Wolf (The Henchmen MC #3)

by Jessica Gadziala

  Seeing me fully dressed, he moved toward the door and pulled it open.

  And there was a very resigned, tired looking Detective Collings and his new blood Marco who Collings' made no attempt to hide his distaste for. Marco seemed energetic, excited to be at Wolf's door, the testosterone practically stinking up the air. "Wolf Rostov?" Marco said, his voice filled with obnoxious authority from someone who would probably wet himself if someone shot at him. "We have some questions for you regarding the murder of Lex Keith."

  Ten minutes later, Wolf was on the way to the station with an apologetic looking Collings and a triumphant looking Marco.

  I flew back into the cabin, slipping into my boots, tucking Wolf's giant shirt into my pants, grabbing his cell and the keys to the truck and hitting the road.

  Going down the drive, I scrolled through Wolf's contacts and found Cash. "Better be good, Wolf," Cash's groggy voice met my ear.

  "Cash it's Janie. Collings and Marco just took Wolf to the station for questioning."

  "What!" It wasn't a question, it was an explosion. And, coming from someone as calm and carefree as Cash, it was jarring.

  "I don't know if they actually have anything, but I'm on my way there to see."

  "Alright, kid. Thanks. I'm gonna call Reign then I'll be there myself."

  "Okay, see you then," I said, tossing the phone onto the passenger and slipping on my belt as I pulled onto the main drag. I realized I was driving without my license and laughed humorlessly at the idea of getting myself locked up as well.

  I'd been in the police station more than a few times in my life. In fact, most of the times I was inside it, I was in one of those interrogation rooms Wolf was nestled away in. Hailstorm generally managed to stay under the radar most of the time and Lo greased a fair amount of palms to look the other way, but that didn't mean we weren't hauled in on occasion and asked questions to keep up appearances. It was a particular joy of mine to screw with the detectives, their measly interrogation training paling in comparison to my extensive counter-interrogation training.

  I sat down on the metal chairs by reception, smiling a little at the thought of how hard it must be to try to interrogate Wolf. Talk about frustrating. He barely spoke when he wanted to. I couldn't imagine the kind of stoic silence he could pull off when he was trying to be quiet.

  Cash breezed in twenty minutes later, Reign at his side, both looking fully awake and dressed in jeans, Cash in a white shirt, Reign in black, neither wearing cuts, but still both extremely intimidating with their mouths set in hard lines.

  "Hey kid," Cash said, wrapping a arm around my waist and leaning down to plant a kiss on the top of my head.

  "Any word?" Reign asked. I shook my head. "Babe, forgot to ask. After you got him showered, did you happen to..."

  "It's handled," I said with finality.

  "Barbie, baby," Cash called, moving away from me and giving the woman at reception a warm smile. A woman, I might add, whose name tag clearly said Barbara. She was past middle-aged and looked like she had never smiled a day in her life so I imagined Cash's knowledge of her must have come from one too many trips into the station, not because of a friendship or anything more.

  "What do you want, Cash?" she asked in a firm voice, but her eyes were dancing. She had a soft spot for Cash. Who wouldn't?

  "Care to scrounge up three cups of that toxic sludge you guys pass off as coffee?"

  She shook her head, sighing in a way that made her ample bosom heave under her deep blue button-up blouse. "Fine, but you're getting it black."

  "You're an angel among mere women," Cash gushed and I could have sworn I saw the woman blushing as she walked away.

  "You're disgusting," I said with an eye roll and a lip twitch. "Does Lo know what a shameless flirt you are?"

  "Why do you think she fell for me in the first place?"

  I snorted. "If you think she fell for some pet names and flattery, you don't know her at all."

  "I know it wasn't that. It was my hot bod."

  And to that, I laughed, right there in the middle of a police station, my stomach in knots and almost nauseated with worry, I laughed.

  "Yeah," I agreed, shaking my head, "that must be it."

  Barbara came back with the coffee that was very much the consistency and taste of toxic sludge and we all took chairs and waited in silence. It was a good hour later, coffee cups disposed of and a stern looking male took over at the front desk, taking away our access to refills, when the door to an interrogation room opened.

