Deception: The Reapers Series Book Two

by Bo Reid

  Moving around the coffee table I sit next to Hunter so I can see what it is he thinks he found. “Have you ever heard of Fallen Angels MC?” he asks.

  I’m instantly brought back to those same memories of the men in dad’s office. “Yeah, when I was little, I remember two of them coming to the house for meetings, but I don’t remember ever doing business with them. I don’t remember them coming around any time after we turned ten,” I say as Hunter rolls a recording from four weeks ago. I instantly recognize the two men in the video wearing motorcycle club cuts.

  They’re the same two men from that meeting when we were eight. I replay their faces in my mind and the other man in the cheaper suit. I can picture his face staring at me, calculating. There’s something so familiar about his face, but I can’t place it in my brain. The more I try the more my head starts to hurt.

  I reach up and rub my temples. Closing my eyes I try to place someone I saw once sixteen years ago.

  “Love, are you okay?” I hear Ranger calling but he seems far away until I feel his hand gently rest on my knee

  . I snap my eyes open, my head screaming at me to stop thinking. Memories are rarely this hard to place, so why can’t I grab the memory I know is begging to float to the surface?

  “Yeah I’m just getting a headache,” I say and give him a small smile. “Those men are the ones that used to come to the house when I was a kid. They’re older now but it’s them. Probably the president and VP,” I say, motioning to the screen that’s frozen on the aging faces of two MC members.

  Before the guys can respond the camera system dings, letting us know someone’s driven into the lot. Hunter gets up to check the camera system but doesn’t say who it is. “Uhh guys, we might have a problem,” he says as Ranger and I stand up and walk over to him. I peer around Hunter’s arm to get a look at the security feed.

  And we most definitely have a fucking problem.

  Chapter 7: Maitotoxin

  Morana

  Nash walks into the apartment with a lopsided, goofy grin on his face. But when he sees us standing in front of him with our arms crossed and matching scowls on our faces, his grin drops.

  “Uh, hey guys, what’s up?” He tries for a casual tone, but a small sheen of sweat starts on his forehead.

  If I was a cartoon character steam would be coming out of my ears right now. I can’t deal with this, not right now. Not after everything. I just can’t. So instead I brush past him and wrench open the door, slamming it behind me.

  “Morana! Get back here!” Ranger calls from the door.

  I send up my middle finger as I reach the stairway. “Fuck. Off!” I yell back and rapidly descend to the parking garage.

  Just as I’m about to climb onto my street-legal dirt bike a hand grips my bicep. I turn to see Ranger’s angry gaze fixed on me. “Where are you going?” he asks, anger evident in his tone but I’m still leaving.

  “Out,” I say as I rip my arm out of his grasp.

  “Then let me take you,” he says and gestures to the truck.

  “No. I’m going out, and I’m going alone. You’re going to go back up there and knock some fucking sense into Nash before I murder him,” I say as I swing my leg over the seat of my bike.

  “Where are you going?” he asks again, crossing his arms.

  I tug my helmet over my head and kick-start my bike. “I told you. Out.”

  “Morana!” he yells at me, but I just shake my head, rev up my bike, and peel out of the garage.

  Trying to shake my head clean of the image of Nash with his tongue down Agent Emma Holt’s throat as I race down the street towards the forest.

  Let him go Morana. Just let him go.

  I repeat that to myself over and over and over again, but I don’t know if I can. He’s everything to me. He’s the last piece of the brother I lost all those years ago. I know that’s not fair to him. It's never been fair to him. I hold onto him like I wish I could hold onto Hades.

  Nash was shoved into the hole in my heart, contorted to try to fill the space that only a dead man could. It’s never been that he isn’t enough, he’s more than enough. But what he can give me isn’t the same as what I’ve already lost. I’ll never be whole again, but maybe Nash could be if I just let him go. If I freed him from his shackles maybe he could find the last piece of himself, the piece I can never give him.

