Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men, #6)

by Darling, Giana

  But touch?

  My skin was only so seasoned. The feel of those soft, small hands tipped always in some outrageous shade of pink? They would devastate my walls, pull them down stone by stone until my barriers were all in ruin.

  I couldn’t be exposed.

  Not again.

  Memories rattled in their chains, flashes popping behind my lids.

  The scent of dank, molding earth sharp in my nostrils, the feel of mud beneath my knees as I bent prostrate in prayer before a false god.

  Pain, explosions of it across my flesh as if my very body was a battlefield, the Somme, craters blown out of muscles and fissures cracked into bone.

  My hand slapped out against the wall of the warehouse beside my door to brace against the onslaught. I tried to tamp down the nausea that swelled high in my belly, lapping acid at the base of my throat, but I knew it was futile.

  Seconds later, I turned my head and threw up on the frosty grass beside the gravel walkway. The putrid mess steamed in the freezing air, a reminder that my body wore more than just the scars they’d carved into my skin. I was diseased by my past. It was a cancer inside me, eating away at everything good I tried to produce. Sometimes, like when Bea tried to touch me with her soft, tapered fingers, I could literally feel it gnawing at my bones.

  I spit out the last of the acidic waste, then wiped the back of my hand across my mouth before I started to unlock the door to the warehouse. It was heavily alarmed with motion sensors, cameras, and multiple locks. A Fort Knox for me and my demons, as necessary to keep things out as it was at times to keep me locked within.

  But then I saw it.

  Such a little thing.

  Someone else wouldn’t have taken note. But I was The Fallen enforcer. I’d killed more men than I could ever tattoo the names of on my knuckles, and I knew I’d kill a hundred more. I was a predator through and fucking through. There was little in my environment I didn’t catalogue, few times I missed something however small a change, in those settings that were both familiar or unfamiliar to me.

  So, I noticed.

  The patch of darker grass beside the derelict garage at the edge of my property.

  It was a space I didn’t use, leaving it purposely in disarray so that people would think the building next to it was just as abandoned and ravaged.

  It could have been anything, maybe the drain-off from the day’s earlier rainfall or the leftover of an animal passing through.

  But I knew somehow it was blood.

  Some people had an affinity for music and math; mine was more elemental.

  They say blood doesn’t have a smell, but I could smell it. More, I could sense it. Maybe because I’d spilled it one too many times and been consequently cursed to know it intimately ever after.

  I stalked over to the shed, my heart beating like a steady metronome in my chest.

  There was blood on that grass then, moving closer, blood on the door, wrapped around it’s open edge like bleeding fingers had fought to open it.

  My thoughts whirred.

  I dropped to the ground carefully and stuck my head closer to the crack between it and the asphalt. My nose pricked, stung by the metallic tang.

  More blood.

  “Fuck.”

  I hopped to my feet and flipped open my disposable cell. It only rang once before Zeus picked up with a laughing, “Priest, my brother.”

  Children laughed in the background, the faint trill of Loulou’s voice talking to one of her babies.

  Family.

  The cancer inside me ate away with its vicious, poisoned teeth.

  “Got a problem,” I said, cutting to the quick, careful not to get blood on my boot as I stalked around the building, looking for a forced sign of entry.

  It was there at the second garage bay, the corrugated metal lipped and distorted by what had to have been a crowbar.

  “Give it to me,” Zeus ordered, the humour stripped from his words. All business now. All Prez.

  “Seems someone’s been into the garage on my property,” I told him calmly as I went back round to the front. My boots crunched in the frost-tipped grass, drawing my eyes to other prints that might’ve been left in its mold.

  There, faint, earlier that morning before the dew froze in the anaemic light of dawn.

  Wide, long footprints in running shoes of a kind. Too big for a woman, the tread sank deep in the grass. They disappeared quickly from the garage bay into the gravel drive.