  All three of us sprang to our feet in unison as Marco walked out, an arm on the forearm of Wolf. My eyes stayed there for a split second before I realized they had cuffed him. They cuffed him.

  I sprang forward without thinking. "You're arresting him!" I screamed, making the chatter in the station silence immediately. "You can't be fucking serious, Collings!" I accused, making my way across the room, knocking over chairs in my way to get to the almost repentant-looking Collings. "What could you possibly have..."

  "Janie," Wolf's voice clipped, drawing my full attention. "Pull it together," he said with a soft look that I imagined was supposed to be reassuring. But there was no way to calm me down when he was being arrested for freaking murder! Because of me! "Reign," Wolf said, jerking his chin and I felt my waist tagged by a strong arm, almost pulling me off my feet as I collided back into a broad chest.

  "Take your fucking hand off me or I swear to Christ you will lose a dangling bit you hold very dear to you," I warned, arching my arm back so I could elbow him hard in the gut. His air whooshed out, but his arm only got tighter.

  "Take her home," Wolf said, turning away from me.

  "Wolf you..." but he wasn't turning back to me. In a few seconds, he disappeared behind a locked door.

  "You listen to me you son of a bitch," I seethed at Collings, "if you don't get this dropped..."

  "Careful," Collings broke in, but not in the cocky way most cops would. It was almost soft, understanding. "Don't want to say anything in here you can't take back." He turned his attention to Reign. "Bail hearing will be set in the morning. There's nothing you can do here tonight. Do what the man wanted, take his woman home."

  With that, Collings turned and left us standing there.

  "Come on, kid," Cash said, reaching for my hand as Reign set me back down. "I'll take you back to Hailstorm. You and Lo can try to..."

  "I'm going back to the cabin," I growled, ripping my hand from his and charging out of the building before I could lose my shit. I was seconds from threatening Collings in there, from hauling off and punching him. Thank god Wolf had the presence of mind to react and get Reign to rein me in.

  Self control, it was something I needed to learn and fast.

  No bail was set. I guess when you were being charged with three counts of first degree murder and said murders were horrifically violent, the judge didn't really think it would look good to set him back on the streets, no matter how much Henchmen money lined his pocket from day to day.

  I drove Wolf's truck with Harley and Chopper to the docks where my getaway car was parked, switching their spots and forcing the dogs to huddle together in the much smaller space of my little sedan.

  I parked out front of The Henchmen compound's gates, letting the dogs out, grabbing a couple bags of my shit, and waiting for the curious Repo to nod at the boy at the gates to open it.

  Everything that happened after this point would heretofore be known as "Janie's Reign of Terror" or, the slightly more colloquial, "You Don't Fucking Mess With What's Mine, Mother Fuckers".

  I stormed into the compound, looking for Reign and finding him immediately standing beside the bar.

  "I was the one who bombed your compound," I declared, sensing every biker in the room tensing. "Get over it," I added with a haughty chin raise.

  "And why the fuck would I do that, babe?" Reign asked, unflappable even facing unsettling news. He really was a good prez.

&
nbsp; "Because I am going to get you your road captain back," I declared, ripping my laptop out of my messenger bag as I swiped everything off the coffee table, sending it flying to the floor as I propped my laptop up. "Besides, that shed was full of years of evidence of exactly how many murders, Reign? Five? Eight? On top of countless beatings. You should be thanking me for getting rid of that shit. Here," I said to a biker on the couch, tossing him Wolf's keys. "Wolf's truck is parked down at the docks. Get it and bring it here. And you," I said to another guy standing close by, "go get whatever the heck Wolf's hell beasts will need to hold them over for a few days."

  Both men paused, but moved to do what they were told.

  "Babe, you can't just come into my compound barking out orders, trying to control the place."

  "Really? 'Cause it looks like I did just that."

