Chapter 49
R iordan
A ripple of explanation sped across the room, and all gazes fell on me, heavy anticipation coming with a hush of complete silence. I swiped to answer, setting my phone to loudspeaker.
“Hello?”
A choked sob met my greeting. “Riordan? It’s Moniqua. I need your help.”
Fucking hell. It really was her. “With what?”
She hesitated. “You sound upset.”
I curled an arm around a silent, vicious Cassie, bringing my wild girl close. Moniqua would’ve happily let Red kill her. She’d die for that, which meant getting to her. “I got dumped then my girlfriend was in a fire. It hasn’t been the best day.”
She made a sound of sympathy. “I’m so sorry Cassie died. That’s tragic. Listen, you helped me so much when Don went missing. I need to tell you something. He’s back.”
Cassie’s eyes flared.
I gripped the phone. “Your cousin’s alive?”
“He is, and he’s so angry. Please, I need you to come to me.”
A recollection hit my mind. When I’d driven down her street on my way to the church, the lights had been on in her flat. Yet she’d been in the basement with Cassie as a prisoner. It was a small detail, but it added up.
“Why do you need help?” I breathed.
“I told you, he’s in a rage. He’s dangerous.”
“Is Don the person who’s been killing all the women in Deadwater?”
She sobbed again. “Yes. It started with your sister rejecting him. He saw Arran at her place and got so furious that he crashed his car. His friend died—that’s whose remains they found. He went back to confront Gen but ended up killing the prostitute on the steps opposite your flat instead.”
“He told you all this?”
She took a rushed breath. “He’s coming back. I have to go. I’m so scared. Please, please, rescue me or I’m going to be next, and who knows who else. We’re on an industrial estate. He had a drug deal.”
She rattled off an address, then the call disconnected.
Silence filled the space. Shock, too. Because what the hell?
Cassie was first to speak. “What are we waiting for? We know who the killer is.”
“She could be lying,” Genevieve said.
“Okay, correction, she claims she knows who the killer is and we can torture her then decide if it’s true.”
Shade palmed his jaw. “Or all of it is a lie and she just wants Riot.”
My girlfriend cracked her knuckles. “True or not, that piece of shite arranged to have me kidnapped. She offered me up to Red in exchange for a job. She’s mine. All of ye got that? I’m going to go pick her up.”
Her gaze flashed to me, feverish intent contained inside it. A challenge, too, for me to dare tell her she couldn’t come.
This time, I didn’t need the handcuffs.
I brushed her hair back from her eyes. “Your second kill gets to be a little more fun, but I’ll grab her so she doesn’t get spooked. Don’t argue. You can have her after.” I turned to her brothers and the skeleton crew. “We’ll round her and Don up to add to the suspects haul.”
Arran swapped a glance with Shade then turned to Cassie’s brothers. “Sin, Struan, go with them.”
I didn’t argue. Cassie needed protection, and it was me Moniqua wanted, which meant arriving separately, and there was no way on Earth I was leaving Cassie unguarded.
We left Genevieve and Everly behind in the apartment with Jamieson, Shade providing a quick strategy for what I might encounter. Then there was nothing more than to kiss Cassie goodbye and take off on my bike.
It was strange riding solo over the bridge to the Scottish side of Deadwater.
The trip out to the industrial estate and suburb where Don was apparently hiding gave me an odd moment of headspace. I knew Cassie and her family were behind me, but I’d be walking into this alone.
It was past midnight and the streets empty and quiet. This part of town was far from the sirens and firelight of the burning city. Skeletal trees dotted corners, the leaves lost and scattered. I took the twisting road that led to the river, passing in and out of isolated yellow streetlights.
The houses here were workers’ homes, marginally better than a slum and densely packed together. They were in clusters of narrow streets, blocked in by warehouses and with not a soul peeking out at the motorbike cruising by.
