~ Barbara ~
“This is a lot more fun than I thought it would be.”
Barbara smiled at Jennifer. “I love everything about being in the kitchen. Making cool recipes and trying to make them look like my Pinterest pictures is fun and relaxing. I also get such gratification from watching people enjoy the food I make. I know it sounds corny, but feeding people is very fulfilling for me. Staying busy right now is the only thing keeping me sane.”
Barbara’s eyes scanned the spacious kitchen. Lily and Sarah were chatting over a glass of wine as they made a salad. Even Tiffany had grabbed a piece of the action along with Alyssa. They’d made several side dishes and were now making iced tea and lemonade. Jennifer’s reply pulled her attention back to their conversation.
“We’ll have to see if anyone likes my cookies.”
A deep voice came from the doorway. “Those cookies look really good. You should take some to the security room for Peb. He’s been in there all day, and I know he hasn’t eaten.”
Jennifer lit up like a Christmas tree at the idea. “Cookies? Hell, I’ll make him a nice plate.”
“He likes those energy drinks that make everyone else twitchy, too.”
“Thanks for the heads up, old man.”
Ace scowled. “I ain’t old, kid.”
“Well you sure as hell are not young, dude,” she quipped back.
Frowning at her, Ace heard Rose say from the corner of the room, “If you don’t leave my best friend alone, you and I are gonna rumble.”
“You’re best friends with an old dude?” Jennifer asked.
“I’m best friends with a lot of dudes around this place. You got a problem with that?”
“Not particularly, but we can create one if you want,” she returned, the challenge half-hearted at best.
Ace walked over to Rose and tossed a piece of fruit from her cutting board into his mouth. “I wouldn’t mess with Rose. I’ve seen her hold a stalker down and cram gingerbread cookies down his throat until he exploded.”
“Eww, that’s disgusting.” Jennifer cringed. “Plus, I think you’re lying about that, old man.”
“Maybe I am and maybe I’m not. Guess you’ll never know for sure.”
“You’re kind of evil in your own way. You know that, right?” Gathering up the food, Barbara helped her load it up onto a tray, while Jennifer grabbed an energy drink and headed for the security room.”
Walking over, Ace wrapped his arms around Barbara’s slim waist and gave her a kiss on the neck. He’d put in an appearance quite a bit throughout the day. Looking over her shoulder, she whispered, “Are you playing Cupid today?”
“Hell, no, I’m not.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” she teased. “Are your brothers about here?”
“That’s what I came to tell you. They’ll be at the gate in about ten minutes.”
“Great, the food is almost finished.”
“Everything looks delicious.”
“You’ve been sampling all day long. How does it taste?”
“Fuckin’ fantastic,” he said with an appreciative growl. “I don’t think our crew has had food like this before.”
“You always say the sweetest things. Did they say how their investigation went?”
“Darkness won’t allow us to talk over the phone about stuff like that. We have to wait until they get here, shower, and eat. Then we normally meet in the large common room and talk over drinks. Unless it’s something confidential, then we meet in the small meeting room on the other side of Darkness’s office.”
“I hope he gets here soon. Savage says the baby’s getting fussy for her father.”
Ace couldn’t keep the smile off his face. “I’m still getting my head around Darkness being a dad.”
“Everyone says he’s amazing with little Sammy.”
“Oh, he’s all kinds of fatherly. I’ll give him that much.”
Suddenly, the roar of motorcycles split the air. “I better go greet them.” Dropping a light kiss on her temple, Ace headed out to the front of the building.
Every time they came back from a road trip, it was the same. All the guys who had rooms showered in their rooms and the others lined up along the north side of the building where the club had installed a row of showers with a hot water maker on the end. The women had laid out fresh bars of soap and towels. Most of the men traveled with an extra change of clothes in their saddlebags. The club had a private well that was calibrated to handle that kind of pull, so within thirty minutes, the brothers were pouring into the clubhouse.
Barb and Tiff had loaded a huge table down with food in the main room and scattered folding chairs all around. Though the girls were new, Lily and Rose had been doing this for a long time.
Ace watched Darkness come down from his upstairs apartment with his little one on his shoulder. Her dark hair and eyes made her look so much like her father that it was uncanny.
Stopping in his tracks, Darkness eyed the table suspiciously. Slowly moving forward, he groused, “I was expecting meat. We usually have meat.”
Rose skipped over and lifted a round hand-sized puff of pastry for him to see. “The meat is inside the pie shell.”
Eyeing it suspiciously, he asked, “What kind of meat?”
“Steak.”
He looked skeptical. “You first.”
“God, you’re such a baby.” As if catching herself, Rose apologized, “No insult to Little Sammy.”
“None taken. Now eat a bite. I want to know what’s in there.”
Rose ate a gigantic bite out of the mini beef wellington and began talking with her mouth full. “See, it’s got steak and a bunch of other yummy stuff in there.”
