“Here’s fine.”
I willed my legs to take a few steps back while staring at the officer, daring him to ask me to leave—half expecting Niki to, too. She didn’t, and he didn’t, so I stayed as he took pictures of her face, legs, arms, feet, tattered clothes, each click of the camera like a pop of a gun, inciting a firestorm of anger inside me. I fought the urge to rip the camera from his calloused hands and hurl it out the window. Haddix kept looking at her, watching her… not normally… like he was dissecting her. I didn’t freaking like it. Niki turned her head to the side, jaw clenched, and revealed her stomach, cut and bruised. Then she turned around to display her lower back. My focus bore into her, wanting to tell her it was going to be okay. That she was being damn tough. But she avoided eye contact. More flashes, more restraint on my behalf.
As she lowered her waistband to show another round of scrapes, a small, red leaf fell to the floor. A flash of fire from a red maple tree in autumn. In the quickest movement I’d seen from her yet, she swooped down and picked up the leaf, carefully gripping it in her palm. A flicker of a glance to me, a flush on her cheeks.
What the hell was that about, I wondered. She held it tightly, guarding it from us, as a starving child would a piece of bread. The woman loved that leaf, or maybe just red maples, for whatever reason. Haddix glanced at me, and I shrugged.
Finally, Niki tugged down the top of her tank to reveal the beginning speckling of bruising above her left breast.
“That’s enough,” I snapped and stepped forward. Niki’s quick side-eye prevented me from doing one of the dozen things I had rolling around in my head. Like pistol whipping Haddix with his own camera.
Headlights cut up the driveway.
“That’ll be Colson,” Haddix said casually as if he hadn’t spent the last five minutes putting the final nail in the coffin of a woman who was already on the brink of an emotional breakdown. Then he paused, staring at her with that damn look for a moment before saying, “Just one more thing, Miss Avery.”
Something in the officer’s voice had my spine straightening.
“Just to confirm, you said you stabbed your main attacker in the neck, correct?”
“Yes,” her tone ice-cold.
“Did you injure him anywhere else?”
“No.”
“Not after?”
“Not after what?” She stiffened, her reaction now similar to mine.
“After you pierced his throat. You didn’t injure him anywhere else?”
“No. I dropped the knife on the ground when he fell over. Maybe beforehand… maybe some scratches. I might have punched him. It was an attack, Officer Haddix, I was doing everything I could to get away. But after, no, I ran like hell.”
“Where’re you going with this Haddix?” I cut in, my patience cashed out.
The officer glanced at me, then back to Niki. “You’re one-hundred percent sure you didn’t attack him anywhere else with the knife? You’re one-hundred percent sure you didn’t have some sort of previous vendetta against Ian Lee?”
“What are you talking about?” Niki was out of patience, too. “Attack him somewhere else with the knife? No, I’m absolutely certain. And no, I’ve told you a hundred times, I don’t know the guy.”
I didn’t like him stressing Niki out more than she already was, plus, being ignored is one of my triggers—according to my brothers, anyway—so I stepped in front of Niki. “I repeat, Haddix, where are you going with this?”
“Yeah, why are you asking if I had a previous vendetta?” Niki followed up, elbowing her way beside me.
“Because, Miss Avery. Someone cut off Ian Lee’s head.”
7
Gage
“What?” Niki squeaked, shock, horror, sliding over her face.
I put my hand on her shoulder. “What the hell do you mean someone cut off his head?”
“I mean,” Haddix’s gaze shifted between Niki and me. “Ian Lee has been decapitated.”
“What?” Her voice pitched.
“Wait.” I squeezed her shoulder, willing her to breathe, then addressed Haddix. “Where? At the scene?”
“I’m not going to make assumptions at this point, but his body is currently in the ditch in front of Miss Avery’s Jeep.”
“Without a head? Is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s right.”
Niki’s face matched the white of her tank top… the parts that weren’t covered in blood.
“Just removed, or taken?” My mind reeled.
“Taken. The head is not at the scene, best I could tell from the little I searched on my way in. We’ll look again, with more lights tonight and at sun up tomorrow.”