An intense feeling of discomfort settled over me, and fragments of my never-forgotten nightmare returned. The fear of being chased and ending up down by the water. All I needed now was my father to pop up and lodge a bullet in my chest to live out that horrible dream state.
I rounded the corner. Ahead, the road ended with two high-sided industrial buildings bracketing it and a scrubby wasteland beyond.
A final feature of my nightmare resolved in my mind.
When I fell under the water, I’d been clutching a little life. Something small and precious and beautiful. That was love. A part of me that hadn’t existed but now burned bright because of Cassie. It was all the good and perfect things she made me feel. It was real, and I’d be damned if I was losing it.
I centred myself on the goal of bringing this reign of terror to an end and finished the trip down the road. Leaving my bike at the kerb, I eased off my helmet and scanned the scrubby ground which gave way to the riverbank.
There was nobody in sight. The main entrances to the warehouses were on the far side of both buildings, so all that was around me was the empty perimeters and the calm of the night. Only the rushing river and the distant sounds of the city made the backdrop.
A click sounded, and I spun around. A fire exit door opened at the back of the nearest warehouse. Moniqua stepped out. Relief fell over her expression, and she set her hand on her heart.
Once, I’d tried to be her friend. I hated for anyone to suffer, and she’d laid it on thick about how tough her life was with her gangster cousin and her inability to protect herself. Hindsight told me I’d been played.
Her smile appeared real, though. “I’m so glad you came. I’ve got something for you.”
“Where’s your cousin?” I called.
“In the building. He won’t disturb us.”
“But he’s a murderer.”
“Nah, not really.” She returned inside, and clattering followed, then Moniqua backed out of the door wheeling a flat, metal trolley. With a body on it.
In horror, I recoiled. “Who’s that?”
She turned, and the answer presented itself.
Slumped on the trolley was the mayor.
With difficulty, she wheeled him over then unceremoniously tipped him onto the road, apparently uncaring that fifty metres behind me, people slept in their houses and could look out at any moment.
Moniqua dusted her hands. “I knew you’d come. You’ve always been so kind and so good. It’s why I brought you this present.”
I stared at the body. His lolling head and pale skin. “I don’t understand.”
“You want him to acknowledge you, don’t you? Baby, he’s yours. My gift.”
“Is he the murderer?”
Her smile morphed into a more frustrated expression. “Are you joking? After everything you’ve seen, you think this piece of shit could have done all of that?”
My gut tightened, and I dragged my gaze off my father. “I don’t understand.”
“God, men are such idiots.”
“You said you knew who’s responsible. If not Don, or the mayor, then who?”
She widened her eyes, the effect alarming. “It’s me, silly. I did it. They say women aren’t natural killers, but all she needs is someone to lift the bodies for her and wipe the blood from her cheek to even the playing field. I can’t believe you thought he could’ve handled such a well-executed campaign.”
She kicked the mayor’s prone form.
He groaned. Unconscious then, not dead.
I scanned the wastelands beyond us and the road that led back to the houses. There was no sign of anyone else around. No indication that I had backup. Yet Cassie was listening to every word down the open line of the phone in my pocket. With any luck, one of her brothers would already be taking down Don, if he really was here. I was beginning to doubt that now, too.
For Cassie’s sake, I had to make sure this was all clear.
I folded my arms. “How? Explain it to me, because you lied and told me it was your cousin.”
Moniqua rolled her eyes. “Only to get you here, because I knew you couldn’t resist the need to protect me. Don would’ve happily ruined any throats to get to the top, but he’s not stealing my crown. Not after the shit he pulled. It was me in the car with him when Gen pissed him off and rejected him in favour of Arran. I barely survived his rage, and only escaped seconds before the crash. I rolled free, he toasted himself.”
Then he was dead. “You’re telling me that after that, you walked back up the hill and murdered Cherry?”
