by Bijou Hunter
Goliath gives me a cranky smile. “I did intimidate Fuse.”
“You’re gigantic, and he was a pathetic bitch. If you were paying attention, you’d realize River isn’t pathetic.”
“But he is a bitch?”
Shrugging, I give him a grin. “Aren’t we all?”
Goliath shrugs, looking awkward. I really feel as if he’s here against his will. There goes my momentary confidence over him maybe, possibly, under certain circumstances, wanting me.
I don’t lose my shit, though. Goliath isn’t my project anymore. I gave us a shot, and things ended differently than I hoped. Sure, I got a few orgasms and a baby out of the attempt, but I couldn’t win the big guy’s heart.
THE GOLIATH
Shelby is a weird chick. Why won’t she put on pants? Is she flirting with me? No, not really. Does she walk around with no pants on all the time? I ain’t asking her that question, but I can’t help wondering.
I swear I got no idea what she’s thinking when she watches me with her bright brown eyes.
“What’s all this?” I say, gesturing at the three whiteboards with names listed and photos pinned to them.
“I’m trying to find the Shasta Slasher.”
Chuckling, I shake my head. “Sounds about right.”
“I have a system,” she says, standing up and giving me a flash of her white panties in the process. I swear this woman wants my dick to explode from my jeans. Except her mind is clearly on her goofy project rather than me.
“First, I have all the possible victims,” she says, gesturing toward the whiteboard on the right. “I’m not sure about a few of them. Like Violet Navarro. It’s possible her parents killed her. I even worried she was buried here. We paid some guys to come out to the property and use a device to search for her remains. Basically, the kind of technology they use to find dinosaur bones. We checked the house and the yard. I don’t think they murdered her.”
“Was she a prostitute like the others?”
“No. Though she does fit the physical type of the other victims, her body was never found. Either she isn’t one of his victims, or he disposed of her in a different way.”
“Why change his behavior? Isn’t the reason you think it’s a serial killer because he drops them off in the same place?”
“Yes. My theory is Violet can be tied to him in a way that the other girls can’t be. Right now, the cops treat her as a missing person. If she was found dead, it might get press and more intelligent cops to look at the case. But that’s not for sure. She might have actually run away. The problem is I don’t know anything personal about her or the other women. None of them have families or friends who can help me with info. It’s difficult to know what the women did or didn’t do before they were killed. That’s why I’m mostly focused on the killer.”
I stand up and walk over to the boards. “He could be anyone.”
“No, not really. He must be from Shasta. He isn’t grabbing prostitutes off the street. He knows who people are and how to avoid trouble. I think he’s local, and I’m narrowing down the suspects.”
“How?”
“I located the name of every male in Shasta. I’m working to eliminate candidates. Then I’ll investigate the ones that I can’t rule out.”
“How can you rule anyone out?”
“Well, you were in prison during the most recent murders. Therefore, you were ruled out. Hugh and Utah were ruled out for being into dudes, and Hugh wasn’t in town when one of the girls died. Pom-Pom didn’t live in Kentucky during a few of the deaths. Joey Wickcock is a disabled eighty-year-old.”
“There are thousands of people in Shasta.”
“Yes, but I rule out the women and the children and the very old and the disabled. Also, people who couldn’t have done it like you. Then I work my way through the names left on the list. Statistically, the killer is in his forties or fifties by now. Possibly older, but not by much. He probably owns a home because he needs a place to keep the women before he kills them. I have a hundred men left to go through.”
“What if you never find him?”
Shelby’s confident smile disappears. “I don’t know. I guess I start over and see what I missed. I haven’t reached that point yet. I figure it might take a few years, but no one else is doing anything about finding him. River and Shane have Reapers riding by the trailer parks daily. That’s where most of the victims were grabbed. We also have spies keeping watch in that area, but this guy is a local. No one will think anything wrong when they see him.”
“What happens if you find him?”
