I looked up at Moore calmly, but my mind was working, clicking and whirring as I thought through the ramifications of this.
I was not sleeping with Natalie Ashley.
But Kodiak was.
“Mr. Moore, I’ll tell you once more, keep to the facts, or I’ll be leaving with my client. So far, I see no cause why you brought him in for questioning,” White warned, and for a pale, short, old suit, he didn’t do half-bad.
“He assaulted an officer,” Moore reminded him.
“Doesn’t have a fucking scratch on him,” I said mildly. “Listen, Natalie Ashley is friends with King’s woman, she visits her at the club sometimes. You gonna arrest me for that?”
“She was a good, churchgoing woman,” Moore attempted. “If she was lured into your club, I believe only a man could’ve done it. Women think with their hearts.”
Bea.
Her name sat on my tongue, burned there like a communion wafer.
She thought with her heart and it brought her to me.
It was sexist, the motherfucking prick, but he wasn’t entirely wrong.
“You wanna arrest me for shit I didn’t do just like you arrested Zeus for the murder of a man committed by a man in fuckin’ blue, get on with it so we can sue your motherfucking asses,” I suggested with a little shrug. “Otherwise, White and I are gettin’ outta this pigpen. It fuckin’ stinks.”
Moore glared at me. If this was a tug of war, he’d just lost hold of the rope.
“Did you find a note at the crime scene?” White asked. “As I understand it, they’ve been accompanying murders of late.”
Moore hesitated then nodded. “There was something written in blood, but it doesn’t exactly follow the modus operandi of the killer. It seems more likely the work of a copycat.”
He slanted me a suspicious look, but I ignored him in favour of the photo he flipped over for us.
Written poorly in blood on the inside of the garage door was the phrase ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay’.
For the first time during this entire tedious interchange, I frowned. Leaning closer, I traced my finger over the words on the photograph and muttered them under my breath.
This passion was unusual, the carelessness of the body hacked to pieces wasn’t biblical in any obvious way nor was the scripture left at the scene.
It didn’t follow the path of the previous religious kills. It could have been that this was a personal message delivered to me to warn me to stay away from their crimes or maybe away from Bea herself, if they’d fixated on her as solidly as I had. Or it was something else entirely, someone with a vendetta against me who was taking the opportunity to frame me because it had presented itself to them.
Either way, they’d done a piss poor fucking job. My DNA was probably at the scene but not in conjunction with the crime. I lived in the property beside the garage, but these fucks didn’t know that and they wouldn’t be able to get a warrant to search the property unless they had hard evidence I might be the killer.
Sloppy, amateur hour at best.
But interesting.
“Priest,” Moore said musingly, gearing up for some dramatic bullshit. “It all ties together so well despite what you say. A biker with a thing against religion, targets the pious people of B.C. to teach them his own kind of lesson. You got trauma in the church?” He paused to narrow his gaze at me, hoping that might magnify his intrusive stare maybe. I yawned again, so wide my jaw cracked. “I just bet you do. I bet some old priest back in backwater Ireland bent you over the altar as a choir boy and––”
His words transformed into a shocked shout as I hooked my foot around his leg under the table and jerked it forward. Moore went careening back in his chair, his head hitting the top of the metal backrest with a loud smack. Before he could right himself, I was on the table, knees braced, hand at his fleshy throat.
We were close enough, I could smell the fetid coffee and fried lunch on his breath, but still I got closer, until my bared teeth were all he could see. “You’ve heard about me? Then you know a man like me doesn’t do shit like this.” I lifted a crumpled fistful of the scattered photos in one hand and shoved them into his chest. “Never killed a woman and never would. You’re so goddamn obsessed with takin’ down The Fallen, you can’t see what’s right in front’a your eyes? Why don’t you catch the motherfucker murderer slaying women from Vancouver to the Rez and then see if there’re any bodies still showin’ up?”
“Priest,” White suggested mildly over the cacophony outside the door of cops coming to their brethren’s rescue. “Release the man and sit down, will you? They have no cause to arrest you, but they will if you carry on much longer.”
