Page 59

Dante

“What did you find?” I all but shouted into my helmet as I raced home, ready to meet up with everyone else.

“Not much.” I could hear Vienna’s disappointment through the phone. “Hacksaw is doing his best, but there’s not much to go off. Did she tell you anything else?”

“That’s all I know, man,” I sighed, revving the bike as I picked up more speed.

“Do you know her mam and dad’s names?”

“I don’t know a fucking thing,” I all but roared, taking the corner at dangerous speed. “I wouldn’t even know where to find her fucking mother these days, either.”

“Well, that’s sort of what happens when you burn someone’s house down. They move elsewhere. And even if you were to find her, I doubt she’d talk to you.”

“Yes, thank you for that, Vienna.”

“Happy to help,” he said pleasantly as I overtook a car and raced through a red light. I was being fucking reckless, which I never was. But we had reached nothing but a dead end so far in our investigation, and it was driving me mad.

I wanted to find these fuckers and make them pay.

Mainly for what they had done to Rachel, but also for every other woman they had hurt over the years.

I wasn’t perfect by any means, but there are some lines you just don’t cross, and grooming little girls was one of those lines. Especially when you abused those girls to the extent those bastards did.

“Look, dude, I’m nearly at the club. I’ll see you in a moment.” I told Vienna, shutting off the Bluetooth call before he had a chance to reply.

I’d find the cunts even if it took me the rest of my goddamn life to do it.

Rachel deserved closure on that chapter of her life.

She might have thought she was over it, but all she had done was suppress those memories, and was living as a shadow of her former self.

I had seen glimpses of the real Rachel before the veil fell back over and she continued her act of being a robot, and I’d just about do anything to keep the Rachel I was obsessed with around permanently.

I pulled up to the clubhouse, and all but jumped off the bike, slamming open the door. I did let out a little laugh as I saw the massive hulk of a man that was Hacksaw with his teeny, tiny, reading glasses on the end of his nose.

“What the fuck are those?” I said, snatching them off his face. “You steal these from one of Bee’s barbies?”

“Fuck off, Dante,” he huffed, ripping them out of my grasp.

Vienna slapped him on his back and held out his hand. “Fifty bucks,” he said, rubbing his hand under Hacksaw’s nose. “Come on. Cough it up, spectacles.”

“For what?” I asked, looking back and forth between the two of them.

“He bet me fifty you would comment on the glasses within a minute. I stupidly thought better of you, seen as though I’m doing you a favour and all. But I guess assholes will be assholes.” He dug into his pocket and slapped the notes into Vienna’s waiting hand.

“Ahh, smell that? It smells like victory.” Vienna beamed, stroking the notes down Hacksaw’s cheeks.

“No, don’t let him take us,” he said in a singsong, high-pitched voice.

“We loved living in your back pocket, never getting spent. Hush, hush,” he said, his voice returning to normal. “You will live a good life with me.”

“You’re a weird man,” Hacksaw frowned.

“A weird man that’s fifty bucks richer. Now scoot on over, let’s have a look,” Vienna said, kicking the seat Hacksaw was sitting on, sending the wheels flying across the floor.

I snapped to attention, looking at the laptop Hacksaw had set up. “We’ve searched for an Alex on the database, but nothing is coming up.” Hacksaw said as he scooted the chair back over to us.

The database was the police database. We had no business being in there, but we had a few contacts at the station, and they allowed us access so we could keep our members safe.

If a crime was committed, they would face our punishment based on our club rules.

They were not facing a jury that would judge them harshly, just because of the way they looked.

We had our own bylaws and expected members to stick to them.

The issue was, what was acceptable to us wasn’t always acceptable by British law.

“What about her parents?” I asked, frowning as I scanned the list, going back the last two decades.

They were right, there wasn’t an Alex to be found.

“Without her last name, it’s proving difficult to even find out what her parents are called. Are you sure she never told you?”

“I never asked,” I admitted with a huffed breath.

“Her dad is in prison. We’ll have to look up court cases from the past decade and go from there.

We can cross reference names to the local news pages, can’t we?

” I asked, directing my question at Hacksaw.

He was a whizz at computers, hence the ‘Hack’ in his name.

The saw came from the fact that he was a fucking brute with the weapon.

I had once seen him saw a man’s fingers off for brushing up too close to him at the urinals.

“We can, but it’ll be time consuming.”

“He went to prison for murder. Stabbed a bloke to death. By all accounts, it was brutal. He was nearly beheaded and stabbed a fair few times. Does that help?”

