by KJ Dahlen
She looked around the home she’d once lived in. So much of it had been changed over the years she could barely remember the old house, how it looked then to how it looked today. Back then, it had been a home, now it was just a clubhouse.
Some of it was the same but so much had changed. Shaking her head she finally spoke, “I just don’t remember. This house had a number of secrets and not all of them I knew about. I was just a kid back then.”
“Ok then.” Jackal nodded. “What about his tunnel system? Where is the tunnel located that you used last night?”
Beast got to his feet and walked toward the back door. He stopped in front of the wall and began pressing the panels. After a few minutes, he growled and looked at Cin. “Come show me again where this fucking door is.”
Cin shook her head and tried to hide her smile at his growling as she got to her feet. Several of the others walked over there with her including Jackal. She got to the wall and pressed the lock and the door popped open.
Everyone just stared at the open panel.
“Now that’s a slick trick,” Wolf murmured.
Jackal turned to Cin. “And this comes out in Beast’s bedroom?”
She nodded.
“You said earlier there were other tunnels?” he asked. “Where are they located?”
Cin turned toward the stairway and walked up to the second floor. She opened the first door on the right and walked inside. The room belonged to one of the men, she didn’t know which one, but it made no difference to her. “This was my Uncle Ethan’s room growing up.”
“This is my room now,” Wolf told her. He looked around the room. “I never found any door though. All the walls seem solid to me.”
Cin didn’t say anything as she just walked over to the back wall behind the bed. She pushed it out of the way the best she could then pushed on the floor trim piece with her foot. The wall popped open.
Again, everyone gasped.
“What the everlovin hell?” Wolf exclaimed as his eyes opened wide. “How did no one ever discover this before now?’
Jackal moved closer and pushed the bed completely out of the way. He dug in his pocket and brought out a small but strong flashlight. Then he could see a set of narrow steps leading downward toward the first floor. Turning to Cin he asked, “Where does this tunnel come out?”
“In the basement.” Cin wet her lips with her tongue. The air in the tunnels was stale and she could hardly breathe. “This tunnel hadn’t been opened in a very long time.” She pressed the floor trim board again and the door slowly closed. She then turned and left the room.
The whole group moved with her as she entered the next bedroom. “This was Uncle Gabriel’s room.” She walked over to the wall next to the wardrobe. Hitting a secret bottom on the top of the wardrobe the piece was easy enough for her to move.
The men helped to push the big piece of furniture away from the wall.
Then she pressed on the floorboard. A section of the wall opened up and everyone could see a set of steps leading downstairs.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Cobra swore. “Ever since we moved in here that wardrobe has been in the same position.”
Cin nodded. “It was attached to the wall with a clasp. You have to let the clasp go in order to get it to move. It was a way to hide the doorway to the basement. Only family knew where the clasp was.”
She closed the panel again and moved down the hall to yet another room.
Again, looking amazed the group all followed.
She laid her forehead on the door panel for a moment.
They all stared at her then looked at each other.
“This was the room my parents shared and after I was born,” she informed them. “I shared it with my dad until I got old enough to have my own room.” She opened the door and the familiar sights she expected to see weren’t there. Gone was her father’s bed and in its place was another bed. This bed was wrought Iron not the fine wooden one her father had made. The room didn’t even smell the same, now it smelled of leather and gun oil. There was a cabinet of rifles standing beside the bed.
She went over to the wall closest to the bathroom and her hand trembled as she pressed not one trim piece but two.
Side by side, two panels opened. One was a stairway to the basement while the other was a door leading to the room next door.
They could clearly see another door on the other side of the short passage.
Jackal knelt down and studied the passageway between the rooms then he looked back at Cin, “Why a passage between the two rooms?”
“My bedroom was next door. If there was ever trouble and I couldn’t get to my dad in time, I was supposed to hide in the passage. There were hidey holes all over the house.”
“I told you Edward wanted to keep his family safe against the odds.” Silas spoke up from the doorway. He nodded at the hidey hole she’d uncovered. “I never saw anything like this though.”
“Fat lot of good it did him in the end huh?” Cin commented.
“Oh girl, that’s where you’re wrong.” Silas shook his head. “They came in broad daylight and had you and your grandmother caged in on the porch. Remember? Of course, they wouldn’t have hidden. He gave his life to protect you and Ms. Katie. He knew it and so did she. When she took you away from here she did it to protect the pair of you.”
Cin suddenly remembered something and began looking around the room. She turned to stare at the bed and frowned. She looked up at Jackal and Beast. “Whatever happened to the bed in my grandparent’s room? It was big and made of wood, a cherry wood, grandpa stained it black and he carved a wildflower design in the headboard. Wildflowers were my Grandma Katie’s favorite flowers.”
Jackal stared at her in surprise, then he looked over at Beast. “We moved that into my room, why?”
Cin stared at him. “Why did you move it to another room?”
