Halligan To My Axe (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC Book 2) (2 page)

Adeline snorted. “Must have been some date.”

I barely contained my laugh in time before BB was bouncing her way to us.

“1A, ma’am.” Sebastian replied soberly.

He wasn’t in a laughing mood, apparently.

“Yes, yes,” she said hustling to the door.

The back looked even worse than the front. I could make out the red outline of her thong just above her slip of a skirt, and if I had to guess, a cell phone tucked into the back so-called pocket.

Nice.

“There you go; is there anything else I can help you with?” BB asked.

We waited patiently as the woman backed up and walked back to her car, not even giving the men entering into one of her properties another thought.

“Umm, is that your cat?” Sebastian asked worriedly, looking up at the window ledge of her apartment.

Adeline cursed soundly when she saw her cat leaning out the open window to her apartment. She disentangled herself from the snake, and thrust the beast into my hands before taking off at a sprint.

Now that was the type of ass you should be looking at and appreciating, I thought.

“The last time someone asked you to hold their snake it was that transvestite at the bar in Minneapolis.” Sebastian observed lightly.

“Fuck off,” I said as I held the large snake in my hands at arm’s length.

“Give it to me and go check out the apartment. Be careful.” He ordered.

Handing the thing off gladly, I walked slowly into the apartment.

It was cluttered.

Furniture lined the walls from one side of the doorjamb to the other, and in some places pieces stood two deep. In fact, there was a couch in front of a couch that had a coffee table in front of it.

This could almost qualify as hoarders, furniture style.

“Benton Fire Department!” I yelled once I cleared the first room.

After not hearing a reply, I cleared the kitchen, and then went to the back bedroom.

The smoke was thicker in the hallway, meaning whatever was done, was done in the bedroom area. Which explained why it was coming up through Adeline’s floor.

“BFD!” I yelled again.

Then had to control a snicker. It got to me every single time.

BFD-Big Fucking Deal
! Just kidding.

After getting my inner giggles under control, ‘cause apparently it wasn’t manly to giggle, I walked into the first bedroom and sighed.

We had a stiffy.

Reaching for my radio, I called over the airwaves. “Stiffy.”

“Copy.” Sebastian confirmed.

How did I know it was a stiffy? The man, who’d obviously been enjoying his weed based on the fifteen joints just in the
first
ashtray, was doing the thousand yard stare, and not from the high he’d gotten.

The thousand yard stare, in the medical field, was roughly based on a dead person having that ‘look;’ the one where there wasn’t any life left there to give their eyes ‘depth.’

This man was sporting that look, not to mention that his chest wasn’t moving.

“What the fuck man, you said he was dead, not that he was murdered.” Dallas whined.

“Stiffy means dead. And he’s dead.” I replied dryly.

“Well, shit.” Dallas sighed. “Now we’re going to be sitting here until the parish coroner gets here. Who knows when the fuck that’s gonna be. It’s Friday night, you know my poker nights are always on Fridays.”

Dallas was a good kid. He was twenty-two and had passed the firefighter certification just a few months ago.

He was also the Mayor of Benton’s son. The mayor had also been a firefighter, himself, before he’d had a heart attack and his wife put her foot down, insisting that he leave the service before he died and left their young family alone.

Dallas was a quick learner, and didn’t get pissed when you told him to do something he thought was below him like I’d seen some do.

He was also interested in prospecting for the Dixie Wardens.

The Dixie Wardens was my club.

I’d joined with Sebastian over ten years ago now, and I thought of them as family.

I’d been on the fence about them when Sebastian had mentioned the club to me the first time. Benton was a small town, and I knew that the town would know everything that went on with the club. I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to be in the middle of town gossip for the rest of my life.

At the time, I was young and loved riding my Shovelhead wherever the hell I felt like it. I wasn’t so sure belonging to a club was a way to stay free, to be what I wanted to be. There was no one and nothing stopping me from riding for two days straight like I’d been known to do now and then. Then Sebastian suggested patching in, having someone to share the road with if I ever wanted it, and my life had changed.

