Page 47 of Whips and Chains (Saint View Murder Squad #2)

X

Ten minutes earlier.

I paced the sidewalk in front of Psychos, catching little glimpses of Violet talking to Whip and Levi inside.

They were taking too long. They were probably talking about all the hot, dirty sex they’d had while I was out digging a shallow grave in hard soil with a couple of Slayers prospects who kept gagging at the sight of the dead body.

Amateurs.

Whip found me at some point after I’d told the prospects to go home and take a chill pill. He’d helped me fix that problem.

Only then, we’d walked into a few new ones.

Hence why were here now, needing Levi’s help. Rather than sweeping inside, plucking Violet up into my arms, and whisking her away somewhere romantic since I was due some X and Violet time.

Levi and Whip had gotten theirs last night.

Which I would not be thinking about because the idea of them all over her, when I wasn’t around to watch, made me feel vaguely like murdering someone.

Though to be fair, I’d already done a whole lot of that today, so the urge was a tad bit dramatic.

A couple rounded the corner and strolled toward Psychos. It was only as they passed beneath the streetlight that I realized they were two men, and they were both wearing police uniforms.

Well, that was just great. I motioned for Whip and Levi to hurry up.

Then got distracted waving at Violet.

She was so pretty.

“That your ice cream van?”

Well, fuck. Apparently I’d gotten distracted long enough for the cops to walk right on up to me. I not so casually leaned over and pulled the shade down over the window that read, “Closed.” “Sorry, boys. I’m off duty tonight.”

One of them peered up at the list of flavors and sundaes I had painted on the side of the van. “Shame. I could have gone for a banana split.” He looked at me hopefully, like I might open up the van just for him.

But if I opened that van door, he was going to get a lot more than just a bit of dessert.

There was a dripping sound, and I really hoped it was the misty rain beading and sliding off the sides of the van.

And not blood dripping from inside it.

Maybe I could pass it off as raspberry sauce?”

When I didn’t respond, the cops lost interest and wandered off, continuing their patrol through the backstreets of Saint View.

Whip, with Levi close behind him, stepped back out onto the street.

Whip hissed at me. “Are you for real?”

“Geez, Whip, I don’t know. Should we ask Geppetto if I’m a real boy now or should we just assume?”

Whip’s stare turned into a glare. “Please tell me I did not just see you close the serving window on a van that we have full of bodies! While you were talking to two cops! Jesus fuck, X, you didn’t think to do that before they showed up?”

I shrugged. “You never know when you might make a sale.”

“You do realize you’re the entire reason I’m gray, don’t you?”

“You should thank me for that! Your whole appeal is the silver fox thing!”

Levi clapped a hand over my mouth and pinned Whip with a glare.

“Do you think the two of you could stop arguing for one minute and tell me why the fuck you just said you have a van full of bodies? You said one body, X! And you were supposed to bury it last night! What the hell have the two of you been doing all day?”

I dragged his hand down off my mouth. “I did, thank you very much. Don’t accuse me of being a sloppy murderer.

” I cringed at the blood that was very definitely dripping from inside the van, out through the seals on the door and into the gutter.

“Apart from that. That’s not my fault. It’s probably from one of the ones Whip shot. ”

Levi’s eyes widened at Whip. “What the fuck?”

Whip jerked his head toward the van door. “Can we please not have this conversation on the street outside a very busy bar where Violet is watching us, and just around the corner from a couple of patrolling cops? Maybe all the talk of dead people would be better off done in private?”

I quoted one of my favorite movies in an eerie tone. “I see dead people…” Then added, in my usual cheerful one, “Mostly because I put them there. But, hey, semantics. I’ve basically been Uber for corpses all day.”

Whip tapped the van’s window. “If you lie down beneath the tires, and I let the parking brake off, do you think the van would just roll right on over you and crush your windpipe? Or would that be a wasted effort and you’d act more like a speed bump?”

I made a face at him. “Very creative.”

“You two are giving me a migraine,” Levi complained.

Whip opened the front passenger door. “Just get in, would you? We can’t stay here. Christ, if this is the way I get caught, I’m never going to live it down. How fucking embarrassing.”

Levi got in first, and I jogged around the front of the van to get in behind the steering wheel. Whip got in and closed the door on the passenger side.

“Nope,” Levi said from space between the two front seats that formed a walkway so you could move to the back of the van where the freezers were. “Nope. Nope. Nope.”

