Page 50 of The Devil's Viking

As always when delivering bad news, Wolf took the ‘rip the bandaid off in one go’ option. He exchanged glances with Scars and Viking and then plunged right in:

“Gideon has a cop helpin’ him, a woman. Any idea who she might be and what she’s capable of?”

“He –what?” Her eyes were wide with immediate fear. “Acop?”

“Yeah. Some gorgeous, tall blonde who drops by the compound every night.”

“Wait.” Light was dawning on her face. “She’sa cop?”

“So youdoknow who she is.”

“Yes. I mean, no. I mean, I’ve seen her around the compound off and on, but I had no idea that she was a police officer. She never wears a uniform, and she never talks to anyone except the Guardians and Gideon.”

“So she’s on Gideon’s side?”

“Well… I guess. I mean, maybe.” Iris shook her head, and Wolf could see that she was genuinely confused and distressed. “But if he has a cop working for him, then that explains quite a lot. It sure explains –”

Iris broke off suddenly, looking horrified, and Wolf pounced.

“It explains what?” he demanded. “Spit it out.”

“Ummmm.” She looked around at the three men as if contemplating escape, then she sagged in front of their eyes. “It explains how Gideon gets away with some of the things that he does. I always wondered how members of the Garden could just kind of… disappear, but if he had someone covering that all up, then who’d really care? Who’d be interested in investigating?”

“Wait,” Scars said. “Whodisappeared?”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I was only there for a year, so I only saw one person… go away, but the other women-servants told me about others. I only know about Lily.”

“Lily?” Scars asked gently. “You were her friend?”

“No.” Iris shook her head and now there were tears in her eyes. “I was her replacement.”

“OK,” Wolf said calmly, bells ringing in his head at the name ‘Lily’; Ice had told him what King had said word for word, and that name had come up in passing. She’d been the one who’d been dragged out of town and never seen again. “Let’s start again, right at the beginnin’. You were Lily’s replacement, but you saw her go away?”

“I didn’t want to talk about this,” she said to them, the despair etched all over her face. “Not ever.”

“If there’s a cop coverin’ up all of Gideon’s bad shit, then you need to tell us what she’s doin’ for him, sweetheart,” Wolf told her. “I’ve got three men in Walton right now, about to talk to this woman, and they need to know what the hell they’re dealin’ with. I need to make sure they can protect themselves. You see that, right?”

She nodded, wiping her eyes. “Yes.”

“OK, so help us, Iris.” Wolf never begged, the closest that he ever came was asking for help, and he was asking now. “Help us understand what kind of stuff this cop is mixed up in.”

She sighed deeply. “OK, well. So what I understood was, Lily was one of Gideon’s Golden Three, meaning the three women who had most won his favour. There were a few ways to move up the ladder of being Gideon’s women-servants, up to the top three spots. One was how much time you’d been with the Garden, and another was to please him in some way. It was usually to do with sex, but if a woman was especially devoted, or lost a lot of weight quickly, or came across as really submissive, they could move up. As they did, they got more responsibility, but also more privileges.”

“So Lily had privileges?” Viking asked. “Like what?”

“Like goin’ to town for shoppin’, I bet,” Wolf said shrewdly. “Right?”

“You reallydoknow a lot, don’t you?” Iris said. “I’m not even surprised anymore.”

“Not enough,” Wolf said. “Not to give my boys a heads-up.”

“OK,” Iris said. “And you’re right, the Golden Three were the only ones allowed to leave the compound at all, and it was only to go shopping once a week, always escorted by the Guardians. When I first got there, what I heard from the other women was that while Lily was in town, she did something that she wasn’t supposed to. As soon as she was back at the Garden, she was dragged straight to the basement.”

She stopped talking, but this time Wolf didn’t push her. Instead, the three men stood completely silent and still, just waiting. They knew that whatever was coming next was one of those things that Iris had never wanted to revisit, let alone say out loud, so if she needed a minute, she’d get it.

She cleared her throat. “You need to understand about the basement…it’s the last place thatanyoneever wants to go. It’s where all the punishments take place, so there are cages down there, and water hoses, and ropes, and there’s no heat, and –” She gulped. “Well, you get the idea. It’s a little slice of hell tucked under the compound, and we all did everything that we could to not be sent there.”

“Were you ever sent there?” Viking asked, clearly dreading the answer.

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