Chapter 15
Lexi
I wake in a room with sunbeams streaming through the cracks of the blinds. I’m comfortable, so clearly, I’m not in my own cramped bed in the safe room. I open my eyes and stare at an unfamiliar bedroom. It’s sleek, modern, and very masculine. I freeze in place, realizing who the big, warm body pressing against me belongs to.
Memories immediately come flooding back of everything that happened in the last few days. I’d been pissed that he’d accused me of stealing his sister’s money, though I guess he had his reasons. But after reading through the files I sent him about my dad’s murder, he’d shelved the investigation into his sister’s missing crypto because he thought I was in mortal danger from the same man who killed my dad. I still don’t know if I believe that’s true, but there is something weird going on in my life. All I know right now is that I’m grateful Zen and his club stepped up to help a girl out. Otherwise, I’d still be locking myself up in the safe room, attributing that voice to my PTSD. God only knows how that would have eventually panned out.
When Zen moves, I take that as an opportunity to slide out of his bed and use his ensuite bathroom. Picking up my clothing along the way, I decide to grab a quick shower and try to get dressed for the day.
Standing in his shower with warm water flowing over my shoulders, I blush furiously at the memory of how he ate me out with a kind of enthusiasm I never thought possible in a guy. Then again, Zen’s not just any guy. He’s a hot, tatted-up biker with abs of steel and a protective streak a mile wide. In other words, he’s nothing I thought I wanted in my life, but everything I desperately needed.
I soap up using his minty shower gel and quickly get out of the shower before he wakes up. I need to stay out of bed long enough to build myself a computer to use and figure out who and why my dad was killed. Was it some random act of violence, or something more premeditated by the serial killer my dad was apparently tracking? Thinking my dad was tracking this dangerous man over several states for a couple of decades is mind-blowing.
I turn the situation over in my mind as I dry off and get dressed. I always thought we were an average family growing up. Sure, my father was extra safety-conscious, but I believed all fathers were. Everything I thought I knew about my family was flipped upside down when we found that flash drive. If it hadn’t been perfectly obvious, he had named the flash drive ‘Hunting Information’. Of course, I hadn’t known that until I put the flash drive in my computer. Since my father didn’t hunt in the traditional sense of the word, that had been a big red flag before I opened the first folder.
How in the hell did my life get so fucked up, so fast? I stand in front of Zen’s bathroom mirror, finger-combing my long black hair as I try to figure this out.
When I return to the bedroom, Zen’s awake. He’s sitting on the bed with his back leaning against the headboard, his phone in his hand, and a grim expression on his face. I rush over to him and ask, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Did something bad happen?”
He stares at me with such intensity that I start to get scared. “Don’t tell me you have some kind of STD and didn’t wear protection because we got caught up in the moment.”
His eyes widen. “What? No! I’d never do something like that to a woman. I don’t normally have unprotected sex. You were a one-off situation.”
“Fair enough,” I say, feeling idiotic for jumping to that conclusion. “I apologize for thinking the worst of you.”
He reaches out, puts his hands on my shoulders, and draws me closer. “Look, you’re a really sweet person, and you don’t deserve any of the horrible shit that’s happened to you over your lifetime.”
That’s a lovely but odd thing to come out with first thing in the morning. “I don’t understand. What are you trying to tell me, Zen?”
He takes a few minutes to order his thoughts before giving it another try. “You know how you said that you thought your life was one thing growing up, and come to find out your father was nothing like what you thought he was?”
“Yes. It’s really weird. I’ve been thinking about that. Was any of our life real? Did he just go through the motions of spending time with me while his mind was on this side gig he took up, making himself some kind of self-appointed vigilante? When I try to sort it out in my mind, I realize he spent a lot of time wrapped up in his own thoughts, doing his own thing.”
“Let’s take that thought one step further,” he says calmly. “Is it remotely possible that your father was the serial killer and the man we thought was chasing him was the vigilante?”
I shove back so fast I almost fall off the bed. Shock rolls through me. “What? No. Of course not! How can you even think that?”
Zen climbs out of bed naked, still with his phone in his hand. I watch as he picks up his pants and slides them on. Normally, seeing him naked would attract my attention. Not anymore. Now, he’s just another swinging dick who thinks he knows more about my life than I do. White-hot fury pools in my gut as I prepare for the fight I know is coming about this issue.
Zen’s really freaked out. I can tell because he starts pacing back and forth, still gripping his phone like it’s the one thing tethering him to reality. He starts talking, but it’s more like mumbling to himself than trying to convince me of anything. It throws me for a loop.
“Maybe he saw his wife getting attacked and it flipped a switch, causing him to become interested in that dynamic—fascinated by it even? He can’t very well kill his wife because he needs her to raise his kid, so he thinks about it, becomes obsessed with the idea, and eventually kills the co-ed. It would be all too easy to convince his wife to leave because there is danger about or even pretend her one-off attack by some douchebag was part of a larger danger.”
