“Levi,” Dax said when he walked into the office. “I’m sorry about that, man. After being gone a few days, there’s a lot of shit that needs to be handled.”

“No problem. I met a few people.”

Dax smiled. “I saw you talking to Hunter out there—what did you think of him?”

Levi raised an eyebrow and said, “He’s interesting.”

“To say the least,” Dax said with a nod of his head. “He seems a little crazy when you first meet him…and it only gets crazier from there.”

Levi smiled. “I would have been disappointed if that wasn’t the case.”

Dax reached into the top drawer of the desk in front of him and pulled out a set of keys. “We’ll wait until morning for the tour since it’s getting late. I know after that long ride, I’m beat.” He handed the keys to Levi and said, “That silver one will work on the first door to your right at the top of the stairs. You can bunk there. The gold key is to the kitchen if you get hungry in the middle of the night. Tank locks it up…” He shrugged. “Just because he’s kind of a controlling old bastard. The other is to the front door of the clubhouse. I don’t want you getting locked out if you sneak out to visit the ladies in the middle of the night.”

“Thanks. I doubt I’ll need that one.”

Dax nodded. “How long were you and Krissy together?”

“Four years,” Levi said. “She was only eighteen when I met her. She had grown up in a foster home and they were good to her, but she was done with all that…you know? She wanted to make a better life for herself. She was really smart and she wanted to finish school before we went any further, moved in together or anything. Sometimes I wish I would have pushed for it more…Fuck, I miss her.”

“I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” Dax said. “I’ve lost a lot of people I cared about in my life, but if I lost Angel…well, like I said, I can’t even imagine.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

Levi thought about what he wanted to ask and suddenly realized how stupid it might sound out loud to this man he desperately wanted to impress. “You know what? Never mind. I’m sorry.”

Dax smiled. “Whatever you say in here to me is just between us, no judgment.”

“It’s just going to sound a little…crazy, I guess.”

Dax chuckled. “Did you not just meet my friend Hunter? I do crazy on a daily basis around here.”

Levi smiled. “Well then, I have two crazy things to talk to you about. The first one is…do you believe that people can communicate with dead people?”

Dax looked like he was thinking about that and then he said, “I’m more of an ‘I don’t disbelieve anything until it’s been proven not to exist’ kind of guy. I’ve never had that experience, but if I had the opportunity, there’s a lot I’d like to ask some of the people who have left me in my lifetime.”

“I think…I feel like Krissy is trying to tell me something and at the same time, I feel stupid, saying this out loud. I don’t even know why I picked you of all people to talk to about it…”

“I have that effect on people,” Dax said with a smile. “I hardly ever have to torture anyone to get information out of them.”

Levi laughed. “Good to know. I’ve just been having these dreams since she died. They’re wild, and unlike anything I’ve ever had before. It feels like there’s something she wants to tell me, but she doesn’t come right out and say anything…it’s just a feeling for the most part.”

“My advice would be, appreciate the time you still get to spend with her, even in a dream, and keep your mind open. An open mind in a business like the one we’re in is a blessing either way.”

“Thanks, Dax.” Levi stood up and Dax said:

“You said there were two things.”

“The second one is even a little bit wilder, I’m afraid.”

“Try me.”

“I think Cheney arranged to have my father killed.”

* * *

An hour later, Levi was in his room with a sandwich that Tank had made for him and a beer. He sat on the bed, staring at his phone and wishing that he could go back in time. It was good to talk to Dax and get things off his chest, but his late-night conversations with Krissy when she’d been alive had been the best. She didn’t always know what to tell him when he called her to complain or vent about things in the club and he couldn’t always give her all the details, but she’d always listened and she always managed to say something that made him feel better.

After he told Dax that he thought Cheney killed his father, Dax took a minute and looked like he was processing that and then he said, “It’s getting late and I still have to meet with Hunter. Let me sleep on that and we’ll talk about it more tomorrow.”

Levi had agreed, readily. He was already slightly embarrassed about talking to Dax about his dreams and his thoughts that Krissy was trying to reach out to him. He wasn’t sure what compelled him to do that, but even that was becoming the norm lately. Stopping to help Zandra that night and refusing to leave her at the motel and taking her to work the next morning…all those things had been more of a compulsion, which came from a place he didn’t understand, than anything else. The world had suddenly become a strange place and everything seemed to be changing. He got up and walked over to the window. It was dark outside, but lights dotted the landscape of the ranch, coming from the houses and a huge building in the center of it all that looked like a big dorm or something to Levi. The mountains surrounded them, and he could see areas that were planted with trees or other crops that he couldn’t quite make out in the dark. Everyone he’d met so far seemed happy here and he thought that he might be too. He just wished that he’d found the Skulls and this place before Krissy died. She would have loved it at the ranch.

