Never Trust the Living (Battle Crows MC Book 7) Read online

  I would’ve laughed at the thought, but she was so dead serious that I didn’t.

  Not that the thought of losing someone wasn’t scary.

  It was.

  But the funny thought was me actually having a boyfriend.

  Having to get one would be a feat in and of itself with trauma. But having to keep one for any length of time? That would be downright comical.

  Hence the laughter in my thoughts.

  “Why do you ask what our worst fear is?” I found myself asking instead. “Seems kind of morbid.”

  As I asked it, I started to take in the sights around us.

  We were at a bar with about a hundred people milling about around us. Some were standing up drinking at high top tables. Some, like us, were filled with younger adults that couldn’t drink yet—as evidenced by the bright neon green wristband we all wore.

  “Oh, no reason.” Lulu shrugged. “I guess maybe it was just a thought leftover from my psych class today. Did you know there are…”

  That’s when I looked over and saw my brother at the next table over, being deathly quiet and dousing himself in the shadows. I knew I should’ve cut the conversation short with my friends. But I didn’t. And that cost them their lives.

  Not that I knew it at the time.

  I swallowed hard and tried to look away, but time after time, my gaze would be drawn back to him.

  To him, listening to every single instance of our conversation.

  Not that I was scared about him listening in to my worst fear.

  He knew it well.

  He’d been the one to instill that fear inside of me.

  My thoughts went back to a few years ago. To when he’d given me that fear.

  • • •

  Two years ago

  I woke to the sound of a shuffling lurch.

  One second, I was lying in bed, face up, sleeping.

  And the next I had a pillow over my face, and a massive body holding my arms down to my sides and my torso to the bed so I couldn’t move the pillow away.

  My first inclination was to scream. Which was comical, because if I screamed, nobody would hear me.

  I was living with my brother after all. The one person that could hear me was the one person that was doing the smothering.

  I struggled uselessly against the pillow, knowing that this was it.

  This was the time that I would die.

  Oxygen started to deplete the moment the last of the scream fled from my mouth.

  My struggles went from intense and immediate to lethargic from one breath to the next.

  My nose hurt.

  My eyes were wide open but unseeing.

  A hand pressed hard over my mouth from the top of my pillow, and that’s when I realized the truth.

  My brother really did kill me.

  Except, sometime later, after the last of the fight left my body, I woke up.

  It was morning.

  There was light shining through the dirty window, and there were dust particles floating around the still air of my room.

  I sat up slowly, feeling the ache in my arms and chest.

  My throat felt raw, and my face hurt.

  I didn’t make the smothering thing up.

  But it was like my brother to bring me back to life, just so he could play some psychological game with me.

  I took a deep breath, relishing the feel of air in my lungs.

  Then looked up to find my brother standing in my doorway, watching.

  “You’re going to be late for school,” he chirped.

  I felt sick to my stomach as I looked at his expression.

  Though he had a smile pasted on his face, the emptiness in his eyes gave him away.

  Psychopath.

  • • •

  I was no longer terrified of suffocation anymore.

  I was terrified of something much worse.

  My brother.

  CHAPTER 2

  I’m glad I have boobs. The last thing I need is people making eye contact with me.

  -Dory’s secret thoughts

  DORY

  The first of my friends to die was Lulu.

  According to the paper, she’d rear-ended a log truck and had died on impact.

  It took me a whole half a second to realize what had happened.

  That it hadn’t been a mistake.

  That it had been very much planned.

  It was while I was composing an anonymous letter to the police, telling them what I thought was going on—i.e., my psychopath brother killing her because he’d heard her worst fear—that I heard about Della.

  Della had been running at a track when she’d been abducted, tortured, and then killed before being dumped into a dumpster behind the school.

  That’s when I knew I had to do something.

  I had to tell them about my brother.

  That fear that he’d instilled in me was something I would have to overcome.

  There was no way he could talk himself out of this one.

  At least, I hoped not.

  After reading about Della’s death via a Facebook post, I snatched my keys off my desk and headed to the police station.

  Only, none of them took me seriously.

  Not the woman behind the front desk.

  Not the police officer that came to calm me down.

  Not even the police detective that decided to be nice and listen to what I had to say.

  Why? Because I’d established a reputation for myself over the years as being ‘extra.’ Or, what my brother liked to accuse me of, an over-reacter. The few times that I’d gotten the police to listen to me about my brother, were the few times that my brother then turned things around on me and shared that I was ‘sick.’

  I wasn’t sick.

  He was.

  Yet, nobody thought that.

  Everyone knew my name.

  Everyone knew my MO—modus operandi—my usual way. As in, they knew that I complained, they knew that I ‘made things up.’ And they knew that I was one to always make a big deal out of nothing.

  I guess calling the police on your brother hundreds of times over the course of your young life would do that for you and your reputation.

  But this time… I had to convince them.

  “Listen to me,” I pleaded. “He’s going to hurt someone else. Some guy.”

