Keys To My Cuffs (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC Book 4) (2 page)

“T-thank you,” She said after a while, finally finding her voice.

“No problem,” I said and walked away, leaving her there in the grass.

Her eyes were terror filled, and I knew she wouldn’t be able to walk with me that close.

She was in a vulnerable position: sick and scared. I gave her the only reassurance I could. My back.

I don’t always find a series I like on Netflix. But when I do, I watch all twelve seasons in a row while
living off of cookies and chips for three days straight.

-E-card

Channing

“I’ll be back by midnight,” I said to my brother, just in case he was listening to me and didn’t have his earphones all the way up. Although, most likely a useless statement, I wanted to think that he cared enough about me to be concerned about where I went. Though, I knew he didn’t.

When I said he could move in here for a couple of weeks, I never meant he could stay with me forever. It’d been six months since he’d moved in, and in that time he hadn’t once looked for alternate places to stay.

I should’ve known, but it was nice having someone around...even if they didn’t talk to me. Or help. Or pay for anything.

The neighborhood wasn’t a good one, and I liked the feeling of knowing my house wouldn’t be unoccupied when I came home. Especially with all the rapes that had been occurring during the night.

Who would have thought that a serial rapist would show up in this small town?

It all started about six months ago with a young teenager, arriving home after a night of partying with her friends. She’d pulled her car in the garage, shut it off, and got out before she closed the garage door. Then she set the alarm and went to bed. Which was a serious mistake.

According to the news feed from the security cameras, the man had bypassed the security system by unknown means, and rearmed it once he was inside. From there everything looked fine on the outside, while inside a young girl was getting her innocence stolen from her, and then drugged to make her forget.

Since then, there’ve been nearly nine other victims, and they can only remember that they were fine before they got home. The first one was the luckiest since they’d installed cameras after the home was built. The others hadn’t been so lucky. They only woke up confused, beaten, and raped with nothing to remember about how it happened.

Walking outside, I made it to my car, keeping my head down as I went.

It wouldn’t do to see my neighbor. My hot, sexy, drug using, badass neighbor.

It was inevitable though. I was drawn to the man like the crops need the rain. He was like an incandescent star in a pitch-black sky to me. No matter how hard I tried, my eyes always strayed his way. The way he watched me unnerved me, but it also set my blood on fire.

Hell, I was a 26-year-old woman. He was a hot male in his prime, despite the baggy gangster clothes that covered an extremely muscled body. His hair was about three inches too long and shaggy blonde. When he looked at me, he always had a couple strands in his steel blue eyes, only adding to the appeal.

“Hey, sis,” Andrew called. “Can you pick up some dinner on the way home from work?”

He didn’t wait for the reply, which wasn’t surprising. He didn’t care that I worked until nearly three in the morning. All he cared about was getting a hamburger and fries. Did it ever cross his mind that I didn’t have the energy to do that after I got off? I had to be at school at nine tomorrow morning.

When I turned back around, I saw my neighbor shirtless, bending over the hood of his newest acquisition. A 1970 Plymouth Barracuda that I was just dying to take a ride in. In fact, I would kick my brother out right now if he gave that car to me.

It was loud. So loud that it made my heart race. The color could use some work, but the engine was sound. With all the work that the man put in it over the past three weeks, there was no wonder.

Did he even work?

I’d seen him outside on my way to work the last three da
ys, and he’d still been there when I’d gotten home.
Although it was nearly seven at night, and I was gone the entire day, he was out there. In the same spot he’d been
in when I left. He could work sometime in the interim, yet I didn’t think he did.

I couldn’t wait to see what color he painted it.

“Hi, Channing!”

I screamed loudly and turned, finding my next-door neighbor, the
creepy as fuck
next door neighbor to my immediate right. Varian Strong.

“Umm, hi, Mr. Strong. How are you?” I asked, backing away toward my car.

He smiled at my retreat, knowing what he did to me.

My heart raced.

“I’m fine, sweet thing. Going to work?” He asked with feigned concern.

I nodded emphatically. “Sure am. Have a good night!”

I dropped down in my car, then locked it as inconspicuously as I could before starting it and backing the fuck out of my driveway.

I freakin’ hated my neighborhood.

Mostly.

Mostly, because I liked the way that my neighbor was watching me drive away, and the way his eyes narrowed in Varian’s direction once he saw me pass him.

I’d known he was paying attention. He was a smart man. He knew the neighborhood was just as dangerous as I did. Although he wasn’t a scared little rabbit like I was.

I’d grown up in a suburb in New Orleans before the levees collapsed. My mom had died in the floods shortly after, and my dad’s shrimping business had gone under as a result. We’d never done badly for ourselves, but with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was nothing left for us to go back to.

We’d survived, but only just barely.

We relocated to Ruston, Louisiana, much to my brother’s annoyance. My dad had found a job as a truck driver, and left my brother and I home alone nine out of twelve months a year. My brother was a year older than I was, but he acted as if he was four years younger.

When I turned eighteen, I’d moved out to go to school in Monroe, about an hour away from our new home. I’d graduated with
a cosmetology degree within a year. Ever since, I’d been working my ass off.

My newest gig, which brought me to Benton in the first place, was an unusual one.

After struggling for two years trying to make a clientele, I branched out, trying my hardest to save up for my future house and pay my insurance out of pocket.

I had asthma. And with the changing of seasons, I ended up having attacks that sent me to the hospital at least once a year. I also couldn’t lapse on my coverage, or I’d never get it again without paying outrageously for it.

My car groaned as I pulled it into my usual parking spot at the back of the building and died once I no longer had constant pressure on the gas.

It coughed, sputtered, and shook as it wheezed its final revolution before I turned the key and shoved my shoulder against the door. My car was a beast.

