Chapter Fifteen
“Hey guys,” Wolf said. “You’re on speaker.”
“Hey,” the twins chorused in unison. “How you doing, Wolf?”
“Good. Everythin’ is good over here. Ice?”
“Yeah.”
Wolf, Scars and Viking exchanged grins; from just that one word, they could feel Ice’s irritation coming through, loud and clear. The man was an excellent Enforcer, an amazing club general – but he had zero patience for things like chatting and joking. Which meant that after a week, he’d have had just about enough of Dux and Drake, who were just as brutal and lethal as Ice when required, but whose default setting off-duty seemed to be permanently lighthearted. It was a stark contrast to Ice’s permanent setting: cold, implacable, silent, menacing. The man was a human iceberg and icebergs didn’t smile; they totalled unsinkable luxury ships without moving a goddamn inch.
“Anythin’ new?” Wolf asked, getting straight to business. “Last I heard, the Garden of Fuckin’ Lunatics had a lot of comin’ and goin’ through the gate.”
“Yeah. Bad news there, Wolf.”
“Yeah, I figured we had it too easy for too long.” Wolf sighed, rolled his head. “Tell me.”
“We’ve seen men from the cult compound in the forest, right at the spot that Viking got rid of Fielding. We watched them through binoculars all day today and they’re finally digging – it took them a week to thaw the ground without the right equipment, but they’re on it now. We went to the site after they all left for the night, and they’re only about three feet deep, but they’ll undoubtedly be back tomorrow.”
“Goddamn it,” Wolf snarled. “OK, Viking, you’re up. How deep did you go, and what did you leave in that hole?”
“Ummm.” Viking paused. “Well… about eight feet deep. And there are maybe – what? Half-a-dozen bone fragments that didn’t burn and which I buried.”
“Enough to get DNA?” Scars asked him.
“Honestly? No.”
“OK, what?” Wolf was totally alert. “Why no?”
“Because the primary reason to burn a body is to degrade the hard tissues – like the bones – which will compromise forensic identification techniques,” Viking rattled off, sliding right into doctor mode. “Extreme heat will modify the bone structure through combustion and pyrolysis of chemical substances. In addition, heavily burned bones are very prone to contamination with external DNA and so anything present in the soil will most likely seep into the bones themselves, further degrading the original DNA.”
A stunned silence filled the room; even the speaker phone seemed to blink in surprise.
“So –” Wolf said, trying to keep up. “So the bones –”
“Are useless. We’ve got nothing to worry about in terms of forensic evidence,” Viking told him. “I didn’t bury the teeth, remember, I disposed of those one by one across the whole of Utah. Even with burning, it’s teeth that you need to worry about, not bone. So we’re in the clear.”
“But – why didn’t you tell us this sooner?” Wolf demanded. “About not needin’ to be freaked out about DNA in the forest?”
“The deal is that you’re on a need-to-know basis when it comes to what I do,” Viking said succinctly. “That was your call, Wolf, and it was a decision made to protect everyone. I don’t volunteer jack-shit, and only answer direct questions when and if you ask them.”
“Yeah, OK,” Wolf said. “You’re right. Sorry, man.”
“So –” Scars furrowed his brow. “So even if these cult assholes take the bone fragments to the cops, the lab will find nothing?”
“Exactly.” Viking shrugged. “Though I doubt very much they’d go scampering off to a crime lab or have anything to do with the police. I mean, how do they explain how they just happened to dig up a bunch of burned bones? And does a cult leader strike you as the kind of person super-eager to get on the authorities’ radar for any reason?”
“Yeah, well,” Drake –or maybe Dux –said. “That’s where we might have an actual, real problem. Not like Viking’s chemical combustion contamination…thing.”
“Jesus Christ, just when I see the light,” Wolf muttered. “OK, shoot.”
“We’ve seen a woman going in and out of the compound every night,” Ice said. “She’s like goddamn clockwork.”
“Yeah? And?”
“And she’s a cop.”
“Oh, my God,” Scars groaned. “Why, why, why?”
“So this Gideon prick has a cop in his pocket reporting to him,” Wolf said. “Yeah, I’d say that qualifies as a fuckin’ actual, real problem. Ice?”
“I suggest that we go for a charm offensive,” Ice said, answering the unasked question. “See if we can get something from the cop with a less-confrontational approach.”