“I kill him.” When I smile down at her, Shelby rolls her eyes. “I’ve killed before. I blew a guy’s head off with my rifle. I know how to kill, and I wouldn’t have any trouble slaughtering this serial-killing fucker.”
Her eyes flare with rage when she talks, and I shiver at how close she is to me right now. I could lean down a few inches and place my lips on hers. Would she stop me? She keeps acting like she wants me. I don’t know, though. There’s something about Shelby that leaves me unsure. She’s not Becklyn or Jaymes. She isn’t like any woman I’ve known.
“What’s happening?” she says, losing her anger and eyeing me. “What’s that look on your face mean?”
“I’m thinking about kissing you.”
“Oh, well, then carry on,” she says, as her expression softens immediately.
I look around her office, trying to make sense of this woman. I want her to fit into a box where I can keep track of her. I need to see the real her. I believed a lot of lies about Jaymes and Becklyn. They weren’t the ones telling me bullshit. It was all me. Now I want to believe lies about Shelby Campbell.
Stepping back, I study her board as if I believe she can actually catch a serial killer. Everything about Shelby feels off. She looks like one of those pinup girls, sexy without trying.
But her thinking isn’t cutesy. There’s malice in this woman. Not like the flighty fuckups that Becklyn pulled or the nagging dullness of Jaymes. They were bitches, but even at their worst, they made sense. One craved drama that came from fucking with a bad man. The other wanted to reform a bad man to give her life meaning. They were weak women desperate for what no one could give them.
Shelby isn’t weak despite the little pout she wears now that she realizes I don’t plan to kiss her. She’s sneaky, weird, violent, goofy, or maybe none of those things. She could be faking it all. I don’t know. I can’t read people. I grew up thinking my mom was a bitch to me because of her cult-like church. But she doesn’t seem particularly religious otherwise. While in prison, I thought back over all the people I thought I knew. My mom being the main one. That’s when I wised up to the fact that she was a bitch because she didn’t like me. Never had. It wasn’t Jesus or the church. She looked at me and felt a burden because that’s all I was to her. It’s all I’ll ever be.
I read people wrong. Fuse seemed like he wanted strong people at his side, but he fucking sold me out. Swamp Thing and Grabby made sense to me. We’d been screwed over. I was planning on rolling with them no matter what their plans. Then I find out they sent one of the assholes they met in prison to kill women and a fucking kid. The Skullz weren’t Boy Scouts. We did bad shit. That was the life, but I only cross certain lines when my life’s on the line. Swamp Thing could have killed Cum Shot, but he wanted River to do it. I’m guessing, though. I didn’t know them any better than I did my mom or my girlfriends or my club president. Why would I think I can read someone like Shelby, then?
“I’ll see you around,” I mutter and head for the stairs.
Shelby says nothing, sniffling as she gets teary-eyed over my rejection. Becklyn pulled the same dramatics when she wasn’t getting her way.
I walk up the narrow stairs, ducking my head since it’s a close call around the halfway mark. On the main level, I hear voices and smell food coming from my right. The front door is to my left. I turn toward the exit. Then I stop at the thought of this house being where my kid grows u
p.
I keep telling myself Shelby isn’t really pregnant. That’s another con. Becklyn was pregnant six times. She was always pregnant when I was ready to dump her thieving, cheating ass. She’d cry and ask me to help her. Didn’t I care about her and the baby? It was a con, but I always backed down. After all, what if she wasn’t full of shit that time? My mom got tossed aside when she wound up pregnant by that married man in Tennessee. He was a player, and she wasn’t his first side fuck who got herself knocked up. Maybe if he had helped her out, my mother wouldn’t have turned into such a bitter kook.
I think of Shelby downstairs, sniffling over her hurt feelings. I try to imagine my kid inside her. How little must that fucking thing be? Sighing, I glance upward and notice a cat tile design on the ceiling.
“What the fuck?” I mutter.
“It’s a cat,” Maverick says from my left.
Glancing in his direction, I hadn’t noticed the sneaky fucker sitting right there in a weird little front room.
