Chapter 17

Rage

I run my hands through my hair, exasperated as fuck. We’re watching Whitmore’s ski lodge, and it seems just as empty as his mini mansion. This fucker must have money coming out his ears, because his cabin is huge and sits on a much larger piece of land than the surrounding cabins. It’s clear that Malcolm fucking Whitmore is compensating for something because all his houses have to be bigger and better than the others in his neighborhood.

Rigs speaks up, “I see something.”

All our binoculars go to our eyes at the same time.

Siege mutters, “Someone must be home because it looks like they have a visitor.”

“I hope it’s Conrad’s creepy brother,” I say. “I’ve been wanting to get my hands on him for a while now. Did Zen still not dig up any dirt on him?”

“Nope,” Rigs says. “Seems like the asshole was off grid for ten years.”

Rider lowers his binoculars and his head swivels around to look at me. “One fucker at a time, Rage. We’ll be lucky to get the old man, much less the brother.”

Siege speaks without lowering his binoculars. “I’ll take a two for one deal any damn time. It keeps us from having to run them down individually.”

Our club president ain’t wrong about that, I think to myself. We watch a well-dressed gentleman with a box that looks like it might contain a gift or desserts, get out of a fancy SUV and go into the cabin. It’s not Whitmore or his son, but with any luck he knows something.

I get up from my stooping position and announce, “That’s good enough for me. I say we get our asses in there and shake some fuckers up.”

Rider jumps to his feet as well. “I’m all for getting this the fuck over with. It’s not that I’m not looking forward to beating some information out of this sick fucker. It’s just that I want to get home to Frannie because this is a child free day for us, and I don’t like wasting it on ignorant assholes who like to harass innocent women.”

“Yeah,” I respond enthusiastically. “I agree with that statement one hundred percent.”

“I say we give it a couple more hours and see who else shows up. Knowledge is power,” Rigs says.

Siege walks over to Rigs. “I agree about studying these assholes. Only my thought is that it would easier to study them up close from the inside and if we’re diligent, we might find evidence of what they’re up to in there as well.”

Rigs frowns. “Yeah, I guess we could slip in and make it look like no one’s there, since that seems to be the way they roll around here.”

Siege slaps him on the back, and we huddle to make a plan to get inside. My club brothers end up covering me as I jump the small stone surrounding wall and race to the back porch. They follow suit without drawing attention to themselves. And when all six of us are at the back door, I pry open the digital lock and short it out. It makes the porch light go out as well. Good thing it’s daylight outside because I think I may have thrown a break in the back part of the house. I jimmy the door open, and we all pour into what looks like a mud room.

This is the point we all spread out and begin searching the house. Finally we run into the man we saw enter the building. He’s standing beside a woman with the box open between them. Turns out it was just donuts.

The man doesn’t even panic. “Mr. Whitmore said we might get a visit from a bunch of thugs. Said you might be bikers actually.”

The man eyes us with interest, as if trying to figure out if we are in fact bikers. Since we ditched our cuts, it’s not obvious by looking at us.

“We’re just regular folks, looking to figure out why your employer is harassing a friend of ours.”

“Mr. Whitmore said you’d probably say something like that. He also said to tell you that he’s filing charges against you for breaking into his other properties.”

Siege responds roughly, “Have a fucking seat and don’t speak unless spoken to.”

The man and woman obediently walk over and sit down at the kitchen table. The man addresses us, “Whatever man. Knock yourself out. Rob the place. Whatever. My employer doesn’t keep anything of value here anyway.”

I walk over to him and casually slap the donut out of his hand. “You’re no good at following directions and you’re a mouthy fucker as well. Has it occurred to you that we might be here for information rather than valuables? If that’s the case, you’re making yourself an attractive target to beat information out of.”

The man freezes in place for a second, clearly panicking on the inside. He clears his throat. “No beating necessary. I’ll be happy to tell you whatever you want to know.”

