Page 1 of Karma (Deranged Drifters MC #23)

Chapter One

Griffin’s Beach Colt

P hillip is real. And he’s after my wife.

Colt Nichols paces the Chapel and runs his hands through his long blond hair. Two hours ago, he was enjoying a lazy morning in bed with Lex while their kids stayed with his parents before being charted off to school. Everything in the world had been right.

The Chief of Police and Police Captain had both been fired from the Griffin’s Beach Police Department. Their vendetta against the Deranged Drifters their ultimate demise.

Lex’s brother, Zane Dalton, has been gone for over a year now after trying to kill her, and it’s the most peace Lex has had in this town. Her father is on the outs with mostly everyone because of his unbalanced treatment of his children.

It’s been over a year since Colt took over the President seat of the club, and the club is doing well. Profits are great, and the club is making more money than they ever have.

On top of that, the Deranged Drifters helped stop the serial killer terrorizing Griffin’s Beach dubbed the De-Identifier.

He not only tortured his victims before discarding them around town, he went as far as he could to mutilate them to the point it became impossible to identify them. Hence, the nickname.

Now, he walks around the Chapel as he waits for his Sergeant at Arms to arrive with his fiancée as he fears someone is out there trying to kill his wife. Again.

“How did Nina find all of these victims? And how did she identify them when the cops couldn’t?” Colt asks, looking up at Brock Bradshaw.

Nina Person was the last known victim of the De-Identifier. She also happened to be Undertaker’s ex-girlfriend and the reason the club got involved in the case to begin with. Her investigation into the serial killer pulled Colt out of bed with Lex and makes his stomach churn with dread.

“I don’t know,” Brock says.

His tired eyes from having a new baby does little to hide the same look Colt knows he shows. Worry. Brock has known Lex almost as long as Colt has, and he’s worked tirelessly trying to find the man named Phillip that Gerard told them about.

Gerard Buchanan was the man apprehended in the warehouse with another blonde woman who had a large gash along her body from sternum to groin. They’d gotten there in time to save her, and the man was arrested and charged.

He’d taken a plea, and he took a year to give the authorities the identities of his victims. Once all fourteen had been identified and their remains claimed, the club called in a favor to have Gerard killed in prison. But he had a request, first. He needed to talk to Colt.

In prison, Gerard told Brock and Colt that he wasn’t the true killer.

A man name Phillip hired him from some sort of underground criminal for-hire network.

Phillip picked victims who looked like Lex, and he hates a member of the club so much that he plans to make Lex his last victim.

Not only that, he also had a creepy serial killer wall plastered with pictures of her on it.

Something they didn’t find in the warehouse.

When Brock and Grayson Tate, a former cop turned private investigator married to a daughter of the club, couldn’t find anyone named Phillip tied to anyone in the club, they determined he made it all up. Had them chasing a ghost to save his own life, and they ordered his death.

“Does the letter say anything about it?” Colt asks.

Undertaker, the large ex-military man, shakes his head. “No, Patty only knew as much as she put in the letter. That Nina investigated this Phillip guy, and if anything happened to send it all to me.”

The box of research he received has pictures of almost seventy possible victims killed by this man.

And the picture of the guy she wrote Phillip on is not Gerard.

But what really drove the point home was the pictures she’d taken of the inside of his workshop.

Along one of the walls is Lex. Pictures from her teenage years to present appear in the photograph, and Colt gets a sick feeling.

Not just because it matches what Gerard said but because this guy has been following Lex for almost twenty years.

“Why the fuck didn’t we ask Marnie if the guy who attacked her was the guy she saw with Nina?” Undertaker asks, his large body leaning against the far wall of the Chapel.

“Because I’m proving to be one dumbass President,” Colt offers and leans against the table.

“I can’t fucking find this asshole, so if anyone here should feel dumb, it’s me,” Brock says.

His computer skills can rarely be beaten, and he looked at every veteran member linked to a man named Phillip.

Nothing. The closest they got was an old classmate of Chips.

This Phillip lives in the UK and married a man who looks like a long-lost twin of Chips, but he would have no reason to target Lex.