“No shit,” I mutter.
“Are you leaving?”
“Yes.”
“Max is making pulled pork enchiladas, and Shane is grilling steaks. You should stay for dinner.”
“No.”
“I get why you feel no trust for the Reapers. I also understand why my brother and Shelby are soft on you,” he says, standing in that smooth, ballet-like way the Majors move. “I might be sympathetic to your plight, but I’m only loyal to the club and my family. Right now, I don’t feel as if you belong with either. If that doesn’t change soon, just know I’ll watch over your kid after you’re gone.”
Normally, if a man threatens me—even quietly like the Reapers’ enforcer—I’ll puff out my chest and remind the motherfucker of how I could squash him. Except those tactics don’t work on the Majors. They don’t win fights with brute force. They have all that fancy fucking finesse. Plus, if things get too rough and they need help, they have their daddy back in Ellsberg to ride in and save them.
“Is Shelby happy about the baby?” I ask.
Maverick’s blank expression turns into a frown. “Why are you asking me?”
“Because talking to her is hard when she isn’t wearing pants.”
I see a hint of maybe a smile on his otherwise cold face. Maverick doesn’t have his brother's calm vibe. He’s more like a curled-up rattlesnake, deceptively quiet but always ready to attack.
“She’s scared of pregnancy and motherhood, but, yeah, she’s happy about the baby.”
I say nothing. He isn’t my friend, and we’re not bullshitting about sports. He wants to kill me, and I don’t want to be killed. Killing him isn’t an option. Since I’m not looking to die, what’s there to talk about?
I turn around and walk back to the basement. As I return downstairs, Shelby glances over her shoulder, teary-eyed and pouting. But she doesn’t show any relief at the sight of me.
“I never wanted this,” I say, and she spins around in her chair. “The relationship crap. I want to fuck you. I think you’re hot. The sex is what I want, but you have my kid in you. Now I got all this shit I never wanted and none of the stuff I do want.”
Shelby wipes her wet cheeks and sizes me up. “You want me to be a booty call?”
“I never want another relationship. I had enough of that shit before prison. None of it matters. It never lasts. Why pretend for a kid?”
“I don’t want you to pretend to care about me, but I’m not against that booty call idea.”
Her words are a kick in the gut. She never acts like I expect. “Why?”
“Because you’re the only man who’s ever made me horny,” she says and sizes me up again. “But there’s only a small window of time for that to work.”
“What to work?” I ask, looking for the con.
“I’ve got all these feelings about you that make simple fucking impossible. I figure I can get over that shit by the time you’re back from the ride with the Reapers. My parents are coming to town during that time, and I find a lot of clarity when they’re nearby. Okay, so nothing before the ride. Then I’ll get big in a few months from your giant kid. Probably after the holidays, fucking will be a hassle because of my size. Then once the kid is born, I don’t know how horny I’ll be. I heard Chase’s wife say she was never horny after their kid, but I think she just doesn’t like Chase. Anyway, if that booty call thing is going to work, we’ll have about five months tops before I’m finished with dick for life.”
Shelby seems done talking but then blurts out, “Oh, and you can’t fuck any sweet butts or whores or whatever while we’re together. I’m not giving our kid chlamydia. But then after the booty call deal is done, I don’t care who you fuck since you can’t give a baby syphilis from holding it.”
“You can’t just be normal, can you?”
“Why would I ever want to be?” she says, rolling her eyes dismissively. “Oh, and I hope you don’t think you’re normal, you giant cranky bitch. I’ve never known a man so angsty who wasn’t also wearing all black and writing shitty poetry.”
I ain’t sure how to respond to her booty call rules or insults. I only know what I know. I’ve dealt with certain kinds of people, and I eventually figured them out. I guess I will, too, with Shelby. Today ain’t that day, though.
That’s why I don’t say anything more than I’ll talk to her after the ride. Shelby's expression answers no questions for me. I came here, wanting to know where shit stood. River made the whole thing seem reasonable. I could trust the Reapers and Shelby.
