Bash, Volume III Read online

  “I’m probably not getting the exact wording right, but they’d say things like, ‘He said we could do what we wanted with her,’ and then later, when they were arguing over how bad they could rough me up, one of them said something about him telling them they had to keep me hidden away until ‘he’ said the coast was clear for them to let me go.”

  “Anything definitive?” he asked.

  “Apparently, whoever put them up to it didn’t want me dead, just wanted me used and abused until he thought I’d be quiet when they let me go, I think. One of them said if they screwed this up he was guaranteed a trip back inside, which makes me think it’s the DA, or perhaps a crooked cop doing it on behalf of Pickering. But, in answer to your question? No, they didn’t use his name.”

  “Okay, keep going.”

  I told the rest of the story, and was almost to my escape when we pulled into the RTMC bar. Bash was outside waiting for me, and told me my dad was off trying to get my things back. He touched my face, and looked me in the eyes a few seconds as if he could read everything that’d happened in them. He nodded, gently kissed my forehead, and then looked to Graham with a mostly neutral look on his face, but one I recognized as dangerous.

  “He’s here to help, Bash. I’m a federal employee with a security clearance. We have to do this my way, not yours.”

  Bash offered his hand to Agent Graham, and they shook. “Let’s get ya’ll inside. I know you won’t drink while you’re taking her statement, but if you want to stay and hang out when you finish, drinks are on the house.”

  One of the waitresses walked into the office with us, placed three glasses, two pitchers of ice water, and a bowl of sliced lemons on a table. “If you want anything else, just let us know,” she said as she left, closing the door behind her.

  Bash poured us all drinks, and I squeezed two lemon slices into my water before taking a long drink.

  “I offered to get you something to drink at the McDonald’s.” Graham noted as he took in the fact I drank most of the glass at once.

  “I don’t know which cops are trustworthy, and I worried you’d send one of them to get it.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry you’re having to deal with this, Angelica. It’s hard to call you paranoid when it appears someone really is out to get you, and if that someone has the ability to coerce the Disciples into kidnapping you and risking war with the MC…” He shook his head.

  “It’s worse than that,” said Bash. “Angelica isn’t aware of this, but some behind the scenes stuff happened in Atlanta and she’s supposed to be off limits to the Disciples, nationwide. If the Disciples took her, they were going against their own leadership to do it.”

  “You believe them?” Graham asked, obviously not convinced.

  Bash shrugged. “We don’t have a truce with them yet, but the possibility’s been brought up in the past couple of days, and both sides have backed off while we see if it might be possible.”

  Graham looked at us a few seconds, debating, and finally reached to the camera’s switch as he made a point of turning it off.

  “Off the record, what aren’t you telling me?”

  “Let me watch you shut your laptop down, and I’ll give you a box to put your phone in, so I know it isn’t recording us.”

  While Bash watched him, I went behind the desk and pushed the button that turned the music on. Humans couldn’t hear it, but there was a buzzing under the music, and most digital recording devices wouldn’t be able to record our voices over it and the music enough to be understood.

  “I’ll give you four names I know for a fact are dirty cops,” Bash told Graham, “and then two I know are working with Pickering. Don’t know if that makes them dirty, or just willing to bend the law, but cops aren’t supposed to do that.”

  Graham pulled a notepad and pen from his suit jacket, and wrote the names down. Bash gave him Deputy Chief Hanson’s name last, and Graham looked at the name on his notepad a few seconds before saying, “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. You’ll have to do the research and find the proof yourself, but he’s in bed with the DA on dirty stuff. Got the picture he was doin’ it to get favors later, but he didn’t mind throwing Angelica under the bus to do it. She’s just a dirty biker’s daughter, after all.”

  “Bash,” I said, my voice quiet, but I wanted to remind him to watch what he said.

