Possessed By Ghost (Steel Sinners MC #7)

Prologue

Iris

“Miss Grundy, can you take us back to the night of the murder?”

I knew the question was coming, even braced for it, but hearing it out loud sends a jolt through my body.

A shock, not unlike the kind one feels when they touch an exposed electrical wire.

It turns my skin cold and clammy, sends my heart pounding in my chest and my breathing turns shallow and ragged.

I can’t breathe. Not with all these many people watching me. Hating me. Wishing me dead. It doesn’t help that their hate is so palpable from the gallery. I want to sink into myself, close my eyes and wish this moment away.

But I can’t wish it away, any more than I can wish away that night.

If I could go back in time to any point in my life, I would choose the moment before I opened the back door of the bar I worked at to take out the trash.

The moment my life changed. If I could go back, I would hesitate by the door, linger until the horrors playing outside were over.

Does it make me selfish for not wanting to witness the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen in my life, even if it means not helping the cops catch the culprit?

Maybe.

God, a man is dead and I’m…not. What I’m doing here would be considered honorable—standing up for a man that couldn’t. They said his name was Kurt Hugo. A husband, a father. Someone’s son. A man that owed the cartel money and paid dearly for it.

“Miss Grundy?”

I lift my gaze to the prosecutor and I don’t know what it is I was expecting to read in her eyes, but they’re dark and cold with the hint of excitement she’s trying to conceal, but who could blame her.

The man I am about to send to jail, as I’ve come to learn, is a well-known cartel leader that the FBI has been desperately trying to lock away, but he’s always cleaned up well after himself.

Until me.

“I was…” I clear my voice when it comes out shaky.

“It was on a Friday, the sixth. My shift was coming to an end and it was my turn to take out the trash that night.” I scramble for the bottle of water, uncapping it with trembling fingers before taking a sip to clear my dry throat.

“The lights outside are busted but the…the dumpster is just a few steps from the door so it’s generally safe to take the trash out late or um… early morning.”

“What did you witness when you stepped outside?”

“I heard a noise, like someone was groaning.” I take another sip of the water.

“It’s not uncommon to hear noises come from the alleyway.

Sometimes d-drug addicts will pass out in the alley or dig around the dumpster, so I wasn’t immediately startled by the sound but then I looked, just a glance toward the noise, I. ..I saw them.”

“Could you please tell the court what you saw that night?”

“I saw two men,” I say, shuddering at the memory.

At the fear I’d felt when I realized what I was looking at and the instinct that pushed me to my knees, my palm slapped against my mouth.

I can still remember how hard my heart raced as I peeked around the dumpster, afraid to make a sound and draw attention to myself.

“One of them was kneeling on the ground, face bruised with another hovering over him, a gun pointed to his face.”

“Miss Grundy, you just told the court that the lights outside were busted.”

“Yeah, but it’s only the lights outside the door. The streetlights are bright enough that you can see the alley and I…I could see the bruises on the man’s face. Both of them.”

“Can you describe what the two men were wearing?”

Right. I close my eyes and despite my wish not to pull the memory into focus. “The man on his knees was wearing a blue shirt. It was stained at the collar, yes— There were a few stains, like something had spattered around the collar and the front of his shirt. His pants were dark, I think black.”

“And the other man?”

I shudder again. “He was wearing blue jeans and a white sleeveless shirt. I could make out the tattoos on the arm holding the gun. It was a large snake…no, it was two snakes entwined around his forearm.”

When I open my eyes again, I can practically see the prosecutor declaring her victory. “What else do you remember about the man?”

“He was bald,” I say, wishing I didn’t have such a perfect memory of that night, “and he was wearing a gold chain and a wrist watch. It sparkled in the light, which is why I remember it so well.”

“Could you identify the person you saw at the scene?”

“Yes.”

“Is the person you saw in the courtroom today?”

“Yes.”

“Could you please point them out?”

I swallow hard. Please don’t do this to me, I want to plead.

Don’t make me look at the monster I saw that night.

I can’t handle having those dark eyes on me.

Isn’t it bad enough that I am in here today, about to send the most dangerous man in Austin to prison?

Isn’t it enough that my life in this city is practically over?

“Miss Grundy?”

I turn my head to the side, a tremble racking my body when my eyes find his.

Dark. Cold. Dead. Lifeless in a way I have never seen one’s eyes look before and they’re focused on me so intensely that it’s a wonder my body doesn’t simply disintegrate.

“Him,” I croak. “That is the man I saw that night. He was the one in the alley holding the gun. He…he made the shots.”

“The man you are pointing to is Julio Torres, for the record,” the prosecutor confirms. Julio Torres, the man who destroyed my life that night.

I remember the quiet pop-pop of the gun that night.

How my stomach churned when the kneeling man fell and how I’d nearly thrown up on that ground but forced myself back against the wall, bile burning my throat as tears ran down my face.

For several minutes, I sat there, my hand firm against my mouth, rocking with fear.

Terrified that the monster would come around the dumpster and kill me too.

