Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
STONE
“I’d like to know that information too.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, the goddess in front of me looks over her shoulder and quickly slides off the table. Damn, she smells good for a beta.
She’s fucking perfection. Dark brown hair, tan skin, and the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. Her coconut and lime scent is heavier now that I’m closer. My dick leaks pre-cum as I inhale deeply.
“Who the hell are you?” she bites out, moving behind Jimmy and pressing the tip of the knife into his neck.
“Help me, man. This bitch is crazy as fuck. She broke into my house, knocked me out, did something to my wife, and fed some of her to me. Call the cops, she’s fucking insane,” Jimmy pleads, but little does he know it lands on deaf ears.
“I’m someone looking for answers. And the fucker you’re holding a knife to has them. I’m sorry, sweetie, but you can’t kill him until I have them. I heard pieces of your conversation, but the last part was muffled. Where are those trophies, Jimmy?” My eyes flick back and forth between them, narrowed. I’m not stupid—they’re not getting anything past me.
Hopefully, the goddess can sense I’m on her side. I don’t give a fuck what she does with this asshole. I just need the information. Jimmy knows what happened to Brenda, and he’s going to tell me. I’ll keep him alive until he does.
“I don’t know anything. I told you, this bitch is crazy. Help me out, man,” Jimmy pleads again.
“You see, that’s not going to happen. No one is touching my mate,” a deep voice says from the other room, just as a hulking figure steps into view. The goddess has a huge smile on her face.
Mate. Fuck me! I crave this intoxicating woman and… she’s already taken.
“Now, Little Brat, it seems you decided to have fun without me. You disobeyed me, and that requires a punishment.” The stranger says something low, and she turns red—eyes dark, lips parting just a little. The look she gives him… it’s hungry. My cock twitches.
“Now, who are you?” He has a gun pointed right at me. I take in his stone-cold appearance from his shoulder-length blond hair, and chiseled jaw with his lips clenched tightly together. His eyes are sizing me up the same way I am him.
He's wearing a cut with the Renegade MC logo. I’ve heard of them. Not all good either. They toe a fine line with being on the side of the law. But the fucker with the knife held to his neck has the information I need, and playing nice with this duo is the only way I’m going to get it.
I dart my eyes between the two of them.
“My sister, Brenda, went missing, and the last person she was confirmed being seen with was that fucker’s cousin.” I point at the sick fuck. “Joey Ritz. I need to know what happened to her and he has the answers,” I confess, hoping it gets me somewhere with these two without coming to blows with them.
“Was she an omega?” the sweet goddess questions as she smacks Jimmy upside the head while pressing the knife deeper into his neck with the other hand.
“No, she was a beta, but what does that matter?” I grab the photo of her I carry around and hold it out so they can all see. “She’s missing, and this psychopath knows what happened to her.” I can’t help but see the way she flinches at my words—no, that’s not right. It was one word that caused the flinch. Psychopath.
“It doesn’t matter,” the guy says as he steps over to the woman who’s had me enraptured since I laid eyes on her.
“Yeah, I know where the cunt is. She was fucking delicious. Her meat was the most tender I ever had. But fucking her dead, cold corpse was even better. My cousin did a number on her body, but I didn’t care. She did the one thing I wanted while I thrust my cock inside of her. She laid there and kept her mouth shut.”
Rage unlike anything I’ve ever felt before fills every fiber of my body and I see red, charging toward him, cutting the distance in two large strides. I can feel myself going feral when a heavy weight hits me from the side and knocks me to the ground, landing on top of me. I’m stunned for a moment as I try to drag in a breath.
“Get the fuck off of me,” I wheeze through clenched teeth.
“You were chargin’ at my damn woman. No way am I gettin’ off you until I know what your ass was about to do,’’ the man barks back.
“I was going to murder that sick fuck. We don’t need him if he’s telling the truth about having trophies.” I struggle underneath him, trying to break free. He’s clearly an alpha too, if his size didn’t give it away his strength does.
“And I’m with you on doin’ that, man. But first, we need to make sure what he told Sasha is true. So, I’m goin’ to get off you, but I need you to stay calm. Can you do that?”
I just nod my head, and he slowly loosens his hold before standing up. My body relishes the absence of his weight, finally able to breathe again, and I slowly stand. He’s right. I let my anger get to me.
“You good, man?” the stranger asks, to which I nod, cutting my eyes to the smirking bastard restrained to the chair. “Okay, my name’s Levi, and this brat over here is my bond and beta, Sasha.”
“I’m Stone.” I wish I had something more eloquent to say, or I could be more hospitable, but I need to find out what happened to Brenda and then check into what my informant said about the omega who was sold.