Jackal raised an eyebrow. “I’m a big man but Beast is taller and wider. The bed didn’t fit him. He’s got over four inches on me and damn near a hundred pounds, the bed better suited me than it did him.”
“Can I see the bed?” she asked urgently.
“Why?” Jackal asked with a raised eyebrow. “It’s just a bed. A very heavy bed I might add. We had to take the damn thing apart to move it.”
“You might want to let her see the bed,” Beast told his President. He was studying the expression on Cin face. “I think she’s remembering something about it that might help us in the long run.”
Silas nodded. “Edward did like his little secrets and such. He could hide something right under your nose and if he didn’t want it found, you wouldn’t find it. Not until he wanted it found.”
Jackal stared at her for a moment then made up his mind and nodded. “Come with me.”
He led the way downstairs to his bedroom. It was the largest room in the house.
Edward at one time had used to use it as an office. As soon as Cin entered the room, she took a deep breath. The scent of cherrywood was still in the air here. She looked around and saw the shelves lining one entire wall. Those shelves held his bookwork, his ledgers and other assorted items Edward used to collect when he was alive. Now those shelves held Jackals’ items. But there against the far wall was her grandparent’s old bed.
The stained cherrywood looked well taken care of. Someone had lovingly polished it recently and the bed was all made up nice and neat, just like she remembered from years ago. Her grandma Ms. Katie always had a neat home.
She walked over to the bed and ran her hands over the carved wooden structure lovingly. Someone cleared his throat from behind her and she snapped out of her trance. She went over to the right hand headboard poster and turned the knob at the top. Then she pressed down. One of the side pieces popped open and revealed a recess. Digging into the recess, she brought out an old skeleton key. It looked as if it fit a very old lock. She turned and showed them the key.
“Well damn,” Jackal swore as he held out his hand for the key.
Cin passed it along to him then knelt beside the bed. Her grandfather had carved an intricate pattern into the base of the bed.
Jackal and the others watched with curiosity, as she seemed to know exactly what she was doing.
Pressing her finger in the same places she remembered her grandfather pressing, a drawer popped open.
It was a shallow drawer but one no one there had ever seen before. Cin began pulling the items her grandfather had left in the drawer out and laying them on the floor.
Jackal and the others could only watch her, stunned that all these things had been here all these years and they never knew.
The items were small, several were books he kept then files and such and it wasn’t until she brought out a flat box that Jackal moved to take it from her.
He opened the box and gasped. Gazing up at his men with a dazed look in his eyes, he held out the box so they could see for themselves what was inside.
They all muttered and growled.
“Fucking hell!” Beast swore. “No wonder George wanted it back. And was willing to kill to do it. That would have made him legit in the MC eyes.”
“What is it?” Cin asked.
“It’s the badge of the MC. Almost every club has one,” Jackal explained. “It’s made up of something they stand for. Whoever had the badge is the president of the club and when it is time to pass the torch to someone else the badge goes to them.”
“Our club’s badge is made from the bullets we fired fighting for our country,” Beast said. “We took an oath to protect this land and that what meant the most to us.”
Jackal looked down at the badge. It was an exact copy of the Dog’s patch only bigger. And this badge was pure gold. The metal gleamed in the sunlight that came through the windows.” He looked up at his men with a single thought in his mind. “So how the fucking hell did Edward Shay get his hands on the Dog’s of Hell’s club badge?”
Cin got to her feet and glared at him. “He didn’t steal it if that’s what you think. My grandfather was an honest man and wouldn’t take anything that didn’t belong to him.”
Jackal snapped his gaze over to glare at her. “No one here in this room said anything about him stealing it woman!” he yelled at her. “We’re just wondering how it came to be in his possession, that’s all.”
Beast growled at Jackal.
“Easy big guy,” Cobra whispered loudly. “He meant no disrespect.”
Chapter Ten
Beast just stared at his president. His hands were still clenched into fists and he kept himself frozen in place. He didn’t dare move because if he did he would have to deck his President. He hadn’t liked that he had yelled at Cin.
Cin broke the ever-mounting tension by hanging her head and apologizing to the room, “I’m sorry. I don’t want to cause trouble here. Bes ast you just cannot act like this. I know you care but.... It’s just that dammed club has taken everything away from me time after time. After my grandpa and Uncle Gabriel died, we had to run for our lives. I watched the woman I loved fight for the right to breathe every day. We moved every few weeks because she was afraid if we stayed in one place too long, they would find us. She was afraid of leaving me on my own when I wasn’t ready to be alone yet. She made me go to self defense classes and she taught me to use a gun. I hated those lessons but she made me do it anyway. She knew there was danger out there and she wanted me to be able to defend myself, if I ever had to. She never wanted me to feel helpless like the day I did when Norris and his thugs showed up.”
“Did you ever see anyone following you growing up?” Jackal asked.
Cin nodded as tears rolled down her face. Tears she wasn’t even aware of. “There were three different times she thought she recognized someone from here. We changed cars six times over the years and often we would leave where we were living in the middle of the night. I never knew from day to day, if we would wake up in the same city the next morning or somewhere new.”
