Page 2

Chapter Two

Griffin’s Beach Ashley

S lamming the Griffin’s Beach Herold down on the desk in front of Grayson Tate, Ashley glares at her husband as he looks up, startled. “Look at this.”

Her finger stabs at the headline almost painfully, but she wants to make sure her point comes across to the former police officer. The case still on the front page every couple of weeks has been on-going for far too long. The case that remains unsolved.

“The Un-Identifier Strikes Again,” Grayson reads. “The newest victim of the Un-Identifier has been found in a series of suitcases left between the gas pump at a Stop N Pump, the last gas station before reaching the city limits.

“The victim’s face has been disfigured, just like all of the other victims, along with shattered teeth, and her fingertips cut off. Another victim who will remain unidentified unless her DNA is on file, according to Travis Hall with the Griffin’s Beach Police Department.”

She stares at her handsome husband expectedly. His rugged appearance he’s adopted since becoming a private investigator turns her on even more than he did when he was a clean-shaven cop, but she refuses to let it distract her. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“It’s been eight months since the first victim was found, and they believe that wasn’t his first. This sicko has been out there killing and disfiguring women for God only knows how long. There are probably even more victims we don’t know about.”

“Ash, I get that this is scary, but no one has invited me to help. No one with a missing family member has reached out to have me look into whether or not they’re one of the victims. And we know Travis and Julian are going to trip over themselves to stop me from assisting.”

Moving around the desk, she sits on the corner next to him and crosses her legs as they rest along the arm of his chair.

The skirt she chose to wear today has its desired effect as Grayson stares down at her legs.

“But they’re failing because no one can do what you can do. Don’t these girls deserve justice?”

“Ash—”

“Look, where I come from, people go missing every day. The only people who notice or care are people just like them.”

His face softens as he stares into her eyes.

Ashley Tate is a recovering drug addict.

It started when she was seventeen after a rival club brutally murdered her mother, and she was the one to find her.

Not only that, she was forced into the shoes Nancy Short left behind.

Shoes Ashley never wanted to even try on.

Club life was never what Ashley wanted, but she was thrust into it when her mother died. Being a kept woman who bent to her man’s whim just wasn’t in her DNA, even though by all means, it should have been. It’s how she was raised.

Now that she’s older, she understands how she viewed the women of the club isn’t how it is now, but back then, it was exactly as she saw it. Submissive women who would bend over backwards and turn a blind eye to please a man who did whatever he wanted to please himself.

Forced to take over the responsibilities her mother held in the house pushed Ashley over the edge.

Her father, an Original Ten of the Deranged Drifters motorcycle club, became a zombie while her brother, Ky, walked around lost. When she found her mother’s pills, she didn’t even hesitate to toss them back, and then she was hooked.

“Even if we brought the disappearances to the authorities, they never did anything about it. We were seen as unreliable junkies, and I can’t tell you how many of my friends just disappeared one day and never came back. And we never found out what happened to them.”

When Diesel found Ashley high on street drugs after her mother’s pills ran out, he threw her to the curb.

She disappeared for almost twenty years, living on the streets and in an almost constant state of active addiction.

Prison saved her life, and she probably wouldn’t be alive right now if she hadn’t been locked up for six months and forced to detox.

“Baby—”

“Most of my friends are likely dead, and no one saw them as worthwhile enough to miss them. Doesn’t everyone deserve to have someone miss them? Or even know they’re gone? To have a final resting place to let the world know they were here?”

“You know I would do something if I could, but I can’t force my way in without an invitation.

If we had someone who claimed one of the victims could potentially be their daughter, I could work that angle.

But Julian and Travis will shut me down if I start sniffing around simply because they don’t have traction. ”

She runs her hand down the side of his face and cups his cheek. “They’re not doing enough. If you were still working on the force, you wouldn’t sleep until you found a way to identify these women.”

Grayson should be the one heading up this investigation.

He was one of the only competent officers, but his love for her got him fired.

After he took a bullet meant for Ashley, the Police Captain and Chief of Police decided it was too dangerous to keep him.

He was a liability because of his affiliation to the club by proxy because he dated a Drifter daughter.

He picked himself up and became a Private Investigator, proving extremely useful to the club, and they’ve been married about a year now. With his background, and her family being in the club, they almost didn’t end up together. If they weren’t, he’d be solving these grizzly murders.

“I have to admit, though,” Grayson says as he leans his cheek into her palm, “I don’t hate how much Julian’s getting dragged for this. Incompetent, arrogant, and lackadaisical. It’s such an interesting choice of word play by this reporter, but I like it.”

“Someone out there has to be missing these girls. I refuse to believe they’re truly in that morgue with no one in the world,” Ashley says.

Turning his face towards her hand, he kisses her palm. “I love you.”

“Don’t distract me, Grayson. These women may not have had strong ties to people in the world, but they have family and friends out there.

