16. Grayson
16
GRAYSON
L ying out on the couch like a potato, I stared at my phone, trying to find the guts to pick it up and call Kara. I had a good reason to. She’d asked me to make an appointment to talk about Hayley Jade.
The thought had me so nervous it was as if I’d never spoken to a woman in my life.
I’d seen her at work a few times now and had tried to be friendly and as nonthreatening as possible, especially because Hawk was never far away, and I was still pretty sure I hadn’t completely won him over. The man had a mean right hook, and I didn’t fancy another fist to the eye.
But I was worried if I called her, I’d get to know her better, and then I’d fall in love with her because I was a ridiculous sap like that and a sucker for curvy women with big brown eyes.
That’s how it had been with my wife. But the difference was we’d both been head over heels for each other from the first moment we’d met.
Kara already had two men falling at her feet. She didn’t need me throwing my hat in the ring just because I was in love with the idea of being in love. If she needed anything, she needed a friend.
I could be that for her. Even if it killed me.
“Just pick up the phone and make the call, Gray. You big pansy-ass chicken,” I taunted myself. “You can talk to beautiful women. You are not incapable of being friends with one.”
The pep talk didn’t help much. I had thoroughly convinced myself I’d come on too strong and she’d think me a creepy weirdo with a fetish for glove balloons.
Why the hell had I made her so many of those? She wasn’t a child.
I flipped over onto my stomach and groaned out my embarrassed frustrations into a couch cushion.
An incoming text buzzed, but when I lifted my head from the well of embarrassment I’d created for myself, my phone didn’t show any received texts. “Weird,” I muttered, only to notice my burner lit up on the bookshelf I’d last left it on.
That couldn’t be good.
Someone had broken our code.
We never texted. It was only ever a call that rang three times, signaling a meeting had been called. Worry plaguing every step, I crossed the living room and picked up the burner, using the Face ID to unlock it.
Whip:
Sorry for the text. I know it’s against the rules, but calling would have triggered a meeting, and I didn’t want the others to know about this yet. I found a body last night.
I stared at the message, a trickling sense of dread running down my spine.
Another text came in.
Whip:
A dead one. Not sure if that needed to be spelled out or not.
Despite myself and the situation, I choked on a laugh and texted back.
Gray:
Figured as much. But this isn’t the first dead body you’ve seen. What makes this one special?
Whip:
Vic is mid-twenties. Curvy. Brunette.
My blood ran cold.
Gray:
Strangled?
Whip:
Wouldn’t be texting you if she’d just jumped off a bridge now, would I?
Kara.
Fucking hell.
I snatched up my personal phone from the coffee table and stabbed at the screen until the number I’d saved from Kara’s hospital records appeared.
I’d spent days procrastinating on calling her, trying to plan out every word in my head so I would sound charming and sweet and caring. Only to desperately shout her name the second the call connected. “Kara!”
There was a pause on the other end. “Who is this, please?”
I breathed a sigh of relief, recognizing her gentle voice instantly. I sank back down onto the couch.
“Josiah?” she whispered.
I blinked. “Oh, holy shit. No. Kara, I’m so sorry. It’s me. I mean. Not me. Grayson, me. Dr. Frederick Grayson. Do you remember me?”
I closed my eyes and slapped myself in the forehead for the babble of nonsense words that were nothing like what I’d planned in my head.
Kara laughed, her voice filled with relief. “Of course I remember you, Dr. Frederick Grayson. We spent half the week together, remember?”
Of course I remembered. I silently banged my skull into a cushion, wishing the floor would just swallow me up whole. There was no way I was going to be able to explain my ridiculous behavior, unless I told her the truth.
She probably needed to hear it anyway.
I flipped onto my back and stared at the ceiling, feeling awful for being glad it was some other curvy brunette who Whip had found dead and not the one on the other end of the phone line. “I’m sorry,” I offered. “I was just told of another murder, and for a second…”
I didn’t want to scare her by telling her I was so sure there was a serial killer out there who had her in his sights.
Kara’s laughter died away. “For a second you thought it was me.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “I’m really glad it’s not.”
She sighed heavily. “I am too. Though that poor woman…”
I didn’t want to think about the marks on her body. The bruising that would be around her neck from someone putting a cord around it and pulling it so tight she couldn’t breathe.
Kara’s voice was small. “Does she have a sister too? That’s the mark of this killer, you believe, don’t you? He kills sisters?”