  “They get into the arsenal?” Z asked, shock in the question because it was me and I didn’t ever fail in my duties to the club.

  “No,” I assured, my head cocking to the side as I heard the crunch of wheels on gravel followed shortly by a familiar, dreaded bleep.

  The short exclamation of a police car’s sirens.

  Seconds later, red and blue light spilled around the corner, illuminating the road that was more an alley where my warehouse entrance stood.

  Illuminating me.

  “It seems someone decided to frame me for murder,” I told Zeus conversationally as a cop stepped out of the first of two cars.

  “Fucking fuck,” Zeus swore into the phone, the sound of dislodged furniture in the background as he gained his feet. “Don’t fucking kill anyone. I’m comin’ for ya.”

  I made a short exhale that was as close as I came to a snort. “If I was gonna kill them, they’d bloody well be dead already. I’ll meet you at the precinct. And, Zeus, don’t tell Bea.”

  There was a slight pause as the cop ordered me to put my hands in the air.

  I didn’t.

  Instead, I leaned against the front wall beside the warped garage door and crossed my ankles. “You hear me?”

  “She’s gonna find out, brother,” Zeus finally said. “And you gotta know, Lou’s a Garro now, but she was a Lafayette, and from what I know’a those girls, they wanna do somethin’, there’s no fuckin’ stoppin’ them.”

  I didn’t respond because I figured he was right. Instead, I flipped the phone shut and put it in my pocket.

  “Put your hands in the air,” Officer Talbot, a newer cop on the force brought in after the cleanup, called out to me again.

  His voice shook just slightly.

  A rookie.

  I wondered for a moment why the hell it was the rookie speaking when the second cop got out of the car and I recognized Officer Travers.

  Fucking pig.

  Asshole, bully who was, shockingly, not on Staff Sergeant Danner’s take, just a grade a piece’a shite to everyone.

  A bully who was, notoriously, afraid of me.

  “Oh, it’s my favourite copper,” I called out to him, drawing my hunter’s blade, the long curving length of it, out of its holster so I could pick under my nails. “This must be a fuckin’ social call.”

  “Cut the crap, McKenna,” he shouted. “I’ll draw my gun, you don’t drop that fucking knife.”

  I grinned, knowing the broken lamppost across the street would cast it in gritty yellow light. “This is private property. Thinkin’ it should be me who makes the goddamn threats here. And I would, you get me? But I don’t think that’s necessary.” I cocked my head, pinning the rookie with my stare. “You know my reputation.”

  Officer Talbot’s heavy breath plumed in the cold night, giving away his nerves.

  “Drop the shit, McKenna, I’ll put you down,” Officer Travers postured.

  I laughed, but I’d never had a very good one. It was loud and hollow, like shell casing releases hot and hard out of an exploding gun.

  “I’ll put you down if you take one more step on my territory,” I warned lightly.

  A stand-off ensued, one that leaned heavily in my favour.

  “Got a call about a possible assault here,” the rookie tried to explain. “We have a duty to check it out.”

  “By all means, check it out from the property line,” I allowed, graciously, running a finger lightly down the razor-sharp blade. My skin opened up under even that pressure, a quarter-inch
gash on the pad of my thumb. I popped the clean cut into my mouth, ran the iron solution against my teeth, then flashed another smile at them, this one tinged in blood. “You get a warrant before you take one more step toward me.”

  The rookie took a step back when he didn’t have one, his back slamming into the car so hard, he yelped.

  Fuck, it was fun to play with cops.

  “We got a right to check out the perimeter, McKenna,” Officer Travers pointed out gruffly, lowering his voice as if that would make me change my mind.

  He didn’t get there was only one alpha in play here.

  “Do what you want,” I agreed pleasantly, shrugging slightly to distract them as I adjusted my hold on the knife. “Already gave you my warnin’. You don’t get even that’s outta character, take whatever risk you want.”

  Officer Talbot’s hard swallow was visible in the red light of his cop car lights, the vicious pull of his Adam’s apple dragged down by terror.

