Chapter 27
Onyx
I spent the day at a farm in the middle of Buttfuck Nowhere.
We’re lookin’ to set up a shooting range and this land seemed perfect.
Only problem is that there’s no cellphone coverage.
That’s something that’s gonna have to change.
I’m heading back to Cedar Falls when my phone buzzes in my pocket.
I pull over in case it’s something urgent. What I see chills me to the bone.
Emily: We’re in trouble. We’re on the back road heading towards the city. Black SUV bearing down on us. Need help NOW.
Damn it! When did she send this?
I freeze for a second before catapulting into action. I’m moving before I finish reading, already typing out a group text for my brothers to join me.
I don’t wait for replies. I jump on my bike.
Emily has been sharing her location with me since she moved into the clubhouse.
I thumb it open and attach my phone to the cradle at the center of my handlebars and check her location.
When I see the stationary dot, fear swamps my very soul.
I head towards there with my heart in my mouth.
Halfway there I’m joined by Mica and Slate.
We crest the next hill and see Christina’s car in a ditch.
The rear end is smashed to hell, telling me this wasn’t some random accident.
I ditch the bike and run to look for my old lady. The windshield is shattered and the passenger door is hanging open. Christina is slumped in the driver’s seat, blood at her hairline, her breathing shallow but steady. But my Emily’s seat is empty.
Slate shoves me aside and climbs in to check on his old lady.
I stumble back, shocked that she’s just gone.
I can hear Mica calling for an ambulance.
I run around the car, making sure she wasn’t thrown from the vehicle or trapped beneath it.
My blood runs cold when I don’t find her anywhere.
I shout her name anyway, on the off chance that she might hear me and respond.
Mica comes up beside me. He hands me Emily’s phone and states quietly, “Everything points to an abduction. You know that, right?”
I turn her phone on. It still works although the screen is cracked. It looks like she may have dropped it at some point after texting me.
“Fuck! Fuck it to hell!” I yell as I throw the phone on the ground. Why had I chosen today to be out of range. Why hadn’t I accompanied them to the city. “This is my fault!”
Mica puts his hand on my shoulder. “We thought it was over. No one could have foreseen this.”
I’m pacing up and down. “How long has she been gone for?”
Mica speaks again. “I don’t know. But the more time we waste on a fruitless search here, the more time her abductors have alone with her. You know what that means.”
I jerk my head around to look at him. My mind fills with all the information they taught us in the military about how the longer a person is missing, the more unlikely they are to be found alive.
Fuck me. I rub my hand down my face and pocket Emily’s phone.
I make a mental note to let Striker have a crack at it.
Christina groans when the paramedics arrive. As they lift her onto the stretcher, her bloodied fingers are shaking but she’s determined to tell me something.
“Onyx,” she says, voice slurred. “They took her.”
“Who?” I ask, totally bewildered about who could have a grudge enough against a woman as sweet as Emily besides Brennan. He’s in jail, so I know it’s not him.
“It was a fancy black SUV,” she says. “It came out of nowhere and forced us off the road.” She pauses to catch her breath. “A man wearing expensive clothes got out. He wasn’t a biker or a cop.”
My jaw tightens because a suspicion is growing stronger in my mind. If they let that stupid fucker go again, I’m going to drop them where they stand.
“He didn’t even look at me,” she continues. “He went straight for Emily. He was rough and determined. I couldn’t stop him.”
I hold her hand between both of mine as Slate stands close to the gurney, his eyes glistening with tears.
“Don’t worry. You didn’t do anything wrong. We’ll find her and the two of you will be shopping in no time.”
That’s all I get out before they load her into the ambulance and shut the doors. Slate knocks once and the door swings open. He climbs in and kneels at her side. The siren and lights come on as the ambulance pulls away.
I glance over at Jasper. He’s on a call right now, but I see him nodding his head. Then he turns to me and says, “Brennan’s still in jail.”
I say to Mica, “Emily wasn’t taken because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. This feels like maybe she was taken out of vengeance or because someone saw her as a loose end.”
Mica keeps his expression inscrutably blank as he responds. “There’s no evidence to support any of that right now. We need facts, not gut feelings. Like Jasper said, Brennan’s in custody so this wasn’t him. But who the fuck would do something like this?”
***
The ride back to the clubhouse is a painful reminder that I fucked up and my old lady paid the price. My mind gets lost running through every possible reason she might have been taken from me in such a violent way.
Striker’s office light is on when we storm inside. Jasper and my old man are standing beside him, gazing at his computer. Striker’s fingers are flying across the keyboard while they wait.
“You found anything?” I ask, not even bothering with a hello.