Somewhere. A mother or brother or cousin or friend deserves to know their loved one is gone.

They deserve a headstone with their name on it rather than a toe tag listing them as Jane Doe.

They deserve to have record they were here. ”

“I’m not trying to distract you. It’s just amazing to me that you care about people you probably never met. And I know why this means so much to you. I know you identify with these women.”

Her eyes glance down to stare at his chest. “I could have been one of them, you know. Once upon a time.”

“Ash—”

“No, it’s true. Before I got clean and met you, I could have died in a gutter, and Dad never would have known. I didn’t have any ID on me. No one would have identified me, and he’d think I was still out there living a life he couldn’t understand. He wouldn’t have known to mourn me.”

He takes her hand and interlocks their fingers. “I’ll ask around and see what I can find out, but the truth remains that I can’t do anything without being asked. The moment I am, though, I’ll jump on it. You know I will.”

Laughing, she moves and sits on his lap. “Like the cops will ask you to help. But they don’t mind having things unsolved.”

Her lips capture his, and she pours herself into the kiss. Some days, as she sits at the desk across from him, she can’t believe she ended up here. That her life not only turned around, but she found a man she can’t live without. Something she swore she’d never do.

Grayson’s a couple of years younger than she is, and he went to school with her brother. It’s crazy to think about because most of the time, he seems so much older than her. Wiser. And he’s one hell of a lover.

When she first moved back, she had no one in her corner. Her brother hated her, and her father didn’t believe she’d stay sober. The one person who believed in her was Grayson Tate. The cop who lived next door to the house she rented.

Ashley spent as much time as possible with Grayson because she loved how he made her feel.

How normal it was after so many years of never quite fitting in anywhere without drugs in her system.

The boring life they had, even when it was just friendship, made her happier than she ever remembered being.

“Don’t you have a book to finish?” Grayson murmurs against her lips, but his hands tangle in her hair to keep her right where she sits.

“I have some time still,” she says, smiling as she remembers that it was Grayson that got her career started. He helped her live out her dreams while becoming her biggest dream yet. “I can’t get over how sexy my smart and righteous husband is.”

“Ash,” he moans when her hands slip down and over his chest to his jeans.

She smiles and tilts her head. “Are you asking me to stop?”

“I have a meeting in about fifteen minutes. That is not enough time for everything I like to do with you.”

“But it’s plenty of time for what I want to do to you. Then, later tonight, you can show me what you have in mind. I’m hoping it’s a full body massage, complete with a happy ending.”

Sliding down to the floor under his desk, Grayson chuckles as he unbuttons his jeans and helps slide them down enough to free himself. She gazes up at him as she licks her lips, and the adoration in his eyes as he looks down at her makes her heart flutter.

“Fuck, Ash,” he moans when she wraps her lips around him. “I’ll make sure you have more than one happy ending tonight. God, sharing an office with you is the best damn decision I’ve ever made.”

Ashley’s biggest competition when it came to Grayson was another daughter of the club. Alexis Nichols. Grayson had been in love with her since high school, and it bothered Ashley that they were friends. Now? She’s grateful to the blonde who is nothing short of the complete opposite of Ashley.

The petite blonde who bleeds Drifter blood convinced her family to not stand in the way of Ashley and Grayson.

And she helped point out how they’d be nothing short of the world’s biggest assholes if they didn’t grant Grayson their blessing to propose to her.

Her biggest rival helped Ashley achieve everything she has right now.

All her life, she’s been a loner, but with Grayson, Ashley never wants to be alone. So much time is spent with the man she calls her husband, and it’s not just because the sex is explosive.

“Ash, I’m close,” Grayson warns, his body tensing.

Hollowing out her cheeks, she sucks hard on his cock, reveling in the way he gasps and grips the armrests on his chair to help steady him. His ass nearly comes off the chair as he comes hard, shooting his release down her throat.

Ashley releases him and smirks as he stares down at her with the same look he gave her when she started. The look she’ll randomly see when she glances up from her computer screen when they sit across the room from each other.

Grayson Tate sees Ashley for who she is.

Flaws and all, he loves every part of her.

Never once has she felt as though her past made her less than him, and he sees it as a sign of strength rather than a weakness.

He was the first person to ever tell her he was proud of her, and he’s the reason she stays sober.

Disappointing him would destroy her, and she refuses to risk what they’ve built together.

“Okay, I’m not opposed to these pre-meeting meetings with you,” he says, fixing his jeans and pulling her out from underneath the desk.

Biting her lower lip, she winks at him. “I love you, too.”

She walks back to her desk, enjoying the flush in his cheeks as he pants to regain a normal heart rhythm. It amuses her how flustered he is before his meeting, but he never turns her down.

Now, I just have to figure out how to convince him to find a way onto this case. At the rate they’re going, Julian and Travis will let someone close to the club die because of their ineptitude. I don’t even want to know what that would mean for the town.