He looked at Bull nervously. “I did the right thing, Bull. We’re good, right?”
Bull gave him a couple of hard pats to the cheek. “Just as well you did, Spider. You certainly wouldn’t want us finding out he was here and you didn’t tell us. Then we’d definitely not be good.”
I stormed out of the room and down the dark corridor in the direction of the peep show rooms. Muted music pulsed through the walls, its heavy, muffled beat pounding in time with my heart.
I thought about little Kayla Jenkins and the photo of her I still carried in the breast pocket of my cut.
I thought about her mom, Donna, and her anguish of not knowing the whereabouts of her daughter’s remains.
I thought about the charm bracelet with the twelve little silver charms—one for each of her birthdays—that her mom said she never took off her wrist.
I thought about Roger fucking Toombs and all the shit I was going to do to him for all the things that the justice system allowed him to get away with.
“Before you go kicking in any doors, can I suggest you stop and think about this for a moment?” Bull asked calmly behind me.
“I don’t need to think about anything. I’ve had seven years to think about this moment.”
“Then you want to make sure it goes down smoothly.”
I turned to look at my president. “He’s going to confess and he’s going to tell me where he buried her body, so her poor, broken-hearted mother can lay her baby to rest.”
“I agree. So let’s stop and take a breath.”
I glared at my president, my rage itching to come face to face with Toombs.
“Don’t kill him in here. Rough him up, sure. Hell, make him piss his pants. Make him bleed a little. But you find out from him where Kayla is, and then you do whatever you gotta do, you understand me, brother?”
Sometimes my emotions got the best of me. For a calm guy, it was a little unusual. But coming face to face with scum like Toombs did that to you.
I found cubicle four and kicked the door in.
Roger Toombs jumped up with his cock in his hand. Behind him, on the other side of the glass, a redhead was fucking a blonde with a strap-on.
One look at us and the hard cock he had been jerking off went flaccid in his hand.
He knew me and I knew him.
I walked over to him and pulled the curtain down to block his view.
From this moment forward, Roger Toombs was never going to know a single moment of pleasure ever again.
He was only going to know me.
And the pain I could inflict on the wicked.
When Donna Jenkins answered her front door, she knew.
She took one look at my face and the realization seeped into her tired blue eyes. Her chin quivered, and with a sigh, she released the deep breath of pain she had been holding on to for seven long, painful years.
It was finally over.
There would be no trial.
No sensationalized headlines.
No passionate debates between a prosecutor and defense attorney.
Kayla’s story would not be heard in a courtroom.
It was now buried with the man who ended her life seven years ago.
As far as the authorities were concerned, Toombs was still on the run. Not that they were looking for him anyway. But the truth was, his story ended in a shady copse outside of town after leading me and Bull to a musty old suitcase hidden deep in the woods near the river.
Kayla’s remains were already at the crematorium and in the capable hands of Hamish McGregor, the crematorium director and a long-time friend of the Kings who helped us out from time to time.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I held out the silver charm bracelet and dropped it into her hand.
Finally seeing her daughter’s charm bracelet after all these years, she started to cry and my heart cracked open, spilling blood into my chest.
With a sob, she hugged me tight and kissed my cheek. “God bless you.”
I wasn’t a crier but it was all I could do to hold back my own tears.
I nodded, my face stiff as my emotion caught in my throat.
Seven years and it was done.
I hugged her tight, and as the sun began to sink into the horizon, I said goodbye to Donna Jenkins and steered my bike for home.
RUGER
I had a house on the outskirts of town. A renovated 1950s bungalow with a huge veranda and a saltwater pool in the back. I had used all my savings to buy it when I’d moved to Destiny and patched over to the original chapter of the Kings of Mayhem nine months earlier.
I also had a room in the clubhouse. It wasn’t a fuck pad. It wasn’t for entertaining. It was more for convenience than anything. Because sleeping off liquor in the clubhouse was a hell of a lot more comfortable than sleeping it off in a jail cell, or in a hospital bed if I wrecked my bike on the ride home after a night of drinking. But I was rarely there, preferring the peace and quiet of the little house on Neroli Street.