I turned my head just in time to see the bar to descent towards my temple, a blast of pain, and then nothing.
Lights out.
***
Kettle
Our plan worked out perfectly.
After going through the motions of looking at the rooms, and listening to the woman’s spiel about how they like to make the family’s last moments with their loved ones to be special, Trance showed up with a very anxious Radar.
Trance walked in with Radar on his heels, restrained only by a long black leash. Radar was going nuts, barking and snarling furiously. His strong, lithe body was straining towards the back wall trying with everything he had to get at the door.
“How do you get to the back?” Trance all but snarled at the poor woman.
She started at the question, stepping back until her back hit the podium and she could go no further.
With a shaky hand, she held up her finger and pointed towards a door that was partially covered by a long curtain.
Trance’s big arms strained to hold the dog back, and finally, he just gave up, releasing the dog from the confining leash and letting him go.
Radar dashed off, shooting like an arrow towards the door, only to come to a stop with barely restrained patience.
When Trance arrived at the door, he cursed and bellowed at the woman who was still in the same position as before, fear etched across her features.
It wasn’t because of Trance’s snarled question, though. It was because of Loki who’d strode in moments after Trance.
He’d trimmed his hair since I’d last seen him the day before. Gone was the shaggy cut, replaced by a shorter buzz that no longer resembled a preppy surfer boy’s hair. His beard, though, which had been trimmed, remained.
He was wearing his badge on his left hip and his semiautomatic Colt .45 on his other. He had a black polo shirt tucked into his jeans, and black sunglasses sitting on top of his head. His eyes were all for the dog though, completely disregarding the woman who was staring at him in pain.
“Ma’am,” Trance snapped at the woman. “Come open this door.”
The woman, finally tearing her eyes away from Loki, snapped to and came to punch in some numbers into the keypad.
I saw the moment Loki noticed the woman, which caused him to freeze.
After that, I didn’t see much, because I was already through the doorway, on the heels of Trance.
I heard pounding boots behind me as we wound down a narrow hallway to the embalming area. It was a large room about the size of a large dining hall of a restaurant. There were tables about every ten feet, and on the far wall stood a bank of upright freezers that he’d guessed were for the bodies of the deceased.
A man, mid-thirties, wearing a black button down shirt and black pants was standing beside the drawers where they kept the bodies of the deceased.
Adeline’s brother.
Another man, near the same age as Adeline’s brother, wearing a polo shirt over khaki pants, stood beside a plain gray door that most likely led to the alley in the back of the building.
Which was proved true moments later when he jerked open the door, and sprinted out, not sparing his partner even a cautionary glance before he disappeared.
“Retrieve, Radar!” Trance commanded.
Radar looked torn, but ultimately followed Trance’s orders, slipping out of the door just before it closed. Which also remained locked due to the keypad on the side of the doorframe.
“Fuck!” Trance yelled as he turned and ran at a full sprint, going after Radar through the front room.
Loki, who powered into the room just after Trance left, took Adeline’s brother by the arm, turned him around, and started reading him his rights.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Loki said, as he snapped one cuff over Jefferson’s hand. “You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.” He said as he snapped the other cuff on, then pushed him forward, leading him out of the door they’d all come in through, still stating his rights.
I, however, stayed.
Something inside of me made me stay. I didn’t move. Not a single muscle. I moved only my eyes around the room, scanning over it for any hidden doors, cabinets large enough to hold a person, but I didn’t find one. Until my eyes landed on the freezers, and the feeling in my heart grew until it beat an erratic tattoo against my ribs.
Why was her brother standing at the doors to the coolers? Was someone in there? Was someone hiding in one of them? Was there a fucking bomb just waiting for every single cop in Benton to show up before it detonated?
Moving quickly, I jerked open the bottom right corner drawer.
After finding nothing, I moved to the one above it. That one, however, did have something in it.
Ripping the bag open, I was slightly startled to see the charred remains of...something... in it before I moved on to the next body.
Dixie, seeing what I was doing, joined me in the search, opening the doors one by one on the other side.
The next two were more of the same, and it wasn’t until I got to the first row on the far side of the room that I found Tunnel’s massive body shoved inside.
What the fuck? Why was he here? He was supposed to be at the clubhouse with...
His eyes were closed, and a dark purpling goose egg was welling on the side of his temple, indicating that he’d been hit by something before being shoved into the small opening.
Leaving the door open, I frantically reached for the last drawer as bile rose from the pit of my stomach like a tidal wave. It wasn’t until I was at the very last box at the bottom left corner that I found her.
Adeline.
She was on her back, eyes closed, and an ugly bruise was oozing blood just above her right eye. The blood was running steadily out of the cut and into her hair, then further down to the hard surface beneath her where a small puddle was forming.
A steel bar about the size of a crowbar was in the drawer beside her.
Cursing low, I first checked to make sure she had a pulse.
After feeling the slow steady pound of her blood pumping through her veins, I removed the small pen light I always carried with me, lifted her eyelids, and shined it at her pupils. First one, and then the other.
