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Chapter Two

Travis

“Fuck. This can’t be right,” I hiss, staring at the social media profile I just stumbled across on the screen in front of me before releasing a heavy breath. For months, my brothers and I have been doing everything we can think of to find the asshole that has been targeting the club and coming after women we have helped in the past but I may have just found something that rules out the only suspect we’ve been able to come up with. Mitch Harris was married to Dina, the first girl that was killed, and after we came to her rescue and helped her escape him, he lost his goddamn mind. When she was murdered, we all just assumed that he was the one that did it. The problem was, we didn’t have any proof and when two other girls were also killed, we turned our focus away from him. But then Fuzz suggested that he was still behind it all, killing people close to us in an act of revenge for our role in his wife leaving him and since he is such a shifty character, it wasn’t much of a leap. Plus, he didn’t have the best alibi for the night Dina died but if what I just found is true… there is no way he is behind these deaths.

Scrolling through the profile, I shake my head. I was lost, looking for any kind of lead when I decided to go peruse Mitch’s social media and noticed his new girlfriend. She likes to tag him in her check-ins every time they go somewhere together and as I was scrolling through her profile, I found a check-in for the date the latest girl, Sammy, was killed. Shaking my head and hoping like hell this is somehow wrong, I click the like for the little diner she checked in at and start flipping through photos on their page. In one photo, I spot a security camera and grin as I open a new window to hack into their system. It is surprisingly easy and I roll my eyes at how lazy and complacent some people can be. For fucks sake, it is not hard for someone like me to gain access to someone’s system but they make it even easier on me when they don’t change the password from the default code from the factory.

Sighing, I scroll through the dates listed until I find the one I need and click on it, selecting the camera in the dining room. The video starts at midnight so I fast forward through the entire morning until just after lunch when Eve, Mitch’s girlfriend, checked in to the diner. As the video begins playing, I hold my breath and hiss a curse when Mitch walks in with Eve on his arm. Chucking my pen across the room, I lean back in my chair and it smacks against the wall, falling to the floor as I watch Mitch and Eve slip into a back booth and start making out.

“Goddamn it!”

“Problem?”

I glance over my shoulder as Storm walks into my room and arches a brow in question. Nodding, I release a breath and point to my computer screen. “Only if you count discovering an alibi for Mitch a problem.”

“Fuck… seriously?”

“Afraid so.” I turn back to the screen and sneer at Mitch pawing all over Eve in the corner of the booth. “This is him and his new girlfriend, Eve, making out in a diner an hour away from here while Sammy was being murdered.”

“Shit.” He turns away for a moment before turning back to watch the video. “What about the other two murders? Does he have an alibi for them as well?”

“He has a shaky alibi on the day Dina was murdered,” I say, clicking back over to Eve’s profile and scrolling down until I find the date in question and resist the urge to smash my fist into the table. “But, he was with Eve again on the day Laney was killed.”

“Doing what?”

I point to the check-in. “Bowling. Apparently, they won third place.”

“Can you verify that?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest and I nod as I click the link for the bowling alley and bring up their website. I jump over to the winner’s page and scroll down until their picture pops up on the screen. Turning back to him, I point to it and he sighs.

“Fuck.”

I nod in agreement. “Yep.”

“All right…” he says, running a hand through his hair. “We’ll deal with that later. Veronica is downstairs in the war room and she might have new leads for us. You coming?”

“Absolutely,” I answer, closing out of the websites and grabbing my phone off of my desk. He nods, turning to leave and I follow behind him as he walks out of my room and down the hallway to the stairs. The low murmur of multiple conversations greet us as we descend the stairs but I can’t make out anything that is said since we are literally packed to the rafters in here these days.

The Bayou Devils MC wasn’t always the family friendly environment it is now. In fact, it used to be a real outlaw club with its members running guns, drugs, women… anything to bring in the cash but everything changed when our President, Blaze, was shot by a rival dealer and one of our members, Henn, was sent to jail for seven years on a drug charge. Blaze started to see the error of his ways and backed away from anything illegal to open a legitimate business and when a terrified woman crashed into him in a gas station, we kind of fell into the work we do now - helping those that have nowhere else to go. Or, at least, that’s the way it started. These days, we’ve made quite the name for ourselves and we’ve taken on other jobs like security and P.I. work. I didn’t join the club until things had turned around and I was drawn here by their mission and I knew my computer hacking skills would come in handy but I haven’t been a whole lot of help lately with this threat coming after us.

Veronica, the woman we’re meeting with today, went missing almost a year ago on her way home from class and we were tasked with looking into her disappearance when Detective Rodriguez, a local cop we work with often, hit a dead end and was ordered to focus on other cases. We didn’t get much farther than he did, though, and we were all shocked as hell when she stumbled into the clubhouse two weeks ago, disheveled and terrified out of her mind. She had a message for us, from the man who has been targeting the club and it set us all on edge – even more so than we already were. Blaze immediately ordered everyone and their families to come stay here, at the clubhouse, so we can keep this little family we have built safe but it hasn’t been easy.

I am just getting started.

I shudder as I remember the message she delivered that day. It’s haunted me day in and day out as I try my hardest to come up with answers for my brothers but I hit a wall every time. No matter where I look or what angle I try to take, I always come up empty and I can’t help but feel like this fucker is toying with me. Like he knew who I was and he knew what I could do when he went about making this whole damn plan so it’s tailored to drive me out of my mind. Scoffing, I shake my head.

God, how fucking narcissistic is that?

Pushing the thoughts from my mind, I follow Storm as he walks into the war room and as soon as I’m in the room, he shuts the door behind me, locking it as I slip into my seat at one end of the table. Across from me is Blaze, our president, at the head of the table and Storm takes his seat to his left with Smith, our sergeant at arms, to his right. Veronica sits in the middle of the table to my left, looking nervous as hell as we all turn our focus to her.

“You all right, darlin’?” Blaze asks her and she nods, her gaze flicking around the room like a scared animal.

“Being back here just reminds me of…”

I nod in understanding as do the rest of my brothers. The last time Veronica was here, she had just been dropped off by the man who kidnapped her and she has absolutely no idea what she was walking into.

“Just know that we’re all here to help you in any way that we can,” Blaze assures her and she nods, sitting up a little straighter as she sucks in a breath. “Are you ready to tell your story?”

“I am.”