Raw: The Ultimate Mc Collection (40 page)

Which is exactly what I was doing.  Well, wait - I mean the hoarding leads part.  I hadn’t yet fallen to the depths of sleeping with my boss.

And I was close to this story, in the weirdest of ways, but I wasn’t about to let Wyatt take over.

Wyatt was an asshole.

A premium, superman level, grade-A asshole.  And even though we were supposed to be working on stories together, we were also next in line for a very coveted promotion - Lead Investigative Reporter.  The only problem was that there was only one position available.

So, while the very essence of our jobs forced us to work together, we were also in competition with each other at all times.  Mature people might be able to handle that situation with grace, but Wyatt Williams was anything but mature or graceful.

He was a slimy snake of a man.

I can’t stand him.  Can you tell?

That’s why, that even though this story hit home in the worst possible way, I was determined that Wyatt wouldn't get the upper hand and end up with the job that I had passionately worked to get for over a decade.

And ensuring that didn’t happen mostly involved knowing when to keep my mouth shut.  Which was most of the time.  Even if I wasn’t keeping a lead to myself, I was still holding my tongue,  because my Mama taught me if I didn’t have anything nice to say, I shouldn’t say anything at all.

There were a lot of not nice things I could say about Wyatt.

“I’m not going anywhere, so you might as well stop suggesting it!” I growled at Wyatt, my patience worn thin and ragged.

“Well, don’t you think you owe it to Evie?” he asked, his obvious attempt at guilting me only serving to insult me and piss me off more.

“Fuck off, Wyatt.  You’re in no position to tell me what I do or don’t owe to Evie.  You know it’s complicated.”

“I understand that, Diana.  But I could also see how much you care for her when she visited the station, so I know you have to be torn up over this, even if she just came into your life.”

“Look, Wyatt, how about you stay out of my family business and I’ll stay out of yours…if you even have any!”  He was pissing me off royally, and at this point, I didn’t give a shit if I offended him or not.  It was only once the words were out of my mouth that I realized Wyatt had never spoken about his family before, ever.  The darkness that flickered in his eyes for a millisecond stopped me from going any farther.

He shut down as fast as he had started up.

“Evie seemed like a very nice girl, Diana.  I hope she’s found soon,” he said, before turning away and walking towards his dressing room.

I sighed and turned back to Tony, who had been watching this entire exchange with interest.

“He’s right, you know,” he said quietly.

“Whose side are you on?” I grumbled.

“You know I’m on yours, Ms. D, but I also know this can’t be easy on you.”

“Look, I just met her, okay?  It’s weird.  I know I’m supposed to be all torn up and everything, but for fuck’s sake, I’m not just going to stop doing my job because some long lost sister,
that I didn’t even know I had
, comes waltzing into my life one month before she goes missing!  And, besides, you know there’s no family I need to be with.  It’s best if I keep working.  That’s the only way I can help find her.”

“Okay, if you say so.  But listen to me, Ms. D. - if, at any time you change your mind, and want to take a few days off, you just let me know.  Okay?” he asked, his hazel eyes peering into mine.

I nodded and smiled at him.  Tony was one of the only friends I had at the station, and I knew he was only thinking about my well-being.

Unlike that slivering snake Wyatt.

“I’m going to go call the detective again,” I said before turning away from Tony.

“Okay, remember Ms. D - anytime, just say the word.”

“Okay, okay…I hear you. Thanks, Tony.”

I walked into my dressing room with my head filled with questions.  Questions about what I was supposed to do about this entire situation.  Questions about where in the world Evie could be. Questions about how my father found the audacity to live with himself while keeping it a secret from his family that he had another daughter out in the world.  Questions about exactly what my role was supposed to be in her life now that he was dead.  He had died five years ago of a heart attack and now here I was, apparently her only living relative. 

When she contacted me a month ago, I didn’t believe her at first.  It was easy to doubt her story over the phone but after reluctantly agreeing to meet her for coffee, I knew once I laid eyes on her that I couldn’t deny it any longer.  The resemblance between us was uncanny.  If I had a sister, she would have looked exactly like Evie.

After spending a few weeks trying to wrap my head around the situation, I decided I had to at least try to have a relationship with her.  I invited her to the station to look around.  I introduced her to my co-workers, including Wyatt, because she was so enthusiastic about being there, and we went out to lunch downtown afterwards. 

Although young and naive, she was undeniably charming and sweet.  In spite of everything, I liked her.  A lot.

I was having a hard time reconciling my feelings about my father now, but I was doing my best to keep the two things separated.  It wasn’t easy but I hoped in time I would understand exactly what happened, and come to some sort of grips with it.

My dad was human, I knew that.

Shit happens in life, I knew that too.

And sometimes the shit that happens produces a human being.

I was fine with all of that, honestly.  It was the lying part I was having the hardest time with.  He could have told us.  We would have dealt with it, instead of finding out years after he was already dead, when any chance of being a family was long gone.

At first, I thought he kept it a secret because he didn’t want to hurt my Mom.  But she died two years before he did, after spending a week in a coma after a stroke.  He could have told me afterwards, but for some reason, he chose not to.

I’d never know why.  And that was the hardest part.  All the unanswered questions.  All the wondering.  All the wasted years and all the ‘what-if’s’ that continued to wind their way into my thoughts.