Rigs walks over to stand beside me as the other brothers scatter to see if Whitmore or anyone else is in the cabin.

Rigs grumbles, “That was too easy.”

I reply irritably, “It’s because this fucker likely doesn’t know anything about Whitmore, and his lady friend probably knows even less.” Turning to the man, I ask, “Who the fuck are you, the caretaker?”

His eyebrows shoot up. “Yes, I am actually. My name is Harold Edwins. Been working here for coming up on five years.”

Rigs asks, “Where’s Whitmore right now?”

Harold exclaims, “Hell if I know! I’ve never laid eyes on my boss. Not once in all the five years I’ve worked here.”

“So what? The two of you just hang out here and play house, or something?”

He gives a nervous laugh. “Conrad used to come here to ski and socialize with the other residents. Occasionally, his brother Ashton puts in an appearance for a week or two at a time.”

“What’s Ashton like?” I ask. I couldn’t help but notice the look of revulsion that flashed on the woman’s face when his name was mentioned.

“Like all the other wealthy folks around here. He likes his breakfast served hot at eight o’clock sharp and doesn’t usually take visitors. He just hangs around and skis occasionally.”

“Is he creepy?” Holding up one hand, I explain, “The only reason I ask is because I heard he was.”

Harold takes a deep breath and chooses his words carefully. “It’s not my job to cast aspersions upon the character of my employers.”

Rigs glances at me and murmurs, “That’s a yes, if ever I’ve heard one.”

Siege rushes back in. “The rest of the house is clear. Zen is accessing their electronic devices and Ven reports the drones aren’t picking up any unusual activity outside.”

The woman blurts out, “Can I go now? I don’t have anything to do with whatever is going on between you and Mr. Whitmore.”

Rigs answers, “Of course you can’t leave while we’re here. Can’t have you running to the cops. Have a seat. We’re not the kind of men to hurt women.”

Harold quips, “That just the kind of thing a criminal would stay before they start doing evil shit.”

“I said we don’t hurt women. You’re not a woman, so unless you want a tune up, shut your mouth unless we ask you a question,” Rigs says menacingly. I gotta admit our club minister is not a man you’d want to mess with.

As we walk off to huddle, I can hear Harold grumble under his breath, “This is so fucking messed up, we only work for the man.”

The woman beside him shushes him, probably afraid that Rigs is going to beat the shit out of him.

When we’re on the other side of the room, Siege lowers his voice. “Zen is checking the electronic devices for intel, hopefully we’ll find something incriminating on the fucker.”

“I doubt he’s going to find anything.” I no sooner get the words out of my mouth than Zen is yelling for us. We herd Harold and the lady who never told us her name upstairs into the master bedroom. What I see on the screen makes me furious. Zen’s opened a folder of pictures and it’s just hundreds of images of Priscilla going back years, a reminder that Conrad was obsessed with the one and only woman I ever loved. She was mine all those years ago and he used deceit and her parents to steal her from me.

“I hate Conrad Whitmore with the fire of a thousand suns,” I say angrily.

Zen informs me grimly, “This isn’t Conrad’s. It’s Ashton’s. He left a flash drive in the computer.”

My mouth falls open. “What! Are you saying that Ashton was as obsessed with Priscilla as his brother?”

Harold snorts a laugh. My hand was on his throat before I even made the conscious decision to throttle him. “What the fuck is so funny, asshole?”

The woman speaks up. “Conrad was never obsessed with Priscilla. It was always Ashton. Conrad only married her to keep Ashton from having her, it was the only way to keep her safe.”

I drop Harold and he crumples to the floor gasping for breath. Every head in the room turns to look at the woman. Rigs asks, “Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Emily Pemberton. I was hired to cook and clean, originally at the Whitmore estate in town. But I ended up getting transferred here after I discovered Ashton’s sick obsession with Priscilla. The reason his family got him institutionalized for so—”

Harold chokes out, “Shut up, Em.”

“I’m tired of watching people like the Whitmores get away with stuff. It’s high time someone spoke up.”

