Halligan To My Axe (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC Book 2) (22 page)

“That’s my folks’ car.” I told Sebastian who was directly behind me.

Oaths and curses sounded at my admission, and I ran my fingers through the short spiky strip of hair that lined the top of my head.

“It was a good plan, having The Bayou Funeral Home take care of the funeral arrangements. Never expected your parents to show at the parlor though.” Sebastian observed.

“Yeah, well they’ve fucked absolutely everything up. Why stop now?” I said as I yanked the front door open.

Loki’s plan was to call in to the funeral home and ask for them to start the never-ending process of burying my sister as an excuse to be there. Once inside, they’d take over the front, then move to the back where there was an extra 10,000 square feet of space that the fire station didn’t account for.

Each fire station had blue prints of the local businesses on file in case of a fire so that the on duty captain could plan accordingly. The Bayou Funeral Home’s plan didn’t match up, making it obvious to me and the rest of my club that they had a little extra room unaccounted for, and reason to hide it.

As a firefighter, that ticked me off. The firefighters that went into burning buildings had a right to know what they were getting themselves into; Gustavo Amadeus was a selfish prick who deserved what was about to come at him.

Just one more nail in Gustavo’s coffin.

“This doesn’t change the plan. Does it?” Silas asked as he walked around me and opened the door to the building.

Sebastian gave me a hard pound on the back as he passed, making my feet come unstuck, allowing me to follow them inside.

Trance was to come in later with Radar, who would alert Trance to the drugs, effectively signing the warrant that allowed him to search any facility, and take each and every one of Gustavo’s employees into custody. Followed shortly by searching his properties and other businesses for more evidence.

We just had to get back far enough to provide Radar the opportunity to alert, first.

Of course, nothing ever works as it should. The best-laid plans always backfire when your father’s the ultimate douche on the planet.

The first thing I observed was the sickly sweet stench of flowers as we walked into the front room.

It was elegant with deep maroon and hunter green coloring. There were sedate paintings of forests and bayous, as well as some wildlife moderately interspersed throughout. The carpet was plush and hunter green, allowing my shoes to sink into it as soon as my feet entered the room.

The desk in the front of the room was covered in fliers of the upcoming viewings happening in the next four hours, as well as a guest list. A woman, all of twenty-five at most, was dressed in a prim black pantsuit with her brown hair styled into a partial up-do that kept the fly-aways out of her face.

I knew immediately that she hadn’t worked there long. She was too sweet. Her eyes showed every single emotion she was feeling, and right at that moment, it was remorse.

She didn’t seem to care that fifteen men had entered the room wearing their Dixie Wardens cuts, or that most of them had tattoos that were very colorful. Color and language wise.

No, her eyes were trained on my father who was in the corner of the god-forsaken room crying about his ‘precious girl’ being gone.

Of course, it could’ve been genuine. However, he didn’t have the right to that anymore. Not after everything he’d done.

My mother was sitting down next to my father. Her hands were clutched tightly to her chest, and she’d clocked me as soon as I’d walked in, causing her eyes to widen. Mother’s intuition or some shit.

She wasn’t crying now, but I could tell by the deep bags underneath her eyes and the paleness to her skin that she had been.

“Ma’am?” My disgusted voice brought the woman’s attention from my parents to me, and she smiled warmly at me.

“Can I help you?” She asked me.

“Name’s Tiago Spada, I’m here to checkout some of the rooms, get some things ironed out before the viewing of my sister in a couple of days.” I told the woman.

Her eyes widened. “Of course, I’ll be glad to show you the way.” She said as she hustled in the direction of the back room.

Ignoring the call of my father, I followed, knowing for a fact that my brothers would keep them from following me.

I didn’t know how I did it so calmly, but I walked behind the pretty woman at a sedate pace as she led us into a back room.

***

Adeline

“What do you think?” I asked Tunnel, as Mr. Platt walked into a back room to take a phone call.

Mr. Platt looked so familiar. Like I’d seen him before from somewhere.