  "What do you need, kid?" Cash asked. Reign gave him a hard look and Cash held up his hands, palms out. "Bro, if there's one thing I know about women, and I know a fuckuva lot about women," he added with a wink toward me, "it's that when one of them is on a mission, you don't stand in their fucking way. You fall into step or you get plowed over."

  Reign sighed, shaking his head. "What's the plan, babe?"

  "Nothing I can tell you about. Don't need anyone else getting locked up."

  "Janie..."

  "Coffee. Silence," I barked, scrolling into the internet radio station and blaring the metal.

  Hours passed as I hacked into the NBPD database, figuring out who was on the case and what evidence they had. It was a real clusterfuck weighing heavily on speculation like the approximate weight and shoe size of the person whose boot print they found on the scene. Luckily for me, Wolf must have taken the clothes and boots I had left in bleach and disposed of them. He wasn't walking into the god damn police station with evidence on his feet.

  Collings clearly wanted nothing to do with the case if the brushed over reports he filed had anything to say. His new partner, though, was a problem. Marco was a wild card. He was too fresh to Navesink Bank. He didn't get his ass handed to him by one of the syndicates yet. He didn't live in fear of what might happen to him. He also didn't accept the bribes I knew Lex and Richard Lyon had tried to throw at him. He was fresh out of the academy and looking for his first big bust.

  Never mind that one bad guy taking out the worst bad guy I had ever met wouldn't exactly make for a good news story. No one would mourn Lex Keith's death. People wouldn't be rallying behind the force when they realized Wolf took out a serial rapist with two dozen unfiled rape kits sitting in storage in the NBPD database, "lost" because of Lex's financial contribution to the right file clerks and detectives.

  Yeah, well, those rape kits suddenly found themselves on Collings' desk.

  He wasn't exactly a pillar of humanity, but the man had a daughter that was just starting college. If there was ever a time when the idea of rape hung heavily on a dad's (especially a cop dad's) mind, it was when their little girls were away from home for the first time in a place where he knew rape was as rampant as STDs and Ritalin-fueled study sessions. He couldn't see all those files of rape victims on his desk and not picture his own daughter, not feel the need to give those women justice.

  There was no punishing Lex Keith post-mortem, but it would make the news. It would overshadow the story of Lex's killer. Or, more likely depending on the newscaster, it could vilify Lex further and make his murderer suddenly a citizen-backed vigilante.

  There was no way to guarantee that Collings wouldn't process the kits without making it public, but there was a way to make sure it did get out.

  On a deep breath that felt like acid fog, I opened up the forum that Alex had created when she was trying to get help neutralizing Lex. I took the images, blurring the women's faces, almost gagging as I did so to my own, and leaving Lex and his men's faces for all the world to see. Then I packaged them up with the information about the unprocessed rape kits and shot it all off to every news station in the state. A big juicy story wrapped in a big red bow. They would go fucking nuts tearing down the NBPD.

  I shot off an untraceable email to Collings.

  Maybe you never wanted a war, but now you got one. Process those rape kits before the five o'clock news or you'll regret it. You have one chance to make this right, Collings. You've kept your pockets clean and your head down to what is going on around you. I respected you until you took down a man who was righting a wrong you and your station overlooked for years as endless piles of women suffered for your cowardice.

  Those rape kits managed to get 'lost' for years. I think a little boot print could easily get accidentally deleted, don't you?

  Do the right thing.

  "You think threatening a cop is the best move?" Repo asked, sitting down beside me and shamelessly reading what I was typing.

  "I think Collings understands how things work around here. I think he hates his job and what it has made him."

  "What has it made him?"

  "Weak." I turned my head to look at him fully. "And if there is one thing a once-alpha man hates to be, it's weak. He will finally get his head out of his ass and do something for once, something that matters. Or he can get his ass swept up in the cleanse when Internal Affairs starts smelling the shit festering inside the NBPD."

  "You realize you are erasing the leverage The Henchmen, Mallicks, Lyon, and Hailstorm had against imprisonment?"

