Wrath (Dirty Soul MC: Long Beach #2)

Chapter 1

T he hammering in my head ain’t showing any signs of quitting, so I give in and open my eyes.

I’m at my houseboat, which I guess is a good start and when I go to move, my body doesn’t ache as bad as I’m expecting it to. I glance down at the floor and when I see the empty bottle of Jack, I try and piece together what happened as I sit myself up.

I remember taking a knock to the face, one that shocked more than it hurt, and I remember…

“ Shit. ” I scrub my hand over my face when I recall a vision of her, wearing that white dress and storming toward me like she wanted me dead.

Eden was at the club. She came to the fuckin’ club!

After that I don’t remember much, there was some kinda scuffle, no doubt it was between me and Raze. I guess that’s when all the drinking started.

“Mornin’.” I hear a voice come from outside and, pulling on a pair of boxers, I head out onto the deck.

“It’s nice here. Peaceful.” Ruck looks up at me over his shoulder, and the grin he’s wearing proves he ain’t feeling as rough as I am.

“You got me home?” I check, taking the seat next to him and sliding a cigarette from the pack he holds out.

“Yeah.”

“Was I…?”

“A mess? Yep.” Lifting his chin he expels a lungful of smoke into the air. “You wanna talk about it?” He focuses on the smoke as it evaporates.

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” I admit, massaging my fingers into my temple and willing my head to stop pounding.

“Well, you tried the whole gettin’ wasted thing, and the problem’s still here. I figured ya might be ready to talk it out.” Ruckus leans forward and faces me.

“Raze wouldn’t let me talk to her.” I ignore him when a whole new vision plays itself out in my head, one of my president getting in my face and telling me to let her be.

“ I was happy .” Her words rattle my skull. “ I was moving on. ” There was so much torment in her voice, and her bright blue eyes were so full of hate that I felt it scorching me inside. “ I’m supposed to be getting married, right now .”

“Did she go through with it?”

“The wedding?” Ruckus checks we’re on the same page. “Nah, she’s still at the club. Spent the night at Raze’s beach hut, according to Dev.” He hangs his arms over his knees and blows out a heavy breath.

“Look, Wrath, I don’t know wha?—”

“Save it.” I shake my head and close my eyes. “I gotta talk to her.” I go to stand up and when he grabs my arm I fix my eyes on his hand until he finds the sense to remove it.

“You can’t. You left your bike at the club,” he reminds me.

“Then you can take me, you must have driven me home in a cage last night, right?”

“No, Rocco drove the cage. I just loaded you into it and followed on my bike. Much as I like ya, brother, I ain’t quite ready for you to be my saddle slut.” He laughs to himself, but I find no fuckin’ humor in the fact that I’m stuck here and she’s there.

“D’ya know why she came back?” I stare at my best friend hoping he’s got some answers.

“I know as much as you do. You saw how fast Raze got her outta there. And you pretty much drank the bar dry while ya waited for him to come back… Why don’t ya grab a coffee and get a shower? I’ll ride back to the club and have someone come out here to pick you up.” Ruckus stands up from the chair and grips my shoulder. “I don’t know what happened, and I agree, you and the girl need to do some talkin’, but maybe try bein’---”

“Bein’ what?” I narrow my eyes at him.

“A little less you,” he sniggers. “The girl just ran out on her wedding, she’s clearly upset, you can’t go in all guns blazin’, treatin’ her like she’s under interrogation. Try havin’ a little patience with this one.” He taps my back before he steps onto the wharf.

“And, Wrath?” I look back over my shoulder when I hear my name.

“You got puke in your hair.” He strolls up the wharf toward his bike.

“There’s no way I puked.” I laugh at him, then after grabbing a handful of hair and sniffing, I gag when I realize that he’s fuckin’ right.

My head‘s still pounding after I’ve showered, so I shove my jeans and cut into a rucksack and stick on some running shoes and shorts. I’ve been slowly getting back into training these past few weeks. Raze and Ruckus may not think it, but I got a good chance of winning the tournament André has organized next month. All I need to do is convince Raze to be my trainer again. He always knew how to get the best outta me, and I hate the fact I paid that back by giving him my worst.

I slide my fingers through the sides of my freshly washed hair and tie it up on top of my head, then taking in a lung full of salty air, I start my jog across the coastal route back to the club.

