by Jewel, Bella
Freak me. Another Level.
Books by Lesley Jones
Saviour
Resolution
Carnage Book #1
Carnage Book #2
Marley
The Letters
Conviction
Acknowledgements
This gets harder every time I publish and I always worry there will be people I’ll forget. So, let’s get started…
Ash, my editor. You have achieved the impossible and made me love the editing process. You challenge me and make me think outside the box, but, never forget, I write using British English, there will be no, guys, no trash and no happy holidays. Ever!
Jeanette, my proofreader, tihs book wold bee so flu fo rerrors fi it wast’n orf ouy. Yank thou!
To my amazing admin team, Vix, Marian, Angie, Sasha, Lisa, Sharee and Sam. Some of you have been with me since Gabe, most, since Sean, Georgia and Cam. I dedicate this book to you all. For your unwavering support, of not just me, but of each other. We are our own unique little family. We bitch, we moan, we laugh and we cry. You are my safe place, my levellers and I love you all.
To my beautiful beta squad, Bianca, Angie, Jeanette, Kirsten, Lisa, Marian, Petra, Sasha, Serena, Vix and Tina, I thank you for the feedback you give me as I drip feed you words.
To the ladies of my reader group, you rock my world. Effie, Goldi, Irene, Gaynor, Elizabeth, Sue, Pat, Terri, Faye, Kim, Shabby and so very many more, your passion and unwavering support, knocks my socks off on a daily basis.
Bianca, thank you for your support and amazing assistance at all of my AU signings. You’re a star.
Abbey, thanks for getting me organised for this release. I don’t know where I’d be without your skills!
For all of the bloggers that pretty much dedicate their lives to this amazing book world, I thank you for my career.
To Sarah Hansen at Okay Creations, thank you for my amazing cover. I said ‘get artsy’ and you sure delivered. I love it hard.
For each and every one of my amazing readers that I’ve had the pleasre of meeting face to face, all around the world theses past few years, thank you so much for taking the time to stop by my table and say hi. The best part about book signings is meeting all of you. You are who I fan girl over!
To the ‘Book Haven’ girls. Love you ladies, thanks for making me an honoury member!
To all of the authors I now have the pleasure of calling friends, especially KM, Mo, Jessica, Elle, Nina, Lili and Callie, it humbles me that I am considered one of you. When my name appears on a list next to yours, I will always and forever get tingles and have to pinch myself. That shit will never get old.
Last but not least, my family. Thank you for putting up with what you do, I love you such a much.
About the author
Lesley Jones was born and raised in Essex, England but moved to Australia ten years ago. She now lives by the beach on the Mornington Peninsula, just outside of Melbourne.
When she’s not writing, she loves to read, listen to music, watch football, sing badly and drink good wine.
You can find, follow, or stalk her at these places…
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/LesleyJonesAuthor/
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/lesleyjonesauthor/
THE THIEF
Kate McCarthy
Dedication
This book is for Maree.
You know what you did.
And you know how much you mean to me.
Kelly is for you.
“I loved you the same way I learned to ride a bike; scared but reckless.”
Rudy Francisco
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
Thank You
Books By Kate Mccarthy
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue
Kelly Daniels, 15 years old
I’m in my bedroom when it starts. Homework spread out on my bed in a chaotic mess as my head tries to make sense of the algebra equation.
What a bunch of shit.
I’m trying though, just like I try with everything I do. I try to be quiet. I try to go unnoticed and blend into the walls. I try to be a good student. I try to be brave and strong like my older brother, Casey.
I turn my head to the frame on my bedside table. The photo inside shows me and Casey in black and white. Mum took the photo when she was in an artsy mood, toying with the idea of photography and earning hobby income. We knew it was a pipe dream though. Dad would never let her have anything. Eventually he tore up every photo she took, but I managed to save this one.
It shows the both us laughing at each other, so similar in looks, down to the blond hair and blue eyes our mother said were brighter than the halos of angels. Casey and I even have the same mannerisms. But that’s where it ends. Because my brother is a fucking cunt.
Familiar rage ignites in my chest when I think of him. Four years older than me, Casey left. He got free. He’s at Charles Sturt University in Goulburn now.
“Selfish bitch!” I hear my dad roar from down the hall.
My eyes squeeze shut. Please stop.
Casey said he’d come back for us.
“Six months,” he vowed, grabbing my shoulders and looking at me with fierce eyes. Determined eyes. “I’ll get settled and come back for you. I promise.”
I believed him. Of course I did. He’s my big brother. My protector. But it’s been eight months now and nothing. I have to accept that he moved on and left us behind. He’s never coming back.
My fingers tighten around the pencil in my hand. It snaps in two.
Crack.