Suddenly, I had an enormous family.

A family that gave a shit about me and, by default, my sister when previously we’d had nobody.

“Alright, I’ll be right outside. Make sure the body doesn’t go anywhere.” I tried to say as seriously as I could; which happened to be not that much.

Dallas rolled his eyes and backed out of the room until he was standing in the doorway between the hallway and the bedroom, taking up position.

I found Sebastian outside, snake still curling around his arms, and a worried Adeline standing beside him. “Do you think my other pets will be okay in that?”

I walked up on the latest comment, and Sebastian’s expression clearly said, ‘Fix this.’

“It’s not the harmful smoke from a fire. It’s just from the guy chain smoking his pot.” I tried.

“So you don’t consider pot smoke harmful at all, or is it only to animals you don’t consider it harmful to?” She asked curiously.

Uh-oh. I knew a loaded question when I heard one. The question was, what exactly was she wanting me to say? That I didn’t think weed was that bad, or that weed was the devil. Or was she only worried about her animals, and not herself?

Jesus. I hated women’s minds. Why couldn’t they just be straight forward?

“I think your pets will be fine. The smoke will clear out once we open a few windows, and you can do the same in your place.” I sidestepped.

She smiled widely at me. “Nice save you just made there.”

“How many animals do you have up there anyway?” I asked curiously.

She blushed. “Well, quite a few actually. But they’re all in cages. And it’s only temporary. I saved them.”

Sebastian, who’d been doing his best to ignore the woman until she said she’d saved them, looked at me with widened eyes.

“From a facility that wasn’t taking care of them.” She hedged.

Then little facts started sinking in, mainly in the form of a huge news story that was sweeping over the South.

A week ago, a facility in Southern Louisiana that supposedly ‘didn’t test on animals’ had some lab equipment go missing and they suspected an ex-employee. That ex-employee being about 5’5 with black hair and gray eyes, uncannily similar to the woman standing in front of me.

“Well, I think it’s time for you to get Monty back into his cage. The police will be here any minute.” Sebastian informed her, holding out his arms for Adeline to take the snake.

Adeline didn’t waste any time hustling back up the stairs without a goodbye, and I couldn’t help but be intrigued. A woman that looked like her didn’t strike me as working in a testing facility at all.

“Cops are here.” Sebastian noted a few minutes later.

My eyes turned in that direction and groaned.

Sebastian turned as well and barely stifled his laughter.

“Aw, shit.” I sighed.

“Boys,” the bane of my existence, and ex-girlfriend, Detective Annalise Hernandez, drawled.

Annalise wasn’t a bad woman. I just liked my women a little less...brash and ballsy.

Annalise was a seasoned detective on the Benton Police Department, and she’s beautiful. But beauty wasn’t the only thing I was looking for. I liked my women soft and warm, not cold and hard.

I’d gone out with Annalise for nearly five months before I finally realized that no matter how much work I put into the relationship, I would never be able to make it work. Not to mention the fact that she didn’t approve of the Dixie Wardens and went out of her way to make that known.

“Annalise,” I nodded. “How are you?”

“What have we got?” She said briskly, ignoring the niceties that I tried to engage her in.

Annalise didn’t know why our relationship didn’t work, and I never had the desire to explain to her that she was too much like one of the guys, rather than a girlfriend. I didn’t think she’d appreciate that too much. Instead, I’d just told her I wasn’t interested in her anymore and left it at that.

Harsh, yes, but in the end it saved some hurt feelings on her part.

Sebastian answered her question when she raised her eyebrows at me in question. “Older male, late seventies. Dead. Sword through the chest.”

“Witnesses?” She asked.

They both shrugged.

“Alright, back off and let me do my job.” She ordered and left to speak with the officer that was first on the scene.

“You heard the man,” Sebastian said.

At my glare, Sebastian laughed.

“Funny.” I growled.

She asked me to say something sexy to her, so I whispered, “I’m a fireman.”

- Kettle to Adeline

Adeline

“Can I help you?” I asked the woman on the front porch of my apartment the next morning.

