“I will,” he promised, tangling his hands in her hair and bringing her mouth to his. He hated that he couldn’t tell he where they were going and what they were looking for. This was going to hurt her if their suspicions were correct, but part of this was to help her. If that guy was what they all thought, a serial killer, then she could finally be free of him. If she was free of him, then the two of them could live their lives without fear, and he wanted that. He kissed her one more time before walking out of the dorm room and making his way towards the garage.
“Jagger’s on his way,” Liam told Travis as he entered the garage. “There was a wreck on Covington, and he got stuck.”
Travis nodded. “You sure you wanna come with us?”
“Yeah, Rooster’s gone out of his way to help us this time. I feel like I need to be there. He didn’t have to okay the use of that equipment; he put himself out there for this. I feel like, too, I should be there just in case this guy comes out and you and Jagger want to kill him. I don’t want anybody to get in the type of situation that we can’t get out of, and I’m in charge of how the two of you act. Keep your shit together, no matter what we see here.”
“I get what you’re saying and I appreciate it. Believe it or not, I’m glad you’re coming, for all of the reasons that you just mentioned.”
They were quiet while they readied their bikes. It was colder than normal for late fall, early winter. Because of that, Travis pulled a knit hat over his almost bald held and then pulled the hood of the sweatshirt he also wore over it. “Not used to the almost baldness,” he laughed.
Liam grinned right back at him. “Dude, that sucked, but you’re rockin’ it, ya know? It looks good.”
“You’re just sayin’ that ’cause you don’t want me to be pissed at Jagger for it anymore. I’m not, really. I did deserve it, but I would have preferred not to have staples put in the back of my head. And I would really have liked to keep my hair.”
The loud rumble of a motorcycle sounded as they talked. “Speak of the devil and he shall appear,” Liam joked.
They could hear Jagger park in front of the garage and enter it. They both looked up and laughed. He had on a face mask that looked like a skull. “Y’all like it? It’s new. B said she was sick of me wearin’ that damn bandana. I think this one’s pretty badass!”
Travis had missed this, the brotherhood. Before they went to do something they knew they weren’t supposed to, there were always a ton of jokes, a lot of trying to release the tension by just being stupid. He missed this, and he was so thankful they were getting it right now.
“That is pretty badass,” Liam agreed, slapping Jagger on the back.
“Is it as cold as it feels?” Travis asked.
“Yeah, you want something in front of your face. Wind is a little high tonight.”
That sucked for some of the equipment they were going to use, but he had anything with a battery strapped to his skin to keep it warm. They would be fine, he told himself. Pulling out his own bandana, he wrapped it around his face and then put his helmet on.
“We ready?” Liam asked the two of them.
“As I’ll ever be,” Travis admitted.
None of them were looking forward to what they knew they might find, but they all knew it was a necessary evil. For some of them, this would help them move on with their lives; for the rest of them, it meant that Heaven Hill was getting back into the game. They had been quiet for too long. It was time to let the people of the town and surrounding counties that they wouldn’t stand for this kind of shit anymore. All three of them started their bikes and within moments were driving down the gravel of the driveway and turning onto Porter Pike. A few miles down the road, a sheriff car pulled in front of them and flashed his lights—they recognized it as Rooster’s car. He escorted them to the county line. Once they made it to Simpson County, he dropped off, giving them a honk and a wave. It didn’t escape Travis’ notice that he did a U-turn on the interstate and parked on the north bound side. He was waiting for them to come back. That meant more to him than he cared to examine, but right now, it was time to get to work.
Chapter Twenty-One
It hadn’t been easy getting behind the electrified barbed wire fence that surrounded the property, but they had managed it. Took them over an hour, and they knew at this point they had no time to lose. It was a struggle they hadn’t counted on.
“You sure you know how to work this stuff?” Liam asked Travis as he laid everything out and began putting batteries in the pieces that needed it.
“I’m not a dumbass. I set up your phone and everything having to deal with that. Might I also add, I make sure every single one of our houses is safe. I know what I’m doing, I just need to make sure I do it right. These batteries don’t last forever, and we need a little juice to figure out what works best.”
Jagger kept watch towards the main house, watching through a pair of binoculars for anything that could be taken as a threat from the man who lived there. “Everything’s quiet up this way. Just do what you need to. I’ll let ya know if we’ve got to book it.”
Liam wished he could be of some help to Travis, but he knew that if he tried, he would only help in fucking everything up. “If you need me to do something, let me know.”
Travis nodded and began messing with the keys on the small laptop he’d brought with him. Without a thought, Travis reached into his pocket, took out a piece of hard candy, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth.
“You really can’t concentrate without that, can you?” Liam chuckled, blowing his breath into his hands.
“It’s either that or die of lung cancer. I gotta do something while I’m concentrating, and my smokin’ was gettin’ out of hand. Tyler makes fun of the ten pounds I’ve put on, but at least I’m not waking up in the morning hacking my lungs out. I’m still smoking, just not as much.
There wasn’t much to argue about to that. Travis did have a point. Liam decided instead that he should probably shut his mouth. It was very quiet this time of night. The only thing they could hear was the wind howling, and Liam threw up a silent prayer that everything went off without a hitch so that they could be back before the sun rose.