  The type of love he deserves to have, that I can’t ever be the one to give him. I wish I could. I wish I could see him like that, but that’s not the love that I feel for him. It's selfish of me to keep him bound to the shoes of a dead man.

  After spending the better part of an hour racing around on the trails in the forest outside of Sanorah attempting to allow the forest to clear my mind, my body aches from being rattled around on my bike. I welcome that pain. I wish I hurt more. I want the physical pain to be unbearable, then maybe, just maybe, my heart wouldn’t hurt so much.

  I find myself in the parking lot of the hotel the FBI’s staying at. Getting off my bike, I head towards room two-eleven. The manager’s such a nice and helpful man.

  Walking through the halls of the hotel I stop in front of Emma Holt’s room and bang on the door. When it swings open, Holt’s standing on the other side with a goofy grin on her face that matches the one Nash was wearing earlier. And just like him, her face falls when she sees me. I tend to have that effect on people. I guess she was expecting a different Reaper.

  “Evening, Emma,” I say with a sinister smile.

  She attempts to close the door in my face, but I slam my palm against it, forcing my way into her room. Shoving my forearm against her throat, I push her against the wall, cutting off her air supply.

  “If you hurt him, I will kill you. Do you understand me, Sweetheart?” I ask, letting up slightly so she can catch her breath and answer me.

  “You’re threatening a federal agent,” she gasps without any real authority.

  I smile. “If you hurt him, your badge can’t protect you from me,” I whisper close to her ear before I let off her throat. Turning, I throw the door open, exiting her room without a backward glance.

  “He isn’t yours to keep!” she yells at me like I’m a little girl that’s trying to take her toy away.

  “He isn’t yours either. But you can have him, Emma, you can take him away from me and give him the life I never can,” I tell her, turning around and walking back towards her, watching as she attempts to stifle the shudder of fear.

  “But remember, I will always know where you are. I will know what you’re doing. And if you hurt him, I will come after you. That’s not a threat, Honey, it’s a fucking promise. You hurt my Nash, and I will gut you where you stand.”

  I turn and walk away, leaving a pale-faced Emma Holt behind me. Now, onto bigger problems. Like the fact that Agent Malic Connors was an attendee in a meeting with my father, Galen Ashby, and two members of the Fallen Angels MC sixteen years ago.

  Violence is a wonderful thing to trigger memories to fall into place.

  Talin

  I turn the car off as I park out front of the hotel we’re staying in, scrubbing a frustrated hand down my face. I can’t track down any of the team, and I lost Morana earlier today when she peeled out of their building.

  When I look up, I see the one person I’m supposed to be watching; Morana Valdis is walking out of the lobby’s front doors. I watch her walk across the parking lot, almost as if she’s in a haze. Her gaze is locked in front of her as she pulls sunglasses out of her pocket.

  I quickly open my door and jog towards her as she stops next to a dirt bike parked in the back of the parking lot. “Morana!” I call out before she can take off.

  When she looks up towards me I catch the emptiness in her eyes for a brief moment before it’s gone, and she shoves her sunglasses over her emerald eyes.

  “Talin,” she greets me curtly.

  “What were you doing here?” I ask her. It’s no secret that this is where we’re staying and it’s a small town. It wou
ldn’t take her long to figure out where we are. I’m sure she could even find out our room numbers. Is it wrong of me to hope she was looking for me?

  Probably.

  No, definitely.

  And yet, the hope is there.

  “Came to talk to Holt,” she says.

  I turn back to look at the hotel to hide my disappointment, my disappointment over something that I shouldn’t be upset about in the first place. What’s this woman doing to me? “Why? Something I can help you with?”

  “Nope,” she says and pops the p. “Her and my Nash are fucking around. Just wanted to make sure her intentions were pure and all that,” she says, waving her hand around.

  I can’t hide my surprise that Emma’s fooling around with a suspect. Nash Lee might not be suspected of any current murders, but if the rumors here are true it wouldn’t surprise me if he had blood on his hands.

