Savage Things (Chaos & Ruin Book 2) (8 page)

Someone slaps me on the back. Another guy in a pale grey suit with a dark wet stain down the lapel hands me a fifty-dollar bill and laughs like a hyena as he tells me I won him three grand tonight. More people thank me, congratulate me, and shake my hand, but I don’t really hear the words coming from their mouths. All I’m thinking about is Kaya Rayne’s mouth wrapped around that red vine. Kaya Rayne’s mouth wrapped around my dick.
 

God damn, that woman is dangerous.

******

I am electric, alive, filled from head-to-toe with an exhausted energy as I jog across the parking lot toward the truck. By rights I should be exhausted after a long, stressful day like today, but fighting always does this to me. If I were in bed with a woman right now, I could fuck for hours. I could come over and over again and it wouldn’t matter. This kind of buzz doesn’t dissipate at the drop of a hat. It lingers, keeps your mind sharp, honing your senses so you’re aware of everything. I’m considering driving straight back to St. Peter’s, foregoing sleep altogether, but then my mind flashes white, all thought vanishing instantly as I notice the black Camaro parked up beside my truck. I’d know that Camaro anywhere; I see it every day, pulling up outside the Blood & Roses Fighting Gym.
 

What the
fuck
is Zeth doing here? He knows about the underground cage fights that take place at French’s, he must, everyone does, but I never expected to see him here. No way.
 

I slow my jog down to a walk, my heart suddenly thumping out of rhythm, spiking, shock waves of adrenalin rushing my head and my arms, skin tingling. There’s no such thing as luck in this world, either good or bad. It’s no happy coincidence that the crazy bastard from across the street has somehow managed to come across my truck and has accidentally parked beside it, when the rest of the parking lot is fucking empty. No, he’s been waiting for me here for god knows how long, and I really don’t want to find out why.
 

No good trying to slink off into the shadows now, though. He must have seen me, the same way I’ve seen him. I’m condemning myself if I bolt. I try to loosen the stiffness that’s settled in my shoulders as I walk directly to the driver’s side window of the Camaro, already planning out what I’m going to say to him.
 

‘Oh, hey, man.’
(Insert enigmatic smile here
.
)
‘You came to the fights? D’you see Jameson Rayne destroy Ben Farminger in the first round? Crazy, right?’

Or…

‘Hey, Zeth. What brings you out to the Markets on this fine evening? Couldn’t sleep?’

When I reach his window and the glass slides down, though, I don’t say a word. Inside the front seat, Zeth sits as still as a statue, staring straight ahead out of his windscreen, one hand resting on the steering wheel, the other resting on the Camaro’s gear stick. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t breathe a word.
 

He knows.
 

I exhale, letting my head hang, my chin nearly hitting my chest. Zeth starts the Camaro’s engine, and I know what’s expected of me. Fuck Lowell. Fuck this whole day. Fuck my fucking life. I go around and climb into the front passenger seat beside him; Zeth throws the car into gear as soon as my ass is in the seat and the door is closed behind me. The inside of the car smells like lemon and leather soap, like it’s just been detailed.
 

“She threatened to take her away,” I say quietly. “I couldn’t let her do that, man. Millie’s been through enough. She’s just a kid.”

Zeth grunts, eyes still fixed on an unknown point in the road. I don’t expect kindness or understanding from a man like him. His reputation precedes him. He’s a cold-blooded killer. Lowell wouldn’t be chasing him down so hard if she weren’t one hundred percent sure he is responsible for the death of the girl on the mountain. So perhaps this is how it ends: me being driven off into the night, my sister still in the hospital, destined to wake up tomorrow, wondering where the fuck I am. Maybe I’m about to give Lowell the evidence she needs to put Mayfair away once and for all. Zeth could be driving me out into the wilds, where he’s already found the perfect spot to dump my freshly dead body into a freshly dug grave. All I know is I’m in big, big fucking trouble, and there’s no way out of it now.
 

Chapter Eight

ZETH

There are only a few rules I live by. I can count them on one hand. First: if you’re going to kill a man, make sure he’s definitely dead before you dispose of the body. Second: Always check every room for a potential threat when you enter an empty house. Third: If something seems too good to be true, it definitely fucking is. Lastly, fourth: never snitch on someone, no matter how fucking terrible they are.
Ever
.
 

