Chapter 18 Levi
LEVI
Ilowered my binoculars. “I’m not sure watching Ace practice line dances in his living room is really helping us prove anything.”
Whip cringed, leaning back in his seat behind the wheel. “He’s still doing that? He’s been at it for two hours.”
“And not getting any better. He’s gotta be the most uncoordinated motherfucker I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Violet reached across the back seat and plucked the binoculars from my fingers, holding them up to her eyes again. She watched Ace dance for a bit, a smile playing across her pretty mouth. “I don’t know. I think it’s really cute he wants to learn.”
I tilted my head back and stared at the ceiling of the car.
The interior smelled vaguely of grease and salt, courtesy of the McDonald’s pit stop we’d made between watching Trigger attend an AA meeting and Torch sitting in his yard with a fire going in a metal drum.
Trigger had been serious and solemn, shaking the hands of other members and talking to them quietly.
Torch had looked like he was living his best life, watching shit he threw into the bin go up in flames.
Neither had been doing anything that would have made me think they were capable of capturing a bunch of innocent women, torturing them to death, then dumping their bodies without so much as bothering to cover them with anything.
Ace’s fumbling, mis-stepping line dances sure as hell weren’t giving ‘I get off on torturing women’ vibes.
I tossed the binoculars down on the seat between me and Violet. “This is a waste of time. We need to go back out to the dump site and check out those bodies ourselves.”
“What’s the point?” Whip asked. “You searching for some sort of calling card?”
I swallowed thickly. I didn’t want to admit that was exactly what I wanted to do.
Ever since I’d realized Lynx was out of jail and Toby’s photos had proved he was lurking around with people he shouldn’t, a bad feeling had swirled in my gut.
I’d almost wanted to believe that Trigger, Ace, and Torch were responsible for those dead women, and for all the other shit Violet had gone through. I mean, that would have sucked. I’d come to like them all since I’d been dragged into the group, even if I didn’t know them as well as Whip and X.
But I’d shared a cell with Lynx for a lot longer than a couple of months. He was my friend in the true sense of the word, not just an acquaintance like Trig, Ace, and Torch were.
I didn’t want to think he might be responsible for all the shit that had happened since I’d gotten out.
Since we’d both gotten out and he hadn’t even said a word.
I knew things about Lynx nobody else knew. Things not even the cops knew, or he wouldn’t be walking the street. Things clearly even Grayson and the rest of the Murder Squad didn’t know, or Lynx would be on the list too.
If I’d known he was out I would have suggested he join the squad himself. Would have made sure he was turning over a new leaf and putting his skills to use in a way that served the community around us, not hurt it.
But after seeing his face in Toby’s photos, I didn’t know what to think. Didn’t know if the friend I’d made was the real Lynx or if it had all been for show.
If Trig, Ace, and Torch weren’t responsible for it all, then Lynx needed to be ruled out.
I just didn’t have the guts to put my friend square in the sights of killers without some sort of proof. Sharing years in a cell with him surely meant I owed him at least that much.
If he’d killed those women, there’d be signs.
Four claw marks, ripped into their skin.
I’d seen him draw that mark over and over, etching it into the walls of our cell, drawing it on anything that belonged to him. Everyone in the prison knew if there were four claw marks on something, then it was the property of Lynx.
If he’d killed those women, I would have bet my life he wouldn’t have been able to help himself and that his mark would be on them too.
X groaned. “Get it together, Ace! It’s left, left, ball change, slap your ass! It’s not that hard!” He flung his forearm over his eyes like he couldn’t bear watching Ace’s fumbling another minute. “Remind me never to go to a honky-tonk with him. How embarrassing.”
Whip questioned if there were any honky-tonks in Saint View, but Violet’s phone ringing drowned them out.
She made a face at the screen then answered pleasantly, “Hi, Francine. What’s up?”
I started to turn away, not interested in Violet’s conversation with her boss, but the frown that morphed between her eyes stopped me. I watched her while she listened to the older woman on the phone, her frown deepening with every second that passed.
“No, I haven’t heard from her.”
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
Violet held a finger up to me, telling me to wait, then answered Francine. “I’m sure she’s sick and was maybe just too unwell to call. I can check on her.”
She opened her mouth again but then quickly closed it, pressing it into a firm line. She held the phone out from her head just a bit, so even I could hear Francine’s ranting down the line.
Violet put it back to her ear. “Like I said, I’ll check on her. Can I do that before you fire her, please? She might be really unwell. I can pick up her missed shift so there’s no harm done.”
Relief spread across Violet’s face. “Thank you. Yes. I’ll check her roster and make sure the houses she’s missed get taken care of.”
Whip and X had both fallen quiet, listening to her end of the conversation as well.
She finished the call and cringed. “Nyah didn’t show up for her shift today, and she didn’t call either. I’m going to make them up tomorrow, and I know we want to go out to where you found the bodies, but can we check on Nyah first?”
Whip put the car into drive. “Of course. Where to?”
“Call her first,” I suggested.
Violet nodded, stabbing her phone. “She’s probably just avoiding Francine’s calls. Can’t blame her, she’s the last person I would want to talk to if I was unwell.”
“Or if you were loved-up and in bed with Dax?” X suggested.
