Chapter 34
thirty-four
ISABELLE
Time seemed to stop. Everyone was moving in slow motion.
Ronnie was grabbing me, trying to hold me back as I ran after the cops.
They were dragging Cole outside. The bar was full of Hounds, watching silently as their Pres was marched out.
They were all armed and dangerous men. I knew this could turn into a shoot-out at any second.
Many looked like they were seconds away from drawing.
Cole looked around his bar and firmly shook his head. He didn’t want anyone doing anything. His word was so valued, no one dared to go against him.
They took him outside and put him in the back of the cop car.
“What the fuck did they say they were arresting him for?” Maddox demanded, coming to stand beside me.
“Murder. Murder of Grant Elwick,” I repeated numbly.
“Who the fuck is Grant Elwick?” Gage asked, looking like he was about to lose it. I knew the feeling.
“He’s… no one to Cole,” I muttered, pulling Cole’s truck keys from my pocket. “I need to go and see my parents.”
Ronnie followed me outside. “Don’t drive too fast, or anything. It’s the last news Cole needs. Go with Derek, Cole trusted him to watch your back. Derek, do your fucking job!” she shouted at a guy standing outside by the bikes. He stumbled forward and went for his bike.
I got to the truck and climbed inside. Hysteria bubbled up in my chest. I could barely keep it down. But I needed answers, first and foremost.
I started the truck, barely registering Derek driving his bike alongside me, and pulled out onto the road.
The drive to my parents’ house was done on autopilot.
I was lost in my head, going over what I knew, which was far too little to figure anything out.
The gate opened excruciatingly slowly, and I drove inside impatiently, quickly abandoning the truck and ignoring Derek, who pulled up and parked right behind me.
“Keys!” he shouted to me as I ran for the steps to the house.
I tossed him my keys and headed inside. I didn’t know exactly who he was, but if Cole trusted him, that was enough for me.
“Mom! Dad! Where are you?”
I walked through the first floor of the house, toward the kitchen. I found my parents in the orangery.
“Is it true?” I demanded, but as soon as I saw my mother’s face, I knew that it was.
She was sitting with my dad on a bench, blotchy and red, holding tissues.
“Yes, it’s true,” my father said grimly, standing up and shoving a hand through his hair.
“Grant Elwick is dead?” I said, needing to hear it to believe it. It was so sudden.
My father nodded. “Grant is dead, and our fucking shares are sliding into a black hole.”
“Shares? You’re worrying about shares right now?”
My father looked at me. “What should I be worried about? The fact that my daughter has been sleeping around with a murderer?”
I flinched. “He’s not a murderer.”
My father laughed. “I’m sorry, Isabelle, but that’s not going to stand up in court. They’ve got proof on him. Your dirty little biker boyfriend killed his competition. We’re just lucky he didn’t decide to kill you instead.”
My father’s face didn’t look like he considered himself lucky at all.
“Maybe you’d have preferred that. Then your shares wouldn’t be sliding,” I bit out, ignoring for a second the fact that Cole didn’t do this.
“Your words, not mine,” my father said, not disagreeing at all. He turned around and refilled his scotch glass at the bar.
“What happened?” I asked my mother, who was sniffling into her tissues.
“He was just discharged from the hospital. He was on his way home. Someone drove up next to the cab window and... they shot him through the window. They called it a drive-by. It’s so horrible. No one is safe.”
“What kind of evidence do they have on Cole? When was this exactly?”
“It’s none of your business, Isabelle, and you need to stay out of it. I just pray you aren’t dragged into this. Our family name—”
“When was it! Tell me! I might have been with him.”
I didn’t see the slap coming. In all the years I’d been brave enough to stand up to my father, which admittedly, hadn’t been often, he’d always held back.
In a sudden flash of insight, I understood then why I’d always defaulted to being a good girl. Why I’d never truly gone against them. Why I’d sometimes felt like a passive force in my own life.
Because something inside me had understood that there were clear boundaries to my father’s love, and staying inside them was the only way to avoid seeing how small they were.
I hadn’t wanted to test him because I’d known he would fail. And so, I’d made myself small enough not to find out.
My mother screamed and clamped a hand over her mouth, pushing herself up and wobbling. She hadn’t been holding back on the scotch either, it seemed. She clung onto me and stroked my cheek with a cool, dry hand.
“Charles, you’ll leave a mark on her skin,” she complained, holding me as close as my brittle posture would allow.
