Knight (94 page)

“I’m gonna make sure you’re safe,” I said. “Then I’m leaving.”

“Where will you go?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“What will you do?”

I held my arms out. “It doesn’t matter. Time to go.”

“But what about the deal?” She planted herself in the motel. It’d take a slap to her ass to get her to move. “Sacrilege MC doesn’t spend thousands of dollars they don’t have to hire someone to steal women away. And Kingdom isn’t holding me for money. You have to know something.”

I forced her coat into her arms. “I don’t ask questions. If you were smart, you wouldn’t either. You might not always like the answers.”

“Oh, I have plenty of questions.”

I didn’t doubt it. She raised her chin.

“Who’s Rose? What’s Anathema? Why didn’t you black out your ink yet? What did you do to Temple to piss them off?”

I shoved her into the wall and held her there, my forearm to her throat.

I towered over the girl. It took less effort to keep her still than it did to haul my crashed bike off the road. She didn’t reach for my arm. Martini went limp, but her stare met mine and matched the rage seething from my strength with her own resonating stubbornness.

 “Darling, I answer those questions and I guaran-
fucking
-tee you’d wish you never asked.”

We had wasted enough time. I grabbed her wrist and forced her out the door, tossing the room key on the ground and guiding her to an exit. She didn’t say a word as I slammed her on my bike. The Harley started. It was more reliable than anything else in my life.

“Something happened to Rose.” Martini laced her fingers over my chest. Each touch was like a dagger’s bite. “That’s why you’re helping me. Something happened to her, and you blame yourself.”

I clenched my teeth. Three months passed since the rage last seized control. I inherited my temper from my father. My hands tightened over the handlebars. It was the only thing saving her from a smack across the mouth, and the only motion preventing me from shoving the gun under my chin and ending the fucking guilt once and for all.

“You say her name again, and I’ll leave you with Kingdom to rot.”

Martini tensed, but her voice softened. Not the placating whisper she used with Goliath. A real gentleness. A heart-breaking forgiveness I didn’t deserve.

“You won’t leave me because you’ll never let it happen again.”

I didn’t answer. She already sliced my throat, and I was content to bleed out. She said nothing else on the ride, just gripped me tight and leaned against me to protect herself from the wind and bitter truth of what was about to happen.

The highway let out in forest. I followed the lone road beyond civilization and into the back-ass woods where lone cabins dotted the streams fed from the lake. My phone buzzed again. I didn’t look until we pulled in front of the addressed safehouse—a little summer home that might have once entertained a happy family. Now, Kingdom boarded up the windows and hid their grizzly pack inside. A padlocked garage probably housed their boat. Two jeeps parked in the grass.

No one moved in the cottage.

I ignored the text from Rose.

Martini hopped off the bike and fluffed her hair. She was probably five feet tall, but a good four feet of that was just bluff. She zipped her jacket higher and stared at the quiet house.

Kingdom hadn’t called to ask why I was late with their delivery.

I knew why.

“Brew.” Martini pointed to the rickety porch and the swing collapsed against the rotting floorboards. “Why is the door open?”

Fresh, single tire tracks imbedded out of the mud along the driveway. Only one. They rode in, stopped in the mud, then spun out as they left in a hurry.

Martini read the tracks and came to the same conclusion.

I pulled my gun.

“Stay here,” I said. “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound. I’ll be right back.”

She nodded. I didn’t need to tell her twice to keep the bike warm.

I eased onto the porch. The scent of death wafted outside, the fresh reek of ambush and bloodshed. I edged open the door. Only the darkness of a cloudy autumn morning greeted me. No sound. No TV or laughing, no shuffling or swearing.

Whatever happened, happened quick. The coffee table knocked over. One of the fancy kinds with the glass plate in the middle. The glass shattered, but nothing else was disturbed.

I peeled the corner with my bad shoulder first. It screamed as I lifted my arm and aimed the gun.

I found what I came for.

The dining room was once a quaint little set-up. China cabinet built into the wall. A hand-crafted cherry dining set with matching chairs lined up under a sparkling chandelier. Perfect for a small family.

Except five severed heads positioned at the table, hacked from their bodies and rolled before each place setting. Kingdom’s cuts served as placemats.

A bullet pierced through each head. I recognized Rivet. His expression registered only shock. The others didn’t have time to react before they were killed and desecrated.

Anathema never sent messages like this, even to the asshole brothers who split to form The Coup.

This wasn’t the violence a small crew inflicted. Tough MCs tossed bricks through windows and dented cars with hammers.

Beheadings were the markings of a cartel.

It was a damn good thing Martini slept beside me in a filthy motel. One of the heads might have been hers.

Her scream echoed from outside. I sprinted from the house, but she was nowhere near my bike.

I swore and circled around back, to the pretty garden fenced in with white-washed wood protecting orange and gold mums. Martini found the headless bodies, stripped naked and tossed in the flowers.

She clawed through her panic and stared at me, her eyes glassy in horror.

Then she bolted into the woods.

They were killed.

All of them. Murdered. Left to rot in a tiny garden.

None of them had heads.

I ran, but I couldn’t sprint far enough. Brambles tangled in my legs, and branches snagged in my hair. Nothing slowed me down, but I couldn’t outrun what I saw.

And neither could my stomach.

I fled until my side cramped and warred with every part of me jarred from the accident. My collapse wasn’t elegant. Neither was what I heaved from my stomach. But the sickness was good. Something tangible. A way for me to expel everything haunting and terrible from my body and mind.

I stood only to get sick again.

Apparently, there were a
lot
of terrible things festering inside me. I doubted I’d get them all out without clawing at my insides.