“Hang on…” Niki raised her hand and shook her head, trying to process that little—huge—development. “Someone cut off his head and took it?”
“Again, it’s way too early for assumptions, Miss Avery.”
“I didn’t do that.” Her eyes widened like a ghost’s. “I didn’t decapitate him. Why would—”
“Listen, stop.” I gave her shoulder another squeeze. “Breathe. It’s fine if you did, regardless. Should’ve cut off his dick while you were at it.”
“I didn’t do it. I told you exactly what happened. When it happened.”
The slamming of car doors outside broke the mounting tension.
Haddix looked out the window, then back at Niki. “Well, if you didn’t do it, someone did. Unless the guy raised up from the dead and sawed off his own head.”
Suddenly, Haddix’s odd interview behavior and questions made sense. He’d assumed she’d done the grotesque deed, and maybe he still did.
“Is the knife still there?” I asked, hoping for prints on the hilt.
“Didn’t see one.” Haddix turned his attention back to Niki. “I’d like to take you back to the scene, to confirm that the body is exactly where you left it. But I’m sure Lieutenant Colson will have some follow up questions for you first. Please stay here, I’ll be back in a bit.”
Just then, the back door slammed, followed by a staccato of quick, heavy footsteps. Gunner and Phoenix. I watched Haddix disappear through the foyer as my brothers entered the room.
“Gage, a moment?”
Reluctant to leave Niki, I turned to her, blankly staring at me. I could almost hear the wheels grinding in her head. “I’m going to chat with my brothers real quick. You okay?” I had to fight to keep myself from grabbing her hand.
She nodded, dazed.
“Hey,” I whispered.
Her dilated eyes focused on me, a fresh flush coloring her cheeks.
“I asked… you okay?”
“Yes,” she whispered back, the nerves in her voice like a schoolgirl on her first day of kindergarten.
I ran a finger down her arm, unable to resist a touch, then followed Gunner and Feen to the far side of the kitchen. Niki had guided herself into a chair and was mindlessly twisting the unopened water bottle around in her hands.
My heart cracked. “You always fall for the damsel in distress”… Feen’s words echoed in my head. A spike of insecurity gripped me. Maybe he was right, maybe I couldn’t trust myself.
Maybe I needed to get a fucking grip.
I focused on my brothers.
“No trucks anywhere on the road, and no viable tracks.” Gunner grabbed a towel from the dish rack.
Streaked with fresh dirt—a look that I realized I hadn’t seen on him in a while—Feen slid his gun into his waistband. “There’s a few tracks in the woods past the scene, definitely not solid or full prints. Broken twigs, leaves scattered; I can see the direction she ran. We’ll head out at first light tomorrow and search.”
“Guy’s a mess. Well, what’s left of him.” Gunner shook his head. We’d all seen the horrors of evil, but not in our back yard.
“Wonder how long it took her to do that.” My paranoid conspiracy theorist older brother said.
“She says she didn’t do it.”
“Oh, well then, if she said�
�”
“That’s right, she said—"
Gunner held up a hand. “Fill us in, Gage,” he said before a fight could ensue.
After sending Feen a glare, I did just that, reciting the black and white facts, doing my best to put a lid on the defensiveness creeping up.
“Niki Avery. You know who she is, right?” Running his fingers through his hair, Feen shook his head. A few specs of leaves fell to the ground.
“Yeah, I know who she is.”
“Jesus Christ.” Gunner laughed, putting the pieces of the puzzle together. “‘Ol Loony Avery’s daughter. The town liar. You’re fucking kidding me.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“How can we believe a thing this girl is saying?”
I opened my mouth to expel the anger boiling up my body, but the thing was, how did I know Niki Avery wasn’t full of shit? A nice face, perky tits, and a tight ass didn’t mean the woman was incapable of a lie. Hell, in my experience, the more perfect the face, the deeper the lie. It was obvious that Haddix wasn’t sold on her story, either.