It’s just short of 6k and although I’m puffing outta my ass, by the time I reach our beach, my head’s feeling much better.

I stop to drink some water, and when I notice a female lying face down in the sand I shake my head and laugh as I move toward her.

“Hey, c’mon, you can’t sleep out here. Sun’ll be gettin’ hot soon.” I gently shake her shoulder, but she doesn’t respond. She must have gotten even more wasted than I did last night.

“Hey, wake up. C’mon.” I shake her harder, and when I still get nothing I pull back her shoulder to roll her over. “ Holy fuuck! ” Her skin is white, and the empty eyes that stare back at me, confirm that this girl ain’t sleepin’. She’s dead.

I glance her over, still in shock, and when I notice the purple marks on her neck I immediately take my hands off her. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” I take a few paces back, quickly rifling through my rucksack so I can pull out my cell.

“No.” Raze answers my call in that stern ‘don’t fuckin’ try it’ tone of his.

“What? No. Raze, I?—-”

“Whatever it is, if it concerns Eden the answer is no ,” he tells me firmly.

“Raze, this ain’t about Eden, you need to come out here, right now .” I hang up and keep my eyes focused on the dead girl in front of me. She can’t be much older than my youngest sister, Willow. She’s even got the same long, dark hair, and suddenly I realize how easily this could be her. I don’t know where my little sister is. But I know that he took her. She could be lying dead and cold somewhere, just like this poor girl.

Raze takes his time as he steps off his porch and starts his journey toward me. We may be on opposite ends of the stretch of beach the club owns, but I can feel his tension as he marches past the clubhouse and gets closer. Right now he’ll be thinking the same as I did. Drunk girl sprawled on the beach, she won’t be the first and she won’t be the last but as he gets closer his frown lines get deeper and he tosses the cigarette he’s smoking into the sand when he notices the body by my feet.

“What the fuck is this?” He stares at her with the same shocked expression as my own. “Ya know her?” he checks, taking out another cigarette and sparking it up.

“Never seen her before.” I shake my head staring at the blue ring that’s formed around her lips

“And you just found her like this?” He inhales sharply.

“No, Raze, I found her back at the marina and decided to drag her onto our fuckin’ beach. Of course, I found her like this.”

“Hey.” Raze throws the smoke out his mouth and grips the front of my tee. “You watch ya fuckin’ mouth, and remember who you’re talkin’ to.” He releases me with a shove before pacing the sand. He’s clearly still pissed with me, and since he’s unable to think straight, I decide to take some control of the situation.

“Whoa…whatcha doin’?” His head starts shaking when he notices me move around her body and take both her wrists.

“I’m movin’ her. In case you hadn’t realized it’s fuckin’ daylight and we have a dead girl on our beach.”

“You leave her right there.” He points his finger at me, before scrubbing his hand over his face and taking a cell outta his cut.

“Who ya callin’?” We ain’t got time for making calls, we need to get this dead fuckin’ body moving, pronto.

“I’m callin’ someone who can fuckin’ fix this.” Raze’s nostrils flare while he waits for whoever that someone is to pick up.

“Is that the best you could come up with?” Raze looks unimpressed as Sasquatch erects a colorfully striped windbreak around the girl’s body.

“At 8 am on a Sunday mornin’? Yeah,” he growls before slamming another one of the stakes into the ground with a mallet.

“Any of you seen her before?” Raze shifts his eyes between Ruckus and Sasquatch.

“No. Sorry, boss.” Ruck shakes his head as he looks down at her solemnly.

“Looks like our help showed up.” Raze flicks another cigarette in the sand as he looks past my shoulder toward the gate to the parking lot. “This one’s a little…quirky. Remember to be nice.” He warns as we all turn our heads in the direction his eyes are pointing, and I gotta admit I’m a little shocked at what steps through the gate and onto the sand.

“Who the hell is that?” Ruck asks as we watch the 5ft nothing woman with more colors in her hair than the fuckin’ windbreak, strut her way across the sand.

“Before we get started you should know that my Sunday morning call-out fees are astronomical.” She slides her sun shades up into her hair and drops a doctor's bag that’s covered in stickers, next to the body.

“Boys, this is Quinn, she’s a medical examiner.” Raze introduces her, and she takes the time to shake our hands before pulling a pair of disposable gloves from her pocket and sliding them on.

