiest thing in the world to lean into him and let him hold her up for a minute.

  “You don't understand why Patti and the detective were so quick to protect the shelter and the women inside, but by not following the rules about calling in the security breach the second she was safe, Patti didn't protect you.”

  Nasa finished her sentence, and the air hissed from between her teeth, like steam escaping a boiling kettle.

  “Rain said it was to keep me off the radar of the cops working Portia's homicide.”

  Nasa huffed a derisive noise and hugged her closer. “Even if the cops asked Patti why she called you after the break in, she could honestly say it was because you handle the shelter security on behalf of the Monumentally Foundation.