Except I leave the fancy house feeling more confused than I was before my president showed up and pissed on a grave.
THE WEIRDO
Taylor and Kelsi arrive for dinner not long after Goliath ditches me. I’m still not wearing pants when I go up to visit with them. I do finally find a pair of shorts when I realize my bare-upper-thigh action might traumatize Desi.
Sitting on the back porch, I’m flanked by the blondes as we wait for dinner.
“No,” Taylor insists after I share my booty call plan.
“I don’t know,” Kelsi adds, gaining a frown from her lady love.
“Shelby isn’t equipped for booty calls. Her heart has no protection from the rejection.”
“How do you know if this is her first time? She might be great at booty calls.”
“Shelby’s clingy.”
“Hey,” I whine and then turn to Kelsi and add, “She’s right, though. I do attach myself to people and refuse to let go.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Kelsi lies, smiling warmly.
“I’m glad you love my best friend,” I say and hug her. “I’ll never let you go.”
“I’ve seen this distraction technique before,” Taylor mutters and forces me to move over, so she can sit next to Kelsi. “If you sleep with Goliath, you will get attached. Then he will act like an oaf, and you’ll get your feelings hurt. Why deal with that stress when you’re with child?”
“I am with child. He goes with me everywhere,” I say, stroking my bloated gut.
Taylor shakes her head so vigorously that her feathered hair bounces wildly. “We’ve decided you’re having a girl.”
“But then I’ll have to have a boy afterward, and I don’t know how to make that happen. Also, what if Goliath doesn’t allow me access to his sperm? So many issues arise by having a girl first.”
“Not that I think you should have a pile of giant babies with a man who doesn’t treat you right, but,” Taylor says and inhales sharply to indicate that she’s about to go on a listing spree, “A, he’s a man who likes to fuck. B, he was in prison without pussy for five years.”
Kelsi leans over her woman’s lap and smiles at me. “And, C, he likes you.”
“Likes to fuck me.”
“Sure, but he likes to fuck you so much that he isn’t fucking any of the sweet butts. They’re mad and claim all the quality dicks are taken.”
“What about Maverick?” Taylor asks, glancing at him nearby with Shane and River.
Kelsi whispers, “He has a secret girlfriend named Alba.”
Taylor and I share a smile before I sigh. “Ah, old Alba is back. The fake girlfriend he uses to get people to stop asking him questions. He also has fake hobbies and a fake vacation home in Missouri.”
“Yeah, baby,” Taylor says to a confused Kelsi, “you really can’t trust anything Maverick tells you. He’s full of shit.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t feel bad for believing the lies he told other people. He’s very convincing.”
“I saw him tell Dione about Alba, and he looks so sad as if he missed her a lot.”
Taylor and I laugh at Kelsi’s poor romantic notions. “All fake. He’s probably nailing a few chicks in nearby towns and doesn’t want anyone to know his business. It’s a con.”
“Well, then I’m not believing anything he says again,” Kelsi declares, really piling on the faux outrage.
“Unless he says you’re hot,” Taylor murmurs and takes her hand, “then he’s not bullshitting.”
I try not to make any rude noises or gestures while the tongues belonging to my best friend and her lady noisily comingle. I mean, shit, am I invisible?
“No, Shelby, you’re very visible,” Taylor answers. “Also, you’re not nearly as lowkey as you think you are when you’re annoyed.”
Grinning, I rest my head on her shoulder. “I know you think me getting plowed by the giant is a mistake, but it’ll only be for a few months. Once I get fat, I can’t chance his huge dick injuring the placenta or some other gross baby stuff.”
“I will support anything you do,” Taylor promises. “But only to your face. Behind your back, I will rant and rave about what a dipshit you’re being. I’ll make threats against Goliath. Might get your brother riled up some too. But, to your face, I will treat this decision as if it wasn’t made out of jealousy and desperation.”