“We sic one of the twins on her?”
“Yeah. You did send them here in case flirting was needed, Wolf. I’d say we’re there. Bring out the big guns.”
“Well,” Wolf mused. “This cop is only human, and I have yet to even hear of a straight woman who wasn’t taken with our boys once she was in their sights. Dux? Drake?”
“We’ll flip a coin, Wolf,” Dux – or maybe Drake – said. “Then one of us will take one for the team.”
“It’ll be no hardship,” chimed in Drake – or maybe Dux. “Cop lady is a looker , believe me, and you guys all know how we feel about tall, cool blondes. Ice excepted, of course.”
Wolf, Scars and Viking all rolled their eyes; over the speaker they felt Ice do the same.
“OK, so, carry on boys,” Wolf said. “Call us tomorrow night, same as always.”
“You got it,” Ice said. “You’ll deal with Iris, or whatever the hell her name actually is?”
“You know it,” Wolf said grimly and Viking looked startled. “Stay safe out there, too. If a cop is involved with these maniacs, who knows how much protection they have locally.”
He disconnected the call, then got to his feet.
“Wolf,” Viking said in a hesitant tone. “What did you mean about dealing with Iris?”
“What do you think I mean?” Wolf snapped. “If that Gideon motherfucker has a cop workin’ with him, then it means that he has resources available to him that we had no idea about. Cops can get video and traffic footage. They can trace license plates and access the DMV database. They can use all this stuff and start puttin’ pieces together. They can –”
“Find Iris through the van and through me,” Viking said as the penny dropped; as always, Wolf was about eleven steps ahead of anyone else. “And through me they can find us .”
“Go get your little girlfriend,” Wolf said sharply. “Now.”
Viking didn’t even stop to wonder how Wolf knew about the change in his relationship with Iris; as always, Wolf just knew everything. He shot out of Wolf’s office and up to Iris’ bedroom, where she was getting ready for the dinner rush.
He paused outside her door, already hating what was coming. He knocked. “Iris?”
“Hey!” she called. “Come on in!”
He opened the door and despite himself, he smiled to see her sitting on her bed, happily putting stacks of bills into a box that Zoe had given her as a present. God , she was just so stunning, with that dark hair piled high on her head, those purple eyes sparkling over at him with pure joy.
Just for a second, he flashed back to those eyes staring at him last night as his fingers stroked deep inside her, those eyes after she’d come on his mouth – they’d been hot and full of need, and even though it was wholly inappropriate, he wanted her again. Right now.
“Hey, handsome! Guess what?” She gave him that heart-stopping smile that he was slowly becoming addicted to. “Between wages and kitchen tips, I’ve earned over six hundred dollars this week so far!”
“That’s great,” he said.
“Right? It took me six damn months to get just over three hundred when I was stealing from Gideon, but one honest week’s hard work and I’ve made more. Like, double!”
“Iris.”
She looked at him again, and when she saw his face, her expression changed. “Oh, boy. What is it?”
“Wolf wants to talk to you. Downstairs.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
“Viking.” She got to her feet. “What is he – is he kicking me out?”
“You need to talk to him.”
“So you don’t know what he’s going to do?”
“It’s not my call what Wolf does, you know that.”
“So, he might be kicking me out? Is he mad that we – that you and me –that last night we –”
“Baby,” he said, and oddly, him calling her that seemed to calm her down a bit. “He’s waiting.”
“OK.” She tucked her box away in the dresser drawer, looked at herself in the mirror and smoothed her hair back. “Let’s go.”
**
Wolf closed the door, then turned to face Iris (or whatever her name was). She looked scared to death, and he found himself softening a bit. This woman had been through quite enough at the hands of this sick fuck Gideon –and now Wolf had the thankless task of informing her that maybe she hadn’t escaped his slimy clutches after all.
As always when delivering bad news, Wolf took the ‘rip the bandaid off in one go’ option. He exchanged glances with Scars and Viking and then plunged right in:
“Gideon has a cop helpin’ him, a woman. Any idea who she might be and what she’s capable of?”
“He – what ?” Her eyes were wide with immediate fear. “A cop ?”
“Yeah. Some gorgeous, tall blonde who drops by the compound every night.”