 
It was never an option to hand Charlie Holsan over to the police. It was never a consideration that I might be able to hand him over to Seattle’s boys in blue and let them do their jobs. They might have prosecuted him, finally bringing him to justice for all of the terrible atrocities he committed throughout his life, putting him away forever. Holsan could have spent every last breath he took locked behind bars, his freedom taken away until he finally died in his prison issue cot, his bones aching, crippled with arthritis, but I couldn’t have given them the information they needed to make it happen. Fuck no. It’s just not how things are done.
 

Mason Reeves remains still as I drive through the night. I had to come clean when Sloane called and told me what she’d overheard. I had to pick him up and figure this shit out once and for all. Typical that Mason would end up in St. Peter’s, and typical that it would have to be
my
girlfriend that treated his sister. The world is just too fucking small sometimes. Sloane was not happy with me at all for keeping Lowell’s presence a secret, not happy at all, but she was far more concerned over what I had planned for the guy. She could hear the cold violence in my voice, no doubt. She knew all too well what that meant, and she didn’t like it. Took forever to convince her to leave the hospital and go home, to get some sleep and wait for me there, but she’d finally agreed. And now, here I am driving Mason across the city toward the warehouse, wondering how the hell I’m supposed to deal with this situation. I gave up killing people, yes, but shit. I also swore I’ll do anything I have to in order to make sure Sloane is safe, no matter fucking what, and let’s face it: I’m still so fucking mad at him. I’m so mad I could quite easily lose control and snap his neck.

Mason watches with alert eyes as we head across the city, moving toward the water and the docklands. I’ve had grown ass men in the same position as Mason, zip tied and thrown into the trunk of this Camaro, crying their fucking eyes out, and yet the kid just climbed in and hasn’t made a peep since. There’s something to be said about that.
 

When we reach the warehouse, Michael’s standing in the open doorway, a rectangle of bright light blaring out into the darkness behind him. The deep navy blue suit he’s wearing is immaculate as ever. I swear the guy’s wardrobe must be worth thousands and thousands of dollars. He opens up Mason’s door for him and stands back so he can get out.
 

“Hey, man,” Mason says.
 

Michael smiles at him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Better come inside, huh?” He sounds a little sad—bastard’s supposed to be on my side, not feeling sorry for the guy who’s been feeding information to the woman hell-bent on destroying our lives. I shoot him a dark look, and Michael just shrugs. He’s not sorry in the slightest. Some right hand man he’s gonna be tonight. I follow them inside the warehouse, pulling the heavy sliding door back into place behind us and locking it shut, and then I make my way into the living room, where I find Sloane sitting on the couch with her hands knotted together, her face as white as a sheet.
 

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I growl. “What happened to waiting at home, getting some sleep?” I spin on Michael, ready to punch the traitor in the head. “And you? What the fuck were you thinking, letting her come here?”

Michael arches an eyebrow at me, sighing. “You know your girlfriend better than anyone else, man. If you think there was any element of ‘allowing’ her to do something here, then you’re giving me far too much credit.”

“You should have picked her the fuck up and forced her to go home,” I snarl.

“I threatened it. Then Sloane helpfully pointed out what you’d do to me if I laid hands on her, and I decided to leave her to her own devices.”

I have nothing to say to that. Fair enough, I would have torn him limb from limb if Sloane had been manhandled in any way. Still, though. Fucking unbelievable that he’d just let her waltz in and make herself comfortable on the couch, knowing what’s about to happen to this kid.
 

“You can’t be mad at Michael,” Sloane says. Her voice is cool, filled with ice water. She’s pissed at me—I can see it in her eyes. I don’t need to hear her say the words, but still she says them anyway. “You should never have kept me in the dark on this. I should have known about Lowell from the start.”

“It could have been nothing,” I growl. “What would have been the point in worrying you?”
 

She glares at me with the intensity of a thousand suns. Not another word comes out of her mouth, but I can tell this matter is far from resolved.
 

“I can come back later if you like?” Mason says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. Smart ass.
 