Feen continued his rant, “She could be lying about everything. Maybe she and the guy who chased her were in it together. Hell, maybe she was partying it up with the losers and things got out of hand. Or maybe she wasn’t even chased in the first place. This could be a setup to get into our compound.”
“Give me a break, you paranoid—”
“That’s enough.” Gunner snapped, losing his patience with us. Another minute, he was likely to knock us both out.
“I’m telling you, she says she didn’t do it. Says she cut his throat and ran.”
Feen flashed me that disapproving look that had a way of making me feel three inches tall. “You believe her?” He asked.
“I do.” I squared my shoulders and bowed up, a familiar reaction to my older brother’s consistent disappointment in me.
“She’s a pretty face. That’s it, Gage. Take your fucking blinders off.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Enough.” With his impeccable timing, Ax entered the room, commanding silence as he did when Feen and I were engaged in our usual tit for tat.
I took a deep breath, along with a step back, but couldn’t bite my tongue. “Okay, I want to get one thing clear first. Are we all in agreement that regardless of what happened, this woman was attacked? Shit, she looks like a bruised peach.”
Nods around the group.
“Okay then, so she was attacked, then let’s assume she did decapitate the guy afterward—that she was strong enough to do it. That means you’re thinking that she slit his throat, then what? She takes the time to cut off the rest of Ian’s head? And where the hell is the other guy while this happens?”
“Could have done it with her.” Ax said matter-of-factly. It made more sense than her doing it by herself.
“Fine. But why? What’s the point?”
“Revenge for something. Or, like Feen said, something got out of hand. Or, hell, blind rage. Gage, how many times have we seen that? Guy’s beating a man to death and continues to smash his face into his skull because of the rage. The adrenaline. The release that comes with beating and killing a man.”
“No. You’re crazy. No way.”
Ax glanced at Niki, still sitting at the table, then back at me. “You don’t know her, Gage. We don’t know her. We don’t know a thing about this chick. When people come to us for protection, we know their entire story, have read the police reports, the whole nine yards. This chick just showed up in our front yard. We don’t know shit about her.”
“We will soon.” Feen looked at his phone. “Jagg’s going to run a check on her.”
My eyes rolled back into my head.
Ax cut me a cool-it look, then did what he does best, analyzed facts. “So two guys attack Niki, and she kills one, Ian Lee. Either at that point, or within a few hours later, someone cut off Ian’s head and took it with them. Either she did it, the accomplice—skinny one—did it, or someone else who drove up on it later. Period. Let’s start with scenario one. The chick—”
“Niki.”
Feen snorted.
Ax continued, “Niki kills the guy, cuts off his head, and takes off with it—”
My gaze leveled his. “Niki does not have a human head hidden in those yoga shorts, Ax.”
“Well, if anyone would know, it’s you. Agreed, though, that this seems unlikely. Second scenario is that the second attacker went back and did it after he chased her through the woods.”
“Why, though?” Gunner said. “We’re assuming the two were buddies, right? Why would he cut off the guy’s head?”
We all frowned at each other, trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together that was getting larger, and frankly, weirder by the minute. I never was a fan of puzzles, anyway. That was Ax.
“Okay, option three... someone else entirely did it. Solo, or a third accomplice.”
“During a very small window of opportunity.”
“Right, so, two hours or so.”
“Niki said she didn’t see or hear any other cars before they ran her off the road, or while she was in the woods. And no one lives down this road beside us, Ax. Who would be this deep in the mountains, late at night?”
“Old man Erickson. Remember, Lieutenant Colson said he’d called about trespassers...”
I shook my head. “His house is on the other side of the river, and the main bridge is down. Guy never leaves his house, and if there really were people on his land—there never are when he calls—they wouldn’t have had time to do all this and leave without a trace. So, who else?”
Phoenix’s gaze slid over my shoulder. “Our staff.”
“Jesus Christ, Feen, you think one of our staff is involved?”
“Feen’s right,” Ax jumped in. “We need to consider all angles and look at everyone in the area. The timeframe is too short to not consider it. We live on miles of private, restricted property—our property. It has to be someone close. We need to pull the list of who’s working tonight. If nothing else, maybe they saw something.”