If all of the pictures are true victims of the De-Identifier, it means the man has been killing for quite some time.

Almost seventy people is rather impressive in the sickest of ways.

But it bothers him that all the women resemble his wife.

Blonde hair and blue eyes. The men resemble his brother-in-law, Zane, but he couldn’t give a shit about whether or not the man is in trouble.

Zane hasn’t been seen since the club stripped him of his leather, and that was primarily because he’d tried to kill Lex in Colt’s front yard. If Colt hadn’t shown up, Zane would have made Colt a widower. As far as Colt’s concerned, Zane can fuck off and get murdered for all he cares.

“Who’s to say that Gerard wasn’t the real killer, and Phillip just helped him out? I mean, there have been no other victims we’ve heard about, right?” Brock asks.

As much as Colt wants to hope, he can’t bring himself to. It would be irresponsible considering what’s already happened. How much they’ve already overlooked.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Venom asks, walking into the room with Marnie Banks under his arm.

Venom used to be part of the Summerville charter, but he moved to Griffin’s Beach when Lex and Colt did. It fits him much better, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that the woman he plans to marry in a couple of days moved, too, to win him back.

“We need to talk to you about something, Marnie,” Colt says, his hands shaking at his sides.

Marnie’s the daughter of Snake from Summerville, and while she’s not quite Lex or Lily Hankinson as far as daughters of the club go, she’s certainly used to the club life.

If she’s intimidated by the men in the room, she doesn’t give anything away.

In fact, her only tell is a twitch of her left eyebrow.

She knows better than to show any emotion, especially fear.

“Um, okay,” she says, and her bright green eyes look up at her fiancé.

Grabbing the picture of Gerard Brock printed out, he holds it up. “Do you know this guy?”

“Yeah, he’s the one who attacked me behind the hotel the night Lex and Grayson saved me. Kept shouting that I knew too much, but I didn’t know that I actually did know anything until I saw the picture of Nina in the clubhouse.”

“But he’s not the guy you saw Nina with?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“What happened the night you met Nina?” Undertaker asks. “Walk us through everything exactly.”

He stays planted against the wall with the table between them. The last time the two of them talked about Nina in this room, he scared her. This removes any risk of him harming her, which Colt doubts he ever would do. Not on purpose. But he certainly could frighten her.

“Um, okay. She walked into the bar, and we thought she was an escort. She looked kind of disheveled, and she walked up to me. Asked me if I knew the Drifters, and I said yes. She asked me to reach out to Frances, but I didn’t know who that was.

I asked if she knew his road name, and she didn’t. Then she walked back to the table.”

“But you knew you needed to remember her?” Brock asks.

Nodding, Marnie avoids looking at Undertaker. “Yeah, I had an overwhelming feeling like she’d never be seen alive again. I made it a point to memorize her. And her tattoo.”

“Why didn’t you come here immediately?” Undertaker asks.

“Because she got sick,” Venom snaps.

The two men are friends, but Venom is overly protective of Marnie. And after how Undertaker responded the last time they talked about Nina, he’s understandably on edge. Colt would feel the same way.

“I got food poisoning really bad. Ended up in the hospital for a few days, and even when I was released, I couldn’t walk more than ten feet without passing out. It took a while to regain my strength,” Marnie says.

Venom looks guilty as he stares at the floor. At the time she got sick, they weren’t speaking. It was shortly after Venom told Marnie he didn’t love her anymore, and it was almost the end of them. All the work Marnie put into winning him back after crushing him in Summerville was almost lost.

“Wait,” Marnie says and looks at Colt. “You don’t think Gerard was the one who killed those women, do you?”

Smart girl.

“No, we don’t. Not now.”

“Do you remember anything about the guy you saw Nina with?” Brock asks.

Swallowing, she nods. “He looked kind of familiar, but I don’t know why. I’d never seen him before, and I haven’t seen him since. But he gave me the creeps. The kind that has all the hair on your body standing on end.”

Venom narrows his eyes. “What the fuck is going on?”

