Under Fire (Winged Enemy MC Romance) (9 page)

I moaned loudly as his other hand began to have its way with me, first groping my chest roughly and then unbuttoning my jeans. They were too tight for him to be able to reach a hand down the front in our position, so he settled for dancing his digits through my pants and underwear on top of my pussy.

“Oh, fuck!” Even with the deadening of sensation from the denim I still almost couldn’t stand the intensity from Jed finally touching me where I most wanted him to. I had longed for his touch for so long. Now that it was happening my body was throwing me for loops with crazy levels of sensitivity.

My breasts heaved as I watched his face, the intensity there as he slowly rediscovered and possessed my body.
I would let him take complete control of me.
Feeling helpless with my hands unavailable turned me on more than I thought possible. I had always been the one to take control.

Someone pounded at the front door of the apartment. “Jed! Leslie! Are you in there?”

It was Nathan. He shouted through the door.

Jed and I froze as we looked at each other. Nathan wouldn’t come barging in unless it was important.

“Jed? Please tell me you’re in there!”

“Nathan?” Jed shouted back. “We’re here, what’s going on?”

“It’s Tim. He’s dead.”

Fuck. Just my luck.
My brain hadn’t quite processed the news yet. High off lust and adrenaline, all it cared about was that this would interfere with the sex that it so desperately craved.

Immediately Jed released my hands and let me drop back to stand on my own two feet. He cast about for his shirt and pulled it on while he made his way across the room to the door.

“Wait!” I called out before he opened it. I couldn’t find my bra and settled for just throwing my shirt back on. “OK, go ahead.”

Jed threw the door open to reveal a distraught Nathan.

“I’m glad you two are alive. I wasn’t hearing anything from Tim so I sent a couple guys over to his house to tell him to come to the Roost where we’d all be together. They found him bled out in his living room.”

“Fuck.” Jed held his face in his hands. All he’d ever wanted was to ride free and enjoy the biker life, and instead he had to deal with the ticking time bombs that Frank had left for him. “Is everyone else accounted for?”

“Yeah, for now. Half the guys are keeping watch at Tim’s house, the other half are at headquarters.”

“Ok, good. We’ll be along to Tim’s in a couple seconds. Has Kat been told yet?”

I couldn’t believe his first thought was to his ex. They had split years ago and she’d only been back in town for a few days, but it seemed as though they had a closer bond than Jed and I did.

Nathan shook his head. “I haven’t yet, I don’t think anyone else has. Did you want me to, or are you going to break it to her?”

Jed pondered. “I should tell her. After we deal with things there though.” He turned back to me. “Are you good to go? I’ll have to catch a ride in your car.”

I nodded. “Sure. Let’s go.”

I see why Nathan described it as finding Tim bled out.

The living room was a mess.

Tim’s body was lying across the area rug in the wide expanse of the room. His TV on the wall continued to play sports highlights; nobody had turned it off yet.

Jed stood there, silent, almost the exact same pose that he had held when first seeing Patrick’s body a couple of days ago. I knew that thoughts warred fast and furiously inside of his head, but I left him to his contemplations as I completed my own circuit around the scene.

“Has anyone else been in and touched stuff here?” I asked Nathan. “It’s vital that we keep the crime scene clean for when the teams come in to check for clues.”

“We’re not going to call this in,” Jed said.

I stared at him, incredulous. “Are you kidding? I need to report this, Jed. Patty was one thing, that could have been just a drunk crash, an accident. This is a completely different situation now, someone is hunting down the members of the club!”

Jed shook his head. “Getting the cops or the feds involved isn’t going to help anything, Leslie. This is my club, and my town, and I’m going to find this fucker. I’m not going to go running to your bosses every time something happens, ok?”

I could believe my ears. “This isn’t running away or being weak, Jed. No one would blame you for getting some outside help on this one. Frank, Patty and Tim are dead, and you and Kat are lucky to be alive after the blast that took out Nightshade. This needs to go to the proper authorities so we have the best chance of catching the one responsible before more people die.”

I could tell by the set of his chin that my arguments weren’t making a dent on his decision. “We deal with this ourselves, that’s final.” He paced away, turning his back on me.

I turned to Nathan. “Nathan, you have to admit that the right thing to do here is to let me call this in and bring in the experts. Anything else is just foolish. It could be Jed next, or you. Or Kat, or anyone else in the club. Is that what you want?”

Nathan looked me in the eyes, looked after Jed, and grimaced. “I wish it was my call to make, Leslie, but it isn’t. Jed’s the president, and his word is law in this town. I can’t control you, either, but I would say that you hold off at least for a little while. Things were bound to get messy sooner or later, and the feds can’t come in and bail us out every time. Otherwise word will find a way out and we’ll be useless to their plans for penetrating the bigger crime rings.”

He had a point. There was a certain amount of gang warfare that had to go on if only to maintain appearances. But my biggest concern wasn’t with the DEA and its desires.

“Dammit, I’m not saying this as an agent, I’m saying this as someone who cares about the members of this club. Let me report this, and help stop any more deaths. This is crazy.”

Stony silence met my plea.

Fine, I’ll at least take a look myself to figure out what I can. Then I can report it and there’s nothing they can do to stop me.

