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

“Yes,” Shine snorted. “I’ll bet he’s smug as a bug in a rug.”

  “I think that euphemism is supposed to be ‘snug’ not smug.” I chuckled.

  But the humor in the saying didn’t stay with me for long.

  “Goddammit,” I grumbled. “That man should’ve been given the electric chair.”

  “They stopped using the electric chair years ago, bro,” Shine said, sounding just as pissed as me. “You okay?”

  Was I okay?

  No, the fuck, I wasn’t.

  In fact, I was pissed as hell.

  “No,” I admitted. “I’m not.”

  And I wasn’t. I was so far from okay that it was honestly quite scary to think about.

  My life, or what I’d thought was my life, was in shambles. Mimi—though we’d fought before—had never shown me this new side of her. And I wasn’t sure that I liked it.

  Not to mention, everyone looked at me differently now. As if I would break at any second.

  “Keep your head on straight,” he urged.

  Then he was gone.

  And, since Mimi wasn’t at my place because she was still mad at me, I found myself getting the keys to the bike and heading out the door.

  I never meant to go where I went.

  Honestly, it was the last damn place that I should’ve gone.

  Yet… I went anyway.

  And wouldn’t you know. When I looked across the street… there he was, sitting in his special room, looking out at the world as if he didn’t have a care in his pretty little face.

  They’d deemed him a flight risk.

  So, since he was out on bail, they’d so nicely provided him with a security detail.

  That security detail was drinking coffee and eating, meaning they weren’t paying attention at all to the man that was watching him.

  He watched them for a while before disappearing out of his window.

  Then there he was, on the side of the house, grinning that soulless grin.

  He turned and started walking, and that’s when I saw a girl ahead.

  I cursed and started following, keeping far enough back that I didn’t get made.

  “Why are you running?” he called ahead.

  The girl that’d been there before was now gone. The last I saw of her was her blonde hair as it streaked away through the woods.

  I followed him all through town, winding through alleys, and farther into another copse of trees that were on the opposite side of town from where we’d been previously—not that it was hard to get through a town as small as Intercourse.

  All the time that I was moving behind him, he never once looked back to see if he had a tail.

  Which was lucky for me because I caught him before he could follow another unsuspecting girl.

  “Amon,” I chided. “What are you doing?”

  Amon whirled and turned, surprised to find me directly behind him.

  “What are you doing?” he asked in return.

  “Obviously the police’s job,” I grumbled. “Some escort you have. What were you out here doing?”

  I knew exactly what he was doing.

  I might’ve sounded calm, cool, and collected, but I wasn’t. Far from it, to be honest.

  “One for the road.” He smiled at me.

  That’s when I snapped.

  I punched him in the throat as hard as I could.

  He went down to the ground, clutching his throat, likely wheezing in through a crushed windpipe.

  Did that change anything that I did next?

  No.

  Or… it wouldn’t have.

  I was rearing back my foot to kick him in the face, because all of a sudden I was so full of rage that it needed to come out in any way possible, when she was just there.

  To say that we were surprised to see each other would be an understatement.

  It took half a second.

  I looked at her after she was done stabbing Amon in the chest, right through his heart, and couldn’t help the kindred spirit vibe that I felt with the scared waif.

  “You got prints on that knife?” I asked suddenly.

  I’d learned a few things a time or two.

  One, you never pull a knife out of a body unless you wanted blood to come pouring out.

  Two, you never left fingerprints. Ever.

  “I killed him,” she whispered, looking shocked as she backed away.

  That’s when I saw that she had gloves on.

  Big fluffy blue ones.

  Good.

  She was staring at them as if she couldn’t quite believe what she’d done.

  “I killed him,” I disagreed. “You just helped him along.”

  We both watched as Amon struggled to breathe.

  His eyes were full of panic, and he was staring at us as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.

  “Maybe if you’d stayed where you belonged,” I grumbled. “You wouldn’t be dead right now.”

  Funny enough, neither one of us suggested that we call the cops.

  Instead, we both watched as he twisted and turned on the ground, unable to breathe, and likely bleeding out inside of his chest cavity.

  Good. Fucking. Riddance.

  “I don’t feel bad,” she admitted as she watched him turn first red, then blue, then white.

  All of a sudden, all movement stopped, and I knew.

  He was dead.

  “Ding dong, the witch is dead,” she whispered quietly under her breath.

  “I think you got ‘witch’ and ‘psycho’ mixed up.” I chuckled.

  God, why the fuck was I laughing right now?

  I should be freaking the fuck out.

  Instead, I was staring at the piece of shit on the ground, glad that he wouldn’t be alive any longer to terrorize anyone.

  “What do we do now?” she asked. “Do we leave him? Call the cops and tell them what happened? I don’t think that I can say this was self-defense. I have zero poker face.”

  I thought about it for a few long moments, then shrugged.

  “I have a few thoughts,” I said carefully.

  She looked me dead in the eyes and said, “I’ll help you. You won’t do this alone.”

  She helped me sink the body in the river.

