Never Ever: Book One Perdition MC (16 page)

She snorted derisively, clamping her lips shut when
Nasa
slanted a silencing glance her way. “And just what kind
of cooperation exactly, do you need from Mrs. Morningstar?” He asked, and Agent
Granger pilled one of the many files from his pile to flip open, trying to
slide crime scene photos under another page. Photos of her father’s compound,
of the burnt, twisted bodies of her family. Her stomach churned. “She’s been
wanted for questioning in the deaths of two rival motorcycle gangs, for the
past eight years.” Roar stiffened underneath her, his hand settling on the
curve of her stomach to rub soothingly. Though she wasn’t sure if he was doing
it to calm himself, or her. “Why now, after all this time?”
Nasa
asked, and Granger pulled his hand down the length of his tie, “Agent Jackson
reported her missing after the firefight and subsequent fire to the Tornado
motorcycle compound, when by all accounts she should have been there.”

Nasa
gave her a nod to answer, and she
pressed her lips together before answering. “I was sent an anonymous email,
alerting me to the fact that my fiancé was a racist, Hitler loving Nazi. I was
a little tweaked by this news, seeing as how my father’s motorcycle
club
,
was having issues with a racist, Hitler loving
gang
of Nazi’s infringing
on their turf. I was not aware until today, that the man who asked me to marry
him, was an officer of the law.” Granger wrote that down, “As you can surmise,
Agent Jackson was in deep cover, infiltrating the drug, gun and human trafficking
going on in that Nazi skinhead gang. He reported to his superior officers that
the higher ups in that gang had decided to use you as a way in, in their plan
to assimilate the
Torandos
into their business.”
Nasa
looked at her again and gave a blink of assent. “Yeah,
I figured that out a while ago. Not him being undercover, but the skinheads
deciding I was the weak link in the chain.”

“Is that why you disappeared and took fifty million
dollars worth
of drug money with you?”

Roar was stiff as a board by this point, while she remained
calm and unruffled, knowing full well that her financials were being looked
into right now, and all the agents could prove was that she ran a legit
business selling plants. “I disappeared, because I was mildly concerned that
the people responsible for massacring my family on the day I was supposed to
get married, might decide to come looking for me. And what I took with me, was
a beater car registered to nobody, my purse,
the
cash
in my wallet which I’m pretty sure was under five hundred dollars, and the
clothes on my back.”

“We found your prints at two different confirmed safe houses,
owned by your father and grandfather.”

“I cleaned up after both of them, did their laundry, made dinner
for them and pushed a vacuum around their carpet. Sometimes I would do it for
one of the other brothers when my dad asked, whether or not it was a safe
house, they didn’t tell me.”

“Agent Jackson reported that earning your trust was
difficult, and that you rarely gave out information on your father’s business
dealings.”

“Agent Jackson’s reports are accurate then, and I didn’t give
him any information on my father’s business, because I wasn’t involved with any
of it.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Not even at their garage?”

“I brought my car in a few times a month for oil changes or
to have the tires rotated, but my father was a misogynist. So was my
grandfather, for that matter. If I wasn’t cleaning something, bringing food or
having my car serviced, I had no business being there.”

“You’re saying you had no knowledge of the illegal activities
going on in your father and grandfather’s businesses, or within the motorcycle
gang?”

“Aside from the illegal gambling they did when some of the
boys went two towns over to mess around in the underground fighting arenas?
No.”

More scratching of the pen, more purposeful pauses in between
questions, and one very annoyed uniformed officer with her bag of sweet potato
fries and a pair of pulled pork street tacos. She smiled at him in thanks, and
after a glare from Granger, the guy left. But he came back a few minutes later
with a bottle of water and a ginger ale with a straw for her. The uniform
nodded to
Roar
like they were pals, didn’t say a word,
and then left. “So you know nothing about the fifty million that was supposed
to be hidden between the two safe houses we found your prints at?” She sipped
at the ginger ale and nibbled on a fry, not having realized how ravenous she
was. Must have been the dust up. “I have no idea what was, or wasn’t supposed
to be, or what safe houses you’re talking about. The club owned a lot of
property.”

Frustrated and starting to show it, Granger pulled out
pictures of the two houses she remembered hitting right before she’d taken off.
The second one was where she’d changed out of her wedding dress and into a
slutty jean skirt left behind by one of the club sluts, and a man’s t-shirt.
Her wedding dress had gone into the trash, and there was a picture of it too.
“That house is the one my father let me use to get changed before the wedding,
as it was closer to the compound than my place. It’s where I went after I
decided to get lost before anyone could find me and shoot me, or set me on
fire. And there wasn’t fifty million dollars laying around in the living room,
I’d have remembered that. How did you find me, by the way?”

“We’ll get to that in a minute. What knowledge did you have
of the rivalry going on between your father’s club and the skinheads?”

“Very little. My father told me to watch my ass, because
skinheads were moving into their territory and he didn’t like that. Whatever
rivalry there was, he kept me out of it on purpose. Girls were going missing
around town, and he’d have been pissed if one of them was me.”

“About the time you went missing, several drug rehabilitation
facilities were suddenly gifted with large cash donations.”

“Lucky them. How’d you find me?”

She was glad she hadn’t eaten much of her meal, because
Granger slid a pair of photos across the table to where Top was sitting, and
asked him a question he already knew the answer to. “Do you know either of
these individuals?” She watched his face turn to granite, and his dark eyes go
black as he stared at the pictures.
Nasa
straightened
from his sprawl beside them, and Roar’s hands firmed on her body. “They’re two
of mine. Frank Henderson and his wife, Susan.” Bile churned in her stomach at
his answer, tears immediately welling in her eyes because she knew, she knew
from the look on Top’s face, that the pictures he was looking at, were morgue
photos. “They were killed in what appears to be a random robbery, four days ago
just outside of Carson City. When I heard about Mr. Henderson’s ties to your
club and as a private investigator for your business, and how he’d been asking
for public death records involving specific gang related violence, I looked
into it. And I found you, Mrs. Morningstar, when I came here to speak to your
husband and his business partners, due to the nature of those public records
and their central theme of skinheads and Tornados.” Susan and Pike were dead,
because they had been looking into her past.

