Sweeter Than Sin (35 page)

He’d bled red, just like the boy Caine had once been.

His dick was a mutilated stump. He’d seen specialists in Louisville, but Caine had been thorough—the damage, much like the damage done to Caine, was permanent.

Nobody had heard his screams, a fact that Caine had seen to—he’d wanted to hear those screams, but he wanted, even more, to know that man who’d raped him would live in fear, never knowing the name of the man who’d come at him in the night, never knowing if he’d return.

And he had.

Several times.

The stable base of the Cronus Club had faltered because Max had killed the older members and Caine had stalked the others. The only ones who remained were the younger, weaker idiots who hadn’t had the sense God gave a goat.

Caine had used the information his father had calmly given him over the years, during his indoctrination. That information had been used to destroy the stable group that had remained even after Pete’s death.

Our brothers are everything.
Brotherhood
is everything. We trust nobody but the brotherhood. You’ll be one of us and we have to be able to trust you, son. You have to trust us.

It had taken years for Caine to be able to think of that without feeling the bite of the whip.

He’d used those words on the nights he slid inside a house, into a trailer, the night he was waiting in the back of a truck’s cab. He’d whispered them in the ears of men and watched as they pissed themselves in fear and now, as he watched one of them, he wondered if he shouldn’t have just killed them all.

He didn’t believe in the cops. He didn’t believe in justice. Not for him. Maybe it was going to work out for the kids now. Times had changed, some. And there were people working for the city now who were different—they didn’t have his father whispering in their ear and they didn’t have crooked cops guiding their steps, either.

Taking them out had been the crucial steps, Caine realized.

Although there were others. He hadn’t known it had continued like this.

The one in front of Caine had him curling his hand into a fist and he imagined getting up, crossing the floor, slamming that fist into the man’s face, gone doughy now, soft with age—

A hand touched Caine’s arm.

He fought the urge to react, and react with violence.

Caine had been forged in the fires of hell. Physical touch wasn’t welcome. There were only a very few he allowed to touch him.

As Lana sat down beside him, he had to force himself to relax.

She was one of the few.

“David—”

He closed his eyes.

A quiet sigh escaped her. “I guess you prefer
Caine
now.”

He gave a minute shake of his head. “I have no preference, really.” It was a lie, though and he knew it even as he said it. He’d killed the child he’d been, buried him the day he got his first taste of blood.

The man out in the hall had been Caine’s first, in more ways than one.

He’d been the first to rape David, while his father stood by and watched in silent approval.

And he’d been the one Caine had gone after first.

It had all started after he’d pulled Caine over for speeding, too. The memory flickered, burned bright in his mind.

“You have a look in your eye.”

He knew the look. It was a look that spoke of a need for blood, a need to hurt. Closing his eyes, he reached for that inner calm that Abraham had spent years trying to teach him. Caine had never learned it, but he’d learned to fake it. Once he had the mask in place, he looked over at Lana. “Sorry.”

She laughed softly and leaned forward, her elbows braced on her knees.

A raised voice from the hallway caught her attention and she frowned for a minute, studying Adam. Then she shrugged and glanced at Caine. “I’m not.… Sorry, I mean. You used to scare me. I was worried I’d find out you’d just jumped off the bridge or just hung yourself in your room. Now … well.” She shrugged. “You look like you want blood, but it’s not your own you’re after.”

He managed to keep from scowling, but just barely. She still saw just as deep as always. Before he could figure out what to say to that, though, Adam’s voice, clear and furious, echoed from the hallway: “Just what the
fuck
do you mean,
Noah
is in
jail
?”

The two of them were on their feet in a heartbeat.

*   *   *

So much for seeing how things were going.

Granted, she hadn’t really wanted to talk to Sorenson anyway.

The chief bothered her.

He looked at her like he saw right through her, and she hated that.

But they hadn’t even had ten minutes’ worth of time to talk before he’d up and told her they’d have to finish up later.

Later …

Shit.

Layla hadn’t even had a chance to ask him what she wanted to know.

