Chapter 10 #2
“Then what the hell do you want me to do?”
Thanks for asking. “I want you to get me close to him.” Killing close.
“Give me a name—”
“I don’t have a name. If I did, if I knew who he was, I would have killed him long ago.
” That had been a big life goal for her.
It had been the goal since, well, she’d been standing at the cemetery, and the rain had started to fall, and her brother Ryan had lifted her in his arms and carried her away.
“I never saw his face. If I had, I would have drawn him out perfectly. I would have given his photo to the cops. I would have plastered it all over the internet. I would have hired every PI in the world to help me hunt him down so that I could slowly and painfully kill him.” The way he slowly and painfully killed Max.
The way he tried to slowly and painfully kill me.
He’d left her to bleed out, confident that she’d die before help arrived.
She hadn’t died.
“You never saw his face.”
“Hard to see a face when the perp is wearing a motorcycle helmet and he has the visor down.” As she’d told the initial cops, over and over, when they’d come to the hospital to interview her.
All these years later, and the crime that had shattered her world was unsolved.
“He wore black gloves. A battered jacket. Jeans. Black boots. The only part of him that wasn’t covered was his wrist. When he lifted the knife up high…
” You’re gonna die, pretty girl. You’re my ticket in. Had to bag a redhead.
No, no, she didn’t like thinking of that night.
Of remembering how he’d been so proud to target her.
He’d followed her from the club, she’d pieced that together later.
He’d seen her and stalked her and stabbed her because she happened to have red hair.
“When he lifted up the knife, I saw part of the tattoo on his wrist. It was very unmistakable. Two cobra heads, sliding down toward one snake body.”
“Fuck.”
That was…recognition.
“The killer was part of the Twin Cobras,” she said.
“No.”
“Yes,” she threw right back. “I know what I saw.”
“The Twins are fucking boogeymen used to scare the world.”
“They are monsters without conscience. They hunt and they prey on those weaker than they are. They live in the shadows. A very, very select few individuals because initiation into their freak club is so rare.” She ticked off the things she’d painstakingly learned about them.
“The members are in other motorcycle clubs. That’s how they are selected.
Because they stand out in those other clubs as being the most powerful. Being the strongest. The baddest.”
He didn’t say a word.
So she kept going. “They all sport the twin cobras tat somewhere on their bodies. If you see that tat, then you are looking straight at the worst kind of killer.” The kind of killer who’d ruined her life.
“They are protected, and they are insulated. To find them, to hunt them, you’d need a way to get into the most powerful MCs in the nation. ”
“Sonofabitch. That’s why you’re using me. You want me to kill the boogeyman for you.”
No, not exactly. He was not listening to her. “I’ll kill him.” With extreme pleasure. “I just need you to help me find him. You are my way in. If I’m at your side, then I can search. I can ask questions of the MCs. I can—”
“Get us both killed? Because a nosy Fed will damn well get hell raining down on us both—”
The motel room door flew inward. A blasting, shattering sound because someone had just kicked in the door, and the flimsy lock went flying even as the door banged into the nearby wall.
She fell out of the bed. Leaped out, actually, and landed on top of Cass as she covered him with her body. Gunshots rang out. One, two, three.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Three fast hits that were all directed straight at the bed. Exactly where she’d been. Her hand flew up. The hand that now held her own gun. When she’d leapt from the bed, she’d grabbed the gun that she’d placed on the nightstand before settling in.
The shooter had now realized that she wasn’t in the bed. Missed your target, asshole. He was jerking his gun down, toward her, adjusting his aim.
“Stop!” Agnes yelled.
Nope, he was not stopping. He surged forward and—
With zero hesitation, Agnes fired her gun.
She fired…even as Cass grabbed her hips and tried to spin her beneath him.
Her bullet slammed into the target. The intruder’s chest.
Cass’s fingers wrapped around her gun.
The man in the doorway tried to shoot again.
She and Cass fired once more. Together.
The bastard fell, slamming backwards and hitting the cement right outside of the motel room doorway.
Her breath heaved out. She stared at the door.
Cass lifted her up, then off him. She scrambled for the door.