“Here, take this,” Travis held something out to him that looked like a metal detector. “Walk in a slow line and move that out in front of you. It’s gonna map the ground below. If there’s something underneath there, it’ll show it in startling detail on this laptop.”
Grateful for something to do, Liam did as he was told. “How far do you want me to walk it?” He asked Travis.
“Keep going, I’ll tell you when to stop.”
He walked for what felt like hours, and when he looked up, Liam was concerned with how close he’d gotten to the house.
“Stop,” Travis told him.
Liam turned; something about the tone of Travis’ voice gave him pause. When he looked back, Travis was white as a ghost, and he wasn’t even working on the candy he had in his mouth. “You alright? It’s not your head is it?”
“No, it’s what’s on this screen. I want you two to come here and look, make sure what I think I’m seein’ is what I’m seein’.”
Liam shut off the equipment, and Jagger flipped the binoculars from his eyes as they both made their way over to where he sat. Travis turned the laptop around and waited for their reactions. Liam wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but he if he looked close enough, he thought he saw a skeleton. “Are those bones?”
Liam shivered, more pissed than he had ever been in his life. “Grab that shit up; let’s get the fuck outta here. We’re going to make sure, no matter what we have to do, that this asshole is taken care of. We need to get this to Rooster, explain to him where it’s at, and for once let the authorities handle this. This man is sick, serial killer sick. I don’t want him to find us here. Let’s go.” Not much made Liam scared, but he did not want this man to know they were on the property. There was no telling what he would do, and tonight wasn’t the night that he w
anted to die.
Both Travis and Jagger nodded their heads. They had never felt so strongly about something in their lives.
Rooster felt his stomach clench and roll as he looked at the information that Jagger, Travis, and Liam had brought back to him. “Are we sure this is for real? If I pull the trigger on this and we come to find out that it’s not, we’re looking at a lot of backlash.”
Liam nodded. “I saw it with my own two eyes. Unfortunately, it’s all real. That imaging equipment you got your hands on for us—there are a lot of unmarked graves on that property. He’s been doing this a long time. Christine’s lucky she got out when she did.”
“Fuck,” Rooster breathed. “I can’t take this to my superiors, they’ll cover it up. They’ve obviously been covering for him for a very long time.”
Liam glanced over at his friend. “Tyler, do you think Meredith still has some of her contacts at the news station? If they break the story and notify the state police, the state police will have to notify the Feds. That means we can completely bypass city and county jurisdiction.”
“Let me text her and see what she says.” Tyler pulled his phone out of his pants pocket and went to work.
“It was bad?” Rooster asked Liam.
“Yeah, it’s all on the backside of the property—what you can’t see from the road. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Liam swallowed hard.
Rooster had nothing to say. The images and pictures they had brought to him said enough.
“Those graves are shallow too. They have to be for that imaging equipment to pick it up. That’s why I know he thinks he’s invincible. If he was worried about it, there would be no way we could find it. You feel me?”
Rooster nodded his head, whistling through his teeth. He had never seen anything like this, and he knew it would rock the small Franklin community as well as the surrounding ones. “He’s a collector, he collects bodies.”
“Very much so. I can’t tell you when the last person was buried there, I’m not a forensic person, but I would be willing to bet that the last person Christine saw alive there is the freshest grave. For some reason, he liked her; he wasn’t going to get rid of her. After seeing the haphazard way he left all these, there was a reason he kept her in that house.”
Rooster chewed on the end of his pen. “There’s some other reason he kept Christine, other than the fact she was his favorite. He was waiting on something, she hadn’t triggered him yet.”
The room was quiet as they thought.
Liam shook his head. “You know I’ve done and seen some crazy shit. I’ve killed men, you know this. I draw the line at intentionally hurting a woman—unless she’s trying to kill me. If it’s me protecting myself, it’s completely different. It’s like a cult, man, seriously. You’re going to have to talk to Christine. Maybe she knows more and she just doesn’t realize how important it is. She’s lucky that she got out when she did.”
“Can I have both her and Meredith in here? I think if Meredith hears the story, then she’s going to be more apt to help us out. I’m also kind of thinking maybe Christine wasn’t completely honest with Jagger and Travis, maybe because she’s ashamed.”
Liam let out a deep breath. “I see where you’re coming from. I’ll go grab them, and then I’m going home and hugging the shit out of Mandy and Tatum and promising to every god that I can find that they will never have to fuckin’ live that way.”
Rooster glanced over to where Tyler sat. “I know you want to be here for Meredith, but I don’t think Christine is going to talk with you in here.”
The big man pushed himself off the wall and strode over to where Rooster sat. “Liam and Travis seem to have accepted you, and that means a lot to me.” He pushed back a lock of his hair that had fallen in his face. “But Meredith is my responsibility. I will wait outside that door, and if I even get the feeling you’re harassing her, I don’t give a fuck if you are a sheriff or what you’ve done in the past to help us—I will hurt you.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less from you, Tyler. I promise, she’s in good hands.”