I had had a lot of questions for Evie, but she had been vague with her answers.  She was raised by her single mother, never knowing who her father was until her mom died, too.  At least her mother had the decency to name her dad in her will.  When Evie discovered he was dead, too - she contacted me.

I think she wanted a lot more than I gave her, though.

And now, she was gone.  Vanished.  Just as quickly as she had appeared in my life.

I was worried about her, don’t get me wrong, I was terrified for her.  But I was having a hard time getting choked up about it.  If anything, it piqued my curiosity.

From an outsider and a journalist’s standpoint, the case was fascinating.  Three young women had gone missing in the last month.  Evie was the latest.  And, what my secret source in the police department told me but I was unable to report, was the fact that the evidence police had recovered at each scene that had enabled them to be so confident all three cases were linked, was in fact a calling card of sorts - a snake. 

Each girl had been taken from her apartment in the middle of the night, and when the police searched their apartments, each time they found a rattlesnake.

I shuddered to think about it.  Snakes terrified me and I couldn’t imagine what kind of freak would do something like that.

The big question was why?  And why Evie?

I had little idea of what her life was like before I met her, and the police weren’t much help.  I was hoping to hear some good news, any news, when I finally talked to the detective on the case.

But as soon as I heard his voice, I knew he had nothing for me.  And since I didn’t have anything new to report to him, our conversation ended within seconds.

I sighed, sitting back in my chair as I looked around my office.  For the first time, I realized just how sterile it was.  Outside of a picture of me and my mom and dad at my graduation from the University of Oregon sitting on my bookshelf, there were no personal items in my office at all.  Everyone else had pictures of their kids, their spouses, all kinds of kitschy souvenirs from family vacations and outings with co-workers.  I had none of that.

It was all my own fault, though.  I had sacrificed all that for my career.  Since graduating from college, I had been the nose-to-the-grindstone kind of career girl, the one that arrived first to the office and was the last to leave.  It had taken me years to realize that wasn’t what really helped you climb the ladder. It was dumb luck, a big break on a hot story, usually some back-biting and undermining of the co-worker you were just smiling at the day before, or good old-fashioned fucking the boss.  I wished it wasn’t like that, but I had seen enough after being in this business for the last ten years that proved it was true.

So, that’s where my head was when I decided to go to Evie’s job.  I didn’t know where she lived or the names of any of her friends, and the cops wouldn’t tell me a fucking thing.  All I knew was that she told me that she was a cocktail waitress at a strip club, the Kit Kat Klub.  I knew the detectives had been there but they wouldn’t share anything they had learned during their investigation, saying ‘it could hurt the case’.  Such bullshit.

I knew I had no choice but to go there myself.  Have a drink, take in the scene, maybe chat up the bartender or a dancer.

It wasn’t far from the station, and I decided to go there immediately.  As much as I wished I had someone to go with me, I didn’t.

Sacrificing my social life was really paying off.

In more ways than one
, I thought to myself as I threw my purse over my shoulder.  Not only did I not have any friends, I didn’t have a boyfriend, either.  A boyfriend, hell, a
date
would be nice.  I hadn’t been laid in months.

Although, that last time had sure been memorable.  The most memorable fuck of my life, by far.  I still shuddered when I thought about how much danger I had put myself in when I agreed to go back to the clubhouse of a renegade motorcycle club.  I had known better - I wasn’t naive - but damn if the Gods of Chaos MC hadn’t been the most intriguing group of men I had ever laid eyes on, and when the sexiest of them all had turned his charms on me, winding me around his fingers, his tantalizing invitation oozing from his mouth like some silky smooth concoction…
fuck
.  I found myself on the back of his bike before I could even get the word ‘yes’ across my lips.

Slade.

That’s it.  Just Slade.  I didn’t know his last name.  Hell, I didn’t know if he even had a last name.  

But I knew everything else that I needed to know.  Like the way his callused fingers scraped across my nipple, or the way his teeth caught the skin on my neck between them, gently biting down until I was crying out for him to bite harder.  Or the way his eyes flashed right before they closed, that moment before his lips landed on mine, and the way his impossibly long lashes fluttered when he kissed me deeper.  I knew, because I had watched.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off of him.  When we were kissing, I kept my eyes open, engraving the vision on my brain so I’d never forget.  When he had me shuddering, my juices flowing over his long, skilled fingers, my thighs quivering violently as I thrashed around under his devilish smile, I kept my eyes on him.  I was afraid if I closed them, he would vanish.  That he would be some sort of dream that my starved body had conjured up to stop itself from turning to dust.

So I didn’t close them.  Not once.

I watched him all night.  His kisses trailed on to every inch of my skin, the shimmering remnants nourishing me, hydrating a deep, empty well that I had ignored for way too long.

That night had been incredible.  And I had given in, let him take me wherever he wanted to go, blindly following him in the darkness of his room to the edges of cliffs that I didn’t even know existed.

Slade.

He had rocked me to my very core.

And then he was gone.

Or, rather, I was.

The next morning, I went back to my life, finished up my report on the amazing story of Lacey Carrington, leaving out the part of the story about how the Gods of Chaos MC and Solid Ground, a group of underground rescuers of abused women, had saved Lacey, a former prostitute and victim of sex trafficking, from a horrific situation involving the slimy Mayor of Seattle.