Cass’s hands wrapped around her waist again and he picked her up. Way up so that her feet just sort of cycled in the air, and she didn’t go anywhere.
“Stay the fuck behind me,” Cass snarled.
“Let me the fuck go.”
He let her go, but only after he’d put her behind him. He went to the open doorway.
Someone was screaming from somewhere close by.
Cass had his own gun out. She wondered where he’d been hiding that thing. He’d yanked off his t-shirt and ditched his boots before bunking down on the floor. So he headed toward the perp wearing just his jeans with his back toward her. And she—
She flipped on the lamp near the bed. Then she stopped dead.
Absolutely dead in her tracks.
Because…she’d made love with Cass all night long at his place. Not made love. Fucked. You fucked him all night long.
She’d…she’d seen so much of him. Touched so much. And the lights had been on but...
But she hadn’t seen his back.
The lights had been off the only time she’d kissed his back. The only time she’d…
Tattoos were on his back. A skull with fangs. A grim reaper. And…
A two-headed, snarling cobra.
Oh, my God.
The screaming outside abruptly stopped. Footsteps clattered. Wheels squeaked away.
“The maid is probably gonna call the cops,” Cass said as he knelt beside the attacker. He put his hand to the guy’s throat. “Still breathing.” A muscle flexed along his jaw. “Maybe not for long, though.”
“You’re one of them.”
Cass kicked the gun away from the fallen man.
Her breath shuddered in and out. She grabbed for the phone on the nightstand. She dialed nine-one-one. “Help,” Agnes said as soon as the operator picked up. “There has been a shooting at the Grove Motel on—”
Cass snatched the phone from her fingers and slammed it back onto the cradle. “What in the hell are you doing?”
Damn. He’d moved fast. As far as what she’d been doing… “Calling for help. You said he was still alive.” She still gripped the gun in her right hand.
Cass sucked in a deep breath. “You aren’t a Fed any longer, remember?”
“I just shot an intruder who tried to shoot me, I—”
“You’d better get her the hell out of here.”
Her gaze flew to the open doorway.
Javion Booker stood there, hands on the wooden frame, a twisted glower on his face. Javion Booker, Cass’s right-hand. Agnes knew he had been a member of the Night Strikers since—
“Can’t a man even get half an hour’s worth of damn sleep,” Javion grumbled, “without some prick getting his ass shot? Without gunfire waking everyone up?”
When had Javion arrived at the motel?
Javion’s dark eyes locked on her. “She shouldn’t be here when the cops arrive,” Javion warned. “None of us should be.”
“Tell me shit I don’t know,” Cass groused.
She looked back at the man sprawled on the cement. She lunged for him.
Cass locked an arm around her waist and hauled her back against him. “What are you doing?” His breath blew lightly against the shell of her ear. “Trying to help the man who just attempted to murder you in your sleep?”
Her gaze whipped back toward the bed. She could see the bullet hole in the pillow. Where her head had been. And the two holes in the sheets and mattress. Where her body had been.
“Good thing your ass fell out of bed,” Cass added.
Her mouth dropped open. “I didn’t fall! I leapt out! To save you! To cover you!” How dare he suggest that she’d fallen? She hadn’t accidentally been protecting him.
He grunted and tightened his hold on her. “Good thing you fell.”
The jerk—
“We’re getting out of here. Now.”
“Great plan,” Javion praised. He crouched next to the man in the doorway. “Oh, yeah, he’s dead.”
What? “Cass said he was still alive! That he was breathing!”
Javion frowned. “That’s a hole in his heart.”
She jerked against Cass’s hold. “Were you lying to me? Is he already dead?”
When he didn’t respond, Agnes elbowed Cass and tore from his grip. In two seconds, she was on her knees next to the fallen man. She searched for a pulse. Didn’t find one, dammit. Her hands flew over him. “We can help him.” Absolutely, one hundred percent. Maybe? Potentially?
He wore a motorcycle helmet with the visor still down. Like that didn’t play right into her nightmares. She grabbed the helmet and lifted it off his face.