When Striker finally looks up at me, there’s something different in his eyes. Relief maybe. That’s when it hits me that he’s figured out whatever was bothering him about this case.
I jerk my chin at him and say, “Tell me what you know, brother.”
“I kept digging,” he says. “I couldn’t let it go. When it comes to rich assholes, their money is hard to track.”
“Yeah, they’re always trying to pay as little in taxes on it as possible,” I tell him.
“About Brennan,” Striker says. “Everyone keeps saying he comes from money. That his family’s loaded.
That he can bond out, disappear, start over somewhere else, and maybe that’s all true, but Brennan has very little personal income, no investments, no house in his name, nothing of value that I could find. ”
Mica perks up because we’re in his wheelhouse now. “I thought you said everyone in his family is a trust fund baby, that they have a legacy trust.”
He turns the laptop towards us, and I step closer. Numbers fill the screen. Accounts. Transfers. Trust documents. I lean down and read what he has highlighted. His sister is actually in charge of the trust.
“Brennan isn’t rich,” Striker continues. “He’s been broke for years. In addition to that, he’s got no assets of value in his name except one.”
My old man says, “Get to the point. As entertaining as all this is, getting to Emily is the priority.” He stops pacing. “Then where the hell did the money come from?”
Striker taps the screen. “He got a two-million-dollar life insurance policy. The beneficiary is the family legacy trust.”
Me, Jasper, and my old man are shocked, but not Mica. Money is his job, so he knows all about trust funds. He manages the one our family started years ago, the one that holds all our property and the modest amount of money we’ve accumulated.
He explains, “That’s actually not unusual. Many legacy trusts stipulate that anyone who draws from the trust must give permission for an insurance policy owned and paid for by the trust. It’s one of the many ways rich people keep their trust funds flush with cash.”
My old man asks, “What the fuck does this rich people shit have to do with my missing daughter-in-law?”
“Brennan’s sister controls the family trust,” Striker says. “Everything flows through her. Every dollar Brennan spends is because she gave him trust disbursements. That means when I followed the money, it all traced back to the accounts she manages.”
Jasper asks, “Are you saying that stupid fucker has been living off an allowance while out there murdering women and fucking people’s lives up?”
“Yes,” Striker says. “And not just recently. I can’t find any evidence that Charles Brennan ever had direct access to the trust. His sister gave him enough money to maintain appearances and keep him happy and not a cent more.
This woman spends more on her fiancé than her brother, who is legally entitled to the trust money. ”
I ask gruffly, “What are you gettin’ at? Say it plainly.”
“What I’m saying is two things. If Charles Brennan isn’t capable of managing his own trust fund money, how in the hell did he manage to kill and bury two women without his sister having the slightest inkling that he was off doin’ horrible shit?
And secondly, when I match up the payments she made to his accounts and the timeline of the murders, her behavior seems suspicious at best.”
“What have you found out about the sister?” I ask.
“She’s Charlotte Brennan.”
“What? The who’s running for mayor?” I ask.
“The very same,” Striker mutters.
“So why didn’t we know this?”
“We did. I just wrote it off. Rich family, he had his trust fund, and she’s got a respectable political career. She wasn’t on my radar.”
I lean closer to the screen. “What about the fiancé? Do you think he might be the one involved instead of the sister? Maybe she’s covering for him?”
Striker doesn’t hesitate. “He’s involved alright. I believe he is the one who procured the poison.”
Jasper curses under his breath. “You’re sure? The cops didn’t say anything about the autopsy results.”
“Well, no,” Striker says. “They haven’t done the autopsies yet.
But when I checked out the fiancé’s bank account, I found a transaction for a purchase from the hardware store in Proctor.
Let’s just say, unless he’s dealing with a roach invasion of biblical proportions, that shit was used to kill those women. ”
The pieces slide together in my head with a sick kind of clarity. “Brennan breaking into Emily’s cabin, holding her hostage, and coming back to burn it down seems impulsive, emotional, and messy. Poisoning is personal.”
Mica says what we’re all thinking. “Brennan doesn’t seem smart enough or patient enough to pull off poisoning of two different people months apart.”
“Where does she live?” I ask grimly.
Striker’s fingers move again, fast and sure. An address pops onto the screen. “They live about forty minutes from here in a gated property. All the houses in her community have security systems. But I can hack it if you want me to?”
Jasper speaks before I can get the words out. “Hell yeah. Of course we do. We need to gear up and chase down this lead.”
We all turn towards the door, and Striker scrambles after us with his laptop in tow. He stops to grab some things and runs to catch back up. I can’t wait to bust up in that house and beat some damn information out of these rich assholes. I cannot stand the thought of them hurting the woman I love.