Unbridled and Unjustified [The Double Rider Men's Club 11] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (4 page)

Her eyes crinkled in puzzled amusement. “I see. Well, I’m not dead.”

Troy shook his head. “No. You certainly aren’t.” His voice sounded odd. Glancing at his friend, Declan discovered quickly that Troy liked her, too.
Interesting
.

Declan stared over her head at the three-story house. It had a black-shingled roof, white clapboard siding, and a wide wraparound porch he could see on three sides of the structure. The place looked inviting. He wasn’t a bed-and-breakfast expert or anything, but he’d probably stay here even though he hadn’t seen inside yet.

“Are you open for business by any chance? We could use a couple of rooms for the night.” He was only half kidding. The idea of driving all the way back to Little Rock tonight made his head hurt. “They don’t have to be fancy.”

“That’s the truth. After that long-ass drive today, I’m ready to fall where I stand right now,” Troy said with a laugh. “We should have at least taken the weekend before heading out here.” He leaned Ava’s shotgun against the front bumper of the rental.

“I know. But it’s too late for regrets.”
After getting to meet Miss Ava Campbell, I don’t have any regrets anyway
.

Ava leaned away from the fender. It put her closer to the two of them.

“Sorry,” she said with a nervous laugh. “I’m not quite open for business. The drywall in the bedrooms has just been installed only this past week. They finished up the mud and tape part of the process and sanded today to get it ready for the paint I have picked out. The painters will be out next week. All I have is bare unpainted rooms, unvarnished floors, and no rugs or furniture yet. But feel free to come back in a couple of months.” She paused and added, “Call first, next time. If you don’t mind.”

The hint of a smile came gingerly on her face. She took a step in his direction. Declan was about to say he’d stay anyway and share her bed if only she’d issue an invitation to the both of them. The force of the unexpected blast pushed Ava violently against his body. He didn’t hear the
whoosh
of air leaving his lungs. Breathless, he was propelled backward instantly.

Declan barely registered the soft curvaceous feel of Ava’s body plastered to his before he was on his back resting in the dirt with her unceremoniously draped on top of him.

He opened his eyes to see the result and strength of the detonation. A cloud of smoke, debris, and fire filled the space where Ava’s house had just exploded into ten million fiery, splintering, wooden pieces.

* * * *

Double Rider Men’s Club property, Ryder, Colorado

Clayton Forrester sat back in his comfortable executive chair and surveyed the land and topography of the area surrounding Ava Campbell’s home in beautiful Franklin County, Arkansas. Her home was located near the Petite Jean Mountain area. Probably a good place for a bed-and-breakfast, as was listed as the business at her home address.

His friends Declan and Troy called him an hour before they headed to her house. As a favor to Clay, and more specifically his best friend Jake Salerno, the two private detectives had been searching for a mystery woman in a photo. As they could, they’d been running down the sizeable list of names he’d given them last month, trying to match it to someone who might be in danger.

Clay couldn’t help hoping that this woman Ava Campbell would solve the mystery. But more than likely it would be another dead end, just like the previous nine women they’d contacted.

Jake had called him a while back, looking for help getting in touch with someone on the down low who could aid him in finding the identity of the woman in the photo. He’d seen the picture when a computer program had spit it out. Clay’s friend had been haunted by the fact that this woman might be someone who had
almost
been in his care.

His old friend simply wanted to be sure the witness hadn’t found a way out. Clay figured he just didn’t want her to be dead. It was an idea he understood very well. Long ago he’d suffered through the death of someone he loved and spent a long wasted amount of time wanting her to somehow have been saved. His love hadn’t been saved, but he certainly understood Jake’s need to
make sure
.

So he did his damnedest to help find out the true identity of the woman in the photo, even though all likelihood it was a colossal waste of time. But he wanted to help his good friend Jake.

Declan and Troy were his very last hope. The list they carried was of blonde women who had been inside the bank an hour on either side of the timestamp of the photo. The list of bank transactions had taken a long time to compile. It had taken even longer to whittle down and identify the list of women Clay’s investigator friends now had.

Clay glanced at the live feed overhead of Ava Campbell’s house. He knew they were about to arrive. As he watched, something odd happened. Two people exited the back of the house and moved toward a wooded area. They weren’t running, but moved a steady pace. If they stayed on their current trajectory through the forested area, they’d end up near an old highway. Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell who it was. Hacking into a private company’s satellite feed had obvious limitations. One being that he could only zoom in so far. He missed having clear access to military-grade satellite feeds.

Where would someone be going at this hour anyway? It would be completely dark there in less than an hour. He didn’t mull over the information too long. Perhaps the residents were out for a late-night stroll. He was only concerned because if Declan and Troy got all the way out there and no one was home, he’d catch hell from them for going out there in the first place.

He watched as Declan’s rental SUV pulled into Ava Campbell’s paved, circular driveway. They both got out and headed to the front of the house.

“Nobody’s home,” Clay said to the screen in a high-pitched singsong tone. “They ran out the back door. If you hurry, you might be able to catch them.”

Clay looked away from the screen and sighed. There would be a phone call from Declan, or possibly Troy, in about two minutes with the information he already knew. In some level of irritated tone, one of them would call and say, “No one is home. We’re out of here.” They’d want to leave Arkansas and check this name at a later date, but Clay hoped to convince them to try one more time tomorrow. Or perhaps he could persuade them to take a woodland stroll out behind her house. He laughed out loud at the improbability of that happening.

He put a hand on the phone and glanced at the screen again. Declan and Troy had moved from the front of the house to their car. “Look at that,” he said to himself. A third person was also standing next to their rental. Hopefully, it was Ava Campbell. The three of them spoke for several minutes.