When Tyler left, Rooster took a deep breath. This was going to play out only one way. He was going to have to give the information to the proper authorities, and then he was going to have to hand in his resignation. He was too far in now, and if he was honest, his heart was no longer in law enforcement. Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, he glanced at the picture that was the lock screen and had to admit that because of the woman who decorated it, his heart was now a lot more outlaw. The thought didn’t even give him the anxiety that he knew it once would have. For Roni he would do whatever it took.
“I want to thank the two of you for coming to see me.”
Meredith laughed softly from where she sat. “Like we had any choice, Rooster, but I know that my big, bad husband is right outside the door. I know you aren’t going to be stupid like that.”
Christine sat beside her, picking at her fingernails. “I’m not sure what you want with me,” she said softly.
Rooster was glad to have Meredith with him. He, like the rest of them, knew what had happened to her, and he had a feeling that some of the same things had happened with Christine. He wasn’t sure at all how to approach this, so he did it with as much caution as he could. “I don’t think you lied to Travis and Jagger about what happened to you at Clinton’s house, but I think you withheld some information. I also think that you knew some things were happening, but you weren’t sure what they were. I need your help.”
“I don’t know how I can help you,” she argued.
He pulled one of the pictures out of the packet that the boys had provided him with. “Some of the guys went onto the property today to do some surveillance on him. We want you free, we don’t want you to have to worry if he’s going to come back and find you. We want you to live your life in peace,” he explained. “When they got there they found a dozen shallow graves with what looked like women in them.”
Her face was stone cold until he mentioned the women, and then it cracked and her shoulders heaved, sobs tearing from her throat.
Meredith quickly put her arms around the other woman. “Jesus, Rooster! Couldn’t you have eased into that?”
Did this woman really think there was a way to ease into the fact that they had found shallow graves on a farm in Simpson County? “Really? No matter how you slice this, it’s awful, sick, and twisted. You can’t spin this, reporter.”
“I knew something was going on, but I didn’t know what. They just disappeared, after they got pregnant.” Christine whispered.
“Did you know for sure they were pregnant?” Rooster questioned, softly. That was a fact they hadn’t known about, but it would make sense.
“There were all the signs.” She shook her head. “But I didn’t know for sure, it’s not like we ever had a doctor come see us.”
“Is there a reason why you never became pregnant?” Rooster asked as gently as possible.
She diverted her eyes. “I did things, things I always heard were old wives’ tales, but I counted on them. They worked,” she laughed harshly. “I don’t know if it’s because of what I did, or if maybe I just can’t have children. Thank God that I never had to deal with what the rest of them had to deal with.”
“Did you ever see him hurt any of the women?”
Tears sprang to her eyes, and her throat started to close. “He hurt all of us in some way—whether it be mentally or physically. He backhanded me a few times, so there’s nothing I don’t think he didn’t do.”
“So it would be within the realm of possibility that he killed these women?” Rooster finished for her.
“I heard him once, arguing with someone. I’m not sure who it was, but the other person was telling him that he was going to have to stop. There were only so many women that could go missing in the community before people became suspicious, and he wasn’t sure he could get him out of it anymore.” She told him about the cats dying one by one and the bloody towels.<
br />
Rooster had a sinking feeling that person had been someone at the sheriff’s office, hiding this whole thing. “I just want you to know that they aren’t going to mention your name. I’m taking all this information to the FBI as soon as I leave here, but your name will be left out of this.”
“We’re married,” she cried. “How is my name going to be kept out of this? I want a divorce; I don’t want to have anything to do with him anymore.”
“You leave all of that to me.”
Meredith had kept quiet throughout the exchange. “I’m so sorry for everything that you’ve been through Christine. There’s a part of me that understands some of what you’ve gone through. I was raped in the past. I’ve been working for over the past year to get beyond it. I know a great person that you can talk to—if that’s something that you need.”
Christine looked at the other woman. “I appreciate that. Right now, I’m not sure what I want to do, but I will keep it in mind.”
“Can you help me get this to the people I need to get it to?” Rooster asked Meredith. “I don’t want this intercepted before I have a chance to get it people who aren’t being paid off.”
She nodded. “I know exactly who you need to talk to. After the bank robberies and the disappearance of Raymond Tucker, the FBI sat up a field office here. I just so happen to know the special agent in charge. Don’t ask how I became chummy with him, but I can get you where you need to be. Give me until tomorrow morning and let me take a few pictures of the information you have.”
If there was one thing Rooster knew, it was that Meredith was capable of almost anything; he’d seen it numerous times. She would be an invaluable friend to have, and he was glad she was on their side. It didn’t escape him that he was already thinking of himself as a member of the Heaven Hill MC; even if that wasn’t an idea he had entertained for a long time. Things were about to change, and it was time. He wasn’t the same man he’d been years ago—the job had worn on him, and he was now ready for something new, something different. As soon as he wrapped up giving this information to who needed it and covering his ass, he was gone. He hadn’t felt this free in a long time, and he knew part of that was because of the visit he had paid to Roni. He was ready to give this part of his life another chance—provided that he and Liam could work through their own bullshit.
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