  I pulled harder so he’d know for sure I wasn’t just some fish on his line.

  I was a motherfucking shark.

  “Come closer,” I beseeched, gentling my expression, swiping my tongue over my teeth to erase the eerie blood. “Please, do what you need to.”

  Talbot hesitated, his survival instinct kicking in. Even though he couldn’t articulate it, his body knew what his mind disallowed. I was a threat he was not equipped to deal with.

  Travers, on the other hand, was too much of an eejit to save his own hide.

  Boldly, he stalked forward three large, exaggerated steps.

  I smiled deep inside, but it didn’t grace my lips.

  The knife in my hand was a comfort weight as I flung it end over end toward the advancing cop.

  He yelled after it was already impaled an inch in front of his work boot. I watched placidly as he reared back, catching himself on the hood of his car as he lost balance in his hasty retreat.

  “You’re under fucking arrest for assaulting an officer of the law,” Travers bellowed at me, but I was already stalking forward, collecting my knife before I swung back onto my Harley.

  “I’ll meet ya there,” I shouted over the roar of the engine as I gunned it into life then peeled out of the drive, the tires spewing gravel onto their car.

  Seconds later, the sound of sirens erupted in the night, and the chase was fucking on. I laughed into the glacial wind, the icy fingers tugging through my overlong hair as I kicked the engine into high gear and raced the fucking pigs to their pen.

  * * *

  * * *

  It wasn’t my first time in the Entrance Police Department, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be my last. As far as interrogation rooms went, it was run of the mill: a grey box with a one-way mirror the length of the left wall, four chairs, two on either side of a black table.

  I sat in the chair facing the door, thighs spread, hands linked on the table, gaze fixed to the mirror and the people I knew lurked behind it.

  There had been chaos when they brought me in, more people in the pigpen than there usually was.

  The serial killer and his love for Entrance had brought the big boys to the yard.

  I knew there were Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) special unit officers in that adjoining room watching me.

  Trying to learn me.

  They’d learn nothing.

  Cops put people in these rooms with one objective. They hoped the shake-up of being arrested and paraded through a cop’s den would carbonate them like agitated soda, all those guilty emotions fizzing and popping to the surface so when they sent in the interrogator, all they had to do was crack open the cap and confessions would flood into their hands.

  They weren’t expecting a man to sit there like it was his living room and watch them like they were the entertainment playing on the television, like they were the subjects under observation.

  I cracked a little smile, then cracked my knuckles as I slouched lower in the chair, getting cozy.

  A moment later, the door opened, revealing a man I didn’t recognize in a dark grey suit and Mr. White, the club’s attorney.

  I tipped my chin at White. There weren’t many people outside of my brothers I respected, but he was one of them. We’d been through a helluva a lot together.

  As I said, it wasn’t my first time in an interrogation room.

  White blinked at me and adjusted his glasses as he rounded the table and took a seat beside me.

  The suited man stood behind the chairs on the opposite side of the table staring at me.

  I stared back, expressionless.

  He was short, but held himself rigid, chest puffed, shoulders pinned back like an ex-military man. Bat and Dane still stood like that, feet braced, faces stern, eyes an empty receptacle to place orders from their superiors. He had that vaguely traumatized depth to his gaze and deep grooves between his brows like he only ever frowned.

  So, ex-military, probably divorced, definitely RCMP.

  “How can I motherfuckin’ help you today, Officer?” I asked, cocking my head to the side as I addressed him with a close-lipped curl of my lips that might have been a smile on someone more pleasant.

  “Priest McKenna,” he said slowly, tasting my name, making it Irish. “Good ole mick, eh?”

  I didn’t flinch at the derogatory insult for Irishmen. I’d stopped identifying as one years ago, even if I couldn’t quite shake the song of it in my words.