  Together, we cleaned up the crime scene. We discarded our clothes, and for the first time in my life, I’d seen someone else besides Mimi naked.

  In all of the baggy clothes and hats she’d worn, I’d never once looked at her as anything other than a person.

  But seeing her naked? Seeing all those shapely curves and gorgeous skin?

  Yeah, she was a knockout.

  As in, my dick got hard instantly, and I had to find a way to hide it.

  “I have clothes.” She gestured toward the road. “But there’s a place right before we get there that always has a fire burning outside. They use the coal to do something that I don’t know. But we can throw all this in there. About half a block that way is my apartment.”

  That’s when she turned and I saw the scars.

  Hundreds of them.

  In the streetlight, they glowed silvery purple, and they were numerous.

  But it was the huge purpling bruise on her back that caught my attention for now.

  “What happened?” I asked as I held on to my junk as I jerked my chin.

  I’d planned to dump my clothes in the river. But incinerating them sounded much better.

  Though, had I known we were walking, I would’ve waited until we got there to ditch the clothes.

  She swallowed hard. “Do you want to know the condensed version so you can go home? Or do you want the full monty?”

  My lips quirked up at her use of ‘monty.’

  “Tell it to me as we walk,” I ordered.

  She covered her breasts with her hand as best as she could and then used the rest of her clothes and stuff to hide the lower half of her body from me.

  Though, that didn’t mean that her ass wasn’t on perfect display.

  It was.

  And what a nice ass it was.

  I didn’t stop myself from looking my fill as we walked.

  “There are a few guys that hung onto my brother’s every word,” she admitted. “He was such a smooth talker that everyone wanted to be friends with him. This one in particular took it upon himself to handle my brother’s final ‘fuck you’ to me. By jumping me in the alley outside of my apartment. He slammed me up hard against the building, knocking my breath from my lungs. He’d just gotten a ‘this is for Amon’ and reared back to hit me when a couple of cops rolled around the corner. He stopped what he was doing and left before they could do anything else, but I have a very distinct feeling that the guy will be back.”

  I frowned. “Was it the one at the courthouse today?”

  She turned and looked at me, startled.

  All the long, wet hair that was trailing down her back whipped around her head and stuck to her naked skin as she said, “You saw him?”

  “I talked to him,” I muttered. “But I’ll be having another talk. This one a bit more persuasive.”

  “My brother thought it would be funny to give me one last goodbye before he was taken to the mental facility where he was sentenced,” she whispered. “Not to mention, he is… was… still holding a grudge. He can’t believe I saved you. I think he honestly thought I was too scared of him to go against him in any way.”

  “I’m glad you scrounged up the courage,” I admitted.

  A faint glow had me looking up to find a big barbeque shop that was cooking their meats. The smoker was steadily smoking away, and the fire as well as the unattended fire pit outside was the perfect setup.

  “Let’s go,” I ordered.

  Then I walked to the large smoker, threw our clothes inside, then ad
ded more wood on top of it.

  Only when everything was completely covered did I gesture to the barrel. “I’m guessing that they’re pretty lax in their discard. Or what they put in here.”

  Because I could see burned but not melted beer bottles in the barrels next to the fire that was made to hold the ash.

  “They empty these every Thursday,” she said quietly. “I hear them loading up the barrels. Do you think your boots will be burned all the way down?”

  Her piddly little canvas shoes would be gone in minutes.

  My leather work boots, however…

  “Yes,” I answered. “I think they’ll all melt in some way.”

  “Do you think that it’ll ruin the meat?” she asked warily.

  As in, did that meat get fed to someone that would be burning our murder clothing in… I didn’t know.

  Nor did I really care.

  “Don’t know,” I admitted. “But let’s get to your place so we’re not standing out here naked.”

  She gave me some of her brother’s clothing.

  Which I thought was funny as fuck.

  I didn’t find it funny when I went to leave five minutes later, and she looked absolutely terrified.

  “I promise I won’t say anything,” she murmured quietly as she walked me to the door. “I’ll be strong.”

  I had no doubt. “Without a body, they won’t know he’s gone. Most likely, they’ll come here and ask if you’ve seen him. Just tell them you haven’t.”

  She swallowed hard. “I…”

  Before I could get out of there, though, there was a knock on the door.

  I cursed my closeness to the door, because through the little side window, I could see a man. And that man could certainly see me.

  Which meant that he would know that we were together.

  Fuck.

  CHAPTER 6

  I’m pretty sure I had a good time last night. Let me finish reading the police report and I’ll let you know.

  -Dory to Bram

  DORY

  “Dammit,” I heard him say. “Answer it.”

  I didn’t want to answer it.

  In fact, I wanted to run and hide in my room with the covers pulled up over my face.

  Instead, I pulled my big girl panties up—because I’d just killed my brother, it was time to be an adult—and opened the door.

  “Um.” I stared at the big officer on my porch. “Can I help you?”

  He was wearing plain clothes, but he had a big shiny badge clipped to his belt that showed he was very much an officer of the law and not some normal citizen.