  “No, it’s okay,” said Graham. “He has a right to be pissed. I’m sure Bash didn’t find out this information in a legal manner, but I get that he’s doing what he can to protect you. Doesn’t make it right, but I know how hard it is when someone with power abuses it against you, so I’ll give him a little leeway. If I catch any of you in the act, I’ll have to press charges, but for this…” He shrugged. “Turn the music off so we can go back on the record.”

  He got his phone out of the box, booted his laptop, turned the camera back on, and asked me, “You said the man was out cold when you left. Did you check him to see if he was alive?”

  “I didn’t hit him that hard,” I told him. “But, no, I didn’t check. As soon as he was down, I was out the door. I didn’t know how long he’d be out and I wanted to be as far away as I could get when he came to. I used the alleyway to the street, had to stay on the pavement as I went by a junkyard, and then I stayed in yards because I was terrified the other two would turn around and come back and see me walking down the road. Plus, I was barefoot and where there was grass, it was less painful to run.”

  Brain had carefully gone over all the details I should give, and I’d just about gone through all of them. Graham had me start at the beginning again, and he asked a zillion questions this time. I answered the ones Brain and I had thought of, and told him I didn’t know, or couldn’t remember, for the rest. We made it all the way to the end, and he started near the beginning again, and I said, “I think we’ve gone through it enough, Agent Graham. I’m exhausted and starving. I’m going to ask Bash to bring me a bottle of Chivas and a huge steak, and you and I are going to finish up.”

  He nodded. “I’ll file a report with your bosses tomorrow, but you know by now they’ll hook you up to the polygraph and ask most of these questions again.”

  Shaking my head, I told him, “I’m going to send my supervisor an email letting her know the gist of my evening, and tell her I intend to take tomorrow off.”

  He closed his laptop and put everything into a tech-bag. “Pickering’s on paid leave, and he’s under federal and local investigation, but it’s going to take a while. I need you to let me know of any contact you have with him as soon as it happens.”

  Bash came back in with a full bottle of Chivas and two cocktail glasses, and Graham handed him a card. “I can’t condone illegal activity, but if you come across something legally, please give me a call. Dirty cops and elected officials make us all look bad. We’re supposed to be the good guys.”

  He left, and several MC members came in. I put my head on the table and Bash rubbed my back.

  “Your dad had a hassle getting your purse and phone,” said Duke, “and probably wouldn’t have them if he hadn’t taken our attorney with him. I’m sending someone who can drive your car back, and your dad’ll meet them there with the key. Good call bringing Graham here, Brain has video and audio of the entire interview, including the part where Graham turned his equipment off. I haven’t seen any of it, but he says you did good.”

  I turned to Bash. “I assume you know by now that the Disciples didn’t do this to my face?”

  “Yeah. Brain said you pretty much bullied Dozer into doing it, so I only hit him a few times.”

  “Dammit, Bash!”

  “It’s okay, Princess. Dozer and I are good.”

  “That isn’t the point! He did it to me as a favor, so Dawg or Brain wouldn’t have to, because the thoughts of one of them doing it turned my stomach. He shouldn’t have been hit for doing me a favor.”

  “It’s a guy thing, Princess. Don’t expect you to get it, but Dozer understood.
Didn’t even hit me back.”

  He’d known to order me more than one steak, and I went through four of them before I was ready to go across the street. I realized they were positioning people to make sure I made it across safely, but I was so tired I let them deal with it. I trusted them to keep me safe.

  My dad showed up with my stuff, but I couldn’t tell whether the CPD had gotten into my phone. I was sure they had — law enforcement has ways to get past the lock screen, so I handed it to Brain so he could look through and see what, if anything, they might’ve gotten.

  My dad walked me to one of the sofas in the clubhouse, pulled me onto it with him, and put his arm around me as he asked me what I’d learned.

  “I let my guard down, coming out of the nail place,” I admitted.

  “Not what I asked, Angel. What did you learn?”

