Chapter 20
“Did you miss me so much that you had to call and hear my voice?” Luc laughed into the phone when he saw Lilith’s number flash on the screen.
“No, I need Bandit’s number.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Someone defaced my garage, and there are a few windows broken out.”
“Do. Not. Go. Inside. Call 9-1-1. I’ll call the club, we’ll be right there.
” Luc hung up and sent out a text message that someone had messed with Lilith at her house, and he gave them all the address.
He ran out of his house, hopped on his bike, and didn’t even have his helmet buckled beneath his chin before he roared down his driveway.
Since she was thirty minutes away, other patch holders caught up with him on his way, and joined him.
As the members entered the pack, they moved their bikes so that Lucius was protected.
They roared down the street and parked one house away from her, leaving room for the police who hadn’t arrived yet, at least he couldn’t see any police cruisers.
Luc looked around and spotted Lilith standing on the lawn across the street. He whipped off his helmet, tossed it toward his bike, and ran to her. He sighed in relief when she ran to him and jumped into his arms.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. But my house is destroyed.
” They turned and all the men swore at the words spray painted in red across her garage.
Bandit clipped his badge on his belt, took his gun from his ankle holster, and told the others to stay back.
They did, and just as Bandit entered the house, the first police car arrived.
“You’re fucking late,” Lucius said through gritted teeth. “What if this was a real emergency?”
“Sir, we’re here now, we’ll assess the situation and get back to you.”
“You’re fucking late, there’s already a police officer inside. He’s assessing the situation.”
“Sir,” the cocky officer started, but Bandit stood in the doorway and barked out something that was hard to understand, and when the officer whipped around, everyone heard him swallow hard.
“Conners! Stand down, he’s not the enemy.
Get your ass up here.” The bikers watched as the cop tried not to look like he was going before a firing squad.
“What took you so long? The call was made thirty-seven minutes ago. We all live thirty minutes out, and made it here in thirty minutes, you’re ten minutes away and it took you fifty fucking minutes to arrive?
What if this had been an attack in progress?
We’ll discuss this back at the station, now, what do you see? ”
After that, the men stood with Lucius and Lilith as Bandit and the young police officer went back inside. Twenty minutes later, the young officer came out and went to Lilith. “Ma’am, the place is cleared, but could you come in to see if anything is missing?”
Lilith looked at Luc, and he took her hand and nodded. “We’ll both come.” When the officer started to say something, Luc only gave him that scowl of his, and the guy nodded.
They walked inside and Luc had to hold Lilith up when they saw the damage to the house.
It was ransacked. It looked like every cushion had been cut and the stuffing torn out.
Every drawer, every cupboard, had been opened, and the stuff had been pulled out and smashed on the counters and floor.
The refrigerator and freezer doors stood open and food was all over the floor.
Even the flour and sugar had been thrown all around.
The destruction didn’t stop there, it went throughout the entire house.
In the bathroom, her shampoos and lotions had been squirted over every surface, in her bedroom, her closet and drawers were empty of their contents, the bed had been sliced open, both mattress and box springs.
When Lilith saw all her clothes had been cut to shreds, she turned on her heel and walked out.
“Jesus,” Lucius said as he stared at Bandit. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Yeah, revenge. Do you know if she has a home security system?”
“I know she has a Ring doorbell, other than that, I don’t know.”
“Why are you asking him?” the young officer asked.
“Because he’s her boyfriend and has been in the house before. She spent the night with him at his place last night. I’ll ask Ms. Richards about her security system, I need you to go to the neighbors to see if they have any type of security system where we might get the perpetrators on camera.”
As soon as he left, Luc looked at Bandit with a raised brow, “Why so hard on the kid?”
“He’s new, and he thinks because we live in a small town, 9-1-1 isn’t an emergency situation.
I’m trying to teach him otherwise. Before he came out to get Lilith, once I showed him the destruction, I asked how would he feel if he was almost an hour late to a call and found blood and a dead body or two mixed in with all this.
I can only say thank you for having Lilith at your house last night. ”
“Yeah,” Luc said, and turned in a circle with his hands on his hips, shaking his head. He finally turned to Bandit. “How long before we can get the ladies in here to help clean this up?”
“At least twenty-four hours, maybe longer. We’re going to have to dust for prints, I know yours are already on file, so you won’t have to go in for elimination prints, but Lilith is going to have to come to the station to get hers done.”
“I’ll tell her. I only have one more question, then I’ll get out of your hair and let you do your job.”
“What’s that?”