Teardrop tattoos marked his cheeks. Two on the left. One on the right. A series of skulls and spiderwebs covered his neck. She grabbed his sleeves and shoved up the right one.
Two-headed cobra. Not the one from her nightmares, though. This was too high on his forearm. The heads were right at his elbow. And the heads were smaller than they’d been on the man who’d killed Max and used his knife on her.
Her breath choked out.
A siren wailed in the distance.
Her fingers went toward the shooter’s chest. She could stop the blood flow. Get answers. She could—
She was yanked up before her fingers touched the bloody mess that her two bullets had made when they tore into him.
“Hell, no, princess. He’s dead. You’re not bringing him back.”
She struggled, but Cass’s hold was unbreakable.
“And he’s a good message to leave for our enemies,” Cass added.
Her struggles ceased. That was a brutal thing to say. She whirled in his grip.
He’d put on a t-shirt. His jacket. Someone had moved super fast.
“She needs shoes,” Javion pointed out.
She still wore her pants. Her shirt. No shoes. She hadn’t stripped before climbing into the sagging bed, but she had at least kicked off her heels.
“Get the shoes or leave without them,” Cass ordered.
What?
The siren’s shriek grew louder. Actually, it sounded like multiple sirens.
“Fuck it.” Cass tossed her over his shoulder and rushed out of the motel room. She kept her grip on the gun because no way was she leaving that behind.
He carried her to his motorcycle. Dropped her on the seat. He glowered at her. “Give me the gun.”
“You’re one of them.” Something he should have mentioned. And maybe…maybe her gun was aimed at him. “You told me they were boogeymen. As if they weren’t real. Just made-up monsters. And you have one of their tattoos on your back.”
“I have a lot of tattoos. On my back. On my arms. All over.”
Yes, he did have lots of tats. Only one both terrified and infuriated her. The two-headed cobra. “Are you one of them?”
The two heads…two allegiances. An allegiance to his main MC, the Night Strikers. And a secondary allegiance to the Twins.
The sirens were louder. Closer.
Javion ran past them and jumped on his motorcycle.
Cass stepped closer to her. Her gun pressed into his chest. “Either pull the trigger or scoot the hell back and let me get us out of here.”
She didn’t pull the trigger. She also didn’t drop the gun. “How did that shooter know which room we were in?”
“He must’ve followed us.”
She’d searched when they’d been driving on that motorcycle. Agnes had not spotted a single tail. “Why weren’t you in the bed with me?”
His eyes narrowed.
“He only shot at the bed.” A whisper. “I was in the bed. Not you. You were on the floor.” She wet her lips and kept the gun pressed to his chest. “Why weren’t you in the bed?”
He leaned in toward her. Completely ignored the gun pressing into his chest. “Because I was trying to be a gentleman and not fuck you into oblivion.”
She snorted.
He snatched the gun from her.
“I let you take that,” she said. Because, for the record, she thought it was important for Cass to know and deeply understand that important fact. If she’d wanted to keep her gun, she would have kept it.
He shoved the gun into a saddle bag. “Scoot the hell back.”
She scooted back because they did need to get the heck out of there. “I need my purse,” she said, sniffing. One did not leave a bag at a crime scene. “And my shoes would be really helpful.”
Cursing, he bolted away. Cass returned in seconds with her shoes and her bag. She shoved on the shoes while he pushed her purse in a saddlebag. Then he slid in front of her.
“I don’t trust you,” she said, voice tight.
“Good,” he told her. He plunked a helmet on her head.
No, it wasn’t good. They needed to trust each other.
“I will never hurt you,” he vowed. “Now hold on tight.”
And the motorcycle flew out of the lot. She glanced back, toward their room.
The mystery shooter was still sprawled in the doorway. So much blood.
The story of her life.
And, even though she didn’t trust him, Agnes held tight to the man in front of her. The lover who’d fucked her. The MC leader who bore the tats that marked him as being part of the mythical boogeymen. The worst of the worst…
But, no. I won’t believe that. I can’t. She’d profiled Cass. She’d fucked him. Her life was on the line with him.
If she was wrong…
Then she was dead.