Turning back to me, she explains, “I’ve been with the family for almost fifteen years. From what I could tell, Ashton has been obsessed with Priscilla since they were really young, maybe twelve or thirteen. She must have had some kind of inkling that he wasn’t right because she never would give him the time of day. He used to complain about that a lot to his father. Mr. Whitmore didn’t care anything about Priscilla. He hated her because he had to listen to Ashton complain about her so much.”

“Then why the fuck did Malcolm work so hard to leverage her into marrying into his family?” I ask, infuriated with what I’m hearing.

“Ashton was a bad seed, even as a kid there was something wrong with him. Conrad was always the golden child, the youngest, the one who could do no wrong.” Pausing thoughtfully, she adds, “They tried to get him help, but after his wife passed away Malcolm just let him get away with things. There were accusations against his oldest son, but he’d pay for people’s silence.” She stops for a moment, and it looks like she’s wondering whether to go further with the story. I don’t know what it is, but the talk about buying silence is making my Spidey senses tingle.

“Go on,” I say.

“I don’t know for certain what happened, but just over ten years ago Ashton got sent to a psychiatric institution. It was all hushed up, some private place. I think he’d attacked someone, a woman. Unlike the other times, Malcolm’s money couldn’t make it go away. That was around the time that Conrad married Priscilla.”

“What are you saying?” I demand.

“I’m saying I think Ashton did something to Priscilla, that was why his father got him locked away and that was why he made Conrad marry her.”

“Why marry her though?” I ask.

“Because of the baby—”

Harold groans, “For the love of God, shut the hell up. You don’t know what you’re doing by double-crossing the Whitmores.”

She frowns at him. “I know the Whitmore family dynamics far better than you do, and they can’t be allowed to ruin people’s lives. Conrad wasn’t a nice man but he wasn’t cruel, when his brother was released last year, something changed.”

My mind is spiraling with all this information, and suddenly I have an awful thought. Mia. I was convinced she was mine, but what if she was Ashton’s and that was what Priscilla was trying to hide? Her parents getting a monthly payout from Whitmore—was that hush money? My poor Prissy, has she lived all these years with her attacker’s family? Did Conrad shoot her as some sick attempt to make sure his brother couldn’t have her?

I realize in this moment that it makes no difference to me who Mia’s father is, I want to be there for Priscilla and her daughter. I want to be the father that little girl deserves whether she is biologically mine or not.

I look at Emily, “So what happened when he was released?”

Harold issues one last warning, “Emily don’t.”

Siege backhands Harold, “Priscilla may be in danger. Someone’s been stalking her and leaving dead animals on her doorstep, a mother and baby rabbit. Both decapitated.”

Emily’s hand flies to her mouth. “Oh dear God.” Turning to Harold who is nursing a bloody nose, she says, “This has gotten out of hand, we have to stop them.”

He looks resigned, “Yeah, maybe it has, Em.” Reaching out across the table he takes her hand in his. “From what we could tell, Ashton was a troubled kid. It’s one reason his own parents never bonded well with him.”

Emily sighs. “That’s an understatement. Tell them the rest, Harold.”

He curses under his breath. “They caught him doing unspeakable things to animals when he was a kid, that’s how psychopaths start. He got released last year, the hospital said he was rehabilitated, but you can’t rehabilitate someone like him. It wasn’t even a recognized clinic his father had him in, just some private place to shut his son away. The whole out of sight out of mind thing. I doubt he ever got any treatment. I never knew him before he went away, so I can’t say if he changed. But I can say he gave me the creeps, you know how with some people you never turn your back on them? That was Ashton. I certainly didn’t want Em to be alone with him.” Wiping his nose on his sleeve, he continues, “He started trying to hang around Conrad’s place. As well as Priscilla, he’d gotten obsessed with her daughter. Mia always wanted a pet, but Conrad was afraid it would be too much temptation for Ashton to resist. He likes hurting animals and would probably really get off on doing something awful to Conrad’s pet. Conrad tried to get Ashton readmitted, but because he was classed as mentally competent it was impossible. That’s when Conrad’s drinking got worse. I think that was his way of escaping the situation.”

