Page 13 of The Devil's Viking

“OK,” Wolf said. “And the bad thoughts?”

“Her. All about her.” Ice nodded down the hallway. “She’s a puzzle and a problem. You’re bang-on, Wolf: what the fuckwasshe doing out there and why did she get in the van of a shady stranger? If she saw Viking burning a dead body, why would she voluntarily put herself anywhere near him instead of going to the cops?”

“Huh.” Viking stared at the club Enforcer. “So you think that the fact that she got in the van is agoodthing? You think it means that she didn’t see me doing anything that scared her?”

“What I think is that a woman all alone in the woods, wearing a nightgown in the dead of winter, is desperate. The question that worries memorethan what she might have seen is this: what was she getting away from that was so bad, that getting into a stranger’s van seemed like the better option?”

“Fuck,” Scars muttered. “I think I hate that question.”

“Also,” Ice continued mercilessly. “She has to have come fromsomewhere, so that means that not only is she a potential witness to Viking covering up a murder, she’salsoa possible missing person. What if someone comes looking for her, and in doing so, retraces her steps to where Fielding’s few remains are? Right now, there’s zero direct connection between us and what’s in those Utah mountains – but what if some husband or boyfriend playing Sherlock Holmes blunders into the woods and sees the disturbed earth and gets all curious?”

“Goddammit,” Wolf said darkly. “I fuckin’hateyour bad thoughts.”

“I do have one more good one.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s totally possible, even probable, that this woman is some fucked up random event that just fell into our orbit, and she won’t want to stay here. Maybe she was high and wandered out of the house, then climbed into the van for warmth and passed out. Maybe she ran from an abusive husband with just the nightgown on her back, and managed to grab some of his warm clothes on her way out the door. Now she’s cooled off, she might want to go back and make up or go stay with her Mom for a while.” Ice shrugged. “If it’s anything like any ofthat– and I really think that it is – then I suspect that she’ll crack after a few days and tell us that she’s someone really average and deadly dull, then she’ll beg to get out of here.”

“Wait,” Scars said, startled. “You said afew days?”

“Uh-huh, he’s right,” Wolf said. “We can’t let her leave until we knowexactlywho she is and where she comes from, and what she saw and what she knows, and what she’s gonna say and to who. There are too many questions still, so she’s stayin’ for the foreseeable future."

Scars was thunderstruck. “But that means that we’re kidnapping her.”

“No, we ain’t,” Wolf said. “We’re just enjoyin’ the pleasure of her company until she tells us what we need to know. She got into that van all on her own, man, we didn’t grab her up against her will.”

“Fine. So we’re holding her hostage then,” Scars said. “Ask Jinx if this is all above-board.”

“Jinx will tell us to cover our asses, like any good lawyer would,” Wolf said abruptly. “He’ll have Jo’sandthe club’s best interests at heart, and that means findin’ out as much as we can about our uninvited guest from Utah before we eventhinkabout settin’ her loose. Ice?”

“Already on it, Prez,” Ice said, taking his cell out of his pocket. “I’ll make a call. I know exactly who can help.”

“Can you go and get Zee from the parlour?” Wolf asked Viking. “She must have a change of clothes over there that we can give our mystery guest.”

“Got it, boss.”

Viking followed Ice down the hall into the bar, shaking his head at Rebel’s question about the toast and omelette, nodded at the coffee in a to-go cup. Yeah, he was starving and dragging his ass with exhaustion, but he wasn’t going home yet, probably not for a good long while. So he’d get by on caffeine and adrenalin for the moment.

Scars cleared his throat. “Wolf, what about Silver and Jo?” he said. “Should we tell them any of this? I mean, if this woman saw Viking getting rid of Fielding’s body…”

“Fuck.” Wolf briefly shut his eyes, wished hard for justone damn dayof zero crises. “Didn’t think about that angle.”

“Yeah.” Scars ran his hand over the back of his neck. “I know that Jo is still recovering at Silver’s place, and he’ll be taking her up to Open Skies Ranch this afternoon. He told me that he wants to get her away from things and heal in a quiet, peaceful place. This would only upset her, I know, but should we say something?”

“No,” Wolf said definitively. “We don’t know what we’re dealin’ with, so let’s not tell her or Silver any of this. Not yet, not until we get some answers. If this woman saw somethin’ or we get even a hint from Ice that someone’s come lookin’ for her,thenwe’ll tell them.”

“OK.” Scars looked back at the woman. “ So we’ll try to talk to her?”

“That’s the plan.”

Wolf strode down the hall to his office, then slowed his roll as it occurred to him that having his six-foot-two, heavily-muscled and -tattooed self barrel towards the woman at speed was probably not the best way to approach this situation. He was at an utter loss where and even how to begin, and the last thing he wanted was to scare her, but he had to open the conversation somehow. He took a deep breath and called on his softer side, such as it was.

“So,” he said gruffly, then took it down a notch when she shrank back into the leather chair. “So. I’m Wolf. You got a name?”

She looked up at him with eyes of the deepest purple, so deep they looked almost black in the dim winter light. They were beautiful for sure, but they aged her. When he’d seen her standing there in the van in that child-like white nightgown, Wolf had assumed that she was a teenaged girl and a tiny one at that – but then he’d seen her eyes.

They were bottomless wells of something that he couldn’t name yet; they spoke volumes but Wolf couldn’t decipher the language. Whatever this woman had been through, however she’d ended up in the back of the van, it was all due to something that Wolf hadn’t come across in his life.

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