Chapter 12 #2
Ghost’s choices in who to bring and who to leave behind was obvious.
Lucky was second-in-charge, so he would take over the club in Ghost’s absence.
Bulldog was muscle as well as a voice of reason should they need to rein Scar in.
Bear likely wanted to come, but the giant softy was better protection at the clubhouse than he was in the field.
Scar was already here, and Keys was needed to work his computer magic.
Jumper, Bones, Pumpkin, and Pirate had their individual challenges that could potentially hinder whatever it was Steel needed.
It was likely a coin toss between Angel and Cage as who stayed with their kids and who came to Steel’s aid, and while Angel was a better shot, she was also pregnant.
Demo, Grumpy, Jigsaw, and the prospects all had jobs, and the club still needed to make appearances around town so as not to raise suspicions.
As it was April, Viktor and Darrin would have been patched in by now, though Steel had no idea what their new road names were.
Like Jumper, Chip had severe PTSD. He was better on defense, not offense.
Ranger and Starbucks were muscle, while Papaw was likely here to be Steel’s voice of reason.
“Fine.” Steel popped the cigar back in his mouth and stood up. “Let’s get the party started.”
Turning, he led the others inside the cabin. He took a few steps to the right as he entered to flip on the work lights he had set up around the hole in the floor. The club members filed inside, blinking rapidly at the sudden brightness.
Keys was the only one who gagged at the ghastly sight revealed by the illumination. “Oh God,” he got out before he spun and ran back out the door while covering his mouth.
None of the others reacted as they stared down at Shaw’s lifeless body, caked in mud, rain, and blood, with two bamboo stalks now protruding from his bare chest. It was too soon for him to show physical signs of decay, but the smell was horrendous, even with the open roof.
Two shimmers of light reflected off the top of the bamboo.
Steel had yet to retrieve the bullets. He wasn’t sure he was ever going to.
Cage ventured closer to the edge. He studied Shaw for a moment and then turned with his eyebrows raised. “Well, damn.”
Were it any other time after anyone else’s death, the reaction to his statement might have been laughter.
But the tension that hung heavy in the abandoned cabin was too high.
The black bands on each of the member’s arms were a testament that they had not forgotten Melanie or moved on from the brutality of her murder.
None of them wore their colors. Even with the response nationwide that the club had gotten in support and solidarity from other MCs, it would mean something if the VDMC was caught riding through Huntsville in full colors.
Besides, not knowing what they were riding to or from, it wasn’t a good idea to advertise who they were for anyone with a smartphone or surveillance device to capture.
“Shaw’s dead,” Ghost said with a wave at the pit Steel and Scar had created. “Clearly, you didn’t call Keys to help get rid of the body. What’s going on?”
Removing the cigar from his mouth, Steel’s eyes glanced to Papaw, the only other man in the room who had ever met Griffin Shaw. The man’s eyes were hard, but he showed no sympathy for his former student. “Shaw claims he didn’t kill Melanie,” Steel told his former club.
“He was dying,” Bulldog threw in. “The man would have said anything to make it stop.”
“I wasn’t stopping, and he knew it.” The hardness in Steel’s eyes as well as his voice pointed out how unappreciative he was of Bulldog pointing out the obvious.
“He told me just as he died that he didn’t kill Melanie, said his pain was ending but mine was only just beginning.
He gave me a name to look up, which is why I called Keys. ”
Steel did not add that all he’d done was call Keys, not told the club to ride like the hounds of hell were chasing them to get to him. He’d meant for a simple phone call to give him the answers he needed.
“And you believe him?” Ghost asked, both ginger eyebrows raised. There wasn’t judgement in his voice, but definitely something. Likely suppressed anger. Ghost wasn’t the only member who blamed himself for Melanie’s death. They’d promised her protection, along with everyone else in Steel’s family.
But it hadn’t been their job to protect her. Former President or not, it was Steel’s job as her father to have protected her. He was the one who had failed.
“No,” Steel said honestly. “But I need to put this to rest. I need to know that he wasn’t just fucking with me.”
Keys came back in, looking green around the gills and had his hand over his mouth. His backpack was now slung over only one shoulder. “What was the name?” His voice was muffled by his hand.
“Tracy Marigold,” Steel told him. “Athens, West Virginia.”