My hands fly to my mouth, and shock whips through my entire body like an electrical current. Because what he’s saying makes some kind of sense. Only that can’t be right because it’s my dad. My dad can’t be the killer who finally got his comeuppance. That’s not possible because he’s my dad, and I would have noticed something that fucked up. Then again, I didn’t realize any of the shit we found on the flash drive was going on at the time, so why is this such a gigantic stretch? It’s because he was my dad. If he’s a monster, what does that make me?
Zen is still pacing and mumbling to himself. “What if the man who killed him wasn’t a vigilante but his partner? Maybe they’d been killing people for years, and things got sticky when his partner targeted his wife? That means there could be two serial killers instead of one.”
I yell, “Stop pacing and tell me what changed. Where did all this come from? Yesterday, you thought my dad was some kind of noble vigilante. Today you think he’s a monster. What happened?”
Zen stops in his tracks and stands there staring at me with an expression of pity on his face. Then he slowly lifts his cell phone, using his thumb to turn it on. All I see is a photograph of a dirty bag with items laid out in the grass beside it. Taking a step closer, I take his phone and zoom in on the items. Everyone who has ever watched a psychological thriller or crime show would recognize what that bag is by the items pulled out, there’s duct tape, zip ties, gloves, wire, a knife. It’s all there, everything you need to abduct and murder a woman, right down to big black trash bags.
As I stare at the image, I hear Zen say, “It’s a kill bag, Lexi.”
I’m silent as I wait for him to continue.
“My club brothers guarding your family home discovered an area in the backyard where the grass wasn’t growing fully. They dug down a couple of feet and found this. If your father isn’t a serial killer, why did he stash a kill bag on his property?”
In a moment of clarity, I reject the whole idea of my old man being a serial killer who preyed on women. My brain is already scrambling for some reasonable justification for them finding something like that on our property. “Maybe whoever killed him planted it there?”
“We don’t know how long it’s been there for. Could he have realized whoever was tracking him had found him and decided it was time to ditch the evidence?”
“That means the real killer could have been the one who put it there to frame my father,” I fling back.
This new friend of mine is stubborn. “I still like my idea better.”
“Look, I don’t care what you found buried on our property. My father was not a killer.”
Zen tells me quietly, “I’m sorry, Lexi, but that kill bag throws everything into a new light. We can’t just pretend like we never found it.”
“Why not?” I ask. “Especially if it was planted. Why let that pull the investigation in the wrong direction?”
He shakes his head, his voice resigned. “My club brothers handed the bag over to our contact from the Las Salinas Police Department so their crime lab can take a crack at it. They found some pieces of jewelry in a side pocket.”
When I give him a confused look, he explains, “Serial killers often take trophies from their victims. What are you gonna do if your father’s fingerprints are found inside the bag or on those pieces of jewelry?”
My emotions totally shut down. This is not happening. My father is not the killer. I turn around and start gathering up my stuff because I can’t stay here any longer.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Zen says, his voice deep and worried.
I ignore him, because I’m not even entertaining the idea that my dad’s a serial killer. That’s a bridge too far. Now, I feel terrible about telling him my father beat up our wife-beating neighbor all those years ago. I put everything in my bag and pull out my phone to call a rideshare. Since I didn’t bring my car, I need a lift out of here. I shoulder my bag and begin walking downstairs as I wait for the app to connect.
I can hear Zen yelling after me, but I don’t care. I feel like I’m suffocating. I need to go home, lock myself in my safe room, and finish my computer build. I’m about to walk out the back door when a big hand clamps down on my arm. Zen jerks me back and raises his voice, “I asked you where the hell you think you’re going?”
“Somewhere that’s not here,” I tell him in a clipped voice. I pull my arm from his grasp and turn to leave.
“You don’t even have a computer. You need to stay here until we can figure this out.”
I turn on my heel in front of his door and glare at him. “I’m clearly not in danger if my father’s the killer, right?”
“Look, we’re just exploring that as a possibility. We won’t know until the crime lab finishes analyzing that kill bag. In the meantime, we still haven’t figured out who’s bugging your computer, which means you might still have a stalker. And the police never did find your father’s killer, so that means he’s still out there somewhere.”
“I’m beginning to think this is all bullshit. It might be like the police suggested, we were the victims of a random home invasion gone wrong by some tweaker looking for drug money.”
“How do you explain what we found on that flash drive, Lexi?”
“It might just have been my parents playing detective while they were trying to stay one step ahead of the killer. Maybe they were just trying to maintain some awareness of where he was in order to avoid him?”
Zen frowns at me. I’m not even sure I believe the words coming out of my mouth. The one thing I’m sure of is that my dad’s no serial killer. I just don’t know how to get Zen to believe me about that.
