Trouble: Crooked Souls MC (18 page)

“I know she didn’t. And I can tell you cared for her.” I told him what he needed to hear, even though the words were half-stuck in my throat. I didn’t know any such thing. How could he have cared for her if he had killed her? But I had to keep him talking. If he was talking, he wasn’t killing me.
Oh, Gabriel, please hurry.

“I did. I loved her.” A tear rolled down his cheek. “You believe me, right? You believe I loved her?”

I nodded. I would tell him whatever he needed to hear, even though my skin crawled and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to hold back the accusations I had for him. “Of course. I can see it. I can hear it in your voice when you talk about her. Only someone who loved her would talk that way.”

He nodded, looking relieved that someone believed him. I wished I could take a scalding hot shower to wash away all the dirt I felt on me and inside me. What he had felt for my sister was a sick, perverted excuse for love. No way he could have truly loved her if he’d killed her.

“What happened, then?” I asked as gently as I could. “I know you didn’t mean whatever it was, because you loved her. But how did it happen? Was it a fight?”

“Yeah, we were fighting.” He finally let go of my hair, his hand falling to his side. He stared at the floor. I saw tears dripping onto to burned carpet.

“I know how stubborn she could be. It was nearly impossible to win a fight with her once she really sank her teeth into whatever she was fighting about.” He nodded like he was relieved somebody finally understood what he had been going through with her.

He shook his head, still looking at the floor. “I kept telling her to let it go, that it didn’t have anything to do with her. But she wouldn’t. She kept getting in my face and calling me names. She said I was better than what was I doing.” He looked at me and laughed bitterly. “I wasn’t, you know. She thought I was, but I wasn’t. She thought I was so much better than I was. How funny is that? She didn’t really know me. She only saw what she wanted to see.”

The first truly self-aware thing I’d heard from his mouth so far. “What was it you were involved with? I don’t understand.”

He sighed. “She knew I was selling drugs on the side. Even Gabriel didn’t know about it. The rest of the club didn’t know either. Only these two.” He jerked his thumb in their direction. They looked absolutely riveted by his story. I wished I could knock their stupid heads together.

“And when she found out, she lost it, I guess.” I nodded sympathetically, all the while wondering why the hell she hadn’t gotten away from him as soon as she found out.
Bad move, honey
, I thought. I was sure she was smarter than that. I had hoped she was, anyway. For a clever girl, she could be awfully stupid.

“She did. You know how she was. She wouldn’t let it go. She was…well, she was like you. You wouldn’t let it go either. I think that’s what got me more upset than anything else. You reminded me of how she wouldn’t let go of our fight, even when I told her I wanted her to.”

I nodded again, like I understood every word. “I know how impossible she was,” I said. I hated talking about her in the past tense, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I didn’t want to push him over the edge. I kept my tone low and smooth, hoping to soothe him.

“She could be. But I loved her. I really did. She was the best thing that ever happened to me. The only good thing.” He smiled a little, then looked up at me. “I don’t know how much Gabriel told you about our lives when we were growing up, but there wasn’t much of anything that was nice or pretty or pure. She was pure, though. Sweet and pretty and nice. Not some tramp or skank, like I was used to.”

And you killed her. The only nice, pretty girl you ever knew. Way to go.
It was getting harder to hide my disgust, try as I might to avoid getting him upset.

“So what happened? I mean, you were fighting. I guess it got out of hand? I know how easy it is for that to happen.” I bit the inside of my cheek again, struggling to hold back the rage that was growing inside me. I hated to imagine what Sabrina had been through, but this was the only way to keep him talking.

He nodded, miserable. The tears were flowing more steadily. “Yeah. It got out of hand. She just got me so mad, I couldn’t see straight. She was pushing me and screaming at me and calling me all these names. She told me she thought I was better than what I was doing.” He laughed, and there was a bitter edge to it. “She was wrong. I wasn’t better than drugs. I’ve never been good enough for anything else. I’m trash.”

“I’m sure she didn’t see it that way, or else why would she have been with you?” Why, indeed? I still couldn’t understand it. Maybe he was like her penchant for the bird with the broken wing. She’d tried to bring one into the house, once, so she could nurse it back to health. We had compromised, me telling her she could keep it in a shoebox on the porch and take care of it only while wearing heavy gloves. Was Thorn another broken bird she thought she could fix? My poor, naïve girl.

“I never knew what she saw in me. I only thought I was lucky she saw it.” He wiped his face with the back of his hand and drew a shuddering breath. “Anyway, that’s all over now. I killed her, just like I kill every good thing in my life.”

I flinched involuntarily at the mention of her death. This was almost too painful, but I had to keep going, if only for her sake. “What finally happened? How did she push you that far?”

He shrugged. “I don’t even remember.” He was starting to blubber, his words running into each other. “I was a little high, and I wasn’t thinking straight. And she kept coming at me, and I only wanted her to shut up and stop yelling at me. But she wouldn’t. She kept going and going. So I hit her.”

I winced. He fell silent. Eventually, I had to ask, “That’s it?”