  “Is that so? Didn’t peg you as someone to care,” I say crossing my arms.

  She narrows her eyes at me. “Fuck you, Talin. Do not accuse me of not caring about my guys. They’re all I have left, and I would gladly die before I let anything happen to any of them. You don’t know shit about me except what’s in your stupid files and those don’t even tell you half my story,” she says as she thrusts her helmet on and kick starts the bike.

  “Wait!” I yell, throwing up my hands to surrender and stop her from leaving. “That didn’t come out right.”

  She rolls her eyes at me. “It rarely does,” she says. “Are you still investigating my father’s case?” she asks suddenly, and I nod. “If I were you, I’d look into your command leader’s past.”

  “And by that, you mean what?” I ask.

  “I’m not going to do your job for you, Agent. You want the truth? Start digging. And if I were you, I’d be very careful of who you trust. Whoever you share things with, you better trust them with your life,” she says.

  “Are you saying I should trust you?” I ask and she throws her head back and laughs.

  “Oh Honey, I’m the last person you should trust with your life. Your secrets, on the other hand, those I’d take to a grave,” she says before taking off out of the parking lot.

  And I don’t miss how she says, a grave and not her grave, or the grave.

  She says I shouldn’t trust her with my life and she’s right. I shouldn’t even trust her to borrow a pen. But I don’t miss the way she cares about her guys, and I know that if you’re someone that’s lucky enough to earn her affection, her trust, her love, then there’s certainly nothing you could do for her to take that back.

  It’s the highest honor to have her watching over you, and if I’m right that means you could turn your back on her, throw her away, feed her to the wolves, and in the end she would still love you just the same. 'Cause she’s the type of woman that loves with everything she doesn’t even know she has.

  It's one thing to have the love and affection of someone born to love, born to know how much of themselves they can give you. It's entirely different to gain the love of someone who doesn’t even know how to love. Cause those are the people that don’t know when to stop loving, even if it destroys them in the end.

  Chapter 8: Botulinum Toxin

  Morana

  “You couldn’t just leave her alone?!” Nash yells as he storms into my bedroom far too early. I swear all these people waking me up and showing up early in the morning are begging for me to go on a homicidal rampage.

  “Can we just do this later, Nash? Like when the sun’s up?” I quip and pull the blankets over my head.

  “No!” he yells before trying to rip them back off.

  I groan and grip the corner of my blanket, pulling it back towards me. Nash stumbles forward, letting go of his end to brace himself. I smirk and lay back down, pulling blankets up to cover my face again.

  “Morana, this is serious. This isn’t about me and her, you threatened a federal agent! When you’re already under suspicion for murder! Can you not control yourself for once?”

  Now he’s yelling and pacing. It’s too early for this shit.

  I hear my door open and more people interrupt my sleep. “Do you guys have to argue so loud at six in the morning?” Hunter grumbles and I feel my mattress dip as Hunter slides in next to me.

  “She threatened to kill agent Holt!”

  “Actually, I promised to gut her where she stood, but, you know, semantics,” I correct helpfully, and Nash groans.

  “Of course you did, Love,” Ranger says and kisses my forehead.

  “Can we talk about this later? It’s early, she hates being woken up. Why do you do this, Nash? You know she’s extra homicidal in the morning. Remember the time she tried to stab Ranger because he woke her up at five in the morning?” Hunter says.

  “It was Christmas!” Ranger defends.

  “You almost got stabbed on Christmas,” Hunter deadpans.

  “Yeah, but he never tried to wake me up after that, not even on Christmas,” I point out from under my covers.

  I hear Nash groan. “She threatened her yesterday! I only just found out,” Nash says.

  “Oh, and how did you find out, by chance?” Ranger asks with a hint of anger in his tone.

