Under Fire (Winged Enemy MC Romance) (10 page)

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” Jed stepped back from me. “You seriously think that Kat is the killer?”

“Please, Jed, hear me out. It makes a certain amount of sense, doesn’t it? She’s been gone for how long, and then everything three weeks ago goes down as it does. All of a sudden she’s back, and at the same time as a bunch of accidents and murders that take out members of the motorcycle club.”

“She wouldn’t do that. There’s no way.” My words bounced off the world that Jed had built for himself. Kat was untouchable in that world view, but I couldn’t give up. I was confident that I was correct. It was the only solution that fit all the variables.

“Who else could it be, Jed?”

“I don’t know. Anyone else. But it couldn’t be Kat. I’d stake my life on it.”

“Haven’t you already?”

He stared at me. “What exactly are you saying?”

I pointed at the bandage that wrapped around his face. “She tried to blow up Nightshade, and you on it, Jed. You’re lucky that you’re alive. She’s playing you.”

“Fuck that. She wouldn’t do that. She almost died in that explosion too, Leslie. Don’t forget that.”

“Did she though? She looks mighty fine for someone who was only a foot further away than you were, according to her account. You don’t remember the actual blast. No one else actually saw it. We only have her word that she leaned right in to look at the bike and you saved her. She could have been thirty feet away for all we know.”

“I don’t want to hear this,” Jed said. “I can’t believe you’re accusing Kat of murdering her friends. This is ludicrous.”

He started to walk towards the front door. I was shocked that he wouldn’t at least think about the facts that I’d assembled. It painted a pretty clear picture.

“Jed! Where are you going? We need to talk about this!”

He was already out the front door. I tapped my foot nervously as I looked over the scene one more time.
Have I missed anything?
My reasoning was solid, the facts I had were almost conclusive. Nothing else made sense.

I decided to chase after Jed. At the very least I had to tell Nathan my conclusions and see what he thought. If I could get him over to my side then maybe we could convince Jed. Hell, I was tempted to call it in and get the local constable to arrest Kat as it was.

When I got outside I saw the group of bikers respectfully turned away from the end of the driveway. There, locked in a tight embrace, were Jed and Kat. Tears streamed down her face as he held her.

You’ve got to be kidding me.
It took a cold-blooded killer to be able to destroy a man and then feign such deep distress at his death.
I can’t believe Jed is falling for this.

I felt sick to my stomach and stepped back into the house before anyone could see me.
It’s pretty sad that I feel better in here with a dead body than I do out there witnessing Jed have the wool pulled over his eyes by a calculating bitch.

Nathan hadn’t been in the group of men standing outside. He must have left to go check in with the group at the headquarters.

I sat at the window and looked out at the street. Kat had borrowed a bike from the clubhouse, and as I watched Jed climbed onto it and let her climb onto the back. They motored away into the night.

“Well that’s just great,” I muttered to myself. “An hour ago I thought Jed and I were finally on the mend, and now Tim’s dead and Jed just took Kat away to console her. Fuck!”

I stormed out of the house and past the guards.

“Hey, Leslie, are you going to the headquarters?” I whipped around. It was Zach.

“Oh, hey Zach. Yeah, I’m going to go check in there and make sure everything is fine. Are you staying here and guarding the crime scene?”

He nodded. “Yeah, although my shift’s about to end. Be careful out there, alright?”

“Right back at you. It’s a crazy time right now.”

We looked at each other soberly before I turned away and got into my car.

Crazy fucking night indeed.

I steamed as I drove.

“The problem with this fucking town,” I said to myself, “is that it’s too fucking small to work out your anger during a drive!”

It seemed like I had just started driving when I pulled up to the driveway of the clubhouse. It was too dark to make out which bikes were parked in front, and I didn’t really know which one Jed had been driving anyway. I didn’t know whether to hope that him and Kat were there so that I could force some sort of showdown, or hope that they weren’t since I really didn’t feel up to the challenge at the moment.

The alternative was much worse, though. I could only imagine that Jed might be inside Kat at that very moment. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had gone straight to her house or his and he had picked up with her where he had left off with me earlier.

Anger burned in the pit of my belly at the thought.

Fuck this.
There was no more sitting in my car paralyzed by inaction.

I stormed into the open garage door. Haunted faces looked back at me. Most of the club members were there, a good dozen or so. Jed and Kat were nowhere to be seen, and neither was Nathan.

The men turned back to their commiserating and remembering Tim. There were several open cases of beer, and most of the bottles were already strewn across the shop, empty. I felt like I should warn them not to get too obliterated in case it came down to a fight, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I thought about telling all and sundry of my suspicion that Kat may be the murderer, but I couldn’t do that, either. I was just not sure enough to tell the men information that could potentially save their lives.

And I can’t just tell them that it’s someone within the club, or else it would get ugly really quickly in here.
For now the men had to trust each other, otherwise the killer could just pick them off one by one if they scattered.
For all I know Kat may have an accomplice as well.

