Page 1 of Karma
Chapter One
Griffin’s Beach
Colt
Phillip is real. And he’s after my wife.
Colt Nichols paces the Chapel and runs his hands through his long blond hair. Two hours ago, he was enjoying a lazy morning in bed with Lex while their kids stayed with his parents before being charted off to school. Everything in the world had been right.
The Chief of Police and Police Captain had both been fired from the Griffin’s Beach Police Department. Their vendetta against the Deranged Drifters their ultimate demise.
Lex’s brother, Zane Dalton, has been gone for over a year now after trying to kill her, and it’s the most peace Lex has had in thistown. Her father is on the outs with mostly everyone because of his unbalanced treatment of his children.
It’s been over a year since Colt took over the President seat of the club, and the club is doing well. Profits are great, and the club is making more money than they ever have.
On top of that, the Deranged Drifters helped stop the serial killer terrorizing Griffin’s Beach dubbed the De-Identifier. He not only tortured his victims before discarding them around town, he went as far as he could to mutilate them to the point it became impossible to identify them. Hence, the nickname.
Now, he walks around the Chapel as he waits for his Sergeant at Arms to arrive with his fiancée as he fears someone is out there trying to kill his wife. Again.
“How did Nina find all of these victims? And how did she identify them when the cops couldn’t?” Colt asks, looking up at Brock Bradshaw.
Nina Person was the last known victim of the De-Identifier. She also happened to be Undertaker’s ex-girlfriend and the reason the club got involved in the case to begin with. Her investigation into the serial killer pulled Colt out of bed with Lex and makes his stomach churn with dread.
“I don’t know,” Brock says.
His tired eyes from having a new baby does little to hide the same look Colt knows he shows. Worry. Brock has known Lex almost as long as Colt has, and he’s worked tirelessly trying to find the man named Phillip that Gerard told them about.
Gerard Buchanan was the man apprehended in the warehouse with another blonde woman who had a large gash along her body from sternum to groin. They’d gotten there in time to save her, and the man was arrested and charged.
He’d taken a plea, and he took a year to give the authorities the identities of his victims. Once all fourteen had been identified and their remains claimed, the club called in a favor to haveGerard killed in prison. But he had a request, first. He needed to talk to Colt.
In prison, Gerard told Brock and Colt that he wasn’t the true killer. A man name Phillip hired him from some sort of underground criminal for-hire network. Phillip picked victims who looked like Lex, and he hates a member of the club so much that he plans to make Lex his last victim. Not only that, he also had a creepy serial killer wall plastered with pictures of her on it. Something they didn’t find in the warehouse.
When Brock and Grayson Tate, a former cop turned private investigator married to a daughter of the club, couldn’t find anyone named Phillip tied to anyone in the club, they determined he made it all up. Had them chasing a ghost to save his own life, and they ordered his death.
“Does the letter say anything about it?” Colt asks.
Undertaker, the large ex-military man, shakes his head. “No, Patty only knew as much as she put in the letter. That Nina investigated this Phillip guy, and if anything happened to send it all to me.”
The box of research he received has pictures of almost seventy possible victims killed by this man. And the picture of the guy she wrote Phillip on is not Gerard. But what really drove the point home was the pictures she’d taken of the inside of his workshop. Along one of the walls is Lex. Pictures from her teenage years to present appear in the photograph, and Colt gets a sick feeling. Not just because it matches what Gerard said but because this guy has been following Lex for almost twenty years.
“Why the fuck didn’t we ask Marnie if the guy who attacked her was the guy she saw with Nina?” Undertaker asks, his large body leaning against the far wall of the Chapel.
“Because I’m proving to be one dumbass President,” Colt offers and leans against the table.
“I can’t fucking find this asshole, so if anyone here should feel dumb, it’s me,” Brock says.
His computer skills can rarely be beaten, and he looked at every veteran member linked to a man named Phillip. Nothing. The closest they got was an old classmate of Chips. This Phillip lives in the UK and married a man who looks like a long-lost twin of Chips, but he would have no reason to target Lex.
If all of the pictures are true victims of the De-Identifier, it means the man has been killing for quite some time. Almost seventy people is rather impressive in the sickest of ways. But it bothers him that all the women resemble his wife. Blonde hair and blue eyes. The men resemble his brother-in-law, Zane, but he couldn’t give a shit about whether or not the man is in trouble.
Zane hasn’t been seen since the club stripped him of his leather, and that was primarily because he’d tried to kill Lex in Colt’s front yard. If Colt hadn’t shown up, Zane would have made Colt a widower. As far as Colt’s concerned, Zane can fuck off and get murdered for all he cares.
“Who’s to say that Gerard wasn’t the real killer, and Phillip just helped him out? I mean, there have been no other victims we’ve heard about, right?” Brock asks.
As much as Colt wants to hope, he can’t bring himself to. It would be irresponsible considering what’s already happened. How much they’ve already overlooked.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Venom asks, walking into the room with Marnie Banks under his arm.