Vienna shot me a look, but I gave him one of my own, warning him to stay quiet, and he gave me a small nod of his head.

Rachel’s mum had told him that Rachel had murdered a man in cold blood, and it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together and realise what had happened.

His eyebrows raised slightly as he chuckled and gave a nod of approval.

He was a weird bastard, and Rachel had just climbed up in his estimation.

“Roughly how long ago?” Hacksaw asked, his fingers flying over the keyboard.

“About ten years ago. Rachel is twenty-seven, and she said it happened just before her eighteenth. I don’t know when the court date would have been, though.”

“Doesn’t matter. Something like that would have made the papers somewhere. If not, it should be on record the day he was admitted to prison. Was he kept on remand until the court date?”

“I haven’t a fucking clue. I would have assumed so.”

“Give me a minute,” Hacksaw murmured, more to himself than to us.

“How is she doing?” Vienna asked, drowning out the clacking of the keyboard.

“Fucked if I know. She didn’t even know who I was.”

“She’s had a bang to the head, mate. A nasty one at that. Are you surprised?”

“I don’t know what I am. She called me darkness, so whoever I am to her right now in her confused state, it can’t be fucking good with a name like that, can it?”

“Maybe she likes the dark.”

“Shut up, Ven,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. “There’s a lot of things Rachel likes – albeit I don’t know any of them, but I do know I’m not one of them.”

“None of us like you either, pal, but we’re still here. Give her time.”

I didn’t bother dignifying that with an answer.

“It might turn out to be a good thing,” Vienna said after a pause.

“How do you figure?”

“You two didn’t exactly get off to the best starts. Maybe if she forgets everything, you can start fresh.”

“Aye, right. Because that’s a brilliant way to begin a long-lasting relationship.”

“Better than the beginning of the one you currently have?” Vienna shot right back; his eyebrow raised.

“It is what it is. There’s no point wishing things were different now. And I don’t wish anything was different. I did what I wanted, and I have no regrets about it.” My tone was harsher than I meant it to be, but Vienna didn’t react.

“Got it!” Hacksaw said, a triumphant note in his voice. “Rebecca and Chris Brooks. Daughter Rachel Brooks. Chris was jailed for life for the murder of local club owner Alex Saint.”

“Ironic name,” I muttered.

“And here’s our girl. Looking mighty different, but I’d recognise those eyes a mile away.” He clicked on the picture to enlarge it, and my heart jumped at a picture of Rachel as a teenager.

Her hair was jet black, with awkward bangs framing her face.

Her eye makeup was heavy, her lips overdrawn and dark.

Her skin looked pale as paper in comparison to all the dark makeup, and you could see all the bones and veins in her neck and shoulders she was that thin.

She stood awkwardly next to her mother and father, one of her hands clasping the other at the elbow.

She looked vulnerable and afraid, and once again, my temper roared to life at the fact that these idiotic parents of hers couldn’t see the signs that she was in trouble.

One look at her here and you could see she was haunted.

“It’s her, right?” Hacksaw said proudly.

“Oh yeah,” Vienna said, squinting at the picture. “Her mother hasn’t changed a bit.”

“Damn,” Hacksaw whistled. “She’s a fine looking broad for her age. She looking for a toy-boy whilst the old man is banged up?”

“I think Dante burning her house to the ground might have fucked that idea up for you, Hacksaw.”

“For tits like hers, I’d be willing to throw him to the wolves,” he grinned, nudging me with his elbow playfully.

“Right, people, let’s stop thinking with our dicks and get a plan together,” I said, slamming the laptop shut, ending their fun.

“We have a name. Alex Saint. You ring every low life dirt ball you can think of. He owned a club a decade ago, and from what I gathered, he had a lot of the punk/gothic scene as regulars. Even the tiniest thread is a lead. By the end of the night, I want the name of his closest friends, his ex’s, his parents…

hell, if he has a dead hamster, I want to know the name and location of its burial. Do I make it clear?”

“Yes, boss,” Hacksaw said, bringing out his phone immediately.

For as much as these guys fucked around, they had my back.

They knew when it was time to be serious and right now, I was as serious as a heart attack.

“Pass the message on to every club member here. I want everyone on this as a priority. If anyone can get me the address of the club in the next hour, they can have free drinks for the rest of the year.”

Both men murmured their agreement and went off, their phones already at their ear. As the door closed behind them, I pulled up the laptop lid and looked at the picture of Rachel again.

I couldn’t save her as a teenager, but I’d make damn sure that she spent the rest of her adult life never having to fear anyone again.

Anyone except me, that is.