“Wait.” Light was dawning on her face. “ She’s a cop?”
“So you do know who she is.”
“Yes. I mean, no. I mean, I’ve seen her around the compound off and on, but I had no idea that she was a police officer. She never wears a uniform, and she never talks to anyone except the Guardians and Gideon.”
“So she’s on Gideon’s side?”
“Well… I guess. I mean, maybe.” Iris shook her head, and Wolf could see that she was genuinely confused and distressed. “But if he has a cop working for him, then that explains quite a lot. It sure explains –”
Iris broke off suddenly, looking horrified, and Wolf pounced.
“It explains what?” he demanded. “Spit it out.”
“Ummmm.” She looked around at the three men as if contemplating escape, then she sagged in front of their eyes. “It explains how Gideon gets away with some of the things that he does. I always wondered how members of the Garden could just kind of… disappear, but if he had someone covering that all up, then who’d really care? Who’d be interested in investigating?”
“Wait,” Scars said. “ Who disappeared?”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, I was only there for a year, so I only saw one person… go away, but the other women-servants told me about others. I only know about Lily.”
“Lily?” Scars asked gently. “You were her friend?”
“No.” Iris shook her head and now there were tears in her eyes. “I was her replacement.”
“OK,” Wolf said calmly, bells ringing in his head at the name ‘Lily’; Ice had told him what King had said word for word, and that name had come up in passing. She’d been the one who’d been dragged out of town and never seen again. “Let’s start again, right at the beginnin’. You were Lily’s replacement, but you saw her go away?”
“I didn’t want to talk about this,” she said to them, the despair etched all over her face. “Not ever.”
“If there’s a cop coverin’ up all of Gideon’s bad shit, then you need to tell us what she’s doin’ for him, sweetheart,” Wolf told her. “I’ve got three men in Walton right now, about to talk to this woman, and they need to know what the hell they’re dealin’ with. I need to make sure they can protect themselves. You see that, right?”
She nodded, wiping her eyes. “Yes.”
“OK, so help us, Iris.” Wolf never begged, the closest that he ever came was asking for help, and he was asking now. “Help us understand what kind of stuff this cop is mixed up in.”
She sighed deeply. “OK, well. So what I understood was, Lily was one of Gideon’s Golden Three, meaning the three women who had most won his favour. There were a few ways to move up the ladder of being Gideon’s women-servants, up to the top three spots. One was how much time you’d been with the Garden, and another was to please him in some way. It was usually to do with sex, but if a woman was especially devoted, or lost a lot of weight quickly, or came across as really submissive, they could move up. As they did, they got more responsibility, but also more privileges.”
“So Lily had privileges?” Viking asked. “Like what?”
“Like goin’ to town for shoppin’, I bet,” Wolf said shrewdly. “Right?”
“You really do know a lot, don’t you?” Iris said. “I’m not even surprised anymore.”
“Not enough,” Wolf said. “Not to give my boys a heads-up.”
“OK,” Iris said. “And you’re right, the Golden Three were the only ones allowed to leave the compound at all, and it was only to go shopping once a week, always escorted by the Guardians. When I first got there, what I heard from the other women was that while Lily was in town, she did something that she wasn’t supposed to. As soon as she was back at the Garden, she was dragged straight to the basement.”
She stopped talking, but this time Wolf didn’t push her. Instead, the three men stood completely silent and still, just waiting. They knew that whatever was coming next was one of those things that Iris had never wanted to revisit, let alone say out loud, so if she needed a minute, she’d get it.
She cleared her throat. “You need to understand about the basement…it’s the last place that anyone ever wants to go. It’s where all the punishments take place, so there are cages down there, and water hoses, and ropes, and there’s no heat, and –” She gulped. “Well, you get the idea. It’s a little slice of hell tucked under the compound, and we all did everything that we could to not be sent there.”
“Were you ever sent there?” Viking asked, clearly dreading the answer.
“Yes. Once.” Her eyes were dark and haunted. “It was about five weeks after I got there, and I was really exhausted this one day, just totally wiped out. All I wanted was to watch TV and eat Pringles and veg out, you know? Things that I’d done in my old life and which I’d never thought about as luxuries, but after weeks of five a.m. wake-up calls, and endless chores, and having Gideon summon me to his bed for the Ritual, I missed normal. By then I was sorry that I’d come to the Garden, it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. It was – well, it was a sex cult with Gideon on top scaring everyone, his asshole Guardians allowed to beat the women until we just shut up, and us women-servants doing all the work.”