  The cop looked at me like I was nuts.

  “Honey,” he said soothingly. “Go home.”

  I wouldn’t.

  I wouldn’t until someone listened to me.

  At least, that’d been my plan.

  Except suddenly, my brother was there to take me home.

  And that scared the absolute crap out of me.

  I looked out the windows of the police station and saw my brother pull up in his expensive vehicle. A vehicle I had no clue how he could afford, yet he did.

  He stepped out in his polished shoes, and his impeccable suit, looking like a million dollars.

  And I realized that nobody would believe me.

  I’d have to show them instead.

  • • •

  “Mimi,” I said softly. “I know you don’t know me all that well. But you remember when we were talking about our worst fears over dinner the other night?”

  She looked rough.

  As in, she looked like she’d had her heart ripped out of her chest.

  “Yeah,” she squeaked. “And it’s come true. He’s missing. Something happened to him. There was a car accident. They found his car, but they can’t find him.”

  I closed my eyes and realized that I was too late.

  My brother had already made his move.

  CHAPTER 3

  A very effective way of ending an argument is asking the other person for a piece of their hair.

  -Bram to Dory

  BRAM

  I woke up with a headache from hell and the knowledge that something was wrong.

  Very, very wrong.

  “Wake up,” a whispered voice said urgently.

  I cracked open my eyes and felt like I had a pickax through the brain for my accomplishment.

  I quickly closed them just as fast as I’d opened them, but it didn’t matter.

  The damage was done.

  “No, open your eyes,” the whispered voice continued. “Please.”

  I did, but only because she said please.

  I rarely ever heard that.

  Not even from Mimi.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Was that my voice? Why did it sound like it’d been sent through a cheese grater?

  “My brother kidnapped you,” she whispered. “And it looks like he’s hurt you. A lot.”

  I felt like I’d been hurt. A lot.

  “Your brother’s the psycho?” I rasped, feeling like even that little bit of discussion was quickly taking my strength.

  “N-no.” She poked me in my wounded shoulder, and I nearly saw stars.

  “Ouch,” I hissed, opening my eyes enough to glare at her. “That hurt.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “I’ve had a dislocated shoulder before myself.” She hesitated. “I can put it back in for you.”

  Was that what I had?

  “Umm.” I hesitated, unsure that she should be doing anything to me at this point, let alone setting a shoulder. If she even could. She was a little slip of a thing from what I could see. “I don’t…”

  Just as the last syllable of ‘don’t’ left my mouth, I felt her grasp my shoulder, do something to it that sent shards of agony through me, and then heard a pop.

  I gasped for breath like a fish out of water as I stared at the dirty ceiling of whatever underground system I was in.

  A cave is what it looked like, but without confirmation, I wouldn’t exact
ly know, seeing as I wasn’t conscious when I’d been brought here.

  By the psycho brother.

  “You call the police?” I asked hopefully.

  “Of course, she didn’t call the police,” the psycho drawled. “My sister is scared shitless of me. She knows better.”

  I looked at the girl to now see her staring at the ground as if just the sound of his voice alone sent her into a panic attack.

  “Amon,” she muttered, not looking up. “What are you doing here? I thought you were working?”

  “Good thing that I decided to set up a security system to keep my investments where they belong. It alerted me the moment you came down into the tornado shelter,” he mused.

  Tornado shelter.

  That made sense.

  “He needs medical attention,” she tried.

  Amon snorted. “I’m aware.”

  I was aware, too.

  You didn’t have to look further than my face to know that I needed medical attention.

  “Let him go,” she gritted, still not forceful enough to make him do anything more than smile.

  “I can’t do that,” he disagreed immediately. “Sadly, I’m not quite finished yet. I’ll be finished this evening, though. Then you can take him.”

  I tried to move, but the agony in my entire left side was just too much.

  If I moved around too much, I would pass out like I’d done last time.

  “You can’t do this, Amon!” the girl whispered, sounding scared out of her mind. “This is going to be very, very bad for you.”

  Amon, the goddamn freak of nature, looked at his sister a little too close for my comfort.

  Like he knew that if he stared at her long enough, she’d back down.

  God, I fuckin’ hoped that she didn’t back down.

  Though it was apparent that Amon clearly thought she would. As in, she’d done it a hundred times before to get him to stop.

  “I called the police,” she whispered fiercely. “Said I knew where the missing man was.”

  Amon’s back straightened. “You what?”

  “I called them,” she whispered. “They’re going to be here any second.”

  God, I hoped that she was telling the truth.

  “You called them to our house?” Amon asked curiously. “Why would you do that? You know that this is going to mean you’re homeless.”

  “I haven’t lived here since I was eighteen,” she said quietly. “I don’t care if the damn thing burns to the ground.”

  Amon smiled.

  It was the weirdest smile I’d ever seen.

  I’d never seen a smile look so good, and so bad at the same time.

  It was as if he was happy on the outside, but inside, through his eyes, I could tell that he felt literally nothing.