“Until we can repaint, can we hang a tarp over the garage door?”
“Absolutely. You’re not disturbing the scene, you’re basically preserving it for us.
We’re not big enough to have a crime unit on the force, we’ll have to call into the city for theirs to come out.
” Bandit rubbed the back of his head. “Between you and me, do you think it’s just Sally? Or possibly Brenda Smith?”
“I would bet it was both of them together. I’m not telling you how to do your job, but I’d put a BOLO out on them now for the airports, bus stations, or whatever if they were behind this and are trying to flee.”
“Yeah,” Bandit pulled out his phone and dialed.
Luc went back outside, talked to the guys, and for some reason, someone already had a tarp in one of their saddle bags.
It wasn’t a large one, but it did the trick of covering the words from the neighbors.
When they finished, they stood there, and a man came running up to them, but was stopped by the club members.
“Wait,” Lilith said. “That’s Richard.”
“The retired private dick?”
“Yes.”
Lucius allowed him to be let through, then the three of them went back inside. “Bandit,” Lucius called out, and it turned out that Richard and Bandit knew one another from when Richard was an active working investigator.
“Richard, what can we do for you?”
“Do you know that Ms. Richards hired me?”
“Yes, I’ve seen the photos you took. What about it?”
“Well, for some reason, my gut was screaming in the middle of the night. I don’t sleep well anyway, but something made me get up out of bed, and come over to Ms. Richard’s house last night. It was at two forty-seven that I left my home. I arrived here at three twenty-three.”
“Thanks for the time line,” Bandit began writing. “What did you see?”
“People leaving Ms. Richard’s home.” He had a professional looking camera and the four of them scrunched around to see the six inch square window.
They all saw, plain as day, Sally, Brenda, and the man from the photos earlier, leaving Lilith’s home with gigantic grins on their faces.
There were several frames of them high fiving each other.
The last three frames showed them entering a vehicle parked before the house, and a clear picture perfect image of the license plate.
The man got behind the wheel, Sally climbed into the front seat, and Brenda into the back.
“I’m going to want copies of those.”
“I figured as much. I wanted you to see these before I went into my dark room. I can have them to you in a couple of hours.”
“Thank you,” Bandit said, and Richard left. He turned to Lilith.
“Has Sally ever been in your house?”
“Yes, roughly a week before I met Lucius. She came over and we had pizza and wine, we were best friends, and she brought the wine. I’ve since done some deep cleaning.
” She scrubbed her forehead, and sighed heavily.
“See, when I get upset, or it’s the change of seasons, I deep clean my house.
I mean I wash the walls in the entire house, after my weekly vacuuming, and cleaning, once I do a deep clean, I hire professionals to come in and steam clean the entire house.
” She shrugged at their look. “I had a cousin that was severely allergic to almost everything. Her mother had professionals come in and steam clean her entire house. I know my cousin comes twice a year, so I have it done within days of her visiting.”
“Do you know when the last time it was done?”
“Sally was in my home five months ago, Renee, my cousin, was here five weeks ago, so I’d say it was cleaned six weeks ago.”
“Good, then if Sally’s prints show up, then they should be from this incident, and not months ago.”
“Correct.”
“Okay, now for the bad news. I told Luc that we’ll have to call into the city to get a crime unit out to dust for prints.
You’re going to have to come down to the station to get yours taken for elimination purposes.
Unfortunately, it’s going to be forty-eight hours or more before you can get back in here to clean.
If you could leave me your keys, I’ll make sure it’s locked. ”
“Can we put plywood over the broken windows?” Luc asked.
“Unfortunately, not. We don’t want to mess up any prints that might be there. I can tell the crime unit to dust the outside first, then you can come in and put it up.”
“Let me know,” he said as he wrapped his arm around Lilith. He turned her and took her chin in his fingers. “You’ll come back to my place.”
“I don’t want to put you out?” Lilith whispered, and didn’t see Bandit fade into the background, leaving the two of them alone.
“You’re not. If I didn’t want you there, I would have suggested a local hotel. I want you close to me.”
“I have to work tomorrow.”
“So do I.”
It was settled that she would go back to his place, and as she drove behind the motorcycles, she did a mental calculation of what she had in the pack she’d always kept packed and in her car since dating Lucius.
There had been many times they had gotten caught in the rain, and she needed to change her clothes into something dry.
At his place, she went inside and asked to use the washing machine, as her clothes washed, then dried, Lilith sat there staring into space, numb. She hadn’t realized that Luc supplied her with drinks and something to eat until hours later.