Chapter 19 Whip
WHIP
The dump site was hard enough to get to, even in good conditions, but after all the rain we’d had the other night, the track in was almost completely washed away. My car was too low to the ground, and we were forced to abandon it about a mile out and go in on foot.
I was just glad we weren’t trying to dump a body. Because dead people were heavy, and I’d barely recovered from X trying to kill us with oysters.
The stench hit before we crested the ridge. Not just rot. Not just the sweet, coppery reek of old blood. This was deeper. Feral. Foul.
Levi moved quietly beside me, his eyes sharper than usual, like being back at a crime scene brought him into focus.
X…not so much.
In the last two minutes alone, he’d tripped over a fallen branch, announced it was a hate crime, and then spent the rest of the walk swatting at invisible flies.
“Remind me again why we’re going toward the body pit and not, say, literally anywhere else?” X asked, brushing leaves off his shoulder.
“We need to see if she’s here,” Levi muttered.
I jerked my head in his direction. “Excuse me?”
He looked at me. “What? Like you aren’t thinking the same thing I am?
She’s been missing for at least eight hours, Whip.
You think there’s not even a remote chance that’s linked to the fucking shitstorm that’s surrounded us these last few weeks?
You didn’t come out here with even the slightest suspicion that we might find her body newly added to the pile we found the other night? ”
I didn’t want to think about that. I barely knew Nyah.
But Levi was right. We were supposed to be searching the town for any sign of her, and after a single sweep of the main street, this was where I’d driven.
Levi sighed heavily. “Listen. I told you both about my old cellmate, Lynx, being out of prison.”
X slapped his own arm, then winced, though I wasn’t sure if it was from the sting of the slap or the bug that had bitten him. “Is that the guy who taught you how to give good head? If so, Whip says thank you.”
Levi shot him a look. “Lynx had my back. I was in a bad situation, one of my first nights there. Lynx got me out of it. I owe him.”
I eyed Levi. “And yet you’re bringing him up as we walk toward a pile of dead bodies. All women who died in pretty horrific circumstances, if the sneak peek we got the other night was right.”
Levi sighed. “Yes.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You think he did it.”
Levi shook his head. “No. I don’t want to believe that. He never admitted to hurting a woman. Not to me. But is he capable if the price is right?” He lifted a shoulder. “If Lynx is in town—if he’s working again—he’d leave a message. He always did. Four claw marks.”
“Maybe I should start leaving a calling card on my dead bodies,” X mused out loud. “I don’t know what though. Maybe a star carved between their eyes. Ooh! Maybe polka dots on their ass cheeks.”
I squinted at him. “Just leaving an X for your name is too original?”
X’s mouth dropped open, and he pointed at me. “Now you’re thinking! The press will know me simply as X!”
“Everyone knows you simply as X,” I said dryly.
“Fair point. Maybe I could be X-Man!”
“Pretty sure Marvel has the copyright on that.”
“Dammit!”
“You could be X-Ray?” Levi suggested, shaking his booted foot free of the gluggy mud we sloshed through.
X wasn’t impressed. “I think we need to workshop this more.”
We reached the edge of the site, and I grimaced.
It was even worse in the daylight than it had been the night we’d been here. And after a few days of multiple dead bodies baking in the sun, it smelled twice as bad. The flies that buzzed now weren’t the imaginary kind, and I covered my mouth and nose with my arm, taking in the carnage.
Seven bodies. Maybe eight. All women, except for the few we’d tossed in here the other night.
Twisted. Stripped. Broken
Levi swallowed hard. “Jesus. I forgot how bad it was. The darkness hid a lot of this.”
X crouched beside the nearest body, his tone unusually sober. “They didn’t just kill them. They enjoyed it.” He glanced back at me. “I know we have some issues, but this…” He shook his head. “This is fucked up.”
But my attention was etched on Levi, my gut churning.
I didn’t want to find Nyah’s body here.
And I didn’t want to find a claw-shaped calling card carved into her skin.
Levi’s gaze ran over the bodies. He moved around them, coughing at the stench, but getting in close anywhere he could, searching for a sign his friend had done this.
But there was nothing. These women were covered in marks from ropes, cuts from knives, holes from bullets, bruises from who knew what.
But nothing that resembled Lynx’s mark.
“They aren’t his kills,” I said quietly to Levi. “And none of them are Nyah.”
Like he’d needed someone to confirm it, even though he could see it with his own two eyes, his shoulders hunched in.
I put a heavy, reassuring hand on his shoulder, letting it rest there, just telling him I was here.
“I feel like a fucking asshole for even thinking it might have been him, you know? He’s supposed to be my friend.” He shook his head. “Fuck, what does that say about me?”
“It says you’ve learned to be smart enough not to just blindly trust people.
You did that once before, remember? You trusted your old prez, were loyal to a fault, and did everything he asked of you without question.
And look where it got you? Six years behind bars.
” I squeezed his shoulder harder. “Don’t beat yourself up because the real world taught you not to be so trusting. ”
He nodded slowly. “This place is fucking miserable.”
He wasn’t wrong. “We need to ID those bodies. Find out who they were. Why they were targets. Work out what the fuck they have to do with us.” I pulled out my phone and started taking photos.
I almost hated that we couldn’t call the cops, but we had just as many kills buried out here as whoever had dumped these bodies.
These women weren’t going to get a burial.
The least we could do was find out if they had families. Maybe try to get a message to them that would give them some closure. I scrubbed a hand over my face. Fucking hell, this sucked so much.
Levi grimaced and turned away, clearly feeling the same way.
It was one thing to take a life when they were the scum of the earth.
But these women weren’t that. They were probably someone’s wife. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s mother.
“Well, well. Seems like someone else decided to take a walk through hell this morning.” Trigger’s voice cut through the buzz of flies.
Behind him, Ace and Torch stepped into view.
Trigger didn’t smile. There was a gun holstered at his hip, his hand hovering over it. “What the fuck are you doing here? This is our site.”
I stepped forward, giving him the benefit of the doubt. “Same as you, apparently. Cleaning up a mess we didn’t make.”
Torch’s gaze swept the bodies. His expression didn’t change, but something in his posture shifted. “Those women weren’t on the list.”
“No shit,” Levi muttered.
Trigger’s eyes narrowed at his tone. “You accusing us?”
“That depends,” I said, immediately having Levi’s back. “Are you admitting to something?”
The tension in the air was as thick as the stench of decaying bodies. X, Levi, and I on one side, Trigger, Ace, and Torch on the other. Guns weren’t drawn yet, but the crackle between us was the kind that came right before the bloodstains.
Trig’s gaze shifted to the last woman I’d taken a photo of. Short blond hair. Staring, faded blue eyes. Tall and solid. “This isn’t us.”
“And you expect us to believe you?” Levi asked.
“No,” he said with a tinge of something that sounded a lot like sadness as he stared down at the women. “We expect you to be smart enough to realize someone’s playing all of us.”
He was right.
We’d let ourselves get distracted by not trusting each other.
That sentiment passed silently between Trig and me.
He gave a tiny nod.
I returned it, the tension breaking, a silent agreement to believe that neither of us was capable of this sort of carnage.
We weren’t good men. I wasn’t deluded enough to believe otherwise.
But we weren’t this.
“Plot twist!” X piped up. “We’re the good guys.”
Trig pulled a pack from his back pocket and lit a cigarette, dragging deep. “God help us.”
But my gaze stayed on the bodies.
No claw marks.
No message.
And no Nyah.
That should’ve been a relief.
But it didn’t feel like one.