Conrad was an asshole who tried to kill Priscilla. I couldn’t forgive him anything, but on hearing this I wonder if he was as much a victim of his brother too?

“Why was Conrad’s house, cars, and every damn thing else he owned in his father’s name?”

Harold speaks up, “I didn’t know that. But I’m guessing it was a way for his father to control him, or maybe it was another payoff, you know? Like, here son, marry this woman and I’ll give you a comfortable life.”

Emily adds quietly, “Always having to be on guard against Ashton drove Conrad to the brink of insanity, it drove him to drink.”

Rigs asks, “Didn’t the parents ever try to get his brother help when he was younger?”

She responds, “From what I remember hearing from Conrad, they put Ashton in therapy several times, once when they found him abusing Conrad when he was a baby. They saw him on the baby monitor holding his hand over Conrad’s face until he passed out and put Ashton in a residential treatment program for three months. He was four at the time, as the years went on, he just got better at hiding what he did.”

Rigs looks from Emily to Harold, “Ashton is the one you’re afraid of, not the old man, right?”

Harold sniffs loudly. “Yeah, you have no idea what Ashton is capable of. We have a good reason to be concerned for your lives.”

Emily says in a hushed tone, “We think he had something to do with his mother’s death. Even his father fears him deep down inside.”

I voice my earlier thoughts, “Do you think that maybe Conrad never loved Priscilla. He was just protecting her in some warped way and cracked under the pressure from Ashton, which led to resentment and him killing her as some sick form of protection?”

Emily looks really worried. “Who knows? Maybe there isn’t a good guy and bad guy, just a bad guy and a worse guy.”

Siege tries to clarify, “So, you think that Ashton is still after Priscilla and that he’s the one who left the dead rabbits on her doorstep.”

“Yeah, I don’t see him giving up now that Conrad is dead, if anything he’ll see it as his chance. There’s no one left to stop him finally taking her.”

Emily glances at Harold in a way that makes me think she didn’t really put the last piece of the puzzle together until just now.

Siege asks, “So what’s the plan for the two of you? Do you think Ashton is going to find out you talked?”

Harold looks truly mortified. “We’ve gotta run. Put as much distance between us and the Whitmores as possible.”

Rigs glances at Siege before speaking. “Or hear me out, we could provide you with a safe space until we resolve this situation with Ashton and his father. If they manage to survive, which isn’t likely, they’re going to wind up in jail. Having your witness testimony would go a long way towards putting Ashton away for a very long time.”

I interject, “ If he survives, and he ain’t gonna, if I have anything to say about it.”

Emily responds by making a cross over her chest. “God forgive me, but I think it’s for the best if he doesn’t.”

They end up accepting our offer of protection, but Emily’s words really drive home exactly how much of a danger they think Ashton is in general and to Priscilla in particular.

***

I think about that all the way back to the clubhouse. The minute we get there, I pull out my cellphone and call Priscilla. I need to hear her voice to know that she’s okay. I have to apologize for being an asshole, I shouldn’t have stormed out this morning. I should have voiced my concerns about who Mia’s father is. After everything I learned today, I really don’t know. She looks so much like me, but it might just be wishful thinking. Either way I don’t care. I just want both of them in my life.

Worry twists in my gut when she doesn’t respond. Siege walks by with Harold and Emily. I tell him, “I can’t get Priscilla to answer. I’m going to head home to make sure she’s okay. We shouldn’t have called the prospects back in.”

“The person who left the box is in the holding cells, we didn’t think she was in danger, so having four prospects guard your place was overkill. Don’t let the things you learned about Ashton get inside your head. You have a good security system. I’m sure she’s fine.”

Rigs jerks his chin at Tex. “We’d best go with you, just to be on the safe side.”