“He said there were pictures in the barn in the back. We can go check and see if he’s right,” the goddess, who I now know as Sasha, says.
“Fuck all of you. When I’m free, I’m going to eat every last one of you—savoring every bite.” His rancid breath hits my nose, and he’s not even near me.
“I’ve had enough of your mouth. Step back, Brat.” She does as he says and Levi steps in front of him, pounding him in the face until he’s knocked out cold. “Are there any ropes or belts around here? I want to make sure he’s secured tightly while we go check if what he said is true.”
“Let me go look.” Sasha moves swiftly out of the room in search of something.
“Stone, help me turn his chair around and back it up to the table. I want to attach restraints from the chair legs to those on the table. That way, if he wakes up, he has to take the table with him to get away.”
“Either one or both of you could stay with him while I go look,” I suggest as we both take hold of the chair, sliding it on the floor and turning it around, making sure it’s flush to the table.
“That would be a negative, Speed Racer. We’re goin’ as a unit.”
It’s then I notice the gun that was in his hand is gone. What the fuck happened to it? My eyes move down his body and there, in the holster on his waist, is the butt of the gun sticking out.
“Found some ropes in the shithead’s bedroom.” Sasha steps back in the room, holding her find up proudly.
“Okay, let’s get him tied up and check out this shed. I need to know if he’s telling the truth to determine how I’m going to kill him.” I take one of the ropes from her hand, my fingers grazing along her skin, sending a jolt of electricity through me. She’s a beta, so she’s not my Kismet bond, but I feel something for her. Does she feel it too?
* * *
Jimmy’s shed, as he calls it, is straight out of a horror movie. My stomach churns as I glance around. In fact, it’s more than a shed. It’s a fucking torture barn with a walk-in freezer. Mutilated, partially chopped up bodies hang from meat hooks Their lives are long gone, so we’re not sure what designation they are. Possibly some of the missing bodies are those that disappeared under Joey’s watch.
It’s long past the time any of them could be my sister. There are three women and two men. The only positive out of this is that five families will now be given closure. They can officially mourn for their lost loved one.
“Okay, we’ll deal with the freezer later. Let’s find this box of trophies and get the fuck out of here,” Levi announces.
I do a quick scan of the room first. There’s a table like you would see in a morgue, the floor underneath it stained red. The asshole doesn’t even have a drainage system for it. How in the fuck did he have kids? More importantly, how did child services overlook this? It’s insane. There are hooks, various types of knives, and hatchets all hanging along the wall. But the lone empty spot catches my attention. Looking around, I don’t see the tool that should be there. I wonder where it is?
In the far corner is a desk, and I make a beeline for it. My quick movement catches Levi’s and Sasha’s attention and they fall in behind me. As I start searching it, they pass me, going to the metal cabinet behind it.
Pulling open the drawer, I dump out the contents on top. Pens, scrap paper, business cards.
Wait. My gaze drifts back to one.
Tom Williamson
President of the Omega Foundation
Picking it up, I flip it over and see a number written in black ink on the back. I slip it into my pocket, knowing it’ll be of importance, especially with the text that was sent to me by my unknown accomplice. Someone who I need to find out more about and figure out why they’re so freely giving me this information.
I keep looking, but there’s nothing else. The next drawer is empty. There’s only one drawer left. Levi and Sasha have been pretty quiet behind me; the only noise they’re making is some barely intelligible mumbling. But from the lack of excitement, I know they’re not finding anything either.
I reach down to open the bottom drawer, but it doesn’t budge.
Locked.
Bingo! I think we’ve hit payday.
“We need something to open this drawer. Can you find a crowbar or something?” I ask.
“I’ll look. Sasha, keep lookin’ through all this while I search,” Levi tells her and moves from the cabinet.
When I turn around, I get the first glimpse of what’s inside the metal cabinet. “Is that what I think it is?” I ask her.
They really were fucking psychos.
“Yeah, it seems he kept more trophies than just the pictures. How can people do this? Eat another person and think it’s okay.” She picks up one of the mason jars filled with eyeballs and some type of liquid to preserve them.
There are jars upon jars, and god knows what else is inside of them. Levi steps up beside me, handing a crowbar to me.
“Thanks. Let’s see what he’s hiding in here.” I slip the edge of it into the slit between the opening of the drawer, putting my full strength into trying to pry it open. It takes a couple of tries, but finally, the lock breaks and it slides open.
Inside sits a shoebox. Dropping the tool to the floor, I pick it up and set it on top of the desk. Hope and dread fill me at the same time, knowing that the fate of my sister could be in this box. Hating that what Jimmy claimed could be true.