Page 14 of Clubs

“Mm, guess I’ll have to find someone else to help with that.”

“You do that, sweetheart, and I’ll let you keep the money.” Smirking, I backed away from the car. “‘Cause you’ll have to use every cent of mine to get me out of jail.”

“I don’t make idle threats, baby.” She shifted the car into drive, sparing me one more smirk as she merged onto the quiet morning road. “As you can see.”

“I see you regretting this later,” I called.

She flipped me off in the rearview.

And I laughed.

Maybe this was why we fought so much. Not because we hated each other, but because, for us, it was foreplay.

CHAPTER FOUR

BROOKE

He was the light of my life, he really was, but I couldn’t stand him ninety percent of the time. I wasn’t ashamed of that. I was one hundred percent certain he felt the same way about me.

Our relationship wasn’t normal, and I couldn’t call it healthy, but I loved it. It worked for us.

After abandoning my wonderful, pain in the ass of a boyfriend on the side of the road, I continued to the library. My shift didn’t start for another two hours, and it wasn’t ideal to show up in the same clothes I’d worn to work yesterday, but I had a routine for this. In the trunk of my car, I kept a stayed up way too late, drinking way too much, getting fucked all night, go bag. Others kept a spare pair of sweats, a few hoodies, and a blanket in the trunk so they were prepared to get stuck in an Oregon snow storm. My bag was more fun.

So when I got to work, I locked the door behind me, changed into a work appropriate sundress, and brewed a pot of coffee in the breakroom. It was a slow day with only a few patrons milling about the library. I knew I could hole up and get some research done without getting bothered. Java in hand, I sat at my desk and got to work.

Alicia Tanner. Who was she?

The internet answered that question a hell of a lot quicker than I expected.

Despite her common name, narrowing the search results by location brought up court dockets and mug shots, all for the same person. Two years ago, she was arrested for possession of heroin. A year ago, arrested for theft. Two months after that, arrested for theft again.

I hated to say it, but I wasn’t surprised that she’d wound up dead. Not because she deserved it. No one deserved to die like she did, let alone get discarded behind a bar like a piece of trash. But the sad reality was a brutal life of crime often led to just as brutal a death.

It was a horrible fact. One I’d seen play out a dozen times over throughout the course of my life. Moreso, throughout my childhood. Then all over again when I’d worked for the Chambers.

I had mostly killed Demons and rogue Vampires under the Chamber’s guidance. People like Alicia weren’t my usual targets, but when I got a case they were the usual victims. If a Vampire wanted to drink someone dry, who better than a criminal? Someone society wouldn’t miss. Rogue supernaturals tried to keep the heat of human authorities off their ass. Killing a CEO or politician’s kid would be like putting a glowing red target on their backs. But who’d miss a dead thief or addict?

That said, given the fact that her body was found behind a supernatural biker bar, I had to wonder if the two were correlated. Had she died because of her connection to the drug world? Did it have something to do with the same world Declan’s dad had been a part of? The details I had gathered about Declan’s dad were vague. But they were vivid enough that I knew a dead body in a dumpster wouldn’t have been completely out of place in the life he had led. The problem was, he was long dead.

Before Declan had taken over running Spades, his mom had run the bar for years. Was it possible for something, someone, from those days to have held out this long? The cops certainly thought so. But their vendetta against Declan and Spades seemed baseless these days.

Or was she connected to the bar some other way? If she wasn’t a member, as Declan claimed, was she killed by someone who was? It had something to do with Spades, that much was undisputable. But the question was: how? Why?

Was it about Declan? It must’ve been. If it had just been about a drug deal gone wrong, they wouldn’t have put in an anonymous tip. Perpetrators reporting their crimes were damn near unheard of.

Those involved in a life of crime, however, were known for their anonymous tips. One dealer, or runner, or mule, would turn in another to flush out their competition. Declan wasn’t competition, though. As far as I knew, he kept his nose clean.

If not for our history, I may have doubted the likelihood of that. Maybe I don’t know him as well as I think I do, I would’ve thought. Maybe he has a whole other life I don’t know about.

My instinct to paranoia, to assume the worst, lost out here. I knew Declan like the back of my hand.

Raging pain in the ass or not, his involvement in this world stopped at the bar. In the year and a half that we’d been together, he’d taken one hit off a joint. He drank, often in copious quantities, but in fairness, he got the same buzz from ten beers as I got from one vodka cranberry. It took a lot for a Werewolf to get fucked up.

In fact, I’d been fucked up more frequently than he had since we’d met. Once. That was how many times I’d gotten drunk since we started dating. Not once had I seen Declan drunk. Tipsy enough to get stupid twice. But not drunk. The man owned a bar, and I’d never seen him get past tipsy.

So, despite my instinct to turn to paranoia, I knew that wasn’t the case here.

He wasn’t dealing, either. Sure, he made an okay living, but my librarian salary paid better. The difference in our incomes was something I knew he was insecure about, hence our fight this morning.