So she’d go looking for it elsewhere.

If Noah had been taken to the station somebody would have seen it, and she knew all the right places to talk gossip in town. The best place was Shakers. The next best? The coffee shop. She’d sit down, get a cup of coffee and then loiter there, wait until Sorenson called her back.

Since she’d had such a rough night, she didn’t spend much time with her appearance that morning. She pulled her hair back, a simple, easy ponytail, then took the needed time to put on light makeup, frowning as she saw how deep the lines around her eyes were getting. It wasn’t a bad thing for what she had to do—she wasn’t supposed to look
happy,
for fuck’s sake, but she was thirty-six. She wasn’t supposed to look like she was already forty.

She took a few more minutes than she liked and then checked her clothes. A T-shirt, boring hair, barely any makeup. She still looked good, damn good. Flat belly, great boobs, and her ass was almost as tight as it had been in high school. So what if she had a few lines around her eyes?

She looked tired and stressed. Who wouldn’t be, considering what she’d been through, right?

She barely wasted a minute’s thought over what they’d do when they realized she was just jerking them around. There wasn’t any evidence against Noah and she knew that, but there wasn’t anything saying he
hadn’t
done it, either, she figured.

Otherwise … well.

She shrugged it off and hit the door, pulling a cigarette from her purse and lighting it up as she headed down the street. They didn’t have anybody, which meant they didn’t have any evidence. If they had jack shit, they would have arrested somebody and they wouldn’t have spent so much time asking
her
questions yesterday.

About Noah.

Again, for fuck’s sake.

The guy had turned into a fucking Boy Scout, but they thought he could have killed somebody?

What the hell ever.

Served his ass right, though
, she thought. Giving her so much grief, looking down his nose at her.

Her gut twisted as she thought about the way he’d looked at her. Sad, kind of. Like he’d meant it when he told her to be happy. If he wanted her to be happy, he could take her to bed.
That
made her happy.

Pushing all of that out of her head, she shoved through the door to the coffee shop and paused, looking at all the people packed inside. It was elbow to elbow and all the voices were low, somber.

Making her way to the counter, she arched a brow at Cassie, one of the two college kids Louisa had hired to help out in the mornings. “Damn, who died?” Layla asked.

Cassie flicked a look at her, the diamond stud in her nose winking in the light. She shrugged. “Some old dude. You want the normal?”

Layla nodded and looked around, frowning.
Man. Everybody was in here talking about Willie T.?
She hadn’t thought that many people would care. Moving down to the end of the counter, she paid for her latte, using one of the twenties she’d swiped from Willie T.’s house to pay for it, as she looked back over the crowd, trying to catch a snippet of conversation. The closest group of people was a group of busybodies from the Methodist church, and when they caught her looking at them, the youngest just rolled her eyes and looked away, but Mona Grimes gave her a tentative smile. “I … I guess you heard the news.”

Layla just grabbed her coffee and headed for the door.

Heard the news?
Her belly started to pitch around on her. She needed a smoke. No. She needed a hit. Something to settle her nerves would be better. She’d
found
him. How many times had she felt him on top of her? And he’d been one of those monsters.

“Screw this,” she muttered.

Whoever had killed him was a fucking hero.

She thought of Noah, wondered if maybe she should just let this all go.

She bummed a ride off Trick Thomas, cradling her latte in her hands and jamming her earbuds in so she didn’t have to listen to him yap. The trip up the hill didn’t take long, but it seemed to drag on endlessly. Sipping at her drink, she blocked out the scenes from yesterday and brooded.

Maybe if she ever found out who’d done this, she could sneak him in some cigarettes, but she didn’t need to drag this on.

Not really.

*   *   *

Trinity could handle mad.

She’d been mad before. She’d been furious before.

She’d had her world ripped out from under her and she’d gotten through it with a cool smile.

She’d watched the father of her child across a courtroom as she testified against him, and she’d managed to do it without shedding a tear.

But as she stood in the waiting room of the small police department in Madison she wondered if she’d ever been
this
angry.