“That must have been a hard way to grow up,” Wolf stated softly.
Cin shrugged. “It was all I knew when we left here.” She walked over to the other side of the bed and opened up the other drawer on her grandmother’s side of the bed. Inside her drawer were a couple of journals and several velvet bags. Cleaning everything out, she gathered the items then closed the drawer and went back to gather her grandfather’s things. She passed the men standing there with Jackal and walked down the hall to the room she shared with Beast.
When she left, Beast followed her.
When he closed the door behind them, he watched her walk over to his deck.
Laying everything out, she sat down on the chair and just stared at it.
Beast walked over and knelt at her side. “Are you ok?” he asked after her framed her face with his hands and pulled her face to him.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Too much has happened too fast. I came here to bury my grandma and then all this? I’m just overwhelmed by it all.”
“I get that honey. I really do.” He stared into her eyes. “But this could be a threat to not only you but to us as well. You have to understand that.”
“I can understand that but you have to understand something too. This was at one point and time... my home. I grew up here. I lived here with my family, a family that I had to watch being killed right in front of me because of something my grandfather had that belonged to someone else. We don’t know how he got it or why but I do know he didn’t steal it. You might not have known my grandpa, but I did. He was the most honest man I ever knew. He raised his sons to be honest men too. I can’t and won’t let you or anyone tell me he was a thief.”
Beast leaned forward and laid his forehead on hers. “We don’t have any answers yet. Answers are what we need before we can do anything. But until we get them, we just don’t know what happened.”
“We may never know what really happened” She looked into his eyes. “You guys do know that right? All the players from that time are dead.”
Beast nodded. “But there’s someone out there right now, waiting and watching us and we don’t like that. We need to know why he and his lowlife friends are watching us. We need to know if they plan on attacking us. Our lives are on the line here.”
“And this all seems to be connected to me doesn’t it?” Cin reasoned.
“You are the only one of Shay family that’s left.” He pointed out.
Cin shook her head. “But back then, I was all of ten years old. I had nothing to do with the adult affairs around here.”
“Whoever is out there watching us doesn’t know that.” He reasoned with her. “Besides, you grew up in this house, you are the only one who might know its secrets. Secrets we’re only just finding out about.” He snorted. “We’ve lived here for eleven years and we never knew about the tunnels or the hidey holes or the pocket frames inside Jackal’s bed.”
She leaned over and picked up the old skeleton key. “This proves there is still more to find doesn’t it?”
“Yeah it does.” He nodded. “Any guesses about it?”
She looked down at the key again. “I might know where it is.”
“Where what is?” He’d cocked his head to one side when he asked.
“The fireplace.”
Beast stared at her confused now. “The fireplace? I didn’t see anything there resembling a door.”
Cin smiled sadly. “My grandfather liked puzzles and hiding things in plain sight.”
Beast gazed down at the key in her hands. “Do you want to try it?”
Cin nodded. “The sooner the better in my mind. I just want this ordeal over.”
Beast stood up and held out his hand.
She put her hand in his and allowed him to lead her to the main room.
Then men were all there now and they watched her walk through the room.
Without a word to anyone else, she went to stand by the fireplace. Then moved over to the stone wall on the left side.
The men all sto
od behind her as she studied the wall for a possible locking unit.
Jackal didn’t say anything but looked over at Beast.
Beast shrugged and turned to gaze at Cin.
She must have found what she was looking for because she inserted the key and turned it. The top portion of the wall popped open and she took a step back.
Swinging it open, she took another step back.
Jackal and the others took steps forward and were entirely surprised at what they found themselves looking at. The entire bottom shelf was filled with more coffee cans. The middle shelf too. The top shelf held a few weapons, two rifles and several pistols.
“Well we know one thing for sure.” Jackal shook his head. “Your grandfather really didn’t trust banks for some reason or another.”
“Look at whatever you want in here but please don’t touch what we found in the bed until I have a chance to look at it first. At least give me that much?” Cin asked.
Jackal nodded. “Everything in this house that we’ve found is yours anyway. All we’re searching for is a reason.”
Cin nodded then backed away slowly. When the men were more concerned about what they’d found than they had been with her, she slipped out the back door alone. She needed some time to herself away from the grief she felt at the moment.
She walked along the edge of the property. Memory after memory assaulted her. Good memories and bad, moments of joy and sorrow.
One minute she was fine and the next, she was lost in a painful abyss. Then everything went black.
“It’s hard to believe all this was here. In our home,” Cobra stated.
“If we find out what is threatening it and your woman,” Jackal glanced over at Beast. “We could all have a home here in this place, a good healing home, if the fates allowed it.”
“But boss,” Wolf reminded them all. “This isn’t our home. This place belongs to Cin, not us. Now that she’s home again, we have to respect that.”
“Cin’s my woman. She isn’t going anywhere. This may be her house but with us here, we’ll make it our home and where I live you guys live,” Beast assured them.