“I’m sorry!” my mum cries in a broken voice. A desperate one. Panicked. As if she has a chance of calming him down with an apology. “I won’t—”
“I’m over your lies, Maggie!” My dad’s voice is cold and hard. It gets that way. He goes into a rage and becomes a different person. A monster. Smack. “Tell me why you bought the damn dress! It’s for the new neighbour across the road, isn’t it?”
A single man had moved in to the vacant house two weeks ago. A teacher, I think. He looks around forty and kind. He made the mistake of smiling at my mother and saying hello when they’d both gotten out of their cars at the same time and checked their respective mailboxes out front.
“It’s not! I swear!” she sobs. “It’s for—”
“Shut up!” he roars. “Where did you get the money for it, bitch?”
My jaw clenches tight, and my breathing begins to labour. I start rocking on my bed, not even noticing that I’m doing it.
“You gave it to me.”
Of course he did. On a good day. But he forgets things on his bad days, and today is definitely one of those.
“Bullshit! You stole it from me.”
Smack.
“Please,” she cries.
Crack.
He’s yelling in earnest now, and she’s crying and screaming. My mother is begging for mercy from the man who’s supposed to love her, and he’s giving her none. It’s almost as if he enjoys
her begging. It fuels him.
Their fight builds and I reach a point where I just can’t take it anymore. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. It’s been too much for too long.
My rocking is forceful now.
I have to do something.
I have to …
I jump from the bed and crouch, scrambling for the suitcase beneath it. It’s already packed, sitting there ready since the moment Casey left. I packed for Mum too. Food, clothing, shoes. Enough to get us through a few days at a shelter until we can get in touch with my brother. But he’s not coming and we need to leave. Today. Right now.
“No!” she screams and a thundering crash comes from their room. It’s followed by eerie silence. I shoot to my feet, dizzy and ears ringing, the suitcase forgotten.
I start for their bedroom, picking up speed when I hear Dad sobbing, the sound like a wounded animal. I’ve never heard him cry. It sends chills skittering down my spine.
Their bedroom door is slightly ajar. I place a shaky palm on it and push. My eyes find my mother first, and I stop breathing. She’s on the floor facing toward me, a crumpled heap of limbs and pretty blond hair. Blood pools beneath her head and soaks the carpet. Its metallic stench is thick in the air, choking me. Her eyes, like the brightest blue in a hot summer sky, are open and sightless. They stare at me with nothing inside them. Empty of life.
Grief rises like a tidal surge. I try to swallow but it won’t stay down. My throat aches and my eyes burn as I stare down at her lifeless form.
He’s killed her.
She could have left him. She could have had a whole other life. I have hidden photos of my mother when she was young, ones my father never managed to destroy. Photos of her life before him. Before her every breath became a battle. My mother used to be Maggie McIntyre until she met my dad at the age of nineteen. Her hair used to shine, long and pretty, and her eyes sparkled. There used to be happiness and sunshine in her heart until she fell in love with a callous man that sucked the life right out of her. Now there’s nothing left except blood on the corner of the dresser above her and the stain of misery and death on the floor.
My father sits on the edge of the bed. He’s sobbing, shaking his head in disbelief.
Fury explodes. Its onset so swift and hard it overtakes my body completely, breaking through the shock and horror. The sound of his cries fuel my anger. Hands fisted and knuckles white, I leave the room and make my way down the stairs. When I reach the study, I open the bottom drawer of my father’s desk and take out his gun. After checking the chamber and finding it loaded, I walk to the staircase. I take each step slowly, knowing what I’m about to do but unable to stop myself. Someone stop me, please. But no one comes. I’m alone.
When I return, my father still sits where I left him, a sobbing pathetic mess.
“I hate you.” The words spew from my mouth like venom.
He swallows snot and tears. “I’m sorry.”
I walk toward him. There’s a storm surrounding me, intensifying, and I’m caught in the middle of it. It takes control, raising my arm and pressing the gun in my hand to his temple. “Give your apology to the Devil.”
Sanity screams at me. It claws at the edges of my mind, trying to rip me free from the storm. It makes me hesitate.
“Do it,” Dad pleads, his voice a gravelly whisper. He wants to die. He needs it. My father is a rabid dog that needs putting down for the good of society. “Do it, Son.”
I lift my chin and stare down into his watery eyes, hating that I’m doing him this one favour. And hating my brother for letting it come to this. If I learn one thing from this day, it’s to never rely on anyone. Not even those you love. Because the moment you do, they’ll turn their back on you and you’ll find yourself alone.
The air around me stills.
“See you in Hell, Dad.”
I pull the trigger, ending his torment.