Susan and Pike, were dead.

Chapter Seventeen

She’d checked out. Another two hours of questions and bullshit
answers, and Ever still hadn’t said a mother fucking word. She just sat on his
lap with her cheek on his chest and stared at the table top with vacant,
unseeing eyes. She didn’t even blink when he called an end to the whole shit
show and stood up with her in his arms. She didn’t say a thing, when he walked
her out of the station and put her down in the back of the truck beside him.
Didn’t respond when he got her home and
Squatch
went
crazy, happy to see him and jumped up on the furniture to try and lick his
face. Didn’t fight him when he peeled her out of her dirty clothes, and his,
and got them in the shower. She let him wash her, didn’t even wiggle away when
he spent longer than he needed to, rubbing on her distended belly. It wasn’t
until he curled down with her in their bed, that the damn broke and she cried a
river against his chest.

Pen and Saint went to Nevada to take care of Pike and Susan’s
bodies, to have Pike’s Fat Boy shipped home, and two days later they buried
them side by side. Ever stood next to him at the gravesite in a black dress
that at any other time would have inspired him to fuck her silly. It was long
sleeved and low cut, showing off the beauty of what being pregnant had done to
her tits, and hugged every curve from there down to her knees. He loved how it
outlined her belly, loved that the world saw just how much she belonged to him,
that she was carrying his son inside her.

 It was cold out, but aside from a pair of black stockings
and an expensive looking pair of knee high boots, that dress was all she was
wearing. She’d pulled her hair up into a big bun at her nape, had a pair of
huge black sunglasses on and a dark stone on a long silver chain around her
neck. Something Susan had given her, she said. Any other time, he would have
been strutting like a prize rooster to have her walking next to him. But not
today.

Preacher kept the service short and sweet, thank fuck,
because he didn’t know if he could have handled even a minute more of the fat,
silent tears
Ever
was crying while she stared at the
gaping holes in the ground where their friends were being lowered. She stayed
curled to his side, being the strong bitch he knew she was, but a flash of
light caught his attention and he looked up to see the last fuckin person on
earth he wanted to see, standing within a hundred miles of her.

Her lying, son of a bitch, dick ATF ex.

Saint touched his shoulder and a quick look at him confirmed
that his brother had seen him too, and he tilted his head silently at Ever.
Saint nodded and stepped back to be ready to take her to the car. “Babe, need a
minute. Saint’s
gonna
take you to the car, okay?” She
nodded, and he tipped her head up to softly kiss her, almost smiling when she
murmured,
“Don’t
fuck him up too bad. Not today.” He
huffed and kissed her again, “Maybe tomorrow?” Her lips quivered like she
wanted to smile too, but didn’t have the power to make it just yet. “Maybe
tomorrow.” He nodded, taking a minute to palm her belly, loving how he felt his
son give a little flip inside her, imagining that he did it on purpose. His
heart gave one hell of a lurch, “Go, I’ll be right there.” He watched Saint
wrap his arm around her shoulders, watched her tilt her head to his chest and
wrap both arms around his waist while they slowly walked to the line of cars
parked behind the long row of gleaming Harley’s.

It took effort to tear himself away from the sight of her,
but he did, and moved to walk over to where Agent fuckin Jackson of the ATF was
standing, crossing his arms to firmly plant his hands under his pits to keep
from punching the fucker in his taped up nose. He wanted to do it so bad, his
fists hurt from how hard he clenched them, but he wouldn’t disrespect his
brother, dead in that box beside his bitch. Not today. “I’m surprised you got
balls enough left to show your face after what my woman did to you.” He grated
out, and the dark haired, fairly good looking suit huffed a laugh, then winced
when it jarred his beat up body. “Spent eight years, thinking she went down
some pipeline, couldn’t find her.”

“Glad you did then, for some fuckin closure or whatever.”

“Closure. Right.” The dick huffed, reaching up to rub at the
back of his neck, “Everly Taggart isn’t exactly the sort of woman you just…get
over.”

“Everly
Morningstar
, isn’t the kind of woman you use
to keep your fuckin cover either.”

“Funny, you know. I couldn’t find any record of you and Ever
having gotten married.”

It chapped his ass that the fucker had a point, but didn’t
have to mean he had to acknowledge it. He could drive the knife a little
deeper, and that felt like a fine thing to him. “What would have happened, if
she hadn’t gotten that email?” ATF boy’s jaw went white. “I’m guessing you
weren’t even there when the shooting started, when it counts, the rats don’t go
down with the ship. But she would have been there. She’d have been there in her
pretty white dress, waiting for you, and she’d have died in a bloodbath,
believing you were coming for her.” He sucked in a deep, satisfied breath and
nodded when the dick swallowed loudly, “I guess in a way I should be grateful,
your fuck up sent her running straight into my arms. I asked about you, you
know. You’ve got a career. No wife. No family. Nothing but the job.  Me? I
get to wake up with that beautiful, ball busting, bad ass bitch in my bed every
morning. Get to have her sweet ass on my bike. I get to see my son growing
inside her, feel him kicking against my hands. You got today, you got to see
her, and I think her reaction to seeing you made her feelings clear. You had
your chance to keep her safe and you fucked it up. My job now, and this is the
last time I want to see your face. You get me?”