  “I already knew to look for that kind of van, or anything I can be yanked into so people can’t see me once I’m in and the door’s closed. If I’d been paying attention I’d have waited to step out into the road area until it was past. If you’re asking about specifics — I learned a little about club business I hadn’t known before, but not much.” I smiled. “I was reminded how much of a bad-ass my dad is.”

  “So, you won’t be as likely to let your guard down, in the future?”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry you were worried.”

  “Terrified, Angel. I was terrified, and you know your old man isn’t afraid of much.”

  But losing me was his biggest nightmare. Yeah, I knew, because losing him had been my biggest nightmare since my mom died. And now, losing Bash was right up there on the nightmare scale, too.

  Chapter Three

  Bash

  What really pissed me off about Angelica’s face was the fact we’d have to do it again tomorrow. She was going to heal faster than human, and I was smart enough to know someone would have more questions for her in the coming days.

  Dozer would’ve known it when he hit her, and would’ve made sure he could replicate the hit, just to a lesser extent. And yeah, once she pointed out he’d done it as a favor, so the people close to her wouldn’t have to, I regretted hitting him as hard as I had.

  I didn’t regret hitting him, though.

  My wolf wanted to fuck the hell out of her and reclaim her, but she was exhausted so I convinced the beast we’d have to make do with putting her in the shower and soaping her up to get as much of their smell off her as we could.

  I wanted to slowly and painfully kill the people who’d done this to her, but she’d taken care of it herself, so there was nothing for me to do but take care of her.

  She sent an email to her supervisor and then climbed in bed, and made sure all of our alarms were turned off, telling me, “I’m sleeping in. If you get a phone call pulling you away for club business, leave as quietly as you can, please.”

  “We’ll need to make a trip to your apartment tomorrow so you can get your other gun and pack a few day’s clothes.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed with a yawn, “and I’ll need to spend some time in the range with the other gun. Brain said he’d see to it my old one’s melted down in the morning — he didn’t want to have to explain why the welding torch was fired up tonight. If you’re up before me, can you make sure it gets done first thing?”

  I sighed. “Yeah. Brain says Marlin got all your shell casings off the ground and handed them and your other magazine over to him, and they got you another shirt… it sounds like ya’ll covered the bases, but I’m still worried for you.”

  “I’d feel better if I knew how they were getting rid of the bodies,” she said, snuggling into me.

  I kept waiting for her to lose it over having to kill five men the way she had. She’d killed someone in self-defense a few weeks ago and had dealt with it okay, but she’d said she and her dad had talked it out, plus I’d talked to her and knew she understood it’d been him or her, and she hadn’t been given a choice.

  She’d had a choice tonight, and chosen to end five lives.

  Killing someone, and then having to see the dead body with the life gone out of it — it affects even the hardest, roughest, baddest of the bad, the first few times. The way she snuggled into me as she talked about their bodies told me this either wasn’t the first time she’d made this kind of choice, or she was a sociopath.

  And I knew she wasn’t a sociopath.

  “When was your first kill, Princess?” I asked, keeping my voice soft.

  She tensed a few seconds, and then relaxed with a sigh. “Should’ve known you’d figure it out. I was twelve.”

  I rubbed her back. “Tell me.”

  “I was at the pool at Harrison Bay with some friends. We got our hands stamped to go to the bathroom, and then a few of us decided to walk down to the water, through the woods. I climbed a tree, made it higher than they wanted to go. When they were ready to go back to the pool I told them I’d be along in a little while. I stayed maybe another ten or so minutes, and when I climbed down, a man jumped me. I’d smelled him, knew he was around, but figured he was just someone from the campground enjoying the view like I was.”

  I let her have time to put her thoughts together. I smelled anger and grief, knew talking about him would get her talking about the men she’d just killed.