Tunnel’s eyes, which had been on the retreating man’s back, turned to me. “Something isn’t right. Kettle’s parents, although they were upset, didn’t look like they were trying to take over any funeral plans. I tried calling Kettle on the way here, and he didn’t answer, which means that his phone was turned off. They’d told me the phones were going off as they left the parking lot this morning. How was Kettle supposed to relay a message to you if he couldn’t have answered in the first...”

I was too absorbed in watching the side room where Mr. Platt had disappeared. If I hadn’t been, I might have been able to tell Tunnel that he had a lead pipe headed towards his head.

One that was in the hands of my own frickin’ brother.

“Tunnel!” I exclaimed as he went down like a sack of wheat. “Jefferson! What the fuck, what are you doing?”

“Quiet,” my brother hissed. “You’re in so much fucking danger that it’s not even funny. I’ve done everything in my power to keep you out of this shit, but you keep shoving your head back in there. Jesus Christ. I don’t even know what the fuck to do anymore.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t understand!” I said as I dropped down to my knees to check Tunnel’s pulse.

It was strong and steady, allowing me to take a deep breath for the first time since I’d seen him drop.

“The guy you were talking to is a very dangerous man. Do you know who that was?” He asked as he glanced nervously at the door Mr. Platt had disappeared through.

Jefferson looked different. Almost...normal for him. What he used to look like before dad died. Although I could still tell he was a little underweight, he wasn’t so sickly looking that I could see his cheekbones. Was he getting clean?

“Jefferson, what are you doing here? What’s...”

“Jefferson. Get her in the locker. With any hope they won’t find her and she’ll be dead before anyone’s the wiser. We’ve got company in the parking lot.” Mr. Platt said as he came out of the room he’d disappeared through earlier.

The haughty, pompous attitude made me realize where I knew him from. He was the man who’d ‘accidentally’ entered my lab the day I’d stayed late catching up on my work.

It had been such a fleeting moment. He was there one second, and backing out of the door the next, apologizing for interrupting.

However, now that I thought about it, I’d also seen him at the grocery store a few weeks ago when Kettle had gone down the ice cream aisle. Then again at the phone store when I was paying Viddy’s phone bill.

I didn’t let on that I realized who he was though, I just stared at him blankly, not even realizing my own brother was about to hit me over the head with a goddamn steel pole until I saw his arm lift in my peripheral vision.

I turned my head just in time to see the bar to descent towards my temple, a blast of pain, and then nothing.

Lights out.

***

Kettle

Our plan worked out perfectly.

After going through the motions of looking at the rooms, and listening to the woman’s spiel about how they like to make the family’s last moments with their loved ones to be special, Trance showed up with a very anxious Radar.

Trance walked in with Radar on his heels, restrained only by a long black leash. Radar was going nuts, barking and snarling furiously. His strong, lithe body was straining towards the back wall trying with everything he had to get at the door.

“How do you get to the back?” Trance all but snarled at the poor woman.

She started at the question, stepping back until her back hit the podium and she could go no further.

With a shaky hand, she held up her finger and pointed towards a door that was partially covered by a long curtain.

Trance’s big arms strained to hold the dog back, and finally, he just gave up, releasing the dog from the confining leash and letting him go.

Radar dashed off, shooting like an arrow towards the door, only to come to a stop with barely restrained patience.

When Trance arrived at the door, he cursed and bellowed at the woman who was still in the same position as before, fear etched across her features.

It wasn’t because of Trance’s snarled question, though. It was because of Loki who’d strode in moments after Trance.

He’d trimmed his hair since I’d last seen him the day before. Gone was the shaggy cut, replaced by a shorter buzz that no longer resembled a preppy surfer boy’s hair. His beard, though, which had been trimmed, remained.

He was wearing his badge on his left hip and his semiautomatic Colt .45 on his other. He had a black polo shirt tucked into his jeans, and black sunglasses sitting on top of his head. His eyes were all for the dog though, completely disregarding the woman who was staring at him in pain.