But he never did, and when I peeked around, he was gone.

And the other man, Kurt Hugo, was dead. There was nothing I could do but collect myself and run back into the bar for help.

One of the waiters checked his pulse, another called the cops and someone was crying, maybe it was me.

Some of it is vague. The cops were called and my life as I knew it was over.

I pull my gaze away from Julio’s and stare unseeingly at the prosecutor.

She tosses more questions at me to which I respond but it’s all robotic.

And then the defense attorney comes at me harder with his questions, grilling me enough to send tears running down my cheeks.

He questions my morality for working at a bar, picks my life apart and advertises my personal life to all these strangers in an effort to discredit my account of the night.

Heck, somehow, he finds a way to insert my dead parents and how being an orphan with no family or friends makes me an unreliable source.

He calls me a liar in a way that chips at my sanity, and when he’s done, I want to run and hide.

I want to bury my face in my hands and never resurface.

When they are done torturing me, they finally let me leave the stand.

My knees are weak when I walk back to my seat, head throbbing with a headache but then I see a woman.

Kurt’s wife, I recognize her from the media frenzy.

Her eyes are filled with hope and gratitude when they meet mine.

She mouths her thanks to me as I walk back to my seat and somehow, that little gesture gets me through the rest of the session.

It keeps my head high as the jury leaves to deliberate, keeping to myself the hour it takes for them to reach a verdict.

I try not to let my nerves show when the judge calls the jury back into the courtroom or when the jury foreman stands up to read the verdict.

Christ, I just want it all to be over. They’ll send this horrible man to prison and if they don’t, then…

I don’t have one darn idea what will happen if he’s found innocent. The look he gave me earlier indicated I would meet the same fate Kurt did.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”

The foreman, a middle-aged man with very oily hair, steps forward. “We have, Your Honor.”

“Please present the verdict to the court.”

I close my eyes and pray as I rarely do—I don’t remember the last time I prayed or believed in a higher power.

Perhaps it was that night when I was seventeen and heard of my parents’ accident—how my father had a heart attack and crashed into a pole with my mother in the passenger’s seat.

I fell on my knees at that hospital and begged for their life, prayed that someone out there would save them.

That someone would listen, but…no one did.

“On the charge of conspiracy to commit murder, we the jury find the defendant, Julio Torres…not guilty.”

I feel my heart drop to my stomach, my palms turn clammy even as my eyes open, unwillingly seeking Julio seated back in his chair, confidence apparent in his casual posture. Almost as if he knows he’ll get out of this scot-free.

“On the charge of obstruction of justice, we, the jury, find the defendant…not guilty.”

Oh God. Oh God. Oh my God!

“On the charges of racketeering, we the jury, find the defendant…guilty.”

Julio turns rigid.

“On the charge of first-degree murder, we the jury find the defendant…guilty.”

And then chaos breaks, yelling and shouting from Julio and his friends.

Still, I keep my ears open as the judge calls for order.

. The yelling only seems to grow with the verdict, insults and threats thrown at the judge and the jury, chairs kicked off as the men in blue come to grab the monster.

I try not to look up from the floor. I know I shouldn’t, and yet, my gaze lifts to his and I see the venom in his eyes when they lock on mine.

“I’ll kill every son of a bitch in this room!” he swears, mouth foaming. “But I will enjoy carving into you, little bitch. You’re dead when I get my hands on you. I’ll fucking kill you and enjoy every second of it!”

They drag him away and slowly, people file out of the courtroom but I find myself frozen in place, afraid to move. Uncertain that my legs would carry me out anyway.

It’s a good thing I did today, I try to convince myself but I can’t ignore what it’s going to cost me. Julio is going to prison, for life, if there is a God. But he’s leaving behind his little minions. Men who have found ways to send me threats in the last couple of weeks.

Oh God, what am I going to do now?

“Elizabeth Grundy?”

“What?” I croak, not eager to speak to anyone in this room. My head whips up to find a man standing beside me, old enough to be my grandfather by the looks of it. The badge clipped to his waist tells me he’s with the FBI. I’ve met enough of those already to last me a lifetime.

“What you did here today saved many lives,” he says, words that are meant to offer me comfort but they don’t.

Not really. “You were brave today. Sending that animal to prison was the right thing.” He drops down to the seat next to mine, making himself comfortable.

“There is no doubt that he’ll try to send people after you, but you don’t have to worry.

We’ll protect you as we have these past couple of weeks. ”

“How?” I ask, not exactly excited about hopping from one hotel to another.

“As you were informed and agreed to prior to testifying, you’re going into the witness protection program,” he says.

“A US Marshall agent has been assigned to your case. You will be given a new identity and relocated to a different city. It’s best if you forget everything about your old life.

Friends, family and love interests, everything! ”

“Starting right now?” For some reason, I thought I would have more time to…prepare.

“Exactly. From this moment on, Elizabeth Grundy is dead.” He dips his hand into his pocket then hands me a white envelope. “Say hello to Iris Turner.”