  “He jumped me, put his hand over my mouth and told me if I stayed quiet he wouldn’t hurt me. I could smell the lie, but I went limp to make him think I was cooperating, so he’d relax a little. But instead of rewarding me for cooperating, the fucking bastard put a knife to my throat, and I just kind of reacted. It’s like when a spider crawls on you, and you just slap at it out of fear, even though it can’t really hurt you. Even back then, my dad had talked to me about how to get away with killing people if someone pushed me and I had no choice, and it all kind of happened in one long, slow, dance. I stepped to the side and shoved him, aiming so his head would hit a tree. He was unconscious when he landed, but still alive, so I put my fist on his spine, just below his neck, and wrapped my arm around his forehead so my hands never touched him.”

  Her voice had gone softer and softer, but now she went back to a normal tone of voice, as if she didn’t want to show weakness. “I lifted his head until his neck snapped, trying to get the same angle so it’d look like he tripped and broke his neck when he hit the tree. His right cheek was pretty messed up from the tree bark, and I didn’t touch it with my arm.”

  “Why didn’t you just walk away once he was out?” I asked.

  “Pushing him down and then breaking his neck happened in one long sequence. It never occurred to me to stop. Once I realized I hadn’t needed to kill him, that I could’ve just walked away once he was knocked out, I was mortified. I had nightmares for months, where he was asking me why I’d killed him, or where his kids were crying and asking why I’d killed their daddy.”

  At twelve. She’d had to deal with this at twelve. “What did your parents do?”

  “They talked to me, a lot. My dad found out the guy had been a teacher at the high school, and he convinced me I might have kept him from molesting a lot of girls, and maybe even the asshole’s own daughter. My dad didn’t ask any questions of his law enforcement friends, but the papers reported it was an accident, that he appeared to have tripped and fallen into a tree, and he must’ve been running on the trail to have enough momentum to break his neck.”

  “And how do you feel about the men you killed tonight?”

  “If I hadn’t killed them, my dad would’ve needed to make a huge statement, and he’d have likely killed more than five people. You would’ve probably been right there with him, and it’s pretty much a sure thing that some of the people ya’ll killed would’ve only been guilty by association. However, by taking them out myself, I made sure the five people who kidnapped me were the ones who paid, and I set it up so people will know not to mess with me because I will fuck them up. I’m attached to the RTMC, and I get that ya’ll need to send a message to anyone who hurts someone you c
onsider yours, but I wanted to send my own message.” She sighed. “I feel bad they’re dead, and if I learn they have families then I’ll probably cry for their loss, but I don’t feel guilty about killing men who were planning to imprison me so they could rape me anytime they wanted. They had to know they were signing their death warrant when they took me — they expected it to come from the RTMC and not me, but that doesn’t matter. They knew what they were doing, and what the consequences were likely to be.”

  “Are the Disciples going to spread it that you took them out?” I asked, unhappy with where this was going.

  She nodded. “Yeah, and I’m good with it. If it makes it back to the cops, I’ll just tell them it’s a myth, but one the RTMC has decided to let stand and even propagate a little, because it only keeps me safer to let our enemies think I’m capable of killing five men.”

  I nodded and held her, and petted her a bit, hoping she’d fall asleep, but she asked, “Did Pit-Bull shoot Dawg?”

  “No, but he was there when it happened. We killed all but a few, and they were messed up pretty bad and then instructed to leave town and not come back.”

  “He was nice to me, tonight. So were Marlin and Razor. I know they’re still the enemy, and in different circumstances we might have to draw on each other, but they had my back.”

  “It behooved them to return you safely to us, Princess.”

  She chuckled and relaxed a little, and I kept petting her until she finally fell asleep.

  And then I lay with her in my arms another hour as I contemplated my next moves. I knew I couldn’t punish her for not telling me she’d killed someone when she was twelve, but the eighteen-year-old-me who’d killed on her behalf… Shit, it felt as if she’d lied by omission, by not telling me.

  My entire self-image had changed when she’d accepted the fact I’d killed without seeing me as a monster. She’d seen the asshole’s bloody, broken, body and his shattered head, and wasn’t freaked out — she didn’t look at me in horror, but in relief, and it’d healed something terribly broken in me.