The men were all
murdered
.

Someone desecrated their bodies, sliced their heads off, and tossed their remains haphazardly behind the house for the scavenging animals to eat.

If we hadn’t got into the accident last night, if Brew hadn’t bought me dinner, if we hadn’t hidden in the hotel room from Temple...I would have been tossed into the garden with them.

I wouldn’t think about that. Not while the murderer might have lurked nearby. Watching the house.

Waiting for us to get there.

Waiting for me.

Christ. I didn’t know where I was running, but I ran until my lungs filled with panic as thick as mud. I slid to the ground and panted.

Jesus, how had I got mixed up in this? First Goliath, then the beatings, then the club business. I leaned against a tree and closed my eyes. It didn’t help.

Goliath hadn’t cared about the accident. Hadn’t asked if I was hurt. Hadn’t even cared where I was. He demanded only two things.

Did I make it to Kingdom’s safehouse
.

Did I fuck it up.

What the hell would he say when he realized the men were dead? Or was that how it was always supposed to play out?

How deep did this go?

The jumbled questions blurred my composure into slippery, useless panic. I breathed. It did nothing. The breath lodged itself between the fear of what happened and the horrors yet to come. I coughed it out.

I had to figure this all out. That was step one. Figure out what to do. Who to tell.

Who to trust.

That answer was easy. Red.

My heart stuttered and stopped, split down the middle like the poor bastards trapped in the garden.

Red was supposed to be up here. He went to find the money and rescue me from groping hands, not hacksaws to the neck.

What if he made it here? What if he was one of the dead?

I pulled out my phone. My grip sweated, and the phone fell to the dirt. I dove, murmuring my prayer as I fought with the jerking, thickened movements of my terror to call the one bastard in the world that cared for me even after I made every wrong decision, slept with every wrong guy, and lost myself in the wrong world. My cousin was no saint, but Red was all I had.

I dialed and prayed he wasn’t one of the bodies hauled into the woods.

One ring. Two rings. Three rings and a scream tore through my throat and pooled the blood at my feet. I tasted the panic attack, and it wouldn’t be pretty.

Four rings.

“Martini?”

Red’s smooth voice rolled like Crown Royal, the stuff I hid behind the bar when the guys stumbled in after a run. My lungs might have detonated into a sob if I hadn’t tasted a dozen expletives to fire at my cousin. I gripped the phone until my fingers turned white.

“
Red—fucking answer your phone when someone calls!
”

“What the hell—”

“You’re alive!”

He snorted. “Hardly. I’m stuck in Philly.”

Never had such a horrible fate sounded so perfect. I collapsed against the tree. This time, I let the tears roll over my cheek—only because no one was looking, and no one could use it to their advantage.

“They’re all dead.”

“What?” Red asked.

“All of them. Five of them. Maybe more. They’re all dead.”

Whatever chuckle rounded from his lips abruptly silenced. “Who is dead?”

“
They
are. They’re dead. Dead, Red.”

The rhyme sounded childish. I nearly giggled. I might have used his real name, but Ryan was as dead as the men in the garden. Lost his scholarship, lost his way, lost his mind. Ryan abandoned a life of medicine and potential for a different kind of forensics. Hands-on training—crime scene investigating for those who didn’t want to call the cops. He guaranteed a quiet and effective clean-up service for those who needed to dispose of their vendettas as discretely as possible. Then he dropped out of school, entered the MC, and made a name for himself as
Red
—someone to call when five decapitated bodies piled in a backyard.

“Who is dead? Jesus Christ, hold on.” Red muffled the phone with his hand. The scratchy grumble of a street corner hummed over the line, but he ducked inside a building and slammed a door. The sudden silence only made his question harsher. “What the fuck is happening?”

“They’re dead!”

“Yeah. I get that.
Who
is dead, Martini? Take a fucking breath and talk to me. Christ.”

“Kingdom MC.”

Now it was his turn to panic.

“You’re not serious.”

“Kingdom MC is dead. The ones we were supposed to meet. We’re here. They’re dead.”

“Are you sure?”

“The headless bodies were a clue, but I’ll go back and ask if they’re horsing around.”

“Holy shit.”

My trembling returned—more epileptic fit than shuddered fear. But that was good. Shivering meant I was feeling something. What I saw hadn’t destroyed my mind. I blinked and imagined the bodies. After a drink or ten, maybe the image would fade.

Red’s voice lowered. “You gotta tell me who’s dead. What members? Is anyone else there?”

“Anyone else? Holy shit, we needed a priest for last rites hours ago.” I tugged at my hair. I liked the pain. I normally did, but this time it wasn’t someone else’s hand keeping my attention. It was my own, and the bite focused me on the present. “No one told me I’d be walking into a damned graveyard. What the hell were Sam and Goliath thinking sending me into a fucking gunfight?”

“A gunfight—Martini, what the hell—”

“Three men came after us. I just wanted to stop for a milkshake, talk to him a little. I was trying to get some information out of him.”

“What? Who?”

“Brew.”

“Brew?”

Fuck. “Noir.”

Red exhaled with a profanity. “Three men killed Kingdom?”

“No! Well…maybe. Just fucking listen to me. I had a milkshake. I mean, we stopped at a diner to eat, and Temple MC came in. Three officers. They chased us out of the diner.”

“
Temple
?”

“They must have known Noir. They followed us all over God’s country before Noir took two of them out. Or maybe he didn’t. They might still be around. After we crashed, I don’t remember what happened—”

“
Crashed
?”

“Red, I’m in trouble. Something is happening here. Something big. Sam and Goliath got us into trouble, and now we have
got
to get out.”