  The officer tried again, unbuttoning his suit jacket as he finally took a seat. “I’ve heard about you, you know? The maniac who kills for the notorious mother chapter of The Fallen MC. You take that name as a joke? The sinner Priest? Does it get you off to kill in the name of the Lord?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  This was more boring than I thought it would be.

  I yawned widely, showing the man a nice view of my naturally sharp incisors.

  “This is all speculation, Moore. Why don’t you speak factually from now on?” White suggested mildly.

  Moore.

  British, of course.

  He had the pallor of spilled milk, ruddy with age and too much drink.

  I yawned again.

  The skin around his eyes tightened, the only tell of his irritation with my ennui.

  “Mr. McKenna, we found a dead body in a garage adjacent to your property,” he stated dramatically.

  “Oh?” I asked with mock and mild curiosity. “How strange.”

  White cleared his throat, but it was too late.

  I’d goaded Moore’s ego.

  “Strange that you couldn’t be bothered to clean up your latest mess?” Moore prodded me, thinking I was an animal in a corner he could provoke into violence with the end of a sharp stick.

  I was not a reactionary man, some rabid dog looking for a fight.

  I did not fight at all. I put men down. They came to me to die.

  If Moore wanted to grapple, he’d be disappointed.

  Though if he continued to be as irritating as he was proving himself to be, I’d be happy to find him an early grave.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, because I was not. “You think I killed someone on my own property and put them in the garage next door? Not to mention, the warehouse isn’t even my own. It’s held in trust, I believe, by a Double Edge International LLC.”

  Moore’s jaw worked. “You were found on the property, about to open the door.”

  I hummed in response. “Very good detective work, Officer. Of course, that must mean I own it.”

  “Oh, were you breaking in, then?” he countered, leaning forward, his aggression getting the better of him. There was a brutish, almost pit bull set to his underbite and small, dark eyes.

  Bea had told me once that there were two kinds of violent offenders. I’d listened, not because I was interested, but because I liked the way her mouth looked when it moved around the words, how her chest flushed pink when she spoke about her passions.

  There was the pit bull and the cobra. The former exploded into b
rief, hellacious rages that brought violence down on everything around them. They often regretted their rages, felt remorse for the way they couldn’t control themselves.

  The cobra, on the other hand, was cold, calculated. They did not strike without intention and when they did, they went for the kill.

  It was easy to draw the comparison between the likes of Moore and me.

  I cocked my head as I absorbed all his obvious little tells, knowing that no matter how loudly he barked, he would never be as controlled and powerful as he wished he was. He had a complex, this one. Wanted to make himself feel like a big man by putting down big criminals.

  As I said, too fucking easy.

  “Mr. McKenna was simply checking in on a building owned by a person of his acquaintance. If need be, we will sign an affidavit to that effect. Now, did you have any motive or evidence tying my client to this crime?” White asked, dryly.

  Moore flipped open the portfolio he’d brought in under his arm and one by one, flipped the pages for me to view.

  Blood.

  Everywhere there was blood.

  Oh, it was a messy crime scene, sloppily done, a crime of passion, not one of cold, calculated methodology.

  I almost snorted. I’d never killed a man like that, not even my first kills that last day in my motherland. I’d been passionate then too, before the fire in my soul sputtered out forever, but even then, the kills were clean, thoughtful. I’d spent years planning them down to the very last detail.

  The female victim was torn to ribbons by knives, a poor mockery of my form, but in one picture, a close up of her face, I recognized who it was.

  Fuck.

  The next picture Moore slid across the table with one finger, overly dramatic prick.

  It was a photo of the victim days earlier at Hephaestus Auto, her gleaming dark hair catching in the pale winter sunlight, her smile soft as she waved goodbye to someone obscured just inside The Fallen clubhouse.

  “Her name was Natalie Ashley,” Moore said, knowing that I knew. “She worked at Entrance Bay Academy teaching History and Social Studies, and, apparently, she was sleeping with a member of your club.”