A short silence spins out between us, and then he speaks. “Look, Lexi, I know things have been stressful for you over the last year. I didn’t mean to point fingers at your dad, nor did I have any intention of pushing you over the edge into hysterics.”
I rein in my fury long enough to tell him, “I’m not hysterical, you asshole. I’m just good and damn angry at you for accusing my deceased father of being a damn serial killer.”
“Let’s both calm the fuck down for a minute and just agree to go where the facts lead us.”
“No. This is all too much for me. You’re right about me being on stress overload. I just want to go home, lock myself in my safe room, and work on my custom desktop build. Give me a couple of days to cool off while you break down my computer and try to find out how some nutjob has breached my security protocols.”
“You really want to leave me?” His voice seems more hurt than it ought to be when it comes to getting rid of a pain in the ass like me.
I take a step towards him, still mad but looking for a way to break it to him without hurting his feelings. “Look, Zen, we’ve only spent twenty-four hours together, plus some meetups at the clubhouse. Whatever is going on between us is too new to start getting attached. We need to slow down and pay attention to the danger, try to figure out what’s going on and if my dad’s killer is wound up in all this. There’ll be time to worry about us after.”
His eyes lift, and suddenly he’s staring at a spot over my right shoulder. When he speaks, his voice is wooden and a bit hollow. “In order for there to be an after, I have to protect you in the here and now. But you don’t want me, do you?”
“Not if all I’m going to bring to your life is trouble. I appreciate you trying to help me—I really do. All I have to bring to the table is danger, drama—and like you said, hysterics. I want better for you than that. Maybe one day I’ll get my life sorted and be able to have nice things. When that happens, you’ll be the very first nice thing I’ll come running to. In the meantime, I need to concentrate on sorting my life out.”
“My club is already involved. They won’t quit until they find your father’s killer. Neither will I. You’ve got my word on that.”
I close my eyes and drop my head forward until my chin is touching my chest. After silently counting to ten, I lift my eyes to his. “I might be really scared and confused right now, but I’m certain of one thing. My dad wasn’t a killer. I don’t care what the clues say. I’ll never believe that of him in a million years.”
Zen gazes at me, his expression now totally blank. “I understand. I truly hope that’s what the investigation reveals. Remember my club brothers are outside your place around the clock. If you need anything at all, just text that group chat number I gave you and they’ll come running. I’ll get the message too and come running.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary, but who knows? My life seems like a total crapshoot lately.” By this time all my anger has drained away, leaving me feeling exhausted and numb.
I hear a honk and quickly pull the door open, gesturing to the driver that I’ll be right out. Suddenly, Zen is right behind me. He slips his arm around me and pulls me back against his front. I feel him nuzzle his face against my hair, and he whispers in my ear, “I like you a lot, Lexi. I promise we’re gonna figure this mess out. And one way or another, we’re gonna make sure your father gets justice, and you don’t have to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life.”
I force myself to put one foot in front of the other because walking away from this man is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’m already tearing up. I can’t risk talking because he’ll be able to tell I’m breaking down. So, I step out the door, giving him my back. As I rush down the sidewalk, tears start sliding down my face, blurring my vision. When I get to the car, my hand feels around for a second before I find the door handle. I pull it. When the door swings open, I climb inside and quickly shut the door behind me.
There’s a woman in the driver’s seat who asks, “Are you alright, hon? You look like you’re having a rough morning.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna be just fine. Do you have the address?”
“I sure do.” She repeats my address, and once I verify it’s correct, she pulls away from the curb.
She asks curiously, “Is that big, shirtless biker yours?”
Turning to look over my shoulder, I see Zen standing outside his shop, watching me leave. He’s tall, handsome, and all sexy muscles and tattoos. My heart aches at the sight of him. I mumble an answer to her question, “Honestly, I don’t know.”
“Well, if things get too rough for you, there’s a women’s shelter in town. They’ll help you get a fresh start.”
I catch sight of her kindly face in the rearview mirror and give her a faint smile. “No! It’s nothing like that. If anyone’s the problem, it’s probably me. I’ll remember what you said, though.”
She tries to cheer me up with small talk for the rest of the trip, which is better than me brooding over my problems or crying my eyes out. By the time we pull up to my house, I’m looking dry-eyed and like someone who should be among the living.
Ignoring Zen’s club brothers who are milling about outside, I rush into the house, go straight to the safe room, and lock the door behind me. Standing with my back to the door, I let out a relieved breath. Tossing my bag onto the bed and taking off my jacket, I walk over and sit down at the table in front of the custom-build computer I’ve been working on. When I pick up my tools and get started on this project again, my mind roams, but not over my problems. I’ve shoved all that aside to think about Zen—how his eyes seem to gaze into my very soul, the way his smile warms my heart from the inside out, and how amazing the orgasms he gives are. My memories all contort into fantasies of us being together, of us laughing and loving. If I’m totally honest, the strength of my attraction scares me a little.