Page 48 of Whips and Chains (Saint View Murder Squad #2)

Rain drops rolled down my face, mixing unpleasantly with the sweat of dragging another fully grown human male around who was too dead to provide any assistance.

I squinted in the darkness, trying to remember where the hell the site was.

I’d been here a couple of times since I’d joined the group, though it was really more of Ace and Torch’s favorite spot.

It was tempting to just leave the bodies here with no cover at all and call it good. Especially since the rain had set in and this was starting to feel like Groundhog Day , me doing the same thing over and over.

Kill a man. Bury the body. Repeat.

But just dumping them here was sloppy and kind of disrespectful. If you were going to borrow another guy’s burial spot, then the least you could do was be considerate and clean up after yourself.

“Do you see it?” Whip breathed hard, his hands on his hips. “Visibility is shit.”

I pulled out my phone, switching on the flashlight function and bouncing it around the ground ahead of me.

I froze, stopping the beam of light, and then glanced back at Whip.

“Do I see you needing to do more cardio, or do I see a pile of dead bodies who very much do not look like targets from the list?”

Whip caught up to me and snatched the light, walking ahead a few paces to light up the scene better.

There were at least ten of them. Their legs and arms a broken, tangled mess. Naked. Marks all over their bodies.

Long hair. Pretty faces. Eyes that stared, unblinking, frozen forever in the fear they’d felt before they’d taken their last breaths.

Women.

Levi stopped at my side. “Those aren’t approved kills from the list, are they?”

“No.” I stared down at the mutilation of breasts and genitals that made it clear to me these women had been murdered for sick, sexual gratification. “Fuck, I’m going to be sick.”

And I really hated vomit.

But I hated the sight of those women more.

I turned away, doubling over, gagging but grateful I hadn’t actually gotten to eat the food Whip and I had picked up earlier. At least our dinner being interrupted by men trying to kill me meant I now had nothing in my stomach to actually bring up.

One of those women could have been Violet.

The thought left me so cold I could barely breathe. It was like my blood had instantly turned to ice and no amount of rubbing my arms would make me warm again.

“Who dumps bodies here?” Levi asked.

Whip swallowed thickly. “Trig. Torch. And Ace.”

“You think these are their kills?”

Whip’s lips thinned into a line. “I fucking hope not. But I couldn’t say for sure they’re not. You saw how hard it was to get in here. The road peters out. You have to know where you’re going to find this place. But we know people are watching us. Maybe they’re watching them too.”

“Or,” I mused. “We’ve been looking at people on the list this whole time. When maybe we should have been looking at people inside the group.”

Both of them turned to stare at me.

Whip shook his head. “No. The other guys didn’t do this.

This…This is fucked up. This isn’t just running a knife through someone’s gut to watch them bleed so you can take the edge off your own demons.

This sort of shit is the thing we fight back against. This was done by someone on the list. Someone trying to frame us. ”

I shrugged. “Or the reason this guy has always been one step ahead of us is because he is one of us.”

“Shut up, X,” Levi muttered. “That’s not helpful.”

Maybe not, but I had a point, and they knew it, even if there was nothing we could do right now.

We already had three of the bodies out of my truck, and I wasn’t going to try to get them back in so we could go find a different burial spot.

I needed to get out of here. I closed my eyes briefly, not wanting to see the bodies of the women anymore.

In my mind, all their faces were Violet’s.

I stalked back to the van, yanking out the next guy by his arm and letting my mouth run because that was the only thing that blacked out the images burned into my brain.

“Maybe there’s a simple explanation for this.

Ace might have picked up one of those reward cards.

You know, where you buy nine coffees and get the tenth free. Maybe he got confused.”

Whip gaped at me, watching me drag my next body over to the pile. “And what? Thought it was some sort of dead body loyalty club?”

I heaved my guy farther through the dirt, wrinkling my nose at the trail of blood he left behind. “He’s not real smart. I don’t know if he can read that well. It’s a possibility!”

I stalked back to the van, irritated I was doing all the work while they shot down my ideas. “Maybe Torch got bored? You know how he gets when he’s not allowed to set things on fire. Or maybe, and hear me out, Trig started a sex cult side hustle. And they have Murder-orgy Mondays.”

Levi exploded out of the blue. “What the hell is wrong with you, X? There’s a pile of dead, brutally murdered women here and you’re making jokes? You’re as messed up in the head as whoever the fuck did this!”

Whip’s anger was just as palpable, and all of it directed at me.

“You’re unbelievable, you know that? This isn’t a fucking joke!

Either someone is trying to frame us for these murders, or somebody we thought we knew and trusted isn’t who they say they are.

Either way, do you actually comprehend how fucked we are right now?

How this is going to blow up in our faces and we are yet again farther away from working out who’s doing this, rather than closer?

” He threw his hands up. “Honestly, X, you’re a liability. You need to be fucking locked up.”

His words felt like a slap in the face.

Because by being locked up, I knew he didn’t mean in prison.

He meant in a psych ward.

And he was just saying out loud the very thing I had worried about every day.

He’d gotten inside my head and yanked out my deepest, darkest fear.

Then rubbed it in my face.

My heart beat too fast. My chest was too tight to pull in enough air.

I stared down at my hands, coated in someone else’s blood, with Whip’s words ringing in my ears.

I turned stiffly and walked back to the van, slamming the sliding door closed. I got in behind the steering wheel and closed that door too.

Levi had left the keys in the ignition.

I turned them, and the engine came to life.

Without looking back, I put my foot down on the accelerator, leaving the two of them behind. Their shouts were lost in the roar of the engine when I pushed down harder, needing to put distance between me and Whip’s words.

But the space didn’t help the pain and fear threatening to engulf me.

You’re a liability. You need to be locked up. You’re messed up in the head.

I groaned, the pain inside me a sharp, physical ache I couldn’t ignore. It carved through me, as deadly as a knife, chiseling away my insides until it felt like there was nothing left.

No amount of stupid jokes and bad humor was going to make this feeling go away.

I just had to sit there and bleed, while Whip’s and Levi’s words sliced me open.

Everything they’d said was right.

And I knew it.

I didn’t know how long I’d been driving or how long my phone had been beeping for when the sound finally registered. But it was a welcome relief from the onslaught of thoughts in my head, and so I steered to the side of the road and opened the message on my phone.

Violet: Meet me at the bluffs. It’s happening now. I’m the bait, and we’re going to catch a killer. Don’t be mad. You all know you were never going to let me help.

I stared down at the message.

“No. No. No.” I punched Violet’s number on my phone, holding it up to my ear with shaky fingers, silently willing her to answer.

But I knew she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t want to be talked out of it.

I slammed the heel of my hand against the steering wheel and let out a scream of frustration that echoed around the van.

Violet was up on the bluffs, offering herself up to a madman. And I’d left Levi and Whip stranded in the middle of nowhere with no way of getting to her.