Keys scurried over to the table and the chair Steel had spent the previous night in watching Shaw’s sluggish demise.
He pulled out his laptop, sitting angled where he couldn’t see the hole in the floor behind him.
The moment he put his fingers on the keyboard, they started moving.
Steel had always been secretly envious of Keys’ abilities with a computer.
He was old-school and barely managed a two-fingered jab on a keyboard.
While he had no desire to learn about manipulating computers and the web like Keys could, he could appreciate their usefulness.
Keys barely spent a minute typing away on his laptop before he spoke.
“Tracy Luanne Marigold, forty-nine. She’s a criminology professor at Concord University.
Twice divorced, no kids.” He glanced over his left shoulder at Steel, turning in the opposite direction than the corpse in the room.
“Looks like she gave a lecture at Melanie’s college at the beginning of last semester. ”
Steel kept his face blank as his heart tightened in his chest. He’d grown used to the silence between him and Scar the past several weeks, and hearing Melanie’s name was harder than he expected. “Did Melanie attend?”
Keys shook his head. “She wasn’t taking any criminology courses, and the lecture was meant for upperclassmen.
While I don’t have a roster of who attended, I highly doubt she went.
” He turned back to his computer screen and started typing again.
“Let me do a trace on her phone activity back then to see if I can pinpoint where she was during the lecture.”
“Even if she did attend a lecture,” Ranger pointed out, “it doesn’t mean this woman had anything to do with her death.”
Steel’s eyes glanced between Keys’ screen that was doing something he couldn’t follow and Ranger, who was leaning up against the wall by the door with his arms crossed over his chest. “Clearly, Shaw knew Marigold had been at the college to mention her.”
Papaw stepped closer. “You have a right to learn who this woman is and to put your mind at ease.”
“I didn’t ask for all of you to come down here,” Steel snapped, turning back to the computer he had no hope of interpreting.
“Maybe not,” Bulldog said, “but you needed us. You look like shit, man. When was the last time you ate something?”
To be honest, Steel had no clue. Scar had been shoving MREs at him throughout their trip, but as far as Steel knew, neither of them had eaten since before they’d kidnapped Shaw outside that deli.
Steel wasn’t even positive how many days ago that was.
Two, maybe three? It all blurred together, and there was a more than likely possibility that he was dehydrated.
Cage put his hands in the back pockets of his dark jeans. “We didn’t just come for you, Steel. We came for Jenna.” His lips pressed together a moment before he added, “We came for Melanie.”
His girls. No matter what had happened, that would never change.
Melanie might be gone from this world, but she was still his.
His to remember, to mourn, to carry with him for the rest of his days.
He’d failed her in life, but he would not in death.
He owed that to her, and to her mother. Jenna hadn’t sounded good on the phone.
He didn’t know what her condition was, if she’d recovered from her latest relapse.
He was a shit father and an even shittier husband.
It didn’t matter that he was doing this for Jenna. Being absent from her helped him to stay focused, but that didn’t mean it helped her.
Ignoring the others, he pulled out his phone from his front right pocket and unlocked the screen.
Me: We’ll get through this.
He wasn’t sure how, but he knew that they would. They had to—because the alternative was unacceptable.
Steel didn’t expect an answer back, seeing as it was after midnight, but her response was almost immediate.
Jenna: You came back to me before. I have faith you’ll do it again.
“Holy shit!” At Keys’ exclamation, Steel pocketed his phone and turned to the Tech.
Keys spun around in the chair, his eyes going anywhere but at Shaw.
“I figured there had to be a reason that Shaw mentioned her. Like, very random if he made up a name and location where she lived and there just happened to be a professor there who just happened to have guest lectured at Melanie’s college.
Right? So I looked into where she was on the night of Melanie’s…
” His voice trailed off as he glanced quickly at Steel, and then focused mostly on Ghost. “But a credit card charge showed she wasn’t in Pennsylvania.
She was in Bluefield, West Virginia. I thought, well maybe she gave someone else her card to give her a false alibi.
So I looked further and checked the restaurant’s surveillance to see who actually used her card. And it was her.”
Ghost did not look surprised at this news. “Meaning she didn’t murder Melanie and Shaw’s full of shit.”