Page 18 of Karma (Deranged Drifters MC #23)

Chapter Eighteen

Griffin’s Beach Undertaker

F ollowing Zane and Ky in a pickup, Undertaker rides beside Venom back out to the scene of the crime.

It’s been two days, and Lex still hasn’t woken up after surgery to repair the damage from being stabbed and the internal bleeding.

Only so many people are allowed in the room with her, and they need something to do besides sitting around and waiting.

Blood and vomit remain on the dirt and gravel, and Venom shakes his head. “What the fuck happened?”

“Where’d the house go?” Ky calls.

Depending on what’s in the shop, they figured they may need more than their bikes to bring stuff back to the clubhouse.

“Blew up,” Zane says as he hops out of the pickup. “He had it rigged. We jumped out and covered Lex, which may have hurt her more than helped her. I heard the click the moment I opened the front door.”

“Saved our lives, that’s for sure,” Undertaker says. “How’s Colt holding up?”

“How would you be?” Ky asks. “Lucas still feels guilty, Colt can’t fix it, and the two youngest kids don’t understand why they can’t see their mommy.”

Venom snorts. “And he’s fucking pissed at you, so it’s probably good you’re not around right now. You should’ve called him.”

Grimacing, Undertaker sighs. “I kind of… missed my pocket when I took off after Luke called me. Ran it over. I saw the car and couldn’t lose it. Not if we wanted to find her and get her back alive.”

“Barely alive,” Venom says, his voice dripping with anger, and Undertaker knows it comes from a place of guilt. He missed Lex’s call, and he may never forgive himself for it. “I can’t wait to figure out what this motherfucker had planned. I plan to do the same to him with a few embellishments.”

“Sick fuck got a hard-on beating his sister. I’m not sure you want to match everything he was going to do.”

He shrugs. “I’m not above much when it comes to torturing an asshole like him.”

Ky laughs, but Undertaker sees Venom is dead serious. He stops laughing and stares. “Wait, for real?”

“It’s not to get off,” he says. “But if his goal was to rape someone, he should get to experience the pain himself. Besides, it’s not like my cock is the only thing we can shove up his ass.”

“I don’t think I could get hard to do it,” Ky says and yanks the chain and lock looped through the shop door handles. “Anyone bring bolt cutters?”

“You’d be surprised how you react with enough conviction.” He just shrugs with the incredulous look he gets. “And no. Unless we got some in the truck, I don’t have any cutters.”

Shaking their heads, they look around for something to break in with. Undertaker toys with it a bit and turns to Zane. “You know if anyone owns this place?”

“Not that I know of. The people who bought it from us died about ten years ago. I almost bought it.”

“Then again, the house is fucking gone, so I don’t know if anyone would really care if I”—yanking hard, he breaks the handles off, and the chain and padlock fall with it to the ground— “break this.”

Zane helps him open the doors, and they step inside. The smell of death slaps them in the face, and Zane dry heaves. “And I thought talking about this asshole getting excited when it came to our sister was enough to make me sick. Jesus, this is… Wow.”

“Involuntary,” Venom says, completely unaffected by the smell the others. “He gets off on causing pain. I doubt it happened until he beat her to a bloody pulp.”

“Your dad didn’t seem to recognize this place from the pictures,” Ky says. “Or he just didn’t say anything.”

To Undertaker’s surprise, Zane clenches his fists at his sides as he looks around at the pictures of Lex. More have been added since Nina was here, and he shakes his head. “I don’t know what the fuck his deal is.”

“Coming from the first brother who tried to kill Lex, that’s rich,” Venom snaps.

“I deserve that,” he says and examines the pictures. “How long as he been stalking her? This picture’s old. She’s… fuck, this one’s when she’s like eight or nine. What the actual fuck?”

“Don’t look at this wall then,” Undertaker says.

Turning, Zane’s eyes widen. “That’s a lot of my face on a wall. I guess Lex isn’t all that special. There’s a picture of me from about five or six there.”

Shrines. The few times Undertaker has seen anything similar to this has been in enemy territory when he’s infiltrated the headquarters. There’s always a wall covered with targets.

“He really was killing people who looked like the two of you,” Ky says. “We knew Lex, but it was kind of a guess about you. Considering you and he look so much like VP, it was a toss-up who he pictured when he killed them.”

Zane’s captivated by the pictures of himself. “This one’s from my time as a Prospect. How long was he planning all of this?”

“Years,” Undertaker says. “But there’s no guarantee he’s the one who took all of these pictures. He could have come across them and stolen them.”

“Motherfucker,” Venom mumbles.

He looks through the items on shelves, worktable, and crates stacked on the floor. To hear him mutter that with the disbelief in his tone makes Undertaker’s hair stand on end. “What?”

He slips on his gloves before picking up a glass container. “He really knew how to make them suffer.”

“What is it?”

“Sulfuric acid.”

“This chain looks familiar,” Ky says as he looks up.