We take that as our cue to turn our backs, giving the dead girl some respect while Quinn examines her.

There's a long, awkward silence which I spend staring out at the ocean and thinking about Eden. I wonder if she’s still at Raze’s hut, or if he told her to leave and go back to her life. Not knowing is driving me insane.

“Well, she’s definitely dead,” Quinn informs us, snapping off her gloves once we’ve all turned back around.

“Thank you, Quinn, we’d already established that.” Raze’s patience is getting thin, and I can’t help wondering if it’s more to do with his sister being back than what we’re dealing with here. “I called you out here to find out how it happened.”

“ I could’ve told ya that. Didn’t ya notice the marks on her neck?” I cut in.

“Good observation.” Quinn crouches down and points her pinkie to the purple marks on the girl's throat that I noticed earlier. “She has indeed been throttled, but that's not how she died.”

“What do you mean that's not how she died?” I blurt out in shock. It’s pretty fuckin’ clear to me that it’s exactly what’s happened.

“Those marks are thumbprints,” Quinn explains, and I swear she makes Sasquatch's balls shrivel up inside him when she reaches high and grabs his throat to demonstrate. “They are repetitive.” Holding her thumbs against his windpipe she somehow manages to shake his body and make him choke. “Some of the bruises are older than others, by a few days.” She drops her hands and smiles while Sasquatch clears his throat and looks a little embarrassed. “I’m guessing our killer made her suffer for a while.” She shrugs as if it’s no big deal, and it surprises me how detached she seems from the girl who's lying dead beside her. I guess that's what happens when you see death every day.

“So, what did kill her?” Raze moves her on to her point.

“She has lacerations all over her body, someone’s been slicing at her for quite some time. At first glance, I’d say it was the stab wound to her liver that was fatal. That would have been slow and very painful. Whoever killed this girl is undoubtedly a sadist.”

“Wait.” Raze shakes his head suspiciously. “I’ve seen what happens to a person when you stab into their liver, even sand wouldn’t soak up that much blood.”

“You're right,” Quinn agrees. “Does anyone wanna earn themself a prize and throw a guess at what happened here?” She pulls a candy bar from her back pocket and holds it up.

“It means whoever did this to her, didn’t do it here. She’s been moved.” Sasquatch mumbles under his breath.

“Looks like the big guy’s gettin’ a treat.” She winks at Sasquatch as she hands over his reward.

“ Fuck .” Raze turns his back and storms off toward the ocean, but before the tide can touch his boots he manages to pull himself together and marches right back at us.

“This right here…” He points at the girl, “...is a message. And I wanna know who sent it.” He lights himself another smoke. “Wrath, call everyone in for church.” He throws me an order, before turning his attention back to Quinn. “Can we move her?” he checks.

“You can do what the hell you like with her, she’s on your beach.” Her shoulders shrug.

“That’s what fuckin’ worries me.” His head slowly shakes and I can see the rage in his eyes getting stronger by the second.

“I need to know more. Can you get anythin’ else from lookin’ at her?” He runs his hand through his hair, the way he always does when he’s frustrated.

“I could, but not here, and I can’t exactly sneak her back to work with me,” Quinn points out.

“Okay, I hear ya. Ruck, Sas. You load this body into a cage and you take her and Quinn to the warehouse. Whatever she needs, you make sure she gets it.”

“The warehouse?” My spine shudders just thinking about that place.

“You got a better idea, Wrath?” Raze frowns while he waits for my answer.

“No, boss, it’s just…I wasn’t sure the club even still had that place.” I don’t close my eyes in case a vision of the last time I was there comes to me. The warehouse used to be my playground, it was where Raze spent hours teaching me how to become an enforcer. Back then it was the only place I ever wanted to be, now those cold, damp walls haunt me every night in my dreams.

“Well, given the circumstances it’s a good thing we do. Get to work.” Raze marches back down the beach toward his hut, and just thinking that Eden could be there, makes me wanna go after him.

“Wrath, you gonna help?” Ruck looks up at me from where he’s got the girl by her ankles.

“Careful how you move her,” Quinn warns him and Sasquatch as they lift her off the sand.

“I’ll bring a cage up to the gates.” I leave ‘em to it, taking out my cell as I head up toward the parking lot and type out a group message.

CHURCH 10 AM