Sleep eluded me. My mind kept telling me that I was on to something. This was the same anxious sensation that rode my bones when I tracked down people for the MC. It was like my body knew I was close to something or on the right trail.

I glanced at my watch that showed 2:05 a.m. It was the perfect time for me to go back to those centers and see what Beverly Hudson and Laura Parker were hiding.

In all black, I crept to my truck and headed toward the centers. There may as well have been a damn block party going on outside the center Beverly worked at. Teens, young adults, grown ass men and women, and even stray cats and dogs, all mingled.

The earsplitting sound of loud music booming from the interior of cars that likely cost more than houses, filled the air as weed, alcohol, and all manner of illegal substances were being passed around.

Although the streets were alive with the sound of young heartbreak and the start of many nightmares, the center Beverly worked at was pitch dark on the inside and locked down. I pulled my cap low over my eyes as I searched for a spot to turn around without hitting anyone.

The crowd was so amped up that groups and individuals danced and shouted over each other as some couples appeared to be one grind away from needing a condom.

I managed to turn my truck around without calling attention to the fact that I didn’t fit in, not that some of them would have noticed me in the drug and alcohol induced state they were in.

As I left the scene in my rearview, I observed my surroundings with a keen eye to figure out the best way of getting into the center. My brakes squeaked as I slowed my truck to get a better look at a tight dark alley about half a mile away from the gathering. The alley was wedged between a heavily barred pawn shop and a restaurant with a lopsided sign on the front that read, Henry’s. The dark smelly alley lined with overflowing dumpsters was the perfect spot for me to park my truck.

With nothing but a few tools and a small Maglite flashlight, which at the highest setting could outshine a headlight, I traveled back towards the noise of the crowd. To avoid being spotted by anyone, I ducked into a dark dusty alley a few buildings away from the center and hopped a fence to gain access to the center’s back door.

A tethered wooden fence with missing sections and rotted wood separated the back of the center from the backyards of residences that I prayed didn’t have dogs running loose.

When I’d visited the center earlier, I noticed the locks were deadbolt, which was good news for me. Bricks, bars, heavy locks, and alarm systems were not going to keep me out of a place if I wanted in. The military had dropped us in some of the most vicious places imaginable, so we’d had to do whatever was necessary to survive. I’d became a professional burglar, an arsonist, a hitman, and even a fucking carpenter when it was necessary.

With a small tension wrench and a lock pick, I made quick work of getting the deadbolt on the back door open as my flashlight sat between my lips. D had taken care of the toughest job. He’d hacked into the security company’s database and gotten me the four-digit alarm code, otherwise I would have had to find and cut the alarm feed. I eased the door open and close it behind me as the alarm chirped with each passing second. After I entered the code, it gave a final double-chirp before going silent.

A half-hour search of Beverly’s small office hadn’t turned up a damn thing. I woke D up, so he could talk me through hacking into her computer and emails, but the search ended in disappointment. Beverly’s emails were clean from what I could tell.

Praying I would have better luck at my next stop, I left the center the same as I’d entered it, resetting the alarm and securing the lock to the back door.

The area outside the center Laura worked at was in direct contrast to the scene I’d just left. The streets were deserted, and darkness enveloped the neighborhood, giving it an eerily skin-scratching vibe like danger lurked just out of sight. I drove passed the center to find a place to park before creeping back to the building.

The sign outside the glass on the front door of Laura Parker’s building said the center didn’t open until seven o’clock. Since it was a little after five, I was going to have to make this search a quick one to avoid early arrivals.

Laura’s office was as clean as Beverly’s, but going through Laura’s emails brought a smile to my face and had D chuckling on the other end of the line. The email files she hadn’t cleared from her trash looked suspicious. When I started to read them, my jackpot radar went off.

One of her oldest, trashed emails confirmed that she’d been having an ongoing conversation with someone named Kelli Hunter about pretending to be the Jefferson Rehab facility. This was the same facility that Megan had claimed her sister was in and D discovered had no information about Megan or her sister, Jennifer. How many fucking aliases did Megan have? How many lies had she covered up?

Laura had likely been the woman my father had talked to who’d provided Megan’s alibi about her sister being in rehab. Why lie? What did Megan get out of infiltrating our MC? Why would someone knowingly place themselves in that much danger and not get anything out of it?

Her plan had undoubtedly been to get into our MC. What I couldn’t fucking understand was why? I didn’t know what piece of the puzzle I was missing. She hadn’t outed us to the cops. Hell, she couldn’t. She’d killed someone too.

It came to me like a flash of lightning had driven the idea into my brain. Research! Or could it have been for some type of sick fetish or gratification on her part? The crazy-ass woman had concocted this elaborate plan to infiltrate our MC to get firsthand knowledge of the internal workings and illegal activities of an MC such as ours. No!

My mind refused to believe that it was what Megan had been after. Knowledge? However, after we’d killed three men in my kitchen, she’d started talking about getting exclusives and writing and shit. Therefore, she could very well have pulled off this entire scheme in the name of research. The idea blew my mind wide open.

She’d even gotten to experience some of our most sinful activities, participating in murder and burying bodies. We’d even had hot sex, with dead bodies as our audience. That’s why she wasn’t the least bit shaken by the three dead men that we’d killed in my kitchen.

Megan was a damn sociopath. More of Laura’s emails supported my suspicions that the Megan I knew was the same person who had killed her entire foster family when she was fourteen.

“Fuck!” My fist came down on the desk in an angry outburst of rage.

The bitch was crazy, so why the fuck did I still want to find her so badly? The sensible part of my brain urged me to stay as far away from Megan’s crazy ass as possible. From the sounds of it, she likely had more skeletons than I did.

I started to speculate. How many other times had Megan done this? How many other organizations had she infiltrated in the name of research? How many people had she tricked to satisfy her sick dangerous fetish? I believed the family she killed had really done a number on her mental state.

Time was running out, and D and I were only halfway through Laura’s trashed emails. One of the emails asked Kelli about the weather, about if it was truly the Sunshine State as people said. The email was dated four days prior to my arrival in Texas.

At this point, I closed my eyes as my anger started to boil. There was only one place that I knew of that was referred to as the “Sunshine State.” Megan was right there in Florida. She’d been right under my fucking nose the entire time.

“D, can you check for Lacey Daniels, Kelli Hunter, or Megan Jones in Florida and see if these emails link back to any specific place in Florida?”

“I’m already on it,” D answered.

* * *

Seven hours later and after some much-needed sleep, D called me back. Hearing the hint of excitement in his voice was a good sign.

“I could only narrow the IP address to an area called Wavy Palms, but one of the emails mentioned something about Kelly shipping a MailEx package. Maybe you can see if you can get any information from one of the MailEx workers at the Wavy Palms location. Try a female employee, Knox. You have a way with them.”

D laughed, causing a smile to creep across my lips. He and the rest of my old military squad had always teased me about the way some women reacted to me. My smile deepened and turned into a sinister grin when I thought about the lead D had just handed me.

I had no idea how D did the shit that he did, but as soon as I got back to my safe, I intended to send him a package to show how much I appreciated his help. After I plugged the Wavy Palm’s MailEx office into my GPS, I showered and prepared to get back on the highway to continue my hunt for Megan.

Hopefully, she was still in Florida. When I found her, I had no idea what I was going to do to her because uncovering her secrets had only heightened my anger towards her. She’d landed herself in my danger zone, and that was not a place she wanted to be.