I started the engine. “What? It’s not like you’ve never seen a pile of bodies before.”

“I’m not sitting back here with them! You’re in the back, X.”

“It’s my van. I drive!”

Levi shook his head. “Move.”

I looked at Whip. He jerked his thumb toward the back. “You’re still in disgrace for the way you left the freaking window open.”

I rolled my eyes. “Geez, you try to give a few dead bodies a bit of air to breathe—”

“Dead bodies don’t breathe, X!” Whip shouted.

I waved my hands at him and swapped positions with Levi. “All right, all right. Don’t get your knickers in a knot. Men your age are at much higher risk of a heart attack, and I already have enough bodies to deal with tonight. Don’t need to add yours to it.”

“Just bury me now,” Whip said to Levi. “Seriously, like, bury me alive. Dirt in my mouth and nose and suffocate me. It would be less painful than this conversation.”

“And they say I’m the dramatic one.” I swapped spots with Levi. Only because I really didn’t feel like digging more graves without his help.

“Where to?” Levi checked the mirrors and pulled out onto the street.

Whip sighed. “There’s too many of them for us to start from scratch. The group has a dump point in the woods for situations like this. We can leave them there for now and go back and move them when we can.”

Levi’s lips pressed together into a thin line. “Does somebody want to explain how we ended up with a pile of dead bodies in the back of an ice cream van?” He glanced over his shoulder at me.

“Hey! Why do you automatically think it was me who went off the rails?”

He turned back to the road, but I still saw the raised eyebrow in the rearview mirror. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Did I mislabel you as a serial killer?”

I grinned, ignoring his sarcasm. “No. I wear that label with pride. But this wasn’t my fault.”

“Never is, huh, X?”

Actual irritation prickled inside me, and just the edge of my good mood slipped. I didn’t say anything.

Whip filled him in for me. “I was dropping him home after we went to get some food. They jumped him in the alley outside his apartment building. If I hadn’t looked back—”

“If you hadn’t looked back, I would have killed five people tonight instead of three,” I growled. “I left two of them for you because I was feeling generous.”

It wasn’t quite the truth, and Whip and Levi both knew it.

I was good with a knife. And I had zero remorse for taking a life. Especially when that life belonged to people hunting me down.

But any five-to-one fight wasn’t an even match.

And men from the list, ex-crims and violent felons, were generally no strangers to brawls and weapons either.

I’d been lucky Whip had been there to back me up.

But I didn’t have to admit that when they were both being fuck nuggets.

“We’re fairly certain at least two are from the list,” Whip said to Levi. “The rest were probably roped in to help. They all look like gangbangers.”

Levi clenched the steering wheel harder. “That’s two attacks on X in less than twenty-four hours.”

Whip’s jaw clenched. “I’ve been watching the security footage on my place too. A couple of guys came to my house with guns last night while I was at the clubhouse. They walked right up to the fucking porch and knocked on the door like I was going to ask them in for tea.”

“And they were going to respond with bullets instead of offering to bring a sponge cake.” I shook my head. “No manners on thugs these days, is there? You know, back in my day—”

“You’re barely thirty, X. Shut up.” Whip pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Sorry we aren’t all in our eighties, Grandpa,” I muttered back.

Levi turned the van off the main road, onto a dirt track Whip and I were both familiar with, though it had been months since I’d been down here.

“So they’re escalating.” Levi eased off the accelerator a little to account for the uneven road. “That’s just great. We need to warn the others.”

Whip nodded and pulled out his phone, then tossed it onto the dashboard. “Signal is shit out here. We’ll get it back when we get a bit higher up.”

The van jolted over a bump, and one of the bodies shifted, slapping me on the leg with a rapidly cooling dead hand.

I fought back the urge to gag.

It was going to take forever to get the stench of death out of the back of my van.

Whip eventually pointed to a spot and told Levi to stop.

“Thank God.” I jerked open the sliding back door. “Dead bodies are disgusting.”

Whip got out of the passenger seat and reached for the first one off the top of the pile we’d made. “I’ll never understand how you can like killing so much and yet be so grossed out by it at the same time.”

“I like the killing part, not the sloshing, leaking, decomposing part. I’m unhinged, not unhygienic.” I grabbed the second guy by the arms and hauled him down onto the ground. My guy was smaller than Whip’s, so I overtook him quickly, grinning at him as I passed. “Zoom, zoom!”