I studied the black and white image of a smiling Talia and the familiarity of her smile struck me. My skin prickled. I had seen a smile just like hers recently. But where? Frustrated, I peeled the newspaper article from the scrapbook and shoved it into my back pocket. As I rode back to the clubhouse, the question rolled around in my brain. Then Churchill’s came back to me.
Sometimes the very thing we should be afraid of is in our own home.
That’s when it clicked. That’s when the pieces slowly started to move together.
“You took your sweet time,” Bull said when I arrived back.
I didn’t answer. I brushed past him, Caleb and Maverick and thundered through the clubhouse toward the long corridor where we had our showcase. Behind the glass was a ton of memorabilia of past and present club members. I scanned past the rows of scrapbooks, framed photographs, and the dog tags and cuts of the original seven who were now dead, until I came to a couple of photographs side by side. One was of a GI, his body rigid, his face severe with focus as he looked into the scope of his sniper rifle. Beside it was a smiling photo of the same GI. I held the photo up of Talia until their smiles were side by side.
They were the same.
INDY
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
The monster who had kidnapped me and kept me tied to a bed for a day wasn’t a monster at all. He was a friend.
“Surprise.”
Elias Knight sat in a chair with his arms folded, his legs parted, and a smug look on his face.
I felt dazed.
Elias. The mild-mannered biker whom I had grown so fond of.
My shoulders sagged.
“No . . . ” I whispered.
His smug grin grew. “Afraid so, Indy.”
I felt gutted.
“Why?” Momentarily my fight left me. I thought we were friends.
Elias looked perplexed, like he was genuinely surprised that I hadn’t worked it all out yet. “You really haven’t figured it out?”
I shook my head. “No.”
I tried to swallow but my mouth was too dry and my throat too parched. Elias’s eyes darkened as they focused on me and his grin slowly faded.
“She was my sister,” he said with a dark edge to his voice. “My twin sister.”
It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about, and with the realization came a rush of panic and confusion. “Talia?”
His brows dug in. “Yes, Talia.”
My hungry, dehydrated brain struggled to process what was happening. I shook my head as if I could dislodge some of the fog. “So this was all about revenge?”
“Somebody had to make them pay for what they did,” he said, his eyes hard and sharp.
I felt dazed. “But they didn’t kill her.”
“They might as well have.”
“They were your brothers,” I whispered. “You rode beside them for six years. Six years, Elias.”
“What can I say, I’m patient,” he said with a weird calm.
Again, I shook my head to try and clear the fog. “Why did you join the club that you blame for your sister’s death?”
“Good question. Thank you for