  “Uhh…”

  “Uhhhh…” Hunter mocks. “Exactly. You knew what would happen if you got caught with your tongue down her throat, which is why you didn’t tell any of us. You can’t even pretend to be surprised by our reaction. So, don’t try to sit there like Morana threatening someone not to hurt you is out of character. Hell, I’d be concerned if she didn’t threaten her!”

  “And don’t act like a fed turning on you would actually come as a surprise. Morana’s trying to protect you and instead of understanding that and treating her like the overprotective sister she’s always been for you, you storm in here and yell at her,” Ranger says.

  “Stop!” I yell and throw the covers off before jumping out of bed and stomping out of my own room. I hear all of them trailing after me. “You all need to stop fighting, we don’t need to be at each other's throats.”

  I move into the kitchen and start to grab everything to make a cup of coffee when Hunter butts in to do it for me, which just pisses me off. “Stop. I can make my own damn coffee,” I seethe. He raises his eyebrows at me. “I’m not helpless,” I say crossing my arms and pouting like a petulant child.

  “You also haven’t made your own coffee in years. So, don’t get a fucking attitude with me for stepping in and doing the one thing I’ve done for you every day since we were seventeen,” he says. And now I feel like an asshole.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, groaning.

  Like I said, it’s all falling apart. Including me. I can't even tell which way is up anymore. I can't piece together what’s something we’ve always done, and what they’re doing because they feel guilty. I don’t know if they would’ve reacted like that to Nash a year ago or if this is because we’re together. I don’t need them to gang up on him, that’s never what I want.

  Hunter puts down the coffee, cups my face with his hands, and crashes his lips to mine. I grip his hips and pull him close to me as he pushes me into the counter.

  He moves his hands down my body, gripping my thighs and hoisting me onto the counter, settling between my legs. His tongue runs along my lips, and I part my mouth for him. I wrap my hands in his hair, pulling him closer to me as our mouths devour each other.

  When he pulls back, we’re both panting. He rests his forehead against mine and smiles. “Good morning, Pretty Girl, would you like some coffee?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” he says as he plants a quick kiss on my lips. “Can you not pick fights anymore?” he asks as he pours creamer into my mug.

  “I’ll try,” I sigh.

  “Morana, can we talk?” Nash asks quietly from across the kitchen.

  I down half my coffee, welcoming the burn as it glides down my throat, and jump off the counter. Walking over to Nash, I grab his hand and move into the living room.
We settle on opposite sides of the couch staring at each other.

  It seems like such a small thing, this distance. But it's not the physical space that’s currently separating us, it's everything that’s been left unsaid for too long. It's all the things that we’ve never wanted to confess, but now there’s nothing left for us to do but talk.

  “You know how much I love you right?” he asks, and I’m instantly transported back to a time when Hades and I were twelve years old. Back before it all fell apart the first time.

  “Yeah, of course. You know how much I love you, right?” I ask.

  “Still?”

  “Nothing will change that,” I tell him, reaching my hand out to hold his. “Nothing, Nash. You could turn me in to Holt, give her testimony after testimony. Give her enough evidence for them to fry me and I would love you when they threw that switch the same way I do right now. The same way I have all these years.” He squeezes my hand and looks up with tears in his eyes.

  “I love you, Morana, but there’s something about Emma. I can’t place it, and it seems stupid because we just met. And she’s a fed, and she’s trying to put you away for murder. But something about her calls to me.”

  “Then answer the call. For what it’s worth she’s not trying to pin me for murder, she’s just trying to work the case she’s been given with the information they tell her. Watch your back, but for fuck’s sake, Nash, do what your heart’s telling you to do,” I tell him as my own heart beats painfully slow in my chest.

  “But what about you?” he asks.

  “I’ll always be here. But Nash?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I meant what I said. If she hurts you, I will gut her. It will do you both some good to remember who I am.”

  “I’ll never forget,” he says, and I drop my head, ashamed to know what he thinks of me. “You’re my home, how could I not remember that?” he asks before tugging my hand so I land in his arms. “You’re the only home I’ve ever had and you’ll always have my heart,” he whispers.