I turned back to the crime scene and tried to approach it logically, analytically, and forget that I had joked around with Tim just that morning. It wasn’t the first time that I had traded barbs in the morning with someone who had ended up a cadaver by bedtime, but it never got easier.

Tim was sprawled face down on the rug. A large amount of blood stained it a shocking red that spread out in a pool from the body. It was more blood than I was used to seeing, but then most dead bodies I had seen were the result of gun fire.

“Was he stabbed?”

Nathan nodded. “It looked like he was hit right in the gut and chest five or six times. I rolled him over long enough to see that before I let him drop back down.”

I didn’t blame him. Tim and Nathan were great friends, and you never wanted to let your last memory of a good friend be their mangled corpse after a violent murder.

My training had never covered the intimate details of crime scene investigation. I settled for using my logic and intellect to try and figure out at least something about the murder that wasn’t immediately obvious. Something that would help us to figure out who was doing this.

Let’s see. Tim was stabbed in the front, and it looks as though he was sitting on the bed and slid off onto the ground after the attack.
There was a blood smear that showed where he had slipped off the white leather couch.

If he had been stabbed in the front, there should have been some sign of a struggle.
Why the front? And while he was sitting down… it’s almost as though Tim didn’t even try to protect himself.
I hunted around, looking for clues. Beside the body was the low-slung coffee table which held a couple of magazines, the TV remote, and Tim’s beer.

He had settled in to watch the game, grabbed a beer. He might not have heard an intruder over the sounds of the TV, but that doesn’t explain why he didn’t get stabbed in the back, or at least stand up before he died.

Then I saw it, a detail that my eyes had skipped over several times as normal.

“Nathan, do you mind stepping outside so that I can talk to Jed alone, for a moment?”

He looked at me and cast a glance at the scene. He had stared at it far more than was healthy over the past hour, but he was obviously confused at what had given me a sudden burst of insight. “Yeah, sure. I’ll be out front with the others.”

Jed still stood with his back to me, looking into Tim’s kitchen. I waited for him to come over but he stayed there, obstinate.

“Please.” It was all I said, but we both knew that I was asking for a few things with the one word.

His back softened, and after a moment he turned around. Pain covered his face, distress at losing yet another member of his crew.

I held out my hand to him, and he took the few halting steps necessary to grab it.

“Don’t blame yourself, Jed. You warned everyone, Tim knew that there was danger. There wasn’t much else you could do.” I knew that I wouldn’t change his mind, but I said the words anyway. Maybe they would give him a measure of comfort.

“What did you find?” He didn’t bother to address my words of solace.

I walked with him over to the couch and pointed at Tim’s back. “Why was Tim stabbed in the front?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I mean why did the attacker stab Tim in the chest? If the murderer broke in and found Tim sitting here, wouldn’t he just hit him in the back? It would be quicker, easier, and less dangerous.”

Jed looked at Tim’s back. There were no wounds there, the black fabric of his shirt stretched across the chilled flesh in an unbroken expanse.

“Uh, I don’t really know…”

“Well I do. There’s something else that I noticed. It’s so ordinary that it took me a while to realize that it might be out of place, but look, right there.” I point at the small table that stood next to the other chair.

“What, the table?”

“No, what’s on the table?”

“A beer?”

“Exactly.” I let a small smile come across my face.

“I don’t get it. What’s wrong with a beer sitting on the table?”

I pointed at the beer sitting on the coffee table. “That’s obviously Tim’s beer. It’s right in front of where he was sitting when he was stabbed. So whose beer is that?”

Jed frowned. “It could have been Tim’s beer from earlier. Or it could have been sitting around for a couple days. I mean come on, Leslie, it’s a goddamn beer bottle.”

I shook my head. “It’s more than that, Jed. Look around this place. Wouldn’t you say that Tim kept his house a lot cleaner than your typical biker?”

It was true. Everything was put away and well-tended. It wouldn’t win any awards for home decorating, but it wasn’t messy. The two beers were the only things that didn’t belong there permanently. Even the kitchen counter was cleared of any dishes or beer bottles.

“I suppose so.”

“So what the hell is another beer doing there?” I walked over to the side table to look at it closer. Condensation beaded along the side of the bottle. “This beer was cracked short enough time ago that it’s still cold enough for water to bead on the side. Tim’s killer stabbed him in the front because Tim not only knew the murderer, but invited them in and gave them a beer while they watched the game.”

I was impressed with how well the case pulled itself together once I got going. I hadn’t noticed the condensation from across the room, and it gave me a chill to realize that Tim’s murder had happened such a short period of time ago.

Jed walked over beside me to look at the bottle closer. “I don’t like what this means.” He looked up and to the right as he turned over the implications in his head.

I empathized. There was really only one possible explanation if my read on the situation was accurate. And there was only one person who I could think of who it might be.

“Jed… just how much do you trust Kat?”

Jed looked up at me sharply.

“What are you trying to say?”

I shrugged. “Just think about it. Kat came to town a few days ago. That afternoon we find Patrick’s body in a ditch. Sure the accident happened a day or two before that, but who are we to say she wasn’t buzzing around looking for an opening before that. After all, we just happened to come across her on the road, didn’t we?”