He nodded. “Just once, across the face. She fell and hit her head, and she stopped moving.” I closed my eyes. So that was how it happened. At least it had been fast.
Poor Sabrina. I’m so sorry. You deserved more than that.

My gaze shifted to the two idiots standing on the other side of the room. Sure enough, their dumbfounded expressions told me they had no idea how deep this all went. The whole time, they had thought it was only about drugs. What did he tell them to get them to trick me? Maybe that I knew and was going to tell the club? Or that my sister had known, and she told me? Something gave me the impression that whatever it was, he hadn’t needed to try hard to get them to believe him. They weren’t exactly the brightest bulbs.

“And that was it, huh? She just…died?”

He nodded. “I, like, tried to check her pulse and all that stuff, but I couldn’t find one.”

My brow furrowed. That was all he had done? Just tried to check her pulse? But if he had been high… “Then what?”

He cried harder and had to control himself enough to speak. I did what I could to keep my face blank. What right did he have to act so upset? I was the one who had lost the person closest to me, and he had the nerve to act like a grieving widower.

“I put her in her car and drove to the edge of town. I left her there, in the woods. I thought…I don’t know what I thought, really. Maybe the police would think she had an accident or something? I don’t know. I walked back home from there.” It took forever for him to get the story out, seeing as how he was sobbing the entire time. I knew I would have to tread softly with him.

“So you left her in the woods?”

“Yeah! I said I did!”

“Okay, I’m sorry. I’m just trying to understand, you know?” He left her body in the car, in the woods. How hadn’t she been found, then? I knew the police had scoured the woods for her—it was the first place they’d looked. How could they have missed her car?

What if she wasn’t dead?

I couldn’t help having a little bit of hope after what he had told me. No, it didn’t make sense that she wouldn’t come to me as soon as she woke up from her injury. But what if her memory was screwed up, or she had been too afraid to show her face? She might have gone somewhere else. Her bank account was empty—the police had assumed that whoever took her had emptied it, but we never knew who did it. Maybe she had, and she was living somewhere this whole time.

It still didn’t explain why she wouldn’t have called me, but the only thing I could imagine was that she had been too afraid and ashamed of being wrong about Thorn to reach out to me. Or maybe she’d just been afraid of him. She’d known, finally, that I was right when I told her he was no good, and she wasn’t sure what he would do to her if he knew she was still alive…and that she knew what he was doing behind the club’s back.

For the first time, I felt real hope.

All I had to do now was make sure I didn’t get myself killed before Gabriel got to me.

Gabriel

When I was a kid, it could feel like time stood still when I was in the middle of something I didn’t wanna do. Chores, mostly. I was always getting the shit chores. Cleaning the bathrooms. Washing the floors. Washing the dishes. Other kids were sweeping the porch and weeding the garden, while I scrubbed a toilet. Time seemed to stop when I was doing that.

And sitting in our stupid chat groups at the home, in a circle, talking about our feelings. That was a pain in the ass, too.

But sometimes it wasn’t bad. Some of the stories the other kids told blew my mind. Compared to them, what I went through was nothing. I noticed after enough of these chat sessions that time always crawled when it was my turn to share my feelings, but it would fly whenever somebody got into a really good story that I wanted to hear.

I wasn’t morbid or anything like that. I didn’t take pleasure in hearing about other people’s pain. Sometimes the stories were interesting. Some of the kids had faced a lot of really bad shit but survived it, and I liked hearing about what they’d done to get through. Others would talk about how angry they got, and I could relate to that because I was pissed off pretty much all the time, so what they were talking about was interesting. And that was when time would pass without my noticing. Sometimes the session would be over before the story was, and that was always frustrating.

Time usually flew by when I was on my bike. Riding was one of the only things I ever loved to do, besides screwing. Time flew when I was doing that, too.

So why, when I wanted nothing more in the world than for time to stop while I rode the rest of the way to the hotel, was it moving so fast? I felt like I was standing still, when every second that passed was another chance for Kat to die.

A million years after I talked with Thorn, I finally got to the hotel. I had been right when I estimated how much longer I had to ride. The odometer told me I’d covered another thirty miles. It couldn’t have actually been more than thirty minutes at the rate I’d been riding.

By the time I got there and rode slowly through the broken parking lot, I was no closer to knowing what I was going to do to help Kat than I was when Thorn hung up on me. How could I get to her? Was she being guarded? Who would be doing it? I couldn’t imagine anyone in the club going behind my back. Still, Thorn was VP. He had power. Someone might have agreed to help him, maybe one of the newer members looking to gain a little respect.

The hotel was even worse up close than it looked from the highway. I hated thinking of Kat trapped in a place like this. She must have been desperate to be with her sister again if she dared come here alone.

But of course she was desperate. That wasn’t a secret. And I had left her alone.

It wasn’t my fault
, I told myself. No, it wasn’t. She didn’t want me around her. What could I do? Stalk her? Refuse to leave? And if she had called the police, I would be in a jail cell rather than there trying to help her.

There had to be a few dozen rooms to the place. Where was she? I had no idea what Tracee’s car looked like, so that didn’t help. There were maybe a handful of cars parked here and there, all over the lot. Where could I start?