“What do you
mean
I can’t talk to him?”

The receptionist looked unhappy. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ben—ah, Ms. Ewing. It’s still Ewing, right?”

“Yes. The wedding is tomorrow.” She tried not to grit her teeth. She was getting married in less than twenty-four hours. And her fiancé was sitting in a room somewhere in this police station and they wouldn’t let her talk to him. “Why can’t I talk to him?”

“He’s still being questioned.”

“For
what
?” she demanded.

A bell jangled behind her and a rush of hot air blasted against her.

She didn’t care if Santa Claus had come in. It could have been her ex for all she cared. None of it mattered, because until she saw Noah she wasn’t leaving. But then she saw the way the receptionist—her name tag read:
Sally
—looked past her shoulder. Sally’s face drained of color and she bit her lip, her precise white teeth catching her lower lip in a way that would have done many a romance heroine proud, Trinity thought. “Ah … Ms. Ewing, I’ll tell you what. You can wait in … um, well, maybe Chief Sorenson’s office. Okay? And I’ll, um, go see what I can find out?”

The sudden capitulation would have made Trinity ecstatic.

If it weren’t for the nerves that practically bled out of the woman.

If it weren’t for the way Trinity could feel her skin crawling.

Slowly, she turned.

When her eyes met Layla’s, Trinity couldn’t even say she was surprised.

Running her tongue across the inside of her teeth, she debated. She could do one of two things. She could do the wise thing. Go into the chief’s office, wait. See what happened.

Or she could call Layla out, because Trinity knew damn well that Layla was behind this.

It was there, written in those purple eyes—that purple was as fake as the mock concern that spread across Layla’s face.

“You.” Trinity balled one hand into a fist.

“Oh, honey.” Layla shook her head. “I am so sorry.”

“Whatever you did, you better undo it,” Trinity warned, taking one step forward. “Or you’re going to find yourself in more trouble than you can even begin to imagine.”

Something cool and calculating entered the other woman’s eyes. “Oh, really? What can you do, city girl?”

A door opened somewhere behind them, but neither of them looked away from each other. Layla moved forward, a look of false sympathy on her face. “Look, it’s gotta be tough. He must have just gone off the deep end at some point. We all thought he’d gotten better when he stopped drinking. But after he lost his girl back in high school … You heard about her—”

“Layla,” Sorenson said, his voice carrying down the hall. “That’s enough.”

But Layla was on a roll, her words tripping over themselves in order to be heard. “Either David Sutter killed her or they ran off together or something. Whatever happened, it must have just snapped something inside him, and then this all comes to light—these kids he loves, they were all he had for so long, you know. Now he sees they were hurt so bad, and he couldn’t protect them and I guess he thought he had to do something!”

Slow, mocking applause started.

Layla stopped, caught off-guard as Caine Yoder moved out of the small sitting area. Trinity blinked at the sight of him.

A dark-haired woman was at his side and Adam Brascum stood just behind her, a hand resting on her shoulder.

Both Caine and the woman were staring at Layla.

“Fascinating story,” the woman said, her voice low and soft. “I hadn’t heard that twist, David.”

*   *   *

Lana could have kicked herself the minute his real name fell from her lips, but he didn’t seem to notice.

David shrugged, still not taking his eyes from the woman standing in the doorway.

Lana had heard her name.

Layla.

Layla Chalmers. Back in school, she’d been the girl to try to steal everybody’s boyfriend. She’d bullied the smarter kids into doing her homework or threatened—whatever had worked.

Lana had gotten into two actual
fights
when she’d been in school. Both times had been with Layla.

Her eyes—made purple by contacts—moved to meet Lana’s, confused.

Lana smirked, still holding Layla’s gaze. “I always heard that I’d been the one to kill everybody and then run off. But now you’re the bad guy?”

“Well, that might not be all that far off, Supergirl.” Caine slapped his hat against his thigh and then glanced over his shoulder at her, then at Adam. “What do you two want to bet that we can thank Layla for Noah’s current situation?”