I snapped my teeth in Moore’s face, delighting in his blown open pupils gone black with fear and the little diamonds of sweat crowning his lined forehead. He flinched in my grip, pulse a rapid tattoo against my fingers. I squeezed a little tighter just to see what exact shade of purple he would turn, then abruptly released him and swung off the table back into my seat as if nothing had happened.
The cops burst into the room, two with their guns raised, but I only sat there staring down the man who’d tried to use my past against me. I was the only one capable of doing that and one day, in the future when I could get to him without suspicion, he would know exactly why the scared Entrance cops sent him in to interrogate me instead of doing it themselves.
Moore sat there transfixed by the look in my eyes, fear gluin’ his pansy ass to the chair, his throat bobbing as he swallowed the tang of adrenaline off his tongue.
I leaned forward just slightly again to deliver my promise with a small, saccharine smile. “You don’t do your job and find ’im, I’ll do mine, you get me?”
Bea
I was exhausted.
But I did not want to sleep.
There was a restlessness flooding through me like lactic acid after a workout, burning in my muscles, twitching at my fingertips. I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t eat or sleep. I had to move, but tired as I was, my body went sluggishly through the air as if catching the molecules there like wind in my clothes.
Priest wasn’t with me.
No one told me where he was, but it was club business, Zeus had assured me, nothing too serious.
A bold-faced lie if only because all club business was serious shit.
I hadn’t seen Priest since the night before when he’d been inside me to the hilt. The ache of him still lingered there, a hollow pain that I somehow knew would ease if he would only slide back inside.
Harleigh Rose, Tayline, Cleo, Lila, and Loulou got tired of my pacing and daydreaming after I barely ate my dinner and hardly spoke to them while we sat around afterward playing with the babies. So, in typical Harleigh Rose and Lila fashion, they had declared we needed a night on the town.
I hadn’t been out since that fateful Halloween night and I was absolutely not in the mood to go to some sweaty, crowded club when I didn’t know where Priest was or where I stood with him. But they wouldn’t take no for an answer.
So, now I was at Sugar Nightclub in downtown Vancouver with my biker babes and five of The Fallen brothers who had insisted they join us because they hadn’t been out downtown in a while.
We knew they only came to protect us. The rough and tumble bikers so did not fit in at the hip, sleek downtown bar, but I kind of loved how everyone stared at them. They were gorgeous, but foreign, so of course, they had women all over them within minutes of entering the club.
I stood at the bar under the flashing coloured lights, the music vibrating the air all around me, Bat to my left with Dane, who wasn’t a brother, but was rarely separated from his sister, Lila, or Bat, and Wrath on my right. The rest of the girls were out on the dance floor with Boner and Blade. I watched as Lila and Harleigh Rose jumped up and down, yelling the words to ‘Crazy Train’ in each other’s faces. Loulou spun Cleo around under her arm then dipped her, laughing down at her as they danced together. A man tried to grab Harleigh Rose’s ass and T
ay stepped in to push him away forcibly with a hip check.
I smiled slightly watching them, feeling joy move through me softly like water through rock.
“Not havin’ such a good time,” Wrath noted, forearms braced on the bar as he leaned beside me, his long, wild waves hanging in his gorgeous face as he looked over at me. “Don’t strike me as a party girl.”
I swirled the short straw in my Bourbon Peach Smash then blocked the top of the straw with a finger and brought the end to my mouth before I let go so the liquid trapped there fell between my open lips.
When I was done, I smiled wanly at the brother who never smiled. “You don’t seem much for them either.”
Wrath’s eyes crinkled just slightly, but otherwise his permanent scowl stayed in place. “I’m not much for anythin’ these days.”
I nodded. We all knew Wrath’s tragic story, the love of his life lost to gang violence when he was still patched in to the Berserkers MC years ago. I didn’t know the devastation of losing your one true love, but the acute edge of agony I’d felt obsessing over Priest, unattainable and forbidden as he was for years had been bad enough. I couldn’t imagine the pain Wrath lived with every day.