Suddenly, his screen went completely white.
Shit
. Was his monitor going bad? He was about to pound the top of his machine, but watched as the screen changed to a different color.

Fuck
.

His monitor was fine. The ever-changing feed on the screen had nothing to do with his equipment. However, the house he’d been looking at wasn’t there anymore. Smoking rubble and a big hole blasted into the landscape were all that remained. He adjusted the zoom to see a larger area of the devastation, and then he pushed it back in as close as it would go to find out if his friends were still moving. After a moment or two, Clay saw three people flattened to the ground, but shifting and moving, on the other side of the SUV. He pushed out a long breath of relief he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

As the picture cleared more and more, Clay saw something disturbing. He reached for the phone without taking his eyes off the screen to warn Troy and Declan of another coming threat.

Troy Markham fell hard to the ground after the blast knocked him off his feet. It took him a few seconds to work through what had happened. An explosion? Here? Why?

He felt a hand on his arm and looked toward Declan. Ears still ringing, he nodded once to let his friend know he was fine. Just had the wind knocked out of him.

Bits of fiery wood rained down on them. The stench of burnt plastic and wood filled the air and made breathing a chore. He sat up and stared at the space where a house used to be only seconds ago.

At first, Ava was obviously stunned. Who wouldn’t be? She was flat on her face on top of Declan. She lifted her head from his chest. Wide-eyed and silent, she let them help her stand up. However, before they made it to the SUV, she started screaming.

“Marisol! Javier!” she shouted over and over. She started staggering in the direction of the house and all its smoky destruction.

Troy wrapped an arm around her to keep her away. She fought against him, but was too weak to win the battle. And when he didn’t let her go, she turned and yelled, “There are people in there.”

Declan pulled her around and drilled a stern gaze into her eyes. “Not any more. I’m sorry. Now let’s get in the vehicle.” He ducked a falling piece of burning wood, and pulled her out of the path by hugging her to his chest. She still screamed and reached her arms to where her house used to be. They hadn’t even taken another step toward the SUV when Troy’s phone started vibrating. If it had been set to ring he probably wouldn’t have heard it, since his ears were still ringing from the blast. Declan picked Ava up and bodily thrust her in the backseat as she shrieked and fought him. His friend was determined. Once she was in the backseat, she slumped against the leather, put her face in her hands, and started sobbing loudly.

Troy grabbed for his phone attached to his belt, thumb-pushed the on button, and said, “Yes.” He opened the vehicle’s passenger rear door but paused before getting inside. Declan closed Ava’s door and got in the driver’s seat directly in front of her.

“Troy, it’s Clay. Are you two okay? Fuck. I just saw the house blow into smithereens.”

“We’re good.” Then he paused. “Wait a minute. You
saw
that?”

“Hard to miss it.”

“Are you hacking satellites again?” He couldn’t help it. He looked skyward. It was completely unlikely he’d spot the satellite Clay was using, but it was reflex.

“Whatever. I called to also tell you that there are two vehicles speeding toward the house. Hard to tell who it is, but I’m fairly certain that it isn’t law enforcement or fire rescue. It looks like a couple of Jeeps. And it also looks like they have rifles or shotguns protruding from the sides.”

“Maybe it’s the local law in unmarked police cars.”

“Perhaps, but maybe you don’t want to be in the vicinity of a smoking hole in the ground for them either. If you leave now, you might be able to turn off the main road before they see you. But maybe not. Perhaps you should take your chances and go the other way.”

He lowered the phone’s mouthpiece. “Clay says someone’s on the way here very fast. Guns hanging out of the windows. Possibly unfriendly.”

“Get in,” Declan said. He already had the vehicle running.

Troy hustled inside the SUV’s generous backseat and slammed the door shut. Declan put the vehicle into gear and headed away from the destruction, squealing his tires on her driveway. He went in the opposite direction than the way they’d come. Ava wept big, seemingly endless tears and stared at the utter destruction of her home out the back window. “Oh, no. Oh, no,” she cried over and over again.

Troy wasn’t sure what to say to make her feel better. He glanced over his shoulder at where her house used to be. He’d love to give her hope that maybe someone had survived the blast. Unfortunately, there was a fiery smoldering crater filled with useless burned and shredded boards, plaster, and shingles where her home used to be. If anyone had been inside, they were gone. The second and third stories had collapsed with the first and landed in the basement. It was a miracle the three of them hadn’t been burned beyond recognition for as close as they’d been to the explosion.

He studied the blast area for a few more seconds, and something occurred to him. The trees surrounding the house had barely been shaken. He called Clay.

“What’s up?”

Troy didn’t have the right words to convey what he wanted to say, but managed, “The explosion looks odd to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“A blast that would dissolve a three-story home would have left a larger crater in its wake, don’t you think?”

There was silence at the end of the phone for several seconds. “What are you saying, Troy?”

“Beyond the footprint of the house, nothing was damaged. The blast was meant to completely destroy the home but not the surrounding area. Like the house imploded in on itself based on the way the charges were set. The bulk of the damage was turned inward, like when demolition guys want to bring down a building, but not the surrounding area block. Not that I’m ungrateful, but how did our vehicle not get destroyed in the process? The blast only knocked us down. Why aren’t we dead? It smacks of a professional hit, right?”

“Actually…” Clay paused for a few seconds before saying, “Good question. I’ll see what I can find out. You have Ava Campbell with you, right? I can hear her crying through the line.”

“Yes.” He paused at looked at Ava’s miserable expression.

“She’s upset about the loss of her home.”