  I could see the tension in Repo, the barely repressed anger. He was a loose cannon like me when he was riled and he was trying like hell to hold onto his calm. Repo was as loyal as a man came and when he saw someone threatening the safety of his brothers, he felt the need to intervene.

  I reached out and hit the send button on the email. "It's done. You can be mad at me. You can scream at me. But we both know you can't lay a hand on me. I belong to your road captain. Your prez and vice like me. It would be the ultimate betrayal to fuck with me right now Repo."

  "I'd never put a fucking hand on you," he said, his face twisting up like he was revolted at the idea. "I don't hit women."

  "Good then we understand each other."

  "Hardly."

  "Look," I said, sighing. "Worst case, IA comes in and wipes out the force, right? They all get replaced with another batch of cops and detectives. I guarantee you they will be just as easy to turn as this last batch was. There's also the chance that there will be pressure on IA to sweep this under the rug, blame it on one dirty cop and let it go. From what I know, this goes way past the force. It goes up to judges. It goes to juries. It goes to senators and governors. They start pulling at the stray thread, the entire state will unravel. The jury tampering alone... people sent away or let off based on a tainted jury? Any idea what a mess that is?"

  "You better be right, Jstorm," Repo said, leaving abruptly, his every step weighted with his anger.

  To be perfectly honest... I wasn't sure I was right. I didn't know that this would work. All I knew was I couldn't sit on my hands as the force and the news tried to paint Wolf as a bad guy. Especially when he had killed Lex for me, to make me feel safe again, to give me peace of mind. He did it for me. And he was being punished for that.

  Not on my fucking watch. No sir, no way.

  "Reign," I called, looking up into the room to find him talking with Cash.

  "Yeah babe?"

  "Most brutal fuck in the area who will work with me?" I asked.

  Reign and Cash shared a look.

  "Eli Mallick."

  "Yeah but will his rage-out be controllable?" I asked, knowing all about Eli. The Mallicks, a family of loan sharks from the dad to the five sons, had a reputation for ruthlessness. You missed your payment, you got a warning. You missed it again, you got a visit from Shane or Mark or Ryan. You missed it again... that was when Eli darkened your door. And if you got some kind of false sense of security because you already got visited by one of the other Mallicks and were able to recover after some stitches or a knee replacement
, well, you were in for a rude awakening when Eli set his sights on you.

  Many said Eli was the most brutal of the Mallicks because he was the one with the temperament least meant for a life of violence. He was an artist, a gentle soul. But Charlie and Helen Mallick raised their boys to settle their disputes with their fists, with one another, with the kids on the playground. Violence was a quality every human possessed, buried deeper in some, almost never to surface. But it was a quality the Mallicks dug out of their sons, brushed off, and polished, making them ruthless knee-cap breakers, making them salivate for blood the way Pavlov's dogs did for a bell.

  "That's the thing, kid," Cash said, shrugging. "He doesn't rage-out. He goes in so cold it's glacial. Get in his way, get in his face and you'll get his attention. He'll stop. He's not like Wolf."

  "Alright," I said, slamming my laptop closed. "Time to go see a man about an old school ass kicking."

  "Babe, be smart about..."

  "About getting someone out of jail who killed the man who tortured me for sixteen days?" I spat, my eyes going huge at what I had just admitted, not just to Reign and Cash, but to a whole compound full of bikers. Shit.

  "Kid..." Cash said, his voice sad.

  Reign stayed silent, but his eyes spoke a thousand words. They wouldn't stand in my way. They wouldn't say another word. They would let me do what I needed to do.

  "Jstorm," Repo's voice called and I jerked before I turned to see him walking toward me, all the anger gone, his light eyes on me. "I'll take you to Chaz's."

  Great. I had their sympathy. Exactly what I never wanted.

  "Look," I said moving back a step so I could address the whole room. "I don't need any of your fucking pity, do you understand me? Pity is for victims. I am not a victim. I'm the badass bitch who stormed into your compound and got you jumping to follow orders. I'm the woman who is going to get your road captain off on three counts of murder. So take those sad looks and shove them up your asses. I don't need that shit. I need..."