It was a 1975 Pontiac Firebird with gold worn out paint and black accents. It had a T-top, and it was my baby.

I had the best of intentions when I’d purchased the vehicle off the side of the road when I was twenty, but as the years went by, I only had enough money to keep the car working. Not make it pretty.

There were springs coming out in the seats, I’d replaced both seatbelts with junkyard finds, and the dash was so cracked that it didn’t even resemble much of a dash anymore. And don’t even get me started on the engine work the car needed.

Angling myself out of the car, I stood and bent inside for my purse.

Hitting the lock with the palm of my hand, I slammed the door hard, glad to see that it actually closed all the way, and walked inside.

The smell was always the first thing to get me when I walked in the door.

The sickly sweet scent of flowers.

I hated flowers now.

After seven years on the job, I could never see another flower again and be happy.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say I loathed flowers.

Why, you ask?

Because the smell reminds me of death.

I am a beautician.

My clientele were dead people.

Black Water Funeral Home had been my home away from home for over five years now.

Walking down the back hallway, I keyed in my entry code and walked into the back room. We called it the locker room. This was where we housed all the bodies. This was where all the magic happened.

I was alone when I entered, which was how I liked it.

The only person that was usually here at this hour was Brittany, the mortician.

However, she was nowhere in sight when I arrived; so I stowed my purse and jacket in the staff lounge room and walked to the computer to pull up who I was to work on first.

Ahh, a Mrs. Rose Abernathy, 23.

I blanched when I saw the cause of death.

God, I hated suicides.

I guess all I could be thankful for was that she hadn’t shot herself. Instead, she’d hung herself, which was nearly as bad, but easily covered with makeup and clothing.

Pulling up the picture the family had sent over, I set the lap top on the table beside the work area I’d be making Rose beautiful at, and walked over to cooler number three.

You’d think that after five years at this job I wouldn’t be so paranoid, but every single time I opened the coolers, I held my breath.

I don’t know what I expected. To find her alive?

One thing I didn’t do was watch shows about zombies. I had enough of an imagination as it was, I didn’t need to be adding to that over activeness.

Rose was a cute girl, and it made my heart hurt to think that something so awful had happened to her that she thought the only way out was by taking her own life.

Once I had her at my station, I washed her hair.

The hardest thing about working on dead people was that they didn’t sit up, which made it infinitely harder to do anything. I also had to have a lot of upper body strength, because picking her up to wash her was quite literally dead weight.

When I had her about two inches off the table, a belch of air released from her lips, startling me.

Once again, after five years of this shit, you’d think I would be expecting that little puff of released air. But no, not me. I shrieked and stepped back.

“Gets you every time,” a dry voice said from the doorway.

I turned, not surprised to see her there watching me and glared.

“Go fuck yourself,” I snapped.

Brittany laughed.

She had a smoky laugh that sounded so sultry and smooth. At 53, she was a bombshell. Tall, much taller than my own 5’7. She had the most to die for body with big boobs, long legs, and
a narrow waist. I liked to call her the real life Ethnic Barbie doll.

Her black hair emphasized her Guatemalan heritage. Long and silky. She reminded me of
Laura Croft: Tomb-raider
, with the way she always wore her hair in a ponytail, and the long main hung to her ass even then.

She didn’t dress like Laura Croft, though.

As a mortician, she had a very ... gross job. Which was why she lived in
Carhartt
Overalls. She looked cute, and she hated when I pointed that fact out to her.

“You don’t say that to your boss!” She mock glared.

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. Where have you been?”

She grimaced. Her eyes screwed up at the corners as she pursed her lips, as if she tasted something foul. “The owner wanted to see me about my hours.”

“What about your hours?” I asked in surprise.

“He says I haven’t been here as much as I used to and wanted to see why. He said Joshua complained about how much he was having to do since I wasn’t ‘doing my job.’”

Her face showed the disgust in her tone.

I looked at her sympathetically. “Joshua is a dick, and always has been. You’re here nearly fifteen hours a day. Your husband already doesn’t see you enough as it is. Your kids either.”

“Ever since JJ left, I haven’t had much to go home to. Cabe works all day long. We’re lucky to even see each other some days. But I get tired of no human interaction. That’s why I’ve cut down my hours. I’ve been going to a
bookclub. We discuss romance novels. You should come with me some time,” She said happily.

Brittany was married to The Chief of Police for Benton, Cabe Warren. He was a beast of a man, and took no crap. But he had a lot of responsibilities, and worked well into the night. Although, it worked for them. They’d been together since they were sixteen and seventeen. They’d had kids when they were 18 and 19. And their youngest, JJ, had just graduated from college and moved into her own place.

They were ‘free’ according to her. Not that they utilized that. They still worked just as much now as they did when their kids were young.

“Anyway, he wanted to make sure I was ‘alright,’” She shivered. “Yick.”

She felt the same way about Gustavo as I did. Although, she hadn’t shared those feelings with her husband.

Wanting the get the subject off Gustavo, I changed the topic. “Did you get anything good today?”

“There’s been a suicide, which I see you already found. And a couple of MVAs. They’re going to need some...work.” She grimaced.

Yick.

I hated watching her work, but she sure was a genius. She was a magician with putty, wire mesh, and cardboard. She could fix pretty much anything deformity wise, and I made them pretty once she was done. We worked well as a team.

We’d worked together for a little over a year now, and I couldn’t imagine working with anybody else.

“What time are you leaving?” I asked.

She looked at her watch when a deep voice said from the doorway behind her, “Now.”

We both jumped.

Her husband was standing at the door looking forbidding.

He had on a simple pair of jeans and a black t-shirt. It wasn’t the clothes that made him look authoritative. He just
was
. And the badge on the front of his jeans, with the large black gun at his hip only added to the effect.