I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. “I don’t know yet. It will probably take some time to identify the body. But the rest…the strangulation, the hair color, the body type…they all fit. I know it probably freaks you out to think you could be a target…”
She breathed softly down the line. “I don’t even know if it does, you know? I’m already my husband’s target. I have to look over my shoulder every day for him. The worst part is the reach he has. He’s made me question everybody and everything. I thought I’d recognize his followers, but after what happened, I realize his reach goes beyond anything I’d ever dreamed of.”
“Do you still think it was your husband and his people who killed your sister?”
“I do,” she said, voice sure but sad.
I shoved another cushion behind my head, trying to get comfortable. “I still think it’s my guy. Do we have any other suspects?”
“The police are still looking at Kyle. He’s the guy we traveled here with, who disappeared the same night of my sister’s death.”
I didn’t like the grief that settled into her tone. I wracked my brain for something to say that would distract her. “We could put all their names in a hat and draw one out? Put this to bed once and for all?”
She let out a tiny laugh. “If only it were that simple, huh?”
It was so far from that simple it was laughable. Josiah and his people were all out in plain sight, which was what had me doubting Alice’s death was at their hands. Gut instinct told me they wouldn’t have made an attempt on Kara’s life so soon after, knowing the police were watching them.
The kid they’d been traveling with seemed like an obvious choice, especially because he’d been conveniently missing ever since.
The only problem with all of that was it only lent further weight to my theory.
Trigger would have had no qualms in offing a scrawny teenager before wrapping a cord around a pretty young thing’s neck.
Just like I was sure he’d done to my wife and her sister years before.
The day before their deaths had been the last time I’d seen him. He’d been MIA ever since, forever an empty seat at our group meetings.
Anger boiled deep inside me, and I fought to keep it under control, even though there was nobody here to see it. Every time my burner phone rang, I hoped and prayed the meeting that followed would be the one Trigger finally returned for.
So I could kill him with my own two hands for everything he’d taken from me.
For everything he’d taken from Kara.
I forced my fingers to unclench the phone, rubbing away the ache that sprang up inside me whenever I thought about the man who’d murdered my family. “We should talk about therapy,” I suggested, trying to force some sort of professional tone, even though my stomach twisted into painful knots just thinking about Kara being next on Trigger’s list.
“Oh.” Kara sounded surprised, like she’d forgotten I hadn’t just called to discuss possible suspects in her sister’s murder case and morbidly talk about the dead body my buddy had found.
Not that Whip was my buddy. Whip had no buddies.
Neither did I, for that matter. No true ones I’d actually been able to spill my secrets to.
Except Kara. She was the only person I’d ever told about my wife. Or about the cages.
I put my phone on speaker and switched to the calendar app, scrolling through my schedule. “Do you want to bring her in this week? I’m really booked up, but I could do an early session before school or a late one after it?”
Kara paused. “Is the hospital the only place you can do them? The last time we took her there, she saw Hawk punch you in the face… That’s obviously not your fault, but we just have her settled into a new routine, and I’m so reluctant to do anything to upset it. She’s still not talking at all, and I just wonder if maybe a less sterile environment might be more beneficial to getting her to open up.”
I nodded, scribbling a note about Kara’s concerns on a piece of scrap paper I found on the kitchen counter so I could transfer it to Hayley Jade’s file later. “I do house calls all the time. Many people feel more comfortable talking in familiar surroundings. What’s your address?” I hadn’t paid it any attention when I’d grabbed her number from the hospital paperwork.
She paused. “I…um, I don’t know if that’s a good idea either. I was thinking maybe a park or something…”
I frowned. “I think her home really would be better. If you’re worried about me judging your place, please don’t. I would never.” I truly meant it. I’d lived in some shitholes in my time. Nothing fazed me.
“We’re living in an MC clubhouse in the middle of the woods with at least a dozen bikers plus a couple of club women.”
I stiffened, my tongue freezing up at the thought of her at one of those places. I knew how they worked. Especially when it came to women. I didn’t know why I’d never considered Kara could be living with Hawk, and that if she was, they could be living at a biker clubhouse. The thought made me physically ill.
“Your silence sounds a little like judgment,” she said quietly.
“No,” I said in a rush, though it wasn’t quite the truth. “Just took me by surprise. I’ll be there. Five thirty, Friday?”
“That would be great. Thank you.”
“Bye, Kara.” I ended the call and turned on the TV fast, forcing myself to pay attention to the screen. I’d been five or six the last time I’d been inside the walls of an MC compound, and I had nothing but bad memories of the things that had happened there.
I’d never wanted to step foot back inside one.
But apparently, the time for hiding was gone. And Hayley Jade wasn’t the only one who was going to have to face her past.