I’d just come out to get my daily fix of the hot firefighter and found the woman on my doorstep about to knock.

That was the second time in two days that I nearly got smacked on the face.

“I’m Detective Annalise Hernandez,” she said flipping her badge open and shut again. “I’m here to ask you a few questions. May I come in?”

“Actually, I was on my way to sit on the porch anyway. You may join me.” I said politely, closing the door firmly behind me.

Wouldn’t do to have Monty get out with her here.

She looked annoyed that I wouldn’t let her inside, and I’d had to contain the urge to laugh. I wasn’t a naïve little girl. I wasn’t bringing some cop into my house. I knew better than that.

“I have some questions for you about last night.” Detective Hernandez began.

“Shoot,” I said just before my eyes locked on the heart-stopping, panty wetting man running down the middle of the parking lot.

Today he was in red Nike shorts, a pair of neon yellow running shoes, and nothing else.

Oh, boy.

And now he was looking at me. Should I wave? Yeah, I should wave.

He smiled at me and waved back before turning his attention back to the ground in front of him.

“You know Tiago?” Detective Hernandez asked sourly.

I didn’t turn to face the woman until he rounded the corner and disappeared from my sight.

“Tiago?” I asked curiously.

I thought I’d heard his friend calling him Kettle, not that that name was any better, but still.

“Yeah,” she indicated the direction the man had disappeared from just moments before with her head. “That’s Tiago, AKA Kettle. Do you know him?”

If I wasn’t wrong, I detected a hint of jealousy coming from the woman, but I couldn’t be sure. Detective Hernandez was what you would call stoic. In the five minutes she’d been here, I hadn’t seen the woman do anything but glare and look mildly annoyed.

“No, I met him last night, but that’s it.” I replied, taking a seat on the rocking chair and taking a sip of my coffee. I had things to do today, and sitting here being interrogated wasn’t one of them.

“Can you tell me what happened last night?” Detective Hernandez finally asked.

I explained what happened from the time I smelled the smoke, until I went to bed later that night.

“Did you know the deceased?”

“No. I’ve never seen him before. Although I just moved in a little over a month and a half ago.” I explained.

I’d heard them, but not actually made their acquaintance.

“And did you hear anything?” The detective persisted.

“No, I was watching a movie. I had the surround sound on.”

“What movie?”

It was obvious to me that the detective was trying to catch me in a lie, but my explanation seemed to appease her some.

“I watched Black Dog. It started about an hour after I got home at six in the evening, and then went on until around nine. I smelled the smoke about twenty minutes after that.”

The questions persisted, one after the other, until she made me start over again.

“What did you do between the hour you arrived home and when the movie started?”

“Jesus Christ, lady. I took a shower, masturbated on my bed to that tall, dark and handsome man who just ran past us, and then ate a frozen dinner. A kids’ one that had a brownie in it. Anything else?” I snarled.

I was getting tired of the bullshit, and when I lost my patience, I seemed to lose the filter on my mouth. I probably shouldn’t have told her I’d masturbated, but with a quick glance at my
watch, it showed I was twenty minutes late for work, and she’d been sitting here for well over thirty minutes now.

A low masculine chuckle brought my face from the very pissed detective to the satisfied male eyes at the very bottom of the stairs.

Kettle was still dressed in his shorts and tennis shoes, except for the shorts were about twice as sweaty.

A dark red line went from the waistband of the pants to about mid-thigh, and up close, I could make out each individual drop of sweat that rolled down his chest and met the waistband of his underwear.

I hadn’t realized I’d licked my lips until Kettle started laughing and Detective Hernandez snarled.

“Well, I’ll leave you two alone. Stay in town.” She directed towards me and stomped down the steps.

Kettle moved over slowly so the now extremely pissed off woman didn’t run me over in her exuberance to get the hell out.

In the meantime, I was in the process of figuring out what the hell to say to him. I’d just admitted to masturbating to the man the previous night.
Before
I’d officially met him. He’d probably realize I was a perv and watched him run every morning. Then he’d get a restraining order