She tensed.
“You’re doing that defensive thing,” he muttered.
Guilty as charged. She had been doing that defensive thing again. “I don’t want you to kill for me.”
“You said?—”
“I’ll do the killing on my own, thanks very much.” Not like she wanted someone else doing the dirty work for her. She didn’t mind getting her hands dirty. Or bloody. Besides, this was personal. Agnes sniffed. “I know how to kill, after all. Got trained at Quantico. This may shock you to the soles of those big, black boots that you like to wear, but I can handle myself pretty damn well.”
“Then what the hell do you want me to do?”
Thanks for asking. “I want you to get me close to him.” Killing close.
“Give me a name?—”
“I don’t have a name. If I did, if I knew who he was, I would have killed him long ago.” That had been a big life goal for her. It had been the goal since, well, she’d been standing at the cemetery, and the rain had started to fall, and her brother Ryan had lifted her in his arms and carried her away. “I never saw his face. If I had, I would have drawn him out perfectly. I would have given his photo to the cops. I would have plastered it all over the internet. I would have hired every PI in the world to help me hunt him down so that I could slowly and painfully kill him.” The way he slowly and painfully killed Max. The way he tried to slowly and painfully kill me. He’d left her to bleed out, confident that she’d die before help arrived.
She hadn’t died.
“You never saw his face.”
“Hard to see a face when the perp is wearing a motorcycle helmet and he has the visor down.” As she’d told the initial cops, over and over, when they’d come to the hospital to interview her. All these years later, and the crime that had shattered her world was unsolved. “He wore black gloves. A battered jacket. Jeans. Black boots. The only part of him that wasn’t covered was his wrist. When he lifted the knife up high…” You’re gonna die, pretty girl. You’re my ticket in. Had to bag a redhead.
No, no, she didn’t like thinking of that night. Of remembering how he’d been so proud to target her. He’d followed her from the club, she’d pieced that together later. He’d seen her and stalked her and stabbed her because she happened to have red hair. “When he lifted up the knife, I saw part of the tattoo on his wrist. It was very unmistakable. Two cobra heads, sliding down toward one snake body.”
“Fuck.”
That was…recognition.
“The killer was part of the Twin Cobras,” she said.
“No.”
“Yes,” she threw right back. “I know what I saw.”
“The Twins are fucking boogeymen used to scare the world.”
“They are monsters without conscience. They hunt and they prey on those weaker than they are. They live in the shadows. A very, very select few individuals because initiation into their freak club is so rare.” She ticked off the things she’d painstakingly learned about them. “The members are in other motorcycle clubs. That’s how they are selected. Because they stand out in those other clubs as being the most powerful. Being the strongest. The baddest.”
He didn’t say a word.
So she kept going. “They all sport the twin cobras tat somewhere on their bodies. If you see that tat, then you are looking straight at the worst kind of killer.” The kind of killer who’d ruined her life. “They are protected, and they are insulated. To find them, to hunt them, you’d need a way to get into the most powerful MCs in the nation.”
“Sonofabitch. That’s why you’re using me. You want me to kill the boogeyman for you.”
No, not exactly. He was not listening to her. “I’ll kill him.” With extreme pleasure. “I just need you to help me find him. You are my way in. If I’m at your side, then I can search. I can ask questions of the MCs. I can?—”
“Get us both killed? Because a nosy Fed will damn well get hell raining down on us both?—”
The motel room door flew inward. A blasting, shattering sound because someone had just kicked in the door, and the flimsy lock went flying even as the door banged into the nearby wall.
She fell out of the bed. Leaped out, actually, and landed on top of Cass as she covered him with her body. Gunshots rang out. One, two, three.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