“Is it hard…” I started tentatively then took another sip of the sweet, boozy perfection and spoke strongly. “Is it hard to go on after losing someone like that?”
Wrath’s thick brown brow arched, cutting lines into his smooth forehead. Sometimes, I forgot he was still in his twenties because he wore his grief so heavily in the lines of his glowering face. He seemed surprised I’d asked something so bold, his gaze assessing me with new eyes.
I thought maybe he wouldn’t respond. It was an invasive question, but I was a student of psychology and I liked those kinds of inquiries best so I didn’t take it back.
“’S like I was run through with a sword straight through the chest,” he said finally, soft enough it was hard to hear over the bumping notes of music. He thumped his chest then reached down to slam back his shot of dark liquor before continuing. “And I gotta live with it there every fuckin’ day ’til I can join her in death.”
A shiver raced across my skin even though the air in the club was thick and close.
When Wrath tipped his head to look at me, his eyes were a dark pool, fathomless as the ocean bottom and just as filled with unknown terrors. “But I gotta keep on livin’. She…fuck, she was so young. She had stuff she wanted to do, so I’m gonna do it for her. Live for her, I guess you could say. The pain is the price I pay for not protectin’ her like I shoulda.”
“Wrath,” I said softly, wanting to touch him so badly my hand quivered even though I knew he wouldn’t appreciate it. “I know there’s nothing I can say to make you feel better. I can apologize and empathize all I want, but I know this is your cross to bear. All I can say is, I hope you know that the weight of your grief is a burden you can share.” I gestured to the men behind me and the girls on the dance floor, then flattened my palm over my heart. “Every single one of us would be honoured to help you carry it.”
Wrath’s nostrils flared at the tip of his roman nose, such a small tell for such a colossal man, but it told me my words were felt in his chest.
“Can see why Lou calls you her sunshine girl,” Wrath muttered. “Can’t just leave the dark well enough alone, huh?”
“Nope,” I agreed, popping the ‘p’ then smiling brightly. “I’m cute but psycho.”
Wrath’s whole mouth moved an inch to the left, curling just slightly. “Gotta be, you’re into Priest.”
I looked away, suddenly fixating on the straw in my depleted cocktail.
"Since I was a child, I've always been drawn to things that go bump in the night. So, is it any wonder I've gone and fallen for a man who’s scarier than most little girls can ever conceive of in their nightmares?" I mused.
“You’re not reinventin’ the wheel, Bea,” Bat interjected, tugging on one of my curls the way he’d done since I was a kid. “Opposites attract is a pretty fuckin’ classic adage.”
I pouted. “Does everyone know I like him?”
Bat and Dane shared a look. They’d only known each other for half a year, but they were already thick as thieves, sharing a language of intimacy only they could transcribe.
“Not been here long, and I noticed it right off,” Dane admitted, rubbing a hand over the cropped afro he’d grown since he’d been home.
“Cyclops only got one eye, and even he can see it,” Boner joked as he appeared in front of us, leading Tay and Cleo through the crowd to our side.
“It’s true,” Cleo said with an apologetic shrug when I looked aghast at her. “You’re about as subtle as a flashing neon sign.”
“Damn,” I muttered into my drink, embarrassed but also a little bit relieved.
Everyone knew, and it seemed no one cared.
Priest was ten years older than me and my complete foil, yet these brothers seemed to think nothing of our possible courtship. It made hope spring forth in the soil of my gut like a tender spring shoot.
The obstacles between Priest and I were diminishing by the day. Only one truly gargantuan one remained; Priest himself.
“Stop brooding; it doesn’t suit you,” Cleo teased, bopping me on the nose with her finger. “You look adorable tonight, and it’s about time you had some fun! Come dance. Let some unsuspecting man check you out.”