  He looked at me for so long that I thought I was about to start squirming.

  Obviously sensing this, Bram walked up behind me and placed his hand on my hip, pulling me into his chest.

  His very warm, very defined, very much taken by Mimi chest.

  “What’s going on?” Bram asked, sounding all tired and rough. As if he’d just had sex, not killed a man. “Isn’t it a bit late?”

  The officer looked between the two of us, and I could practically feel the judgment.

  Because I knew, without a doubt, that this man knew Bram was taken.

  Mimi had made such a big spectacle upon his return, as well as it being on the news, that everyone and their brother knew who Bram was.

  They also knew who I was.

  Because I’d seen this particular man a time or two.

  As in, I’d tried to tell him that my brother was a psycho, but he never believed me.

  “Ms. Wheeler,” he said to me. “We’re looking for your brother.”

  I blinked. “What do you mean, you’re looking for my brother?”

  It came out high-pitched and scared, but they didn’t know that I wasn’t scared for the reason they thought.

  “The officers that were watching over him said he’s missing,” he answered. “We thought we would check here to see if he’s been by.”

  I swallowed hard. “If he were here, I’d be dead right now.”

  And I fully believed that.

  Because I would’ve fought, and hard. He probably would’ve accidentally killed me this time, like he’d almost done a hundred times before.

  His eyes narrowed. “You were never his target, from what I understand.”

  That’s when I started laughing.

  I laughed so hard that Bram’s hand at my hip squeezed a little bit too hard.

  “You’re joking, right?” I said. “Because you’re fucking clueless.”

  The detective didn’t like hearing that.

  I lifted up my shirt and showed him a stab wound.

  “This wound right here was from when my brother thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if he deflated my lung,” I said. “They had to reinflate it in the emergency room.”

  The officer’s eyes took that spot in, and I moved to a new one. “This one is from when he wanted to see what my skin would smell like if he pressed a car cigarette lighter to it.”

  The officer frowned.

  “So let’s just say, I more than know who his victims usually are,” I snapped. “I haven’t seen him.”

  The officer looked from me to Bram.

  “Have you?”

  I felt more than saw Bram shake his head.

  “No,” he answered. “Been here all night. Haven’t seen him.”

  That was a joke if I’d ever heard one.

  Even I hadn’t been here all night.

  But whatever worked.

  We would obviously be each other’s alibis.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked. “I thought you were with someone.”

  The suspiciousness in his tone set me on edge.

  “If you can’t figure out what I’m doing here, then obviously you have shit detective skills,” Bram grumbled.

  “Pretty shitty of you, isn’t it?” he asked. “Your girl was broken up over your disappearance.”

  Bram sighed. “I think you have no clue what’s going on with my relationship, nor do you really have any rights to what’s going on with it. If you’re interested in arresting me, I’ll be more than happy to answer whatever questions you have. But if you’re not, then I think it’s time to leave.”

  The detective’s mouth thinned in a line, and I could tell he didn’t like being dismissed.

  Needless to say, when he walked away, I wanted nothing more than to retreat back under my bedspread.

  Instead, I said, “Do you need a ride?”

  “My bike’s a couple blocks over from where he was being held,” Bram said. “It’s at the donut shop. So it won’t look weird if you drive me there right now. They’re about to open anyway.”

  I looked at the officer as he got into his car. “This is going to go bad.”

  Bram sighed. “I have a feeling that you’re right.”

  • • •

  And I was.

  Three weeks later, the shit storm hit.

  Amon’s body had been discovered, and we were the prime suspects in his murder.

  How did I find this out?

  Bram snuck into my window, woke me from a dead sleep, and then said, “Shit’s hit the fan.”

  I was still gasping when I finally realized that I wasn’t about to die.

  “What the fuck?” I gasped. “You can’t just come into a girl’s room like that.”

  He grumbled something under his breath and then, more loudly, said, “I think you’re underestimating the urgency that I’m currently feeling. They found him.”

  Oh.

  Oh, shit.

  “Oh, shit,” I choked. “How? What are the freakin’ odds?”

  “Very slim,” he admitted. “A guy fell out of his fishing boat because he thought he had a monster catfish on his jug line that’d swept downriver. When, in fact, it’d caught on Amon’s jawbone. Pulled him out of the water yesterday afternoon. I just heard the news and came straight here.”

  “Shit,” I grumbled. “What do we do now?”

  “We prepare,” he admitted. “Because I have a feeling that detective is going to come back and ask us some questions.”

  “Prepare for what? How do you prepare for that?” I gasped. “That’s not something you can prepare for!”

  I was slightly freaking out, and you could tell because of the way my voice had risen about five octaves.

  “We have to sell the lie we told that night that he came knocking, looking for your brother,” he said. “You think you can do that?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Sell what lie?”

  I mean, logically I knew what ‘lie’ he was talking about. But what did he mean by ‘sell’ it?

  “We have to act like we’re a couple,” he grunted. “And I have to break it off with Mimi.”