Kasen’s frown deepens to deadly. He’s so on edge I can feel the tension radiating off him from the other side of the room. First Keller dies suddenly, forcing him into a position he clearly despises, then she comes back, his lost love—or all of ours, not that any of us would have admitted it back then, but we all had a thing for her, that was fucking obvious. It was one of those un-talked-about things between bros. None of us could touch her because that would have caused chaos among our adolescent brains. But now things are different. We can survive this—her. She doesn’t have to start a war, she could be the only one who can bring us all back together. “At this point, it could be anyone with the means to slip a note in her pocket unseen and get away from Bodhi after graffitiing the van. This dude knows what he’s doing. He’s got to be trained; think military or a cop she could have pissed off. Someone who’s good with a knife and able to disappear without leaving tracks.”
“You’re ruling out the Southern Breakers?” I check, just to make sure. The last thing we need is some biker club turning up on our soil looking for a fight.
Kasen pours himself a drink from his mini bar and throws it back. Not the first he’s had this morning at the ripe time of ten am, but who’s counting. “Not completely, but you really think those dumbthugs would bother to pull something like this off? It’s not worth their time.”
“Nope. She might have been worth a bit of money to them, but this is someone calculated. He wants to mess with her, scare her,” Bohdi agrees with him.
The way he says she was worth money to them makes me sick to the stomach. Like she’s a product they could profit from, that’s what they turned her into. The images of her in those videos are hot as fuck, I’m not going to deny it. She’s a goddess behind the camera, with her dirty-talking mouth and rocking body. But it’s disgusting to think of who was paying to see her like that. My innocent friend exploited for some gang members’ gain. I have no idea what made her do it. How she could have gotten herself in such bad debt, but I know if I ever come face to face with one of the fuckers involved, I will personally make sure they never have the chance to do that shit to anyone ever again. I still haven’t ruled out an ambush, maybe light up their clubhouse and celebrate as the thing burns to the ground with ‘em all inside. That could be a fun Saturday night. I’m sure Bodhi would be up for it. But he tells me he has them under control, and the pain they will endure will go so much deeper than a simple arson job. They will be left with nothing.
“Exactly. And we need to find this psychopath before he gets the chance to scare her again.” Kasen growls, his glass clattering with the steel tray as he finally collapses into a cream recliner. He hasn’t slept, for days maybe.
Bodhi shares a subtle look that tells me he notices as well. Someone needs to snap him out of this before it brings him undone completely. If I can just get her to go easy on him, spend a little quality time with us all and see this is where she belongs. She doesn’t need to run from us because she’s one of us. It could bring him back to us as well.
“What happened the night her mum was murdered? You two were there,” I ask, sure it’s got something to do with this, it has to. I should have been there as well. Those times were so crucial in the set-up of Throne Enterprises, it was all hands on deck no matter that we were practically kids. Truth was, we all wanted different lives than the ones we had been dealt, and Keller painted us a picture too good to refuse. All we had to do was sell our souls. Only we didn’t know that at the time. But I was sent to deal with another mess with Jayden, a job the two of us would never be the same again after. Bodhi and Kasen came back different as well. That night changed all our lives.
“Shit was going down. It was all over the cop radio, a factory fire on the outskirts of town, a drug bust that put away some local thugs for years. Shit we didn’t fully understand at the time. We were just there to listen and help if things got out of hand with the mayor. That’s what Keller said. Right, K?” Bodhi explains. But we all know it was more complicated than that.
That night was Keller’s big chance to throw the power of the authorities into his hands. He saw his chance, something so much bigger than any individual, bigger than anything anyone had seen before, and it worked as well. That night he got what he wanted. Money, power, control. Every event was carefully calculated by the man himself. What happened to Juliet Dawson is no coincidence. It was all related, same with the shit Jay and I were up to, and the boys waiting outside Dove’s house while the old man sealed a deal with the most influential woman at the time.
Kasen glances up at me, a haunted look in his eyes. He knows more than Bodhi that’s for sure. “Dove saw something that made her run. We don’t know what. Keller gave instructions to bring her home safe. We did what we were told, end of story. That was the last I thought about it until we found out Dove and her dad were gone and her mumwas dead in the house.” And now I know my mate is lying through his teeth. He knows something big. Something even Bodhi doesn’t know from his expression.
“And you believed Keller?” I push. He’s so exhausted he might just slip and finally tell us the truth. I might have been working for the same organization, but I never trusted his old man. He was so crooked, so fixated on money and the power it was giving him. Now, I can see it for what it was. I know Kasen always looked up to Keller, but just this past week, I have seen the cracks appearing, little sly comments he’s made, looks he gives just me and Bodhi when dealing with the board. I don’t think he trusted the old coot either. And since he was his flesh and blood, I know that means only one thing: he’s hiding shit from us.
Kasen runs a hand through his hair, his nervous tic. Has been since he was a kid, going up against me in surf comps that he knew he couldn’t take me in, even if I was two years younger than him. “I’ve read the cop reports. Time of death was later than we were all there. Unless Keller went back without us, I’d say he wasn’t the one who killed her. He had no reason to, he already got what he wanted.”
“But this stalker could be the one with motive?” Bodhi snips, finally taking his attention away from the surveillance and our girl. He might act like he doesn’t want Dove around, like just the sight of her pisses him off, but I know the real him. He pined after her like the rest of us did. He’s pleased she’s back, he just has a messed-up way of showing it.
“That’s unless you know something you’re not telling us, K?” I push.
Kasen shoves back to standing, striding across the room so the two of us are face to face. He glares down at me. “What are you implying, River?”
My lips twitch, the smile directed at my mate not a pleasant one. Yeah, I might be the jokester of the crew, always up for a good time. But this shit is too real to laugh off. Someone could get hurt. She could get hurt, and I’m not going to let that shit fly. “I’m not implying anything, Kasen. You know shit you haven’t told us, I can see it written all over your face. Might be time to dish, now that we have a stalker going forourgirl.”
“Keller didn’t fucking kill her.” His voice booms through the room. His livid eyes come to mine, dark as the night and filled with malice like he could slit my throat right now for having the audacity to challenge him. But fuck him. I’m not scared of him like the rest of the plebs are. I know him, I know what makes him tick, and I know just how far to push. His breathing is so ragged I wonder if he might actually do it this time. Snap and show me just what he’s made of. Instead, he seems to find his composure. Straightening his button-up shirt, he turns and marches out of the room. “Make sure she is at my office by midday.”
“Way to press him when he’s already on edge,” Bodhi snips, plonking down on the seat beside me. He looks just as worn out.
“He’s lying to us. Doesn’t it bother you when we’re the ones doing his dirty work?”
He leans back and closes his eyes. “K’s got his own demons he’s dealing with. If it was important we would know about it.”
“Bullshit.”
He sits forward, his eyes narrowing to slits after my outburst. “Keep your fucking opinions to yourself. We need K in control. He’s closing a massive deal over the land for the new golf course this morning. I can’t afford for him to fuck this up, so for now, play it fucking cool, got it?”
But I’m like a dog with a bone, I can’t let it go, not now when she’s involved. “What did you see that night? You guys sat out in that car for ages, you must have seen something.”
He shakes his head, and I know he’s trying to remember. It was ten years ago, and a lot of shit has happened since then. “It happened how K says. Honestly, the night seemed uneventful other than Dove running off and us being requested to find her, but she did shit like that all the time, it was nothing new. I swear I didn’t see or hear anything odd until I heard the news report that our mayor was dead and her family missing.” He turns back to me. “We all have regrets, Riv. Not staying there that night with her will haunt me till the day I die. But do I think Keller did it? He didn’t need to. He already had Juliet under his thumb.”
His sadness sends a wave of goosebumps over me. He knew in his gut something was off, that’s why he regrets leaving her so much. “You think you could have stopped what happened? You were just a kid.”
He shrugs. “Might have stopped them from running.”
A chill comes over me. We all wish that night could have gone down differently. Fuck, the number of times I wished I was with her, wished I protected her from what she must have seen. The life she’s lived since. We should have done more. I still remember the state of the house the following day. It was blocked off by cop tape, but that didn’t stop us. We made our way in and made our own assumptions; there was blood everywhere. More than there should have been from the one bullet wound that killed her. There was one of Dove’s footprints in the blood right by the door. I knew it was hers, and I remember thinking, poor girl must have seen her dear mum shot to death right in front of her. So fucking sad. That’s the kind of shit that you never recover from. Explains the now half-dead expression in her eyes.
“Dove would have to know more. She was in the house that night,” I mutter almost to myself.
Bodhi’s eyebrow pops up. “Yeah, good luck getting her to talk. She was impossible before we locked her up again. She’s one angry brat now.”