I wasn’t particularly close to any of the men there, so I went up the stairs and let myself into the office that Jed had inherited from Frank. Our hunt for clues just that morning seemed to lose all significance or importance in the face of Tim’s bloody murder. The goal of reeling in several big crime organizations felt like some nebulous dream in the face of the harsh realities of the present.

I paced around the room, antsy for action and heart racing but with nothing to which I could put my energy to.

Notebooks were picked up and flipped through for a couple seconds before getting thrown across the room. The frustrating method Frank had for writing down nonsense that had seemed like a tricky code earlier in the day started to piss me off.

“Fucking nothing!” I shouted. “That’s what’s in these books.” I took up a pile and chucked them at the far wall one by one to punctuate each word. “There. Is. Fucking. Nothing. Of. Importance. In. These. Fucking. Books.”

My chest heaved as I exerted as much energy into the throwing as I could. The image of Jed and Kat embracing at the bottom of Tim’s driveway flashed through my mind.

“Ah, fuck!” I ran to the wall and flung my whole weight behind my hand as I sent it hurtling towards the drywall. I wanted to destroy something to let out some steam. Putting my fist through a wall sounded like a fantastic idea to my enraged mind.

Instead of cracking through drywall, my fist slammed into something metal just behind the drywall facade. I could feel my knuckle splinter under the force of my blow as it met the immovable object buried in the wall.

“Oh Christ!” I swore fiercely as pain exploded through my hand and up my arm. I fell back onto the floor as blood washed over my vision and threatened to take my consciousness away.

I fought off the rush of blood to my head and tried to blink away the darkness. My hand throbbed in massive swells in time with the beating of my heart, impossibly quick.

My back pressed into the hard floor as I stared up towards the ceiling and gingerly touched my hand. My nerves screamed back at me and I stopped probing it.

“What the fuck was that?” I couldn’t think properly but that was all that I cared about. Thoughts of Jed and Kat vanished as I tried to make sense of what had just happened.

Pieces of drywall crumbled away from where I had struck. There was an impact zone where the wall had caved inward slightly, but it didn’t get punched through the way I had expected.

I clambered to my feet slowly and heavily, careful not to use my now useless right hand.

With my left, I tore at the drywall with my fingers, tearing chunks away and revealing more of the metallic object. Eventually I found that there was a seam in the wall, cleverly hidden behind adjacent paintings of motorcycles. The wall opened up to reveal a large safe.

“Would you look at that?”

After a few weeks of trying to crack a code in Frank’s files we hadn’t felt any closer to finding the answer, and now I knew why.

“I guess Kat helped to find it after all.”

I needed to let Jed know about this. It could probably wait, but I needed to finish our discussion about Kat anyway. Now that this safe had come to light there were no more excuses for cowering away and avoiding the confrontation.

There was nothing I could do to hide the safe, but it looked as though it was firmly attached in the wall. There was a false alcove and the safe was bolted into the floor. It wasn’t going anywhere, and considering no one in the club had even known that it existed I didn’t think I’d have to worry about someone figuring out the combination and making off with the contents.

I locked the door behind me. It would be better if no one knew about the safe, and only Jed, Nathan and I had keys to the office. It would be safe enough in the meantime, especially since everyone had something more important to worry about at the moment.

My hand had swollen suddenly and drastically.
I probably broke it. Not what I needed right now.
If Kat was a calculating killer I would need to be at the top of my game. Even if she wasn’t, there was someone out there targeting motorcycle club members, and I could very well get caught in the crossfire.

I raced out of the clubhouse, stopping only long enough to see if any of the men had heard from and knew the locations of Jed, Kat or Nathan. The men were pretty deep in their cups for the most part, but at least a few of them were abstaining and keeping an alert eye out. I spoke with those men for a few seconds to warn them to be vigilant, trust no one, and always travel in groups of at least three.

I quickly broke my own very last piece of advice as I climbed into my car and drove off by myself.

I tore through town quickly, hitting every spot that I thought they could be. There was no bike parked at Jed’s, and nothing at Kat’s. I sat in my car at the end of her driveway for a minute before I decided to head to the Devil’s Roost. It was worth a check, and there may be a few of the men who had decided to set up shop there anyway.

There were a few bikes lined up outside the bar, and the lights were on. I pulled into the parking lot and took a couple deep breaths to steady myself, the same routine that I used before firing my gun.

With steeled resolve I headed up to the bar. Looking through the large windows, there were a couple of men sitting in the new chairs to the left of the entrance, and there, at the same back corner table that they had ensconced themselves at the first night she showed her face in town, were Jed and Kat.

I paused despite myself. They were chatting away, faces animated, hands gesturing. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen Jed’s face look quite the same way talking to anyone else, including myself.

She really gets through to him in a way no one else does, doesn’t she?
The bitter jealousy that I had been struggling with for the past couple of days reared its ugly head again. All of the momentum that I had given myself drained out of my body, and I couldn’t force myself to open the door and step inside. Instead I put my back to the wall and slid down until my ass hit pavement.

Tears sprang to my eyes and I blinked rapidly to try and quell them. There was important work to be done, I couldn’t let myself get all emotional and useless.