We head out immediately. Even though my gas tank is getting low, I don’t stop. The bad feeling in my gut is just getting exponentially worse the closer I get to my place, and I can’t shake it off.

Sure enough, Priscilla and Mia are missing from my house. We search high and low, without talking about how my security system was set and my door was locked. That can only mean that she left me again. And I’m kicking myself once more for how I acted.

Rigs walks up with a sheet of paper in his hands. “You should probably read this.”

I drop down in a chair and scan over the handwritten letter Priscilla wrote to me. I feel all the old pain rising in my chest because this situation is so similar to the first time she left me. The only difference is that I can be reassured that she actually wrote the note, and she’s not left me again. But what’s in the note is equally puzzling.

She starts by apologizing for leaving a note. Saying I seemed so angry this morning that she was worried I’d not pick up if she called. She tells me that we need to have a talk, that there’s some things that happened in the past she didn’t tell me about. Then my breath catches.

She says that she thinks Mia might be mine, that she honestly didn’t think she was, but Meli told her about my strawberry allergy which Mia has, and she found my dog tags with my blood group. She had thought Mia was someone else’s, someone she had hoped never to see again. She says she didn’t want to tell me until she was sure, but the way I acted this morning made her worried that I’d already guessed and thought she was lying.

I’m cursing myself for being such an asshole, if I’d spoken to her this morning then maybe now, she’d be safe.

What I read next, has me more than worried. She says she switched on the cellphone I brought back from her old house and there were lots of missed calls from her mother.

The mother she’d not spoken to in seven years.

She wrote that her parents were in Las Salinas and needed to talk to her and she’d be back later.

I can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. Priscilla’s parents haven’t been in her life for years, me and my club brothers know about the scam they pulled off with Malcolm Whitmore, that they’re supposedly dead. I have an awful thought that Priscilla’s parents and the Whitmores are mixed up in this together.

I realize that I haven’t looked at my security feed, so I jump to my feet and go to the laptop I have set up to save the footage. When I search back in the digital footage, I see a vehicle show up and Priscilla and Mia come out to meet them. I can’t see who’s driving but they both get in and the car speeds off.

It hits me that I was rude to her this morning, and she probably thought I didn’t want her anymore. I could kick my own ass for treating her that way. I truly am my own worst enemy.

Rigs’ hand lands on my shoulder. “You’re looking troubled brother, want to tell me what the letter says?”

I summarize the contents of the letter for him and tell him about seeing the vehicle come to pick up my girls, then finish with, “I hate that she thinks I might not want her, that I might not want Mia. You heard what Harold and Emily said earlier, I think Ashton attacked her and she spent all those years thinking Mia was his. That somehow her parents made her marry Conrad so they’d keep quiet about what Ashton did and get their payout.”

“That’s some wild accusations, but you may be onto something. Though wouldn’t the Whitmores get a DNA test on Mia?”

I shrug, “I don’t know. Maybe they did but thought it better to keep quiet. Maybe her parents were blackmailing them? Maybe Conrad found out that Mia wasn’t his brother’s and resented the fact he’d been forced into a marriage to protect his brother? It’s all so fucking messed up. But the main thing I’m worried about is her parents resurfacing, that can’t just be coincidence.”

He frowns at me, “Can you make out the license plate?”

“No, the video footage isn’t clear enough.” I pull out my phone and try to call her again. It goes to voicemail. I leave a message asking her to call me back.

“Alright, then we head back to the clubhouse. At least we have a visual on the vehicle, we can see if Zen can get eyes on it approaching or leaving your property from the highway cameras. Siege was planning to pick Harold and Emily’s brains for information on where Ashton lives. Maybe we’ll kill two birds with one stone and find that’s where her parents are taking her.”

I hope to God they weren’t. I hope they’re taking her to a restaurant for a family catchup, but with what I knew of them already, I didn’t think that was likely. With more optimism than I felt, I say, “Hell yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.”