“So anyway, this one day I gave Guardian Daniel some attitude. Nothing outrageous, but I said no when he demanded that I scrub his floor with a toothbrush. Right away, he backhanded me across the room, then he went and got Gideon, who kicked me down to the basement.” She swallowed hard. “Lily was down there.”
“We talked, between me being waterboarded in freezing cold water and left naked in a cage, and her being strung up with rope by her throat, then taken down and beaten. She told me that she’d flirted with some guy in town, and Gideon had been so enraged that he’d kept her down there ever since. I figured out then that as soon as Lily was shoved out, then I was brought in. I’d been on the fringes of the Garden for about two months, anyway, in that I knew Gideon and I thought he was – was my boyfriend.”
She sighed and muttered, “So stupid.” Then she continued:
“I’d met some of the men who I later realized were Guardians, and some of the women too. It had all been really casual –like meeting for a picnic or at a restaurant – and I felt like I was part of the group. You know? Like I was totally accepted and loved for who I was, even if who I was was a strung-out drug addict, always looking for her next fix.”
“You were?” Scars asked her, surprised at this piece of information. “Gideon knew that?”
“Sure. He met me on a street corner buying drugs.” Iris shrugged. “He picks people who are in trouble and alone, since it makes them vulnerable to the cult teachings. He takes his time, too –he worked on me for weeks, slowly drawing me in, getting to know my secrets and my history, making me feel safe. So as soon as Lily displeased him, she was kicked out and I was brought in.”
“As her replacement,” Viking said quietly. “Yeah.”
“So what happened to Lily?” Wolf asked, already knowing that the answer was ‘nothing good’. “You said that she… she went away?”
“She died, and it was because of me,” Iris said succinctly. “It was my fault.”
“What?” Viking was appalled. “Baby, there’s no way that you –”
Iris spoke over him. “After I’d been in the basement for about five days, Gideon came down and asked me if I had learned my lesson. I cried and begged and said that I’d be the best woman-servant that he’d ever had, if he could just please make it stop and take me back. He stared at me for a long time, then he agreed to let me come back upstairs. I was so pathetically grateful, I got on my knees and I kissed his fucking feet, thanking him and blubbering. Then he asked me again if I was sure that I wanted to be his servant, and I said yes. That’s when he – he gave Guardian Michael the signal.”
“The signal to… to hurt Lily?” Wolf said.
“Yes. Guardian Michael put her neck in a noose and hoisted her up, way off the ground, and let her hang there. Gideon made me – made me watch. I had to kneel stark naked on that cement floor and watch until it was all over, until she’d stopped kicking and clawing at the rope and twisting around in circles.” Iris shook her head, trying to force the horrible images away. “And as soon as Lily was quiet and still, Gideon sent the Guardians away and made me – I had to – I was already on my knees –”
“Stop,” Wolf barked. “You don’t need to say it. We get it, sweetheart.”
“And then I was taken upstairs and given new clothes and everyone acted like I’d never been gone. Like there had never been a woman named Lily.” Iris looked at Wolf. “I can tell you that Gideon murdered Lily – I saw it with my own eyes. I found out later that there were others who’d disappeared, both women and Guardians. So it seems to me that if Gideon’s able to kill people and nobody on the outside knows anything about it, nobody’s even asking questions, is this what the cop is helping him with?”
“I don’t know,” Wolf said slowly. “But it’s one hell of a great place for Ice and the twins to start.”
“They need to be careful.” Iris’ eyes were huge with fear. “Wolf, I know that the guys can take care of themselves, but Gideon is a full-blown psychopath and a sadist. He doesn’t just kill people – he loves hurting them, drawing out the pain, really watching them suffer. If he even suspects that Ice and Drake and Dux are there to get to him, he’ll torture and disappear them before you ever know they’re missing. Especially –”
“Especially if a local cop is looking the other way while he’s peeling off their skin,” Scars finished for her. “ Fuck , Wolf.”
“‘Fuck’ is right, man.” Wolf was already on his phone calling Ice. “That’s the word, for fuckin’ sure.”