Doing the same, Undertaker studies it. “I don’t know about the chain itself, but it’s the same setup as the one we found that woman in the warehouse tied up in. Probably can rig this up in his sleep.”

“Look at all these instruments,” Venom says with just a bit too much excitement in his tone for comfort. He looks at them and shrugs. “What? I can appreciate the creativity and tools while hating the owner.”

What Venom finds impressive makes Undertaker shudder. Every tool has a place on the racking on the wall. Some of them look more medieval than anything else, and he can only imagine what they’re used for.

Spikes, saws, and what looks like a device to pry things open seem to be his favorite instruments. Everything makes Undertaker sick, and he doesn’t want to know what he did with everything.

Walking towards a stack of notebooks, he picks up the first one and flips it open.

She screamed until she lost her voice when I poured the acid into her body cavity. The drugs helped keep her conscious until her body slowly shut down. With Lex, make sure to reduce the amount. She will last longer.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters and swallows his vomit.

“What?” Ky asks and walks up to look over his arm. Reading the same passage, he growls. “Motherfucker.”

Tossing it to Venom, to read, they all watch the craziest of them process the words. Even he blanches. “Uh, guys?”

“Yeah?” Zane asks.

He flips through the pages and shakes his head. “This is Nina’s notebook. And the coroner got it wrong.”

The nausea turns to guilt, followed by pain, and Undertaker closes his eyes as he clenches his fists at his sides.

It still bothers him that she tried to get his help.

If he’d just told the others his real name, maybe he could have helped her.

He could have stopped it before it went too far, and Nina would still be alive. Lex wouldn’t be in the hospital.

“Wrong how?” His eyes remain closed because he can’t look at Venom when he answers.

“It took her almost three weeks to die. Based on his notes, she died the same day she was found at the gas station. Just hours later.”

“How many notes are there?”

“The entire book is filled out. He has dates and times. Kept track of her stats.”

His pause makes Undertaker open his eyes. “What?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Just say it.”

“He writes that he hopes to find the Frances she keeps calling out for. And then he documented her last words. It burns, Aaron. It’s burning. ”

Falling to his knees, he can’t breathe. Nina was in this room, hung on these very chains, for weeks. He tortured her to unbearable lengths, and she probably prayed for it to end. Not to be saved because there was no coming back from it, but she had to have wished for death. Undertaker would have.

“Can you make it last that long?” he asks, tears in his eyes.

“I can make it last longer,” Venom says and grabs another notebook from the table. “And looking at this, he mapped out his plan for Lex already. Took everything he learned from all of the others, and he believed he could make it last a month.”

Zane runs a hand over his face that’s so pale, he’s nearly translucent. “I don’t want to know how.”

“Well, he gave me a blueprint, so I can follow it pretty well. Psycho and I will get together to determine where we want to add our own flair. I have a few ideas…”

“It creeps me out when you drift off like that as you’re looking at a murder how-to book,” Ky says.

He smirks, but he never looks up. Flipping through the pages, he shakes his head. “He may be a sick fuck, but I have to give him points for creativity. Too bad it’s how he’s going to end.”

“Can we make it work in the basement?”

Sniffling, he finally looks up. “We’ll have to make a few adjustments. I wanna take his stuff, though. It wouldn’t be justice if we don’t use his own shit on him.”

How much of this was used on Nina? Or were all of them used? Did he even bother to clean between uses?

Undertaker hates the questions popping into his head.

None of the questions are ones he wants real answers to, either.

He’d like to think that what he imagines is much worse than what Nina went through, but he suspects he can’t even touch the reality with his imagination.

It’s a blessing his mind isn’t capable of reaching those depths of depravity.

“Load up what you want to take in the back of the truck. I think the acid will need to be strapped down,” Ky says. “I gotta get out of here. I’m gonna puke.”

“Lex was really going to be his thirty-fifth victim?” Zane asks.

“Female victims, yeah, we think so. You and Phillip would be thirty-five males. Sound like he was going for an even seventy.”

Sighing, he looks around and shakes his head in overwhelmed confusion. “And this is my brother? Our brother?”

“Yep,” Venom says. “You’re not the only brother who tried to kill her. Which I owe you payback for, by the way. You got off fucking lucky getting kicked out of the club. I would’ve made you beg for death.”

“Trust me, I know I got off lucky. I’ve had a lot of time to think about things, and I don’t know how no one put me in my place before then.

Hopefully knowing that I totaled my bike and broke my femur gives you some comfort.

By the way, femurs are one of the hardest bones to break, and a bitch to rehab. ”

“Did it hurt?”

“Like a motherfucker.”

Venom smirks. “Good.”

Ky’s phone rings, and he fumbles to answer it. “Colt? Is everything okay?”

“Is Lex okay?” Undertaker asks.

“We’ll be right there.”

“What’s wrong?” Venom asks, his eyes wide.

“She’s awake.”

They all breathe a collective sigh of relief. “Thank God.”