She flushed red. “I was having an emotional moment after losing my only family, can you blame me? A police car passed me, so I hid in the graveyard, and she…she was just there. She was kind. Her pretty smile was so wrong in the face of all that had happened, and I flipped. All that went through my head was a conversation I’d had with Don, our last, where he’d screamed about Genevieve and her new man, and how Arran Daniels’ mother was killed by a single cut to her throat. Common knowledge, apparently. He said how easy it was as a killing method, and how Genevieve deserved the same. Once the idea was in my head, I couldn’t get it out. He was right, too. Cherry died so sweetly. After that, I went home and found I wasn’t all that traumatised by it, but I still had the problem of how to keep myself safe. I decided to do what my cousin intended. I’d get the job he coveted. Even before Bronson met his end, everyone knew Red despaired over his second-in-command. I wanted that top spot, and with Don proving he was a useless sack of shit, I decided then and there to be better than him.”
“You went on a killing spree around the city.” I put disbelief into my tone to keep her talking.
“I made a plan. I wanted that job. I also wanted you, so I went to Divine. I overheard Alisha say that a woman should be running the place, and it backed up my sense of doing what Don never could. So when that bitch, Natasha, started badmouthing the club and the city as a whole, I knew I had to bring her down. I had Don’s stash of sedatives he’d stolen from Bronson and a boatload of anger. That tattooed enforcer guy very nearly caught me, which would be fucking hypocritical, because he drugs his victims. Don told me all about that.”
She made a sound of disgust.
I needed to work this through to the end. “And after that?”
Moniqua’s attitude shifted, her eyes darkening. “You made like your sister and rejected me. I followed you to the mayor’s house, and I went back again. I would have killed the slut you were there to see, don’t judge me because I didn’t know she was also your sister, but I couldn’t get in the house.”
I’d led her there. Fucking hell, she would’ve killed Everly. “So you took your anger out on the girl next door?”
“Something like that. She was available, I still needed the practice.”
“And Alisha?”
“That whore earned her fate when she slept with you.”
I shook my head, the whole conversation one massive mindfuck. “I never slept with her. Why did you think that?”
Regret flickered in her eyes. “I saw the two of you go into a room together. I took a gamble and led her away with a note after finding out who she had a crush on. She really wasn’t making a play for you?”
That was the night I’d started my skeleton crew job. Alisha and I had sat and talked, and the whole time I’d been thinking about Cassie who was let loose in the club. I’d worried for her safety. I’d wanted to trace my hands up her thighs to the ridiculously short skirt she’d worn.
My head pounded with the information.
“If it helps, I’m sorry about Alisha. It wasn’t my finest moment, even if it felt like it at the time.”
She’d strung her up from a lamppost.
She was insane.
Psychopathic, probably. She was telling me all of this like it was a conversation about the weather. Like it was logical for her to have done those things.
All of that had led her to Cassie.
“You would’ve killed my girlfriend.”
She tilted her head, the effect unnerving. From a hidden sheath, she pulled a blade. “I would’ve used this to do the deed. Recognise it?”
I clamped my jaw.
“Your favourite knife.”
At my complete lack of a response, her gaze turned exasperated. “Don’t you remember? You admired it once when you came to my flat. It was Don’s, but I quickly took over ownership when I realised it met your seal of approval.”
She tapped the bladed weapon on her hip. “Lucky for me, I didn’t need to waste my energy on that girl you fucked. The fire did that anyway. I mean, sorry for your loss and all that, but it’s a lot neater with her out of the way. Now I get you all to myself.”
Moniqua performed a little pirouette. “I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’re in this life, too. You were so anti-gang, but being in the skeleton crew has given you the training and experience you need to be with me. With your girlfriend and Red out of the way, we’ll take over the Four Milers. The ultimate power couple. It’s perfect, don’t you think?”
She stepped closer and reached as if to touch my chest.
From the shadows, Cassie strode out, fury written all over her pretty, feral features. “Touch him and die, bitch.”