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Doherty swipes a rag that once looked like a handkerchief across his damp forehead. “Still no word from Jordi and Devon?” he asks all casual-like.
That little antenna that warns me about trouble is pinging now, but I keep my body still, my expression blank.
“I haven’t seen them in weeks, and neither of them has returned any of my calls.”
“That’s a little odd, isn’t it?” The woman asking has short, curly blonde hair and big blue eyes. Kind of pretty, but looks like a fed.
I nod at her. “Who is this?”
“This,” Doherty begins, “is Agent Stiles from the FBI.”
“So,” she asks, tapping her finger on her chin, “you don’t find it odd you haven’t heard from your friends?”
I nod. “Yes, but apparently, it happens. Guys can’t hack the membership process, and they vanish, too embarrassed to show their faces again.” I know that’s not what happened, but I keep it to myself.
“Was there any beef inside the club? Any infighting?”
“No,” Ace answers from behind me. His deep voice signals he doesn’t take any bullshit. “I won’t allow it.”
“Ever?” Stiles presses, skepticism thick in her voice.
Ace gives it back to her. “Men fight. It’s part of our charm, but nothing that deep. We’ve been looking for them, together and separately since they didn’t disappear on the same day as far as we can tell.” Ace folds his arms and turns to Doherty. “What’s this about? Why the feds?”
The chief sighs and all the little hairs on my neck perk the fuck up because I know that look. I’ve seen it too many times in my life. The first time I saw it, I was around seven, and the police came to tell Mama that my Tio Julio wouldn’t be coming home again.
Doherty tells us the news. “Three bodies were found in the Hollywood Hills, two males, and one female.”
Doherty sighs again and shakes his head. “Their tongues were cut out, and their mouths were sliced open ear to ear. Gruesome shit,” he says and shakes off the image, or tries to anyway. It’s not the kind of shit you can shake off easily.
Dix whistles. “That sounds like some cartel shit. You identify Jordi and Devon or somethin’?”
Doherty says nothing, and Agent Stiles taps her notepad. “Exactly what I was thinking,” she says without answering Dix’s question. “Does your club have any connections to any cartel?”
“No,” Ace answers gruffly. “We’ve never had a reason to get involved with cartel business, so we obviously have no beef with any cartel on either side of the border.”
Stiles nods, but I can tell she doesn’t believe what she hears. “Maybe you can explain this.” Then, without another word, she dramatically drops a pile of photos on the laminate counter. “Go on, look.”
I slip in beside Ace and Dix, needing to see the photos to confirm what I already know to be true. “Shit,” I say as I look into the cold, dead eyes of my friends—former friends now—stripped naked for one final humiliation.
Stiles asks for confirmation. “You know them?” she asks coldly, but my gaze is still on the photos and the unknown third victim. “Because they seem to know you,” she says and points to the only clothing in sight, two leatherkutteswith the Reckless Souls emblems on them.
I can’t answer. I am totally fucking unable to tear my eyes away from the images before me. Still, it’s not the dead bodies—mostly—it’s what’s on them. It’s familiar to me, and I wish like hell it wasn’t, but it makes sense now, Stiles’ presence in the shop.
“The numbers,” I say and point to the number one carved on the female’s stomach, trying hard to ignore the two carved into Jordi’s stomach and the three in Devon’s.
“You know them?” she asks with wide eyes. That excitement comes back, and she takes a step forward.
“No,” I say and shake off the memories that still plague me once in a while. “But I know of ’em.”
Her smile is gleeful, almost satisfied, as if she’s caught us in a lie. “How?”
“Yeah, how?” Ace asks.
I scrub one hand over my face and then the other, trying to unsee those dead bodies, the first my young eyes had ever seen up close and personal. I inhale deeply and let it out as slowly as I can, the way the school counselor recommended after that day.
“When I was a kid, there was this house right across the street from mine. I just thought it was a party house, but it was more than that. The guys that hung out in front sold drugs. People went in and out all day and night. Sometimes there would be girls of all ages. Some were never seen again.”
I remember my Tia telling me those guys were no good. They were the work of the devil, she’d said and warned me to stay away. And I had.