Colt holds up a hand, telling him to wait. They need to hear this from Marnie. Holding up the picture with Phillip written along the bottom, he covers the name. “Was this the guy you saw with Nina?”

Please say no. Please tell me that there’s just a big misunderstanding with everything, and Gerard is the one who killed all these people. That somehow, someway, the guy with Nina was just a hired hand. That it was Gerard who hired him, not the other way around.

Her eyes widen, and any hope Colt has vanishes. “Yeah, that’s him. You know him?”

“That’s Phillip,” Brock says and Colt catches himself on the table.

Maybe there’s still an explanation to everything. Something that doesn’t make my wife a target of a serial killer going after women who look just like her. Maybe.

Venom’s eyes dart up and lock with Colt’s. “Did he just say that’s Phillip?”

“Who’s Phillip?” Marnie asks and looks around at them. “Does that mean something?”

“You have to get things squared away for the wedding, right?” Colt asks. “Why don’t you go and take care of those? You don’t need to worry about this right now. Thank you for your help.”

Looking at Venom, she nods. “Yeah, sure. I’ll, uh, go do… stuff.”

“I’ll be right out, love,” he says and shuts the door behind her. “You’re fucking kidding, right? I thought we decided Phillip wasn’t real.”

“Look,” Colt says and hands him the photos of the wall covered in pictures of Lex.

His eyes widen. “Some of these look…”

“Young? Yeah, they are. Fifteen is the youngest I found, but I haven’t gotten a magnifying glass out yet to review it closer.”

They walk him through the contents of the box, and he gasps as he looks at all of the victims. Men and women. “Men, too?”

“Yeah, that’s what Nina found,” Undertaker says. “This motherfucker clearly has types he likes to stick to.”

“Is Marnie in danger?”

Brock shakes his head. “I don’t think so. If she was, she’d have been attacked again. I think this Phillip guy believes he’s safe.”

“He’s not her type, anyway. That’s probably why he paid Gerard to rough her up. She’s got dark hair and green eyes rather than blonde hair with blue eyes,” Colt says.

“Well, I fit that type. He can come for me. I’ll show him what’s up,” Venom says.

His dark hair has been bleached since Summerville, thanks to Marnie’s suggestion, and his blue eyes look like they could laser through glass when he’s angry.

The image makes Colt happy. If anyone here could hurt this son of a bitch the way he deserves to be, it would be Venom. “Unfortunately, you’re not his type when it comes to men. He likes them with dark hair and hazel eyes.”

“Okay, so level with me. What are we looking at?”

“Thirty-four women that we know of and thirty-three men. There could be more, but this is what we have,” Undertaker says.

“What does this asshole want?”

Swallowing, Colt locks eyes with is Sergeant at Arms. “If Gerard was telling the truth, he wants my wife.”

“Then we find this motherfucker and kill him the same way. Slowly and painfully.”

“I can’t fucking find him!” Brock shouts. “I haven’t even come across his picture until now. Birth records, family trees, school records, teachers, doctors, cellmates, guards… nothing. This motherfucker has not come up.”

“It’s not your fault, Brock,” Colt says.

Laughing, he tosses his hands in the air. “Isn’t it? My job is to find what we need on the internet. Find the things no one else can find, and I can’t find one lousy man. The only person alive we know who has seen him is Marnie.”

“Who’s with Lex now?” Venom asks. “Who’s watching her?”

“We just found out. I have to figure out how to fix this fuck up because we killed the only real link to Phillip we had.”

“I swear, it seemed like bullshit. An excuse to save his own ass,” Brock says and sighs in defeat. “Neither of us found anything.”

“This is one smart motherfucker with one goal in mind,” Venom says.

Colt nods. “Yeah, the goal is to murder my wife. But why?”

Colt didn’t feel right walking away from Gerard and pulling the protection detail from him.

Undertaker swore he heard the back door shut and echo in the warehouse when they stormed in, and Colt knows he heard it, too.

Everything pointed to it being a diversion tactic, but this is what happens when Colt doesn’t listen to his gut.

Now, what do I do?