Chapter One
Kelly, 12 years later
I tug at the collar of my crisp white shirt. It’s too tight. I can’t fuckin’ breathe. My eyes scan the room, lighting on Grace Paterson across the room, the fiancée of my older brother. She sees me tugging and the corners of her lips tilt upward. Sadistic bitch. She knows how much I hate playing dress-up. I fix my features in a scowl. It evokes a laugh so beautiful my chest tightens a fraction. Grace is outfitted in a white strapless dress. It highlights the colourful tattoo of flowers that wind down her shoulder and left arm and the fiery waves of hair that hang down her back. Casey is a lucky bastard.
I’m stuck at this fancy place called The Florence Bar, celebrating their recent engagement. Waiters carrying trays of canapes move about the room. Tall bar tables hold vases filled with towering flower arrangements. Their scent mingles with expensive perfume and the sweet tang of champagne. I don’t belong here. Not in this place. Not with all these beautiful, high-class people. And not in this ridiculous tuxedo that Grace supplied after I handed over a shit ton of cash. It feels like I’m wearing a damn straightjacket. I roll my shoulders.
Fox shoots me a look of sympathy. He’s decked out in a tuxedo for the first time and looks as out of place as I feel. His dark blond hair has grown long and it’s tied in a braid down his back. “Another drink?”
I snort. “Is that even a real question?”
Luke Fox is my real brother. My brother in the Sentinels MC. They’ve been my family from the moment I left mine behind, bleeding out on the carpeted floor of my parents’ bedroom.
After shooting my father, I walked blindly to my room and sat on my bed. A cop, Morgan, arrived twenty minutes later. She said a neighbour reported hearing a gun shot.
Morgan was a rookie, but she was also an undercover member of a biker gang. The Sentinels. She reviewed the scene. She could see what went down. Morgan saw my struggle and decided I’d been through enough. Rather than take me into custody when I tried to run, she called in her biker brothers. They made the scene appear as a murder-suicide, then they took me in before Morgan reported the incident. I wasn’t going to live with my brother. Not after what he let happen. So I chose to remain hidden with the Sentinels, and there I stayed.
It didn’t stop Casey looking for me. He searched for ten years, choosing not to believe it was a murder-suicide. I know because Morgan told me he was digging into the case. He believed that someone else did it. And that someone else took me away and killed me too because there was no way I wouldn’t find my way to him if I were still alive.
Casey found me eventually. A year or so ago. All that digging into our parents’ case was causing trouble, to the point where I was left with no choice but to intervene. It was then that he learned the truth. That I killed our father. And how I blamed him for allowing it to happen.
He found out I was runnin’ with the Sentinels, and he looked at me as though he didn’t know who I was anymore. That kind of thing changes you, though. It makes you harder, and it makes you darker. I was no longer the sweet kid my brother used to know. But the Sentinels did for me what he never did. They looked out for me. They had my back. They never abandoned me. Brothers for life, not just when it fuckin’ suits you.
“Are you going to go and congratulate your brother?” Fox asks as we walk over to the bar.
My lips tighten. “Not yet.”
I try to avoid him where possible, despite Grace’s attempts at a familial reconciliation. You can’t force a relationship where the connection has been irreparably severed. We aren’t brothers anymore, and we have nothing in common. I don’t know how to talk to him.
I ride with the Sentinels, earning a dollar by tinkering with their bikes and cars. My brother owns a business called Jamieson and Valentine Consulting alongside three of his friends. They work as security for a big name band, Jamieson, but they also work with the police, hired on as “expert consultants” for kidnapping cases, ransom, and hostage negotiation. They often get their hands dirty, getting involved in shoot-outs and car chases. But Casey’s specialty involves getting children out of abu
sive situations by whatever means possible.
We reach the bar. “Two whiskeys,” I call to the bartender, hoping hard alcohol will wash away the bitter taste in my mouth.
I get it. He didn’t get me out, so he spends his life appeasing his guilty conscience by saving other kids. It’s fuckin’ admirable, right? Except you can’t fix the past. No matter how many lives he saves, it doesn’t change the fact that I was the one he left for dead. His own blood.
“Make them a double,’ I add, again tugging on my collar.
The bartender sets our drinks on the counter. We pick them up and toss them back in a simultaneous motion. Fire spreads through my chest. Fox hisses from beside me. It’s good liquor. Quality. Expensive. It slides down easy, caressing my throat like a hand over silk. Goddamn.
Unfortunately, it’s not a miracle cure as my bitterness holds strong. I set the glass back on the bar with a clink and a hard voice. “Another.”
“Tying one on tonight, little brother?” comes a voice at my back. Speak of the Devil and he shall appear.
My teeth grind together as the bartender hands over my second glass. I snatch it up and turn. Casey is decked out in a similar tuxedo, though he somehow manages to look smoother than I do. A little more at ease. His hair is short at the back and sides with the top slightly tousled as though he’s let his old lady style it for him. She probably did. That’s what women do. Change how you look until you don’t recognise yourself anymore.
