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Briar sighed, but her neck was tingling, too—hell, it was practically on fire. “Fine, go first, but I smell dead body.” And as much as she wanted to prove herself to Royce King, she was apprehensive about what they were going to find when they opened the door to what once had been her bedroom.
He nodded in agreement. “Yep, me too.”
Royce stepped in front of her and, using the back of his hand, pushed open the slightly ajar door. Briar stood close enough behind him that she could feel his body heat and also see over his shoulder.
At first, all she saw was a hand, palm facing upward and reminding her of the hand she’d seen—was it just two days ago? The door swung all the way open, and she was able to see the body that lay on the hardwood floor.
He hadn’t been dead for too long, Briar didn’t think, and luckily it had been cold enough with the window open that she didn’t see any insects. Body parts she could handle, flies and maggots, no.
“Do you recognize him?” Royce asked as he squatted down next to the body.
“No,” she said, too quickly. “I don’t.”
Whoever he was, he was big. Six foot four, at least, and two hundred fifty pounds. His face was covered with a heavy beard. No, she’d never seen him before in her life.
She watched as Royce pressed his index and middle finger against the man’s neck even though they both knew there wouldn’t be a pulse.
“He’s cold.”
She stared down at the corpse. He wore a pair of dirty jeans and a grimy white short-sleeved t-shirt. The boots on his feet were a kind she was familiar with, a brand commonly worn by anyone who rode a motorcycle. If Royce King still rode, he might even have a pair. The stranger’s features were blunt, with an oddly unfinished look to them, and his hair was dark and greasy. But it wasn’t the heavy black boots, the disgusting clothes, or his face that had Briar’s heart pounding in her chest.
It was the tattoo on his bicep.
The sight of it sent her stomach plummeting, but she did her best to school her expression as she kept looking over at the corpse. This had to be a coincidence.
The man actually had several tattoos, but she was far too familiar with only the one. A creepily intricate spider rested in its web, waiting for its prey to wander too close. The tattoo was part of her life far away from Rexville and her father. What was a member of the Spiders MC doing here? Why had this member of the motorcycle gang been killed in her father’s house? And he had died violently, the bullet hole in his forehead had made sure of that.
Royce must have seen her reaction when she recognized the tattoo.
“What?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” Now if she could only believe that herself.
