Page 1 of Lake's Legacy

CHAPTER ONE: LAKE

“You okay there, Lake?” Pirate asks with a laugh.

“Fuck off,” I growl, gripping the handrest tighter.

“Why did you agree to go to Ireland with Dixie if you don’t like flying,” Pirate continues. “Or did you think we were driving there?”

“Seriously, shut up,” I growl back.

He’s silent for several minutes, but I can feel him looking at me.

“Have you spoken with Olivia recently?” He asks me, and I realize he’s trying to distract me from my fear of flying. I should be grateful, but what I want to do is strangle him.

However, I open one eye and glare at him. “I spoke to her after we landed in Ireland and then again just before we left for home. Why?”

“Did she tell you about looking at the photos of the dead women?”

I open the other eye as I nod. My thoughts on Olivia’s breakdown after she insisted on looking at the photos of each woman we found in the office building Cleo owns. “Yeah, tore her up.”

“Brave woman,” Pirate says.

“Have you found anything on her missing friends?”

“No. The police have made no progress. However, they discovered someone tampered with Talia’s car. The car broke down a few miles from the hospital. They’re still trying to figure out how and when someone sabotaged it.”

“Do they think that’s how whoever kidnapped her got to her?”

“It’s their current theory. They can’t find the doctor’s car, so there is no way to verify if this is a possible M.O.”

“Have they checked the security feed?”

“They have, but the camera angle only covered the car’s trunk. No way to see if anyone approached the vehicle from the front.”

“Maybe they’ll find something,” I muse. I know Olivia’s concerns for her former coworkers grow stronger every day. Now that we’re heading back to New Orleans, Pirate should have more time to help locate them. “Any ideas on how to look for them?”

“I spoke with Dante, and he’s permitted me to contact Maestro for help. I want him to run his program against the traffic cam footage for the nights the two women disappeared,” Pirate says, nodding toward Dante, sitting with Dixie and Hex.

Dante is the President of the Original Chapter of the Demon Dawgs. It’s his mother’s plane that we’re flying on today. Rather than letting myself remember that we’re flying, I watch Dixie take a small box out of his pocket and look at it before returning it. The box contains his mother’s engagement and wedding rings. He can’t stop himself from checking on them every few minutes after he retrieved them from the safe deposit box.

“Ten bucks says he drops to his knee the second he sees Delphine,” Pirate says with a smirk.

“Not taking that bet,” I laugh. “He’s been twitchy ever since he picked them up.”

I glance around the private jet's cabin and see Abra and Chaos in a deep discussion. I imagine they’re talking about various means of torture. It makes me glad to be sitting back here with Pirate. Even if he is pissing me off. I’d rather be asleep like Zip, sitting behind us.

“Have you heard anything from your friend about the DNA results for the babies at the clubhouse?” Pirate asks.

“No. He said it would take him at least two weeks to get through all the samples. I’ll only hear something if he finds a match early on. However, we don’t know if the two babies came from any of the dead women. We don’t know how long the women were in that building. The cops have only identified a few of them.”

“Thirteen,” Pirate corrects me. “They’ve identified thirteen of them. Just because they found empty cribs in the basement doesn’t mean that’s where Mikel acquired the babies.”

I shrug. “Doesn’t mean it isn’t. The cops found two dirty diapers that weren’t more than a few days old. I think Mikel took advantage of the ship sailing with all those kids to dispose of the babies and earn some money.”

“Yeah, probably,” Pirate mutters. “We need to find those assholes, because we know Mikel wasn’t running that whorehouse alone. I want to tie them to a bed and ram a hot poker up their asses until they die.”

“Shit, if I wanted an image like that, I’d go sit with Chaos and Abra,” I complain.

Before Pirate can respond, our pilot, Maia, comes over the speaker to let us know that we’ll be landing soon. Thank the Great Spirit.

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