“Ma’am,” Trance snapped at the woman. “Come open this door.”

The woman, finally tearing her eyes away from Loki, snapped to and came to punch in some numbers into the keypad.

I saw the moment Loki noticed the woman, which caused him to freeze.

After that, I didn’t see much, because I was already through the doorway, on the heels of Trance.

I heard pounding boots behind me as we wound down a narrow hallway to the embalming area. It was a large room about the size of a large dining hall of a restaurant. There were tables about every ten feet, and on the far wall stood a bank of upright freezers that he’d guessed were for the bodies of the deceased.

A man, mid-thirties, wearing a black button down shirt and black pants was standing beside the drawers where they kept the bodies of the deceased.

Adeline’s brother.

Another man, near the same age as Adeline’s brother, wearing a polo shirt over khaki pants, stood beside a plain gray door that most likely led to the alley in the back of the building.

Which was proved true moments later when he jerked open the door, and sprinted out, not sparing his partner even a cautionary glance before he disappeared.

“Retrieve, Radar!” Trance commanded.

Radar looked torn, but ultimately followed Trance’s orders, slipping out of the door just before it closed. Which also remained locked due to the keypad on the side of the doorframe.

“Fuck!” Trance yelled as he turned and ran at a full sprint, going after Radar through the front room.

Loki, who powered into the room just after Trance left, took Adeline’s brother by the arm, turned him around, and started reading him his rights.

“You have the right to remain silent,” Loki said, as he snapped one cuff over Jefferson’s hand. “You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.” He said as he snapped the other cuff on, then pushed him forward, leading him out of the door they’d all come in through, still stating his rights.

I, however, stayed.

Something inside of me made me stay. I didn’t move. Not a single muscle. I moved only my eyes around the room, scanning over it for any hidden doors, cabinets large enough to hold a person, but I didn’t find one. Until my eyes landed on the freezers, and the feeling in my heart grew until it beat an erratic tattoo against my ribs.

Why was her brother standing at the doors to the coolers? Was someone in there? Was someone hiding in one of them? Was there a fucking bomb just waiting for every single cop in Benton to show up before it detonated?

Moving quickly, I jerked open the bottom right corner drawer.

After finding nothing, I moved to the one above it. That one, however, did have something in it.

Ripping the bag open, I was slightly startled to see the charred remains of...something... in it before I moved on to the next body.

Dixie, seeing what I was doing, joined me in the search, opening the doors one by one on the other side.

The next two were more of the same, and it wasn’t until I got to the first row on the far side of the room that I found Tunnel’s massive body shoved inside.

What the fuck? Why was he here? He was supposed to be at the clubhouse with...

His eyes were closed, and a dark purpling goose egg was welling on the side of his temple, indicating that he’d been hit by something before being shoved into the small opening.

Leaving the door open, I frantically reached for the last drawer as bile rose from the pit of my stomach like a tidal wave. It wasn’t until I was at the very last box at the bottom left corner that I found her.

Adeline.

She was on her back, eyes closed, and an ugly bruise was oozing blood just above her right eye. The blood was running steadily out of the cut and into her hair, then further down to the hard surface beneath her where a small puddle was forming.

A steel bar about the size of a crowbar was in the drawer beside her.

Cursing low, I first checked to make sure she had a pulse.

After feeling the slow steady pound of her blood pumping through her veins, I removed the small pen light I always carried with me, lifted her eyelids, and shined it at her pupils. First one, and then the other.

Luckily, they were both equal and reactive.

Her eyes fluttered a few moments after that, and opened, blinking sleepily at me.

Then she winced, raising a hand to her head, saying, “Owww!”

Relief poured through me, making the breath in my lungs leave me in a rush, and I sagged. My elbows caught me as I leaned more fully into the drawer, laying my head against the softness of Adeline’s belly.

“Jesus,” I whispered.

The sharp bark of a gun report tore through the room like a thunderclap, tensing my spine once again, making me look at the closed door that led to the outside alley.