  “Let’s see.” He flicked his fingers, and I heard a lighter’s snick as the cap popped up.

  Then I heard the telltale slide of the wheel against flint, and then there was a flame lighting up the room even more.

  “Just kidding.” He laughed as he closed the cap. “I think that I’ll allow them to take me in this time. I’m curious if they can ‘fix me.’”

  He put air quotes around ‘fix me’ and I wondered if he realized how creepy it made him sound.

  Likely he did.

  “Amon,” she said. “You…”

  Just then we heard the sirens as they raced up to the house. Closer and closer they got until they were all right on top of us.

  Why did I think it would’ve been better for them to come silently? Surprise the psycho with their presence?

  “Just know this.” Amon looked over his shoulder as he climbed the stairs. “You’ll pay for going against family.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  But I also didn’t much care at that moment in time.

  Maybe I should have.

  But I passed out the moment he disappeared into the sunlight.

  • • •

  The next time I woke, I was in a hospital bed, and there was a doctor at my bedside going over a list of what I assumed were my injuries.

  “…Concussion, quite severe. We’ll have to watch him overnight for a few days just because of that,” the doctor was saying. “He has a broken left ulna, a broken nose, ten broken ribs. He has a mass of cuts and scrapes from what we assume was his tumble into the shelter.”

  The list went on, but all in all, I’d gotten lucky with what was likely ‘easy’ things to fix.

  Other than the possible aneurysm I could have if my concussion worsened.

  The next time I woke, it was with my family whispering.

  I also heard Mimi, my girlfriend, crying.

  “Should have shot him in the face and killed him,” I heard my older brother say.

  “That girl has tried to get in here three times to see him,” Mimi said. “Don’t you think that’s weird? Don’t you think it’s crazy for her to even consider coming in here? I mean, her brother tried to kill him.”

  “Weren’t you friends with that girl?”

  Jeremiah.

  “Not really.” She hesitated. “We went out for drinks. She wasn’t even allowed to drink. But I think Lulu, our friend, felt terrible about it.”

  “Lulu, the dead chick by the log truck?” Shine.

  “Yeah, her.” She hesitated. “That girl came to me and told me that she thought her brother was responsible for Lulu and Della’s deaths. That she thought he might try to come after Bird next. She’d tried to go to the police, but they didn’t believe her.”

  “That’s because she’s apparently been reported as a girl that cries wolf,” my dad said. “But isn’t it fuckin’ weird that she would try to tell everyone that her brother is a psychopath, but nobody would listen? Then she tries to tell a cop about her brother and thinking that he was behind those two girls’ deaths, and possibly would come after Bram, but the cop doesn’t do anything? If that cop had listened, my son would’ve spent a whole lot less time getting tortured over a four-day period. Not to mention, had you believed her and sounded the alarm.”

  That’s the first time I’d ever heard my dad get pissed at Mimi.

  Holy shit.

  “Darlin’,” my mom whispered. “Let’s not do this here.”

  “I’m just fuckin’ pissed that that girl has tried to get in here three times now to make sure he’s okay, yet y’all keep sending her away when she’s the one responsible for him likely being alive right now. The other two he killed. She said that her brother liked to…”

  I once again fell under, no longer hearing anything they had to say.

  But the next time I woke, it was with the room dark, and the only thing making noise being the monitors.

  One monitor, in particular, was really fuckin’ annoying.

  The heart monitor.

  I hated hospitals.

  I reached blindly for the wires that I could feel tangled around my hands, but then cold fingers stilled my blind grab.

  “Hey,” the quiet whisper said. “Still. Don’t do anything like pull those out. You need those to keep pumping you the medications that make the pain stay under control.”

  My eyes opened to darkness.

  Darkness but for one small sliver of light coming in from the hallway. That sliver of light lit up the girl that’d been the one to save me.

  “Hey,” I rasped. “You finally snuck in.”

  She smiled. “I just wanted to make sure that you were alive.”

  “Still kickin’.” I paused. “Barely.”

  My head hurt.

  Other things hurt.

  Hell, who was I kidding? I was barely kicking. But I was kicking. So there was that.

  “Good,” she whispered. “I just… I just wanted to make sure. That you would live. That you were okay and nobody… for what it’s worth, I’m really sorry. I’ve tried so hard to tell everyone. To make them understand…”

  But nobody would believe her.

  I’d heard my dad talking about it earlier.

  It made sense.

  If she’d tried, that was all that she could do.

  It wasn’t her fault that her brother was nuts.

  “My brother is in police custody.” She spoke so quietly that I could barely hear her. “He’s admitted to six murders.”

  I felt my stomach tighten. “Seven? I thought there were two.”

  She sighed. “There was even one more. Before. A kid at the foster home that I tried to convince the police about, but they didn’t believe me. They didn’t believe me about our parents, the foster parents, or my two friends, either.”

  “Well,” I said. “May he rot in hell.”