Gunner nodded.
A moment slid by. I raked my fingers through my hair, feeling the twinge of a headache between my temples. “But guys…why take the head?”
“We need to search the scene, the woods. See if whoever did it actually took it with them or dumped it somewhere.”
Feen nodded, then started toward the back door. “I’m going to go talk with Colson.”
“Me, too.” Gunner grabbed his phone from the counter.
The back door slammed shut and Ax hung back. “I checked the security cameras on the north lawn. It was only Niki in the woods. No one else. That part of her story checks out, at least.”
“She’s not a liar,” I mumbled as I looked over my shoulder at her.
My twin brother put his hands on my shoulders, demanding my attention on him. “I believe you, and I believe her. Just keep a clear head, alright?”
I took a second to wonder what, exactly, a clear head was.
“I’m going to check out the scene again.”
“I’m going to stay with Niki.”
“Figured as much.”
8
Niki
My attempt to eavesdrop failed as Gage and his twin discussed something—about me—in the corner, their faces expressionless, voices monotone. I got the vibe I wasn’t the only woman to be whispered about in their kitchen. I tucked my red leaf back into my waistband and wrapped my arms around myself. My stomach was in knots, swirling with the grotesque image of Ian Lee’s decapitated body.
I glanced down and grimaced, my face squeezing with a rush of insecurity. My legs, arms, clothes, entire body was covered in dirt and mud, the grime suffocating my skin. I was an absolute, total train wreck. I was embarrassed. Not only because of how wretched I looked, because I was weak enough to get beaten up so badly. Screwed up, I know, but that’s how I felt. No matter how much I tried to will the thought fro
m my head, it remained like a stain, inter-grained into this new woman I’d never met before. I clenched my jaw, disgusted, and began scrubbing my arms.
What a total mind fuck.
A towel appeared on the table as if my thoughts had been said out loud. Gage stood above me, his looming presence making me stop cold, a side-effect of this man that was quickly becoming habit.
He squatted down in front of me and reached for my leg. “We need to get you cleaned up.”
I pulled away. “I can do it.” For all the dignity I had left in me, I can do it.
His brow slowly lifted at my recoil, then he shrugged, flippant. “Alright, then. You need to start with the bottom of your feet. No telling how much bacteria and nasty shit you picked up running through the woods. Come on. Let’s go. Now.”
Before I could protest, I was swept out of the chair and into his arms, another act becoming habit.
This one I could handle.
I was whisked to the counter top, my dirt and blood-covered legs swung to the side and placed into a sparkling copper sink.
The water was turned on and I watched Gage while he waited for it to warm up. Silently. Patiently. Then, he pulled the nozzle and ran the warm water over my shins. A million needles pricked my skin as blood and mud swirled down the drain, beginning to wash away the nightmare that had been my night. If it could only wash away the memories, too. Reading my thoughts, he began to rub my legs, cleaning, careful to avoid even the smallest cut. A tingle rushed over my skin as I watched him, his big, rough hands cleaning me. He was gentle, a juxtaposition to the tough, rugged, beast of a man I’d met in the woods. His hands, along with his gaze, slowly swept upward to my knees. My pulse picked up.
Those stormy irises skimmed my body, slowly. Seductively, a thinly veiled hunger as intense as the beating of my heart.
His eyes met mine.
Butterflies tickled my stomach.
“Well, well, well… I’d say ‘take it to your room’ but your bed is covered with beer cans.”
Startled, I ripped my eyes away and felt a rush of embarrassment as I looked over my shoulder toward the gruff, female voice booming from the doorway. Her jet black hair was pulled into a messy bun on the top of her head. Sharp, piercing blue eyes against tanned skin and bright red lips. Colorful tattoos covered her toned arms, running underneath a faded, holey T-shirt that read Bad Motha Fucka. She wore tattered skinny jeans emphasizing a curvy, fit body, and flip flops. She was every sexy super-heroine… on steroids.
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