That sets off an appreciative round of applause through the crowd. Fate nods and looks over to Boss and Thrasher. “We got everything packed?”
“We had the prospects do it,” says Thrasher. He cuts a look over to Rodi and Bender, who are the new prospects. “Well?”
“Everything’s packed,” Rodi says. “I’m excited to meet the Ruthless Kings of Vegas. I’ve heard so many stories.”
Everyone nods in agreement. There certainly have been a lot of stories. Delilah, Thrasher’s ol’ lady, is the sister of Reaper, who is the Prez of the Ruthless Kings. He only first met her recently though, after she’d escaped from the serial killer that I’ve been tracking. Besides her wanting to get out of town because of the killer becoming increasingly close, she’s itching to see her family for the holidays. She has gone to see them every few months or so, but Christmas time isn’t something she was even remotely thinking about missing, especially not going to miss out on seeing her nieces open their gifts.
The guys want to go and do something crazy for their celebrations, so it only makes sense to make a big trip out of it. It’ll be a nice extended Christmas trip down to Vegas, which honestly sounds fun as hell.
“Reaper is making sure there’s room at the clubhouse and buying out a block of rooms in the hotel he shares with that mafia guy,” reports Ink. “It’s gonna be party time!”
Yet again, all the guys cheer, but my heart’s not in it. Any other time and I would be on board to get away from the regular club life, partying it up with my brothers and enjoying the scene, maybe catching a show while gambling away some cash.
But I don’t want that right now. I can’t handle it, honestly. I just want… I don’t know what I want.
“I’d like to stay,” I cut into the conversation. Everyone’s eyes turn to me in surprise, but I see the understanding I need on Fate’s face as soon as the words come out of my mouth.
“What the hell, man?” asks Cash, a frown on his face. “What’s going on?”
At the word ‘hell’, Wrath clears his throat, and Cash amends his statement. “Heck. What the heck.”
I shake my head. “I’m not going. I have to keep working on this case. He’s ramping up his attacks. Here’s the latest victim. The time between his victims being taken and when they are being found is getting shorter. All the other ones were weeks, even months.”
I take the folder and pass it around. They’ve all seen my office and all the case-related information. I’m not the only one working on it, but I’m second in line to have a personal issue with these kills: Thrasher being the first, as Delilah was the only victim that we know of to survive.
The newest victim smiles up from a family photo wrapped in her parents’ hugs at her college graduation. No one sees the significance of it until they pull out the picture of her discarded body. It was left in the woods, mangled and broken, missing skin, and her belly was sliced open, revealing missing organs.
“What the actual fu—fudge?” Ink gasps, pushing the picture away to Boss. We don’t cuss in church. Between Fate and Wrath, they don’t like it, saying this place is sacred and doesn’t need to be tainted with foul words. We are grown men and can mostly handle it, but the ugliness of these murders should be an exception to the rule.
“I’ve been following all of the police reports, Facebook posts from families, and getting everything I can for you, Raven,” Hack tells me, handing me another stack of papers. “I’ve found that every single victim has had abnormal test results leaving authorities to believe they have all been frozen somehow after the organs are harvested. Sometimes the skin is gone, sometimes limbs, but the freezing part of it happens to every one of them, regardless of how long they’ve been missing.”
Some of the guys grunting in disgust at the idea while Dexter looks interested. Not interested in killing these particular people, but the methods used. I guess being the club’s cleaner when it comes to crime scenes, he would appreciate it more than others. We’re hard-ass bikers, willing to do what’s necessary to anyone that steps on our toes or wants to be on our bad side. But these innocent lives, taken in such a brutal manner, are just horrendous to all of us.
“I’m starting to believe there’s an accomplice of some sort,” he goes on. “In separate cases, families have reported a woman befriending the victim only just before she disappeared. They all have the same description of her: black hair with bright blue eyes. But none of them recall her name.” I’m leaning over, elbows on my knees with my face on my hands. Hopefully this could be a lead.
“If you check out towards the back of that pile, they’ve caught her in the background of pictures of the victims if they were out clubbing or partying,” Hack motions to the pile as I flip through to find what he’s talking about.
I take a long look at each picture. None of them are clear enough to really get a good look at her face; it’s her midnight black hair and dazzling blue eyes that stand out in each one.
I feel sick to my stomach. For a second, I kind of think she looks like Raven. But I know that can’t be the case. And I know that not all women with black hair look like my sister.
But still…
“How many of these shots are from the same victim?” I ask, hoping the more I look, the better the pixilated picture will get. It’s like she’s avoiding the camera, keeping her face ducked from view.
“There are different angles to different nights like it’s a mistake to get caught on film. I’ve done back searches on all the other ones, and I come up with nothing, but I’m still digging.”
I have no doubt that he means it. This guy hacked the Pentagon drunk one night just to prove to Ink that he could. He pulled up every screen that an employee had up that didn’t have to do with anything related to their job, along with a screenshot of their face before sending it to them.
Fate got super pissed, thinking that the FBI would be coming to knock down our door and arrest us all on charges of terrorism, but then Hack went into an hour-long schpiel on what he does so that doesn’t happen. The more he talked about it, the more confused I got. It was like listening to him speaking fucking gibberish.
“When did the last victim get taken?” Thrasher asks, looking at what Hack found. “We need to get this piece of shit off the street. It’s a good thing we are heading out tomorrow. I need to get Delilah out of town. Now.”
“Three days ago, so it’ll be anytime until they find the body,” I say morbidly. I want to hope that it’s not the case, but I know she’s not just a random missing person deep in my gut. I understand Thrasher’s need to keep Delilah away from here. I couldn’t imagine finding my person and her having such a dark shadow over her past.
“You can stay, but if anything changes, you call us, and we’ll get our asses back here. Who’s staying behind with him?” Fate looks around, and everyone seems to look anywhere but at our Prez, hoping they aren’t the one. I can tell no one wants to, and I don’t want him to make anyone. They’d mope around, and I’ve been in enough of a funk that I don’t need someone else’s bad vibes to bring me down.