I give him a look that makes the small smile slide right off his face. “Just sit the fuck down.”

He obeys, sitting down opposite Sloane. He gives her a barely visible nod of the head. “So you guys know each other. I guess this explains why you were so frosty when I came back into the room earlier,” he says. “I had no idea. I’m really sorry, Dr. Romera.”

Sloane clears her throat. She looks around the room, before she finally lets her gaze rest on the kid. “I had no idea you were training with Zeth, either. Tell us about Lowell. Why are you helping her? And what does she want to know?”
 

She’s asked the burning question we’ve been trying to figure out ever since I laid eyes on Lowell again. Sloane has also asked another question I probably wouldn’t have bothered with: what were Mason’s motives for helping her? See, this is the difference between a person like Sloane, a
normal
person, and a person like me. She cares about the
why
. She gives a shit about the reasoning behind someone’s actions. I don’t care about that. I only care about Mason’s betrayal, right alongside the consequences of that betrayal.
 

Mason rubs the back of his neck, shaking his head. “She knew about Millie. She said she was going to have her taken away if I didn’t help her. She wanted me to find out if Zeth ever went up into the mountains. One specific place. They found a body buried up there. Some dog walker’s Lab was going nuts, digging in the dirt. A nearby river flooded in all the rain we had a couple of weeks ago, and a body was unearthed. When forensics did their thing, they found a partial print that belonged to Zeth. That’s all I know.”

My stomach muscles clench tight, as if I’ve just been sucker punched hard to the gut. What the fuck is he talking about? A body buried by a river in the mountains? A partial print? Of course, I know exactly what the fuck he’s talking about, but I don’t want to admit it to myself. This can’t be happening. Just fucking
can’t
. Less than a few months ago, we buried a body up there in the mountains, but we buried her deep. We buried her in the most secluded spot we could find, where she would be at peace, where she wouldn’t have to suffer any further.

We didn’t count on the floodwaters loosening the soil, though. There was no way to know the storms that hit Seattle recently would unearth her, disrupting her final resting place.
 

Sloane and Michael exchange a wary look. They both know what this means, too. They found my sister. They found Lacey.
 

******

SLOANE

I’ve seen Zeth angry before, too many times to recall, but this time it’s different. This time his anger is tinged with a pain he usually tries to tamp down and forget about, but now he’s being forced to face it head on, and it’s more than he can bear. My beautiful, wild Zeth. Still so torn apart inside by grief that he can’t even say his sister’s name. I’m still mad at him, yes, but I’m also hurting so bad for him right now.
 

“No doubt they found more than a partial print on her,” Michael’s saying somewhere in the distance. “We all touched her. Every last one of us helped lower her into the ground.”

“I’m the only one with a criminal record. My fingerprints are the only ones in their database.” He sounds stunned. None of us ever thought we’d be faced with this problem. We’ve tiptoed around the subject of Lacey because no one really wants to deal with the fresh, brightly burning pain of her loss yet. Not even me, who knew her so briefly. I loved her, though. It was impossible not to. The indignity of her body being dug up by a Labrador is significant; it feels as though we’ve disrespected her in the worst way, allowing her remains to be now poked and prodded at by a forensic team as well.
 

“And so Lowell just somehow managed to find out about this and came back here?” I say. “It makes no sense. This isn’t her jurisdiction. A murder has nothing to do with drugs. Not necessarily, anyway.”

Mason says, “She said she has homicides in this area flagged. She thinks they’re all linked to some motorcycle gang over in New Mexico who deal weed.”

Zeth laughs bitterly. “The Widow Makers don’t deal weed. Maybe they used to run it from state to state every once in a while, but not in a long ass time.”

For a moment, we all sit in silence, mulling on the information we’ve just received. Lowell’s trying to pin Lacey’s murder on Zeth. Ironic that he’s killed a fair few people in his time and yet Lacey, the one person he didn’t kill, is potentially going to mean trouble for him. Perhaps Lowell knows Zeth isn’t responsible for Lacey’s death, and perhaps she doesn’t. Either way, she’ll bend every rule and limbo under red tape until she finds a way to make the charge stick.