I could go to the front desk, say a friend of mine had checked in. I was sure Thorn would have worn his kutte when he got there. When they saw mine, the clerk would believe we were supposed to meet there.

I decided against that. What if he had asked the clerk to call the room if someone asked about him? I wanted the element of surprise.

If Kat’s car were in front of one of the rooms, that would have helped, but I didn’t see it anywhere. Smart move. Thorn had parked it somewhere else, maybe off the road somewhere.

I parked behind the building, hoping Thorn hadn’t seen me come in. I pulled my gun and checked the clip, keeping it low so random witnesses didn’t see it. I wondered if they would even care if they did. I was sure all sorts of bad shit went down around here. People did better to pretend they didn’t see anything at a place like this.

I looked around. There wasn’t anyone watching. I didn’t see any bikes nearby—he had to be alone, right? I hoped I was right to assume that.

Wait.
I knew one of the cars. It was Mike’s. I remembered seeing it in front of Kat’s the night before, when he and Tony picked up her car.

What was he doing here? I had a sick feeling in my stomach. This went further than Thorn. Was Tony with them, too? What were the three of them doing together?

What were they doing to Kat?

Just when my thoughts were spiraling out of control, I felt a light hand touch my shoulder. I whirled around, aiming the gun at the person who had approached. When I saw who it was, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The gun almost slipped from my hand, I was so shocked.

She looked just like Kat. Same blonde hair—well, almost the same. Not as golden. Almost the same eyes. Same build. Same fair skin. The biggest difference was how thin she looked, how unhappy. She reminded me of a rag doll.

But there was no mistake about it. I remembered seeing her in that picture Kat showed me, at her graduation.

“Sabrina?” It seemed too good to be true.

She nodded, and there were tears in her eyes. I shook my head, wondering for one insane moment if it was all a dream.

“It’s really you? How is this possible?” I couldn’t believe it. Part of me was unable to believe it. I’d been so sure Thorn had killed her. Hell, even he was sure he’d done it.

“I’ve been hiding here for weeks,” she said. Her voice was small, like a little bird’s. She sounded so afraid.

“Why? Why didn’t you go home? Your sister was worried sick about you this whole time. She’s been looking for you, every day.”

“I know.” The tears spilled onto her cheeks, and I felt sorry for making her cry. I wasn’t trying to blame her—it seemed like she had her reasons. Who would choose to stay in this nasty place if they didn’t have to? But I had to know why.

“So what was it?”

“I was afraid to go home. I was afraid…he would find me.” I should have known it had something to do with Thorn.

“So you’ve been here the whole time?”

She nodded, wrapping her thin arms around her thin body. “It was all I could think to do. I knew Thorn sometimes came here, but it was cheap. I needed a cheap place. I only have so much cash to live on, you know? I had to take a chance and hope he didn’t find me here.”

“You were afraid of him. Why?”

She shook her head. “It’s a long story.”

My head was spinning. I wanted to talk it out with her, but it would have to wait.

It turned out she knew it would have to wait, too. “You have to go now. They have her.”

“Who?”

“Thorn and his friends. I saw them go inside a little while ago. And I saw…her.”

“And you let her go in?”

She was shaking. “I didn’t know what to do! I was so afraid! I’m still afraid! I was all alone!”

I was frustrated with her and sorry for her all at once. “I know, I know. Which room?”

“Room twenty-seven.” She pointed straight ahead, down the long row of doors. “Hurry!”

“Okay. Hide somewhere.” She nodded and was just turning around when I had an idea. It was risky, but it was all I had. My only other option was kicking the door in, and three-against-one weren’t great odds for me. Any one of them could kill Kat at any time, too, while I was fighting the others.

“Scratch that,” I said. I took her arm. “You’re coming with me.”

“What?” Her eyes went round, and her chin started to quiver. “No, no, I can’t do that! I can’t see him! I can’t!”

“Jesus, what did he do to you? Forget it—I don’t wanna know right now.” I leaned down until we were eye-to-eye. “Sabrina. Listen to me. I know you’re a strong girl. Your sister told me so. I know you can do this. Trust me, I’ll keep you safe the whole time. You won’t even have to go near him. I won’t let him touch you.”

“I don’t know…”

“Sabrina.” I didn’t know how else to get through whatever trauma she was suffering over. “Your sister needs you. I know how much she sacrificed for you. All the years she took care of you, to make sure you had a good life. She could have deserted you, but she didn’t. She was brave for you. You have a chance to be brave for her now. If you don’t…Sabrina, you know he’s going to kill her. Don’t you?”

She sobbed, covering her mouth with her hand. She nodded.

“Then you see why I need you. You’re the only person who can change Thorn’s mind right now. He thinks he killed you. If he sees you, he’ll know he didn’t. That might be enough to shake him up, and it’ll give me a chance to save Kat. All right? Do you see? You don’t have to do anything but let him get a look at you and see you’re still alive.” Then I thought twice. “And pretend I’m threatening you. But I know you can. I know you have it in you.”

Her eyes were wild, searching my face. She was my only chance.

The scared look left them, and what I saw in its place reminded me so much of Kat I could have cried. Sabrina clenched her jaw. “Let’s go.”