Violet grimaced. “That is also a likely possibility. She’s not answering her phone.”
I picked up mine and called Dax. He didn’t answer either.
Violet’s teeth sank into her bottom lip. “Can we go to her house? Hopefully we find the two of them in bed—”
“Oh, you kinky minx! You hoping for a peep show?” X asked.
Violet shot him a look. “Just hoping they’re both there and everything is okay.”
I squeezed her leg. “They’ll be fine, but we can go check.
” I was suddenly in no hurry to get back out to that pile of bodies.
I knew we should go before darkness fell, otherwise I’d have the same problem I’d had when we’d found the bodies, without enough light to properly examine them.
But I just didn’t want my fears to be confirmed with Lynx’s mark I was already half convinced I was going to find.
If I was wrong, that was almost as bad. That would just prove what a shitty friend I was, assuming because the guy had a history, he couldn’t turn over a new leaf.
Hadn’t that been exactly the problem I’d had when I’d first gotten out?
That nobody would give me a chance because of who I’d once been?
And now here I was, assuming the same of Lynx.
Running around town searching for Nyah was a whole lot more appealing.
Whip pulled the car out onto the road, and X gave Ace a wave as we passed his house, not that Ace would have seen it. He was too busy concentrating on getting his footwork right to notice Whip’s car lurking outside.
It wasn’t far to Nyah’s little house in the shitty backstreets of Saint View. Whip stopped the car in front, and we all piled out, probably unnecessarily, but Violet’s worry had permeated the car, and now I was concerned too.
I followed her up the path, X to my left, Whip on my right.
X sniggered. “Wouldn’t it be funny if the reason neither of them are answering their phones is because they’re naked, tangled up in a sex swing, and that’s what we’re about to walk in on?”
“Funny for who?” I asked. “I really don’t want to see my new boss’s balls.”
X waved his hand at me. “Yeah, yeah. We all know you only want to see Whip’s. You’re a one testicle kinda dude.”
“That sounds like I only have one testicle.” I didn’t know why I was engaging.
“Want Whip to check for you?”
“Vi,” I asked. “Would Francine notice if you borrowed about twenty bottles of bleach?” Then I turned to Whip. “Think that’ll be enough to drown him in?”
Whip’s lips turned up slightly, but we’d reached Nyah’s front door, and all three of us fell silent as Violet wasted no time in rapping her knuckles across the scratched wood.
There was no sound from inside.
X stepped up to the windows. “Dibs on first peeps. If there is a sex show going on inside, you all wait in line behind me.” He cupped his hands around his eyes to shield them from the late afternoon glare and peered through the glass. “Damn! Nothing but empty house. How dull. I want a refund.”
Violet knocked again, harder this time, her phone to her ear once more, but again, no answer to either the door or her call. She glanced back at me. “Can you pick the lock?”
I eyed it and then nodded. “Easily. But do you really want me to? Bit of an invasion of privacy?”
She stepped back. “You’re right. I’m overreacting. But I just don’t think she’d go AWOL like this. I’m really worried she might be seriously unwell in there. What if she’s passed out or something?”
I was forever a bit of a pessimist. It was hard not to be when you’d been raised in a town where nothing much good ever seemed to happen.
Worry niggled in the back of my mind too.
She was a single female living in a shitty neighborhood with even shittier security.
That lock was flimsy at best. One swift kick would have it flying open, even if I hadn’t been able to pick a lock.
I still had the tools in my pocket from the warehouse though, and there was no point in breaking her door when I didn’t have to. I had the lock open in less than a minute, and the four of us edged inside.
“Nyah?” Violet crept down the hallway, presumably to where the bedroom was.
X followed closed behind, like her second skin.
Both came back quickly.
“There’s nobody here,” Violet told me and Whip.
I reached out and rubbed her arm. “Like we said, she’s probably with Dax, having a sex marathon.”
“Ah, no,” a voice said from the doorway.
We all turned in that direction, taking in Dax standing there, staring at all of us. “Is she not here? She was supposed to meet me after work, but when she didn’t show I called Francine, who said she hadn’t come in at all.”
Worry prickled at the back of my neck. “Who else does she know in town? Friends? Family?”
Dax and Violet both shook their heads.
Violet’s voice wobbled when she answered. “She moved here to get away from her family. She didn’t want to be found. What if…?”
I put an arm around her shoulder. “No need to go there. There’s no sign of her purse or phone or keys. She might just be out shopping or maybe she went for a hike and she’ll be back soon.”
Dax nodded. “True.”
A little of Violet’s panic ebbed away. “If her family had busted in here in the middle of the night there would have been a broken door, right? And they wouldn’t have let her take her phone and keys and purse. Right?”
But my gut churned with the thought of another option.
One I didn’t want to voice out loud, because if it were true, it would devastate both of them.
“Right,” I agreed instead. “We just need to give it some time. There’s a reason the cops wait twenty-four hours before filing a missing person’s report.
It’s because people, at least adults, almost always come back within that time. ”
But the words sounded weak in my ears. “Why don’t Whip, X, and I go out for a drive around and see if we can find her. The two of you wait here in case she comes back.”
I didn’t want to leave Violet alone, but I couldn’t take her with us either.
Because a nagging voice in my head said the first place we needed to check for Nyah was that pile of dead women.