He sighed and walked away from the window. He stripped down to his shorts and went into the small bathroom and splashed water on his face. On his way, back to the bed, he picked up his jeans and fished the silver heart out of his pocket. He carried it to the bed with him and lay down, holding it between his fingers. He closed his eyes and ran his fingers over the engraving. Maybe he needed to find the person that owned the pendant. Maybe she saw something and she could help him figure out whether the accident was indeed that, “an accident.” He had an idea suddenly. Pulling up the Internet on his phone he typed in the code for the public records search app they used in the club. When that was up he typed in: “Zoe Bennett.” That was really as much information as he had about her. When he hit search, the results turned up over a hundred hits across the U.S. To narrow it down, he typed “Tennessee” into the state bar. That narrowed it down to fifteen. He typed “Memphis” in next and hit search. That one brought up two, a “Z. Bennett” and a “Zoe Bennett.” He clicked on Zoe and waited for the program to run through its search. While he waited, his thoughts returned to Zandra and for the first time he realized that he’d never met a girl whose name started with a “Z” before…and suddenly there were two. He knew that was probably just a weird coincidence, but there had been so many lately.

The program beeped at him and he looked down. Zoe Bennett was twenty-four years old, a native of Memphis, and the daughter of Becky Bennett. There was no father listed. He clicked on public records and it showed her most recent address as of five years earlier. He saved that and then clicked on arrest records. That one brought up four hits. For the first one she was only eighteen and it was a drug offense. He clicked on the others and they were all related to drug use or possession. For some reason, even though he didn’t know her, that made him sad. He looked down at the pendant and calculated in his head how old she was when her mother gave it to her…if this was the same Zoe. She would have been around seven years old. It must have been special to her, especially since she was still wearing it, or carrying it around seventeen years later. He scrolled down to the bottom of the page and clicked on the “mug shot” search engine. They used that one a lot in the club, looking for rival club members or street gang thugs. He clicked on it and typed in Zoe’s name and the birth date on the public records search and hit find. A few seconds later his jaw fell open. The picture on the screen was of a very thin-faced white girl with dark, stringy hair and haunted brown eyes. She had sores around her mouth and one on her cheek. She looked much the worse for wear, but he knew the girl he was looking at. He’d met her, at least. It was Zandra. What the hell was she trying to pull?

Levi found the Pancake House where he’d dropped off “Zandra” or “Zoe” or whatever the hell her real name was that day, online. It said they were open until 11 p.m. and it was just after ten in Massachusetts, which was an hour later. He dialed the number and after three rings a woman’s voice said, “Thanks for calling the Pancake House. This is Doris, how can I help you?”

Levi hadn’t thought through what he was going to say. He’d dropped the girl off early in the morning; it stood to reason that she probably didn’t work the night shift. Clicking back over to his public records search he said, “I was calling for Zoe Bennett. This is in regards to her mother, Becky.”

There was silence on the other end and the woman finally said, “Becky’s dead. She’s been dead for a long time.”

“Um…yes, of course. I know that. But, this is in regards to some cash the government owed her. It’s my job to track down a next of kin.”

“At almost ten o’clock at night?” Levi rolled his eyes. Just his luck, he’d get a nosy supervisor on the phone that wanted to ask a million questions.

“I take my job very seriously, ma’am. This was the first good lead I had. Is Miss Bennett there?”

“No. She works morning shifts, but tomorrow is her day off.”

“Would you have another number where I could reach her?”

“I wouldn’t feel right, giving out her number.”

He tried not to sigh out loud. “Well, maybe you could give her my number and ask her to call me ASAP. There is a deadline before the money gets returned to the government fund.”

Again, there was a long pause and then the woman said, “I’ll see what I can do. Give me your name and number.”

“My name is Le…Lincoln Myers.” Levi gave her the name of his high school math teacher. It was the first name that had popped into his head for some reason. He gave her his number, thanked her profusely, and told her to have a nice evening. He hung up and lay all the way down on the bed. He was exhausted, but there was way too much going on in his head to sleep.