Luckily, they were both equal and reactive.
Her eyes fluttered a few moments after that, and opened, blinking sleepily at me.
Then she winced, raising a hand to her head, saying, “Owww!”
Relief poured through me, making the breath in my lungs leave me in a rush, and I sagged. My elbows caught me as I leaned more fully into the drawer, laying my head against the softness of Adeline’s belly.
“Jesus,” I whispered.
The sharp bark of a gun report tore through the room like a thunderclap, tensing my spine once again, making me look at the closed door that led to the outside alley.
“Oh shit,” Dixie uttered the same words that were on the tip of my tongue.
“What’s going on?” Tunnel groaned from the drawer below Adeline.
I watched as the young man stood, and then winced as I got my first good look at the size of the goose egg. “You’re gonna be going to the hospital with us.”
Adeline sat up with my help, and then stood.
We were making our way out to the main room when Loki found us.
He looked a little worse for wear and the grim set to his face let me know that something more was wrong. Well, more than what I guessed was the love of his life working at a funeral parlor belonging to a known drug dealer, was wrong.
“Nelson Platt is now in police custody. He shot Radar though. Luckily, it was in the vest that Trance got him last year. Saved his life. Found the crew in the room we suspected they’d be in. They’re all outside waiting to be taken in on charges for drug trafficking.” Loki said, sounding exhausted.
Seeing Adeline sway on her feet, I picked her up,
one arm underneath her legs, and the other around her back. We followed closely behind Loki as he weaved his way through the bowels of the funeral home and out into the morning sunshine, passing a massive amount of cops in the process. Probably more than we’d had on duty that day.
Carrying Adeline straight towards the ambulance, I sat her down on the cot and started to dress her wounds with more than just tissues and paper towels, ignoring the weird glances I was getting from the medics, as well as their verbal demands.
They were ones I hadn’t met before, which was weird because I knew practically every medic within thirty miles of Benton. Which meant they must be new.
“Sir, we can do it.” One said to him.
I ignored them as I cleaned off her skin around the wound, purposefully not speaking with her, just in case I went insane and lost my temper.
Lucky for her, she stayed quiet too. She must’ve sensed how very annoyed I was with her, because she barely even looked at me the entire time.
“Do you need a ride to the hospital?” The medic asked snidely.
My eyes turned to the rude man, staring at him, letting him know that I was in no mood to deal with his shitty comments.
“No,” I said. “I’ll be driving her myself. Thanks for the offer though.”
“You’re refusing transport, too?” The other medic, the one who was looking at Tunnel’s goose egg, asked.
“Yeah, I have a car here. Can’t leave it.” He explained tightly.
Tunnel was pissed. Most likely at himself. Which was good, because I was mad as hell at him, too. Served him right.
“You do know that you’ve got a goose egg the size of a Burger King Whopper on your head.” Paramedic number two clarified.
“Yeah,” he said. “My wife’s a nurse. She’ll take care of me.”
We left shortly after that.
After taking a closer look at Adeline’s cut, I decided that there wasn’t much to be done for it. It wasn’t deep enough for stitches and other than prescribing her headache meds and being told to wake her up every three hours, there was nothing that they could do at a hospital that I couldn’t do at home.
Adeline still didn’t speak, and I could sense her unease. I knew she thought I was upset with her, and I was. She was trying not to say anything in order to keep my temper in check. Which was good on her part, because my temper was eager to go.
I didn’t take the road home, instead deciding to ride. I knew Adeline was probably cold, but she didn’t complain, only buried her helmeted head into my back and held on tight, moving into the turns with me, making me feel as if we were one.
I thought about a lot of things during that ride.
Mainly about how I’d lost a lot of stuff in my life, and I didn’t want to lose anymore. I didn’t want to waste any more time. Didn’t want to wake up one morning and regret what I’d done with my life. What could have been.
When we finally pulled into the driveway of my lake house three hours later, I’d come to a few decisions.
One, I was marrying Adeline.
Two, I was having kids with her. Soon.
Three, it was time to talk with my parents. Have a relationship with my mom. My dad, I couldn’t give a rip about, but I’d seen the longing in my mother’s eyes. I knew she’d wanted to hug me. Talk to me.
If I was truthful with myself, I wanted the same. I missed her.
“This is a beautiful place,” Adeline said softly.
I looked at my place through her eyes. Eyes that only saw beauty in the world. Or had until tonight.
“Yeah, Shannon loved it out here. She’d come and tan on the dock in a vain attempt to get Sebastian to pay attention to her.” I laughed.
It still felt raw inside, to speak about her in the past.
I didn’t know if the feeling would ever subside, and thought that maybe it was a good thing that it didn’t.
I still thought of my child in the same way.
An aching longing poured through my chest at the thought of never holding her.
Hell. I couldn’t do this right now.
“I left because they said your father was trying to arrange the funeral. I didn’t want him to fuck anything up, and the guy that called told me that you relayed a message to me. It sounded like something you’d say.” She whispered brokenly.
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Just, don’t ever do that to me again. I won’t be able to handle it if I lost you, too.”
My voice sounded raw, and it was.
I was feeling pretty raw, too. Sleep sounded like a good thing, and that’s what I declared when I unlocked the door and held it open for her.
“Let’s get to bed. I don’t want to do anything else right now but sleep, if that’s okay.” I said as I locked the door behind us and flipped on the front room’s light.
It was piled to the brim with the furniture that belonged in the rest of the house. The only thing that probably resembled livable space right now was the one bedroom where my bed was, which was a good thing. That’s all I really cared about right now.
“Okay,” she said, as she followed me into the bedroom.
I showed her to the bathroom, stripped out of my clothes until I was in only my briefs, and then walked to the back door and pissed off the side of the porch.
I chuckled a little when I saw Sebastian doing the same thing. At least I’d had the decency to leave the light off, unlike Sebastian.
After we both waved, I went back inside, locked the door, and walked to my bedroom to find Adeline asleep on the four-poster king sized bed directly in the middle.
I had to smile as I walked to the dresser, opened the top drawer, and pulled out the engagement ring that I’d had for nearly a week now. At least I was lucky enough to hide it here with the rest of my valuables, or those would’ve been gone, too, after the fire.
Replacing it back in the drawer, I walked to the side of the bed, lifted the covers, and crawled in beside my woman. She was soft and willing as she turned into my body. Fortunately, I was too exhausted to think about anything that had happened in the past couple of days. Unluckily, I woke up in the middle of the night to a nightmare that was sure to be recurring.
The dream. The most god-awful dream I’d ever had. It had me sweating bullets as I was jarred awake by Adeline’s hand.
Adeline was up on an elbow, looking at me in concern.
I hadn’t given it a second thought earlier, but my unconscious hadn’t forgotten, and now I couldn’t slip the mental pictures of the bodies in the drawers. One of those that had been burned could’ve very well been my sister.
Logically, I knew they weren’t my sister. My sister’s remains were being examined by the BPD coroner. Was that what she would’ve looked like?
“Kettle?” Adeline asked worriedly.
My eyes snapped to hers, nearly black in the pre-light dawn. The time of day where you knew the sun was about to come up, but it was still practically dark outside.
“Wanna go watch the sun rise on my dock? It’s the only thing that’s finished.” I asked as I threw the covers off myself and stood.
My body ached, and I stretched my arms up high above my head, feeling my tired and sore muscles stretch and ease. My spine crackled and popped, making the tension in my body ease a small bit.
“Sure, but I’ve got no clothes, and from the looks of it, you don’t either.” Adeline said, staring around the empty area.
I snorted. “I’ve got a blanket. That’ll be enough for now. Moreover, I remember hearing last night that today is supposed to be in the 70s. Can’t be too cold out there.” I said as I grabbed the blanket off the bed.
It wasn’t until we were down at the dock that I realized we didn’t have any chairs, and the deck was wet with the morning’s dew. “Well, shit!”
“We should go steal a few of Sebastian’s,” Adeline said as she eyed the other man’s dock with its numerous chairs. All dry, due to the gaze
bo he had over the top of his deck.
“He’s probably awake right now watching out the window like he usually does. He’d kick my ass.” I teased.
“He wouldn’t kick my ass.” Adeline affirmed before she got up and started in the direction of Sebastian’s dock.
She’d gotten her hands on one of Sebastian’s favorite chairs before he came out in his underwear with a coffee mug in his hand. “Hey!” He said indignantly.
Adeline ignored him and continued down my dock before she came to a stop right next to me and thumped the chair down.
I sat down with a wave to Sebastian, who was glaring at me, and wrapped my arms, comforter and all, around Adeline as she sat in my lap.
The sliding glass door followed on the heels of Sebastian’s stomp into his house. Making us both laugh at the inventive language he’d just used.
“You’ve got a nice place here,” Adeline said a few moments later as we watched the sunrise.
“Yeah, I like it.” I agreed.
A lone fish jumped about fifty feet ahead of us, making Adeline jump in my lap.
Before she jumped, she was sitting to the side, most of her butt resting on my thigh. The new position had her flush against my cock. Which, inevitably, led to it getting hard, because it was morning, and Adeline’s fine ass really made me hot.
Making me very aware of the state of our clothing, and the fact that Adeline wasn’t wearing any pants. Nor panties for that matter.
She giggled when my erection went from soft to harder than a steel pole in two seconds flat.
My hands, which had been wrapped around her tightly, release her and started smoothing down her front.
At first, it only started with smooth circles on her abdomen.
It was only when she started squirming in anticipation that I let my hands roam.
One went underneath her shirt, and started plucking her nipple. The other went down to slip in between the lips of her vagina.
“You’re wet,” I observed when my finger slicked over her entrance.
“God, I was wet as soon as I sat on your lap. You make my body do these things. I don’t think it’s normal.” She moaned.
Halligan To My Axe (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC Book 2) Page 18