I laughed, smoothing a hand down my tiny white crop top and popping my hip so the short hem of my pleated black and pink plaid skirt flipped up over my pink fishnet-clad thigh. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”
Cleo laughed with me as she linked our fingers and dragged me out into the mass of dancing bodies. Over my shoulder, Tayline said dryly to the guys, “They’re so cute they make me wanna barf sometimes.”
I let the surging energy of the people on the dance floor around me infect me with vitality. We reached Lila, H.R., and Lou, who all hollered in greeting, not pausing as they danced their butts off.
Joy.
It pumped through me to the beat of the music that thrummed against my feet like a kick drum, urging me to dance harder. I held my heavy hair off my neck to cool the sweat gathering on the back of it, closed my eyes to better feel the music, and danced.
I wasn’t as graceful as my sister, the trained ballerina, but I could bust a move, and I loved to dance. The anxiety eating away at my body was stamped out with each beat of my high-heeled Mary Jane’s against the floor, and soon, I was singing along with my biker babes to the pop music that made the brothers at the bar cringe.
“Fuck, you’re sexy,” someone said from behind me a moment before fingers trailed down the exposed skin at my hip and curled in, pinning me in place so they could press themselves against me.
It was, clearly from the bulge, a man.
I tipped my head back. I was short enough to catch sight of his face even in my heels. “Hello,” I said with a little smile.
He was a gorgeous Asian man, his skin tanned and stretched taut over his slanting cheekbones. When he winked, I had to blink away my bemused delight.
I might have been taken by my very own psychopath, but I was still a woman.
“You move well,” he complimented as his big hands found my waist to better move my ass against his groin.
“Thanks.” I tossed my hair over my shoulder to smile at him and let myself enjoy the simplicity of dancing with a beautiful stranger.
“You should know,” he said after a moment, bending to speak into my ear to be heard over the music. “A man over by the bar is watching you. He doesn’t look happy I’m dancing with you.”
I laughed lightly without looking over at The Fallen, who were no doubt scowling protectively at me in the arms of a stranger. They were doubly protective of me because I was Loulou’s sister, and because now, I might also be Priest’s woman.
I shivered with wholesale delight at the thought.
“Uh…” The guy I was dancing with shivered too, but from the way he suddenly pulled
away, it wasn’t in a good way. “I’m actually gonna head out.”
“What?” I asked, a little bemused. I turned to ask what his problem was, but he was already gone, moving through the crowd without looking back.
I blinked as the space he’d left behind was swallowed up by dancers again and then shrugged as Cleo pulled me back into her body by my hips. We danced together, my girls and I, twirling and laughing, giddy on comradery and tipsy on good booze.
I closed my eyes again to absorb the feel of them against me, sweat-slicked and sweet-scented. It was what I imagined young puppies felt with their siblings, always touching, always playing, always together. This was the kind of life my outlaw friends and family lived, deep lows and soaring highs. They knew how to lock away grief and fear to suck the marrow out of life when it presented you with the opportunity to appreciate it. So many people believed MC life was about drugs, violence, and crime, but at its heart, it was always and forever about living together as a found family, the kind forged voluntarily by love and loyalty.
When Loulou danced my way, I snagged her wrists and pulled her close for a tight hug that stilled us both.
She didn’t hesitate to wrap me up in her arms, stamping her curves to mine. Tears pricked at the backs of my eyes as I held her, nose to her cherry-scented hair.
“Thank you for giving me this family,” I whisper-shouted into her ear. “It’s so much better than anything we ever had before.”
Loulou pulled away to smile in my face, her eyes fluorescent blue in the flashing lights. “We always had each other, though. I hope you know that would have been enough to make me happy forever.”
My throat constricted, a boa of emotion wrapped around it too tight. “Yeah, I know. But I’m glad you found this, for both you and me.”
“Yeah,” Lou agreed solemnly, tucking my damp hair behind one ear. “Love you, sunshine girl.”
It was an important détente in this little skirmish between us. I threw myself back into her arms, feeling her laughter move through me as she caught me and swung me around.
Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men, #6) Page 18