Leave a mark? I nearly laughed. It was such a fucking vain thing to think about at a moment like this, and yet, it summed up my parents’ relationship perfectly.
It had always only been about appearances.
As a kid growing up in this parody of a happy family, I’d understood my role in not upsetting the apple cart.
And now, I was done.
I pulled away from my mother’s touch. I couldn’t stand it right now. Later, maybe I could unpack the trauma around knowing that her life had been ruined and controlled by my father. Maybe I could process that she was a victim as well, or just a narcissistic woman obsessed with money and status.
Right now, though, I couldn’t. Right now, I had to figure out what the hell happened to Grant Elwick.
My man needed me.
I pushed through the doors of The Clutch and saw Asher behind the bar.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I’m going to be closing up soon.”
“Where’s Maddox and Gage?” I asked.
Asher jerked his head toward the back. “In the shop.”
I walked into the auto shop and stopped dead. It looked like the entire MC was here. They sat around on various surfaces, their black leather shining dully under the harsh overhead lights. My mouth went dry as I looked around.
Gage straightened up when he saw me. “Isabelle, are you ok?”
“What’s she doing here?” someone asked.
“She’s not a Hound,” someone else added.
“She’s the Pres’ old lady. She can go wherever she wants,” Maddox said, and gestured me forward.
I walked through the group, tension sharpening my every sense.
Gage made space for me at the desk he was standing beside.
“I’m fine. I found out everything I could about Grant’s murder. He was shot in a cab that had stopped at a red light. The cops have CCTV of a biker wearing a Hounds jacket.”
“What time at?” Gage asked immediately.
“Yesterday afternoon. It was on a back road, not the way a cab should go into town at all.”
“So, that’s fucking sus,” Maddox grunted.
I nodded in agreement. “They’re looking for the cab driver, but he’s disappeared.”
“Of course, he has,” Gage sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. “What time in the afternoon?”
“The call came in from tourists who were passing by and found the body about four. Grant had been discharged from the hospital at two. It’s a pretty specific window.”
Gage let out a hollow laugh. “Yeah, specific and pretty fucking inconvenient.”
“Why? Where was Cole?” I asked, my hope when I’d found out about the time window slipping away. I’d convinced myself on the way over that he’d have a strong alibi for those two hours, and everything would be ok.
“Here. Sleeping. Apparently, he didn’t sleep well last night, and got some shut-eye here in the room at the back.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“No one was here?”
“Asher arrived at five to open. It was a half day.”
“No one in the shop?”
“I was here,” Maddox said.
“Well?” I prompted when no one else spoke. I could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t consider himself a believable alibi.
“And I can’t see that fucking room from here. I didn’t know Cole was here until later, when I came over to the bar at about six.”
I slumped against the table, head spinning.
“Why did the cops only get here this morning to pick Cole up?” Maddox asked.
I shrugged. “Apparently, they couldn’t get the footage any faster. By the time the crime scene was processed and the footage received, it was morning.”
“Excuse me, but why are we even listening to her? She writes an article outing our business to the entire town, and now she gets to question us? Bullshit,” someone scoffed. I looked over, clocking a familiar face. Travis.
Gage studied him without speaking. Travis turned red and looked away.
“Cole might not be here, but we are, so act accordingly. The Pres will hear all about how you’ve acted in his absence,” Maddox put in, his tone hewn from stone.
“So good luck, motherfucker,” Gage muttered and then rolled his shoulders back, and cracked his neck. He looked like he was squaring up for a fight, and maybe he was. We all were.
“Boss says she didn’t write the article,” He announced. “And, he said if she did, he didn’t care. She’s his old lady, and no one disrespects her, got it?”
There was a murmur of assent from the crowd.
Maddox called out instructions for the rest of the day, sending most of the MC home.
“We don’t need any more heat right now. Stay home and don’t make trouble,” he reminded the group as they got up to leave.
They dispersed slowly, and I watched them go. I didn’t want to go back to my dorm to worry alone. I needed to be here to hear what was happening.
“Does he have legal representation?” I asked Gage.
Gage nodded. “One of our old-timers’ daughters is a criminal defense attorney. She’s already at the station.”
“Good. So, now all we have to do is make her job easy. We have two options. Find Cole an alibi, which sounds unlikely…” I trailed off.
“Or?”
“Figure out who really killed Grant Elwick, and why.”