“It looks good…” he said slowly.
“It’s amazing,” she promised. “I wish that I’d never tasted it, though, ‘cause they’re really hard to make, and now I’m gonna want them all the time.”
“Gimme, gimme.”
The capricious teen teased, “Are you sure? They’re weird meat pies, after all.”
“It’s been a long day, Rose.” The subtle note of warning in his voice was Darkness being as nice as possible under the circumstances.
Rose laughed at him. “Have a seat with Sammy and I’ll make you a plate.”
“I want ten steak thingies.”
Shooting him a firm look, she replied, “You can have two. Each one has a four-ounce steak inside.”
“Make it three.”
“Fine.” Rose quickly built her dark friend a plate.
By that time, most of the guys had already grabbed food and were eating. Barbara anxiously awaited the meeting, wondering why a club of bikers were so formal about how they conducted business.
Ace sat beside her with a plate and rubbed her back, encouraging her to eat something. Now that the cooking was done, the waiting was beginning to shove her anxiety level right back up. When most of the assembled crew had thrown their sturdy paper plates away, everyone settled down.
Before Darkness could open his mouth, Peb opened his mouth. “Where is my brother? He’s not answering his cell phone.”
“He’s with the MC we talked about last night. Apparently, they believe that at least one of the bodies was from their crew. Cork and a couple more of the brothers stayed behind to help them dig for more information.”
Ace immediately asked, “What did you find so far?”
We scheduled a meet with the Outlanders MC. Of course, they were pretty suspicious of us and thought we might be tryin’ to move into their territory. Once we convinced them we weren’t and made a good-faith offering, they were about as helpful as suspicious outlaw bikers could be.”
Ace snorted a laugh, as did some of the other outlaw bikers in the room.
Darkness barely noticed. His sister wove quietly through the throng of people to take the baby for a bit so he could talk. Well, she actually traded the baby for another of the meat pastries and ate it as he spoke.
“We discovered that Seven-six and the Outlanders MC have had a truce in effect for coming up on ten years. When we told their main honcho, he about doubled over with grief. The two fuckers were his grandsons. The Seven-six had it in their mind that the twins had just fucked off back to Argentina when they turned up missing about a month ago. They were known for just doin’ as they pleased that way. The old man was just starting to worry ‘cause he hadn’t got word that they’d arrived at their compound in South America.”
“I’ll bet that was all kinds of awkward,” Ace muttered. He seemed as shocked to her as everyone else.
“It was, and although it put the three of us on the same page in terms of not being enemies, it didn’t get us any intelligent information regarding who might be gunning for you. Anyway, we tried everything we could think of to talk to the natives, but the Outlanders say they never play ball. This situation is unlikely to have anything to do with them, ‘cause the Outlanders say people stupid enough to fuck with them go onto their huge stretch of land, but they don’t come back out again.”
Ryder sighed dejectedly. “That brings us right back to maybe it being a serial killer.”
Ace argued, “Don’t most serial killers target women? From what I saw, they were all men.”
Ryder spoke like a man who knew what he was talking about. “The manner of death is consistent with a serial killer. All were shot or stabbed, and almost seventy-five percent of serial killers shoot, strangle, or stab their victims. Whether the vic is male or female depends on the killer, who kill for a variety of reason. Mostly it’s for enjoyment, financial gain, anger, or gang activity. Since we ruled out the last item, we’re looking for someone who had contact with all the vics and had a beef or something to gain. The person we’re looking for ain’t all that smart, ‘cause killers with high IQs aren’t hands-on evil geniuses.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Strangely enough, Ace was asking the same kinds of questions she was thinking in her mind.
“High IQ killers use bombs, poison, and shit like that. Lower IQ fuckers shoot, strangle, and stab,” Ryder clarified. “I’m just going by the most reliable research on serial killers, so don’t think I’m makin’ this shit up as I go.”
“What else are we looking for, since you seem to have enough information to come up with a profile.”
Ryder thought it over for a minute and replied cautiously. “I’d say the killer is probably gonna be a male between the ages of about eighteen to forty. I’d say they live in or are from that local area and are familiar with the terrain. They probably knew the farm had been abandoned for the last decade and didn’t anticipate anyone trying to develop the place anytime soon. It may be someone with mental health substance abuse issues that cause him to act impulsively. Since the brothers were clearly taken down at the same time, I have considered that it might be a small group or family involved. It seems unlikely a single person could have taken down two hardened criminals.
“I’m planning to check local hospitals for people who came in with injuries when the Seven-six twins went missing. It’s reasonable to believe they fought back and might have done some real damage. Since early indicators are that all the vics were minorities and more than one had the boot print of the Aryan-style gangs on his back, I’m gonna focus on anyone who was belligerent or racist.”
“What does the farmer have to say about all this?”
Darkness looked at Ace and smiled. “He was freaking the fuck out. He’s already put the place up for sale and says he’s moving back to the city where things make sense, as soon as the police close the investigation.”
Ace mused out loud, “That’s actually good news. If it is a serial killer of some sort, he’s not going to risk drawing attention to himself by coming after the people who exposed his dump site. He’ll lay low, never go back to the site, and quit killing until the trail runs cold. He’d be absolutely stupid to do anything to connect himself to that dump site.”
Darkness nodded. “That’s what we thought, too. Only organized criminal enterprises need to send a loud and clear message when someone messes with their business. Serial killers have nothing to gain by drawing attention to themselves. We’re thinkin’ that you won’t be in the clear until we track him down and…” Rolling his eyes, he continued, “Hand him over to the proper authorities. In the meanwhile, the risk is extremely low that you’ll get any blowback for stumbling onto that dumpsite.”
Barbara asked excitedly, “We can really go back to our lives?”
Nodding, Darkness cautioned lightly, “I’d say yes, but use good common sense when it comes to safety. Be sure to set your security system, don’t open your door to strangers, and maintain some awareness of your surroundings in public.”
“That’s just good common sense safety advice for your everyday life. You should be doing that anyway.”
Darkness gave a tired nod. “Ryder is right. Leave contact information with Peb, and we’ll let you know when we wrap the situation up.”
“I ain’t going anywhere,” Jack spoke up.
Ven chimed in his two cents worth from the corner of the room. “You should get your ass to class in the morning. You can come straight back and prospect all the hours under the sun when you’re not learnin’.”
Jennifer didn’t seem any more enthusiastic about leaving than Jack. Barbara spoke up, too. “If you want, I’ll drive you all back to campus. Go and gather your things. You can be sleeping in your own beds tonight. That’s the best way to begin putting this whole mess behind us.”
The students all scrambled away to get ready to leave.
After they’d gathered their things, Ace’s arm came out and wound around Barbara’s waist as he led the way outside. “I’m coming with you, until this whole mess is wrapped up.”
Stopping just short of the SUV and grabbing him by the shirt, she pulled him up against her. “Yes, that’s a very good idea. You’ll be damn lucky if I let you come back to your friends to visit.”
Smiling down at her, some of the tension of the day ebbed from his face. “Regardless of what you think, you don’t own my ass.”
“We’ll just see about that, handsome.”
They tossed their bags into the trunk then rounded the SUV. Sliding behind the wheel, she shot Ace a tentative grin. “This whole situation is going to be remembered as much ado about nothing.”
Ace’s happy voice responded sternly, “We always knew that taking you all in was an attempt to cover all our bases safety wise. We did the right thing.”
“I absolutely agree. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.”
As they eased out on the highway, Jennifer spoke up from the back seat. “It blows my mind that thinking it’s a serial killer somehow makes us safer. I mean, I don’t disagree with the club’s train of thought about that. It’s just that knowing a serial killer is involved doesn’t make me feel safer.”
Ace shot her a stern look over his shoulder. “Well, you’re gonna keep your phone charged, stay out of dark alleys, and make sure you don’t take any chances. The reality is that having this experience changed your perspective about safety, so you’re actually less likely to have something seriously shitty happen to you, right?”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she agreed hesitantly. “If not for seeing that gross body, this would have been an awesome weekend. How many college kids get to stay with outlaw bikers for the weekend?”
Ace turned back around in his seat. “I’d say not many. We’ve never taken in strangers like this before. It was a new experience for us.”
One of the other guys spoke up. “I can’t believe Jack is staying there to join up with a biker gang.”
“We ain’t a gang.”
Jennifer interjected glibly, “He’s flunking out anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”
“I suggest you stop talking about Jack’s personal life. He’s with the Blind Jacks now, and we don’t take kindly to outsiders disrespecting our crew.”
“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be rude.”
“Jack’s real smart,” Ace informed them. “He just ain’t found his niche in life yet.”
Jennifer’s phone jingled and she scrolled through it as she mumbled, “You’re probably right about Jack.”
It was well after dark by the time they pulled up on campus and the students climbed out, retrieved their belongings from the trunk, and said their goodbyes. It would be even later by the time they made it back to her house.
Ace was leaned against the SUV watching her when Barbara shut the hatch and turned to leave. Grinning, she approached him. “Is it really only Sunday night? It feels like a lot longer.”
“It was all the waiting around today that made the day seem so much longer. You ready to hit the sack?”
“I am, and I’m glad you’re coming home with me. Of course, it’ll take forever to get rid of enough coordinating throw pillows from my bed to make room for you.”
“I’m a pretty big bastard, I’ll give you that.”
Sliding her arms around his waist, she murmured, “Maybe, but you’re my big sexy bastard.”
He nuzzled her nose with his then slapped her ass. “Let’s get you home. I’m a man with needs tonight.”
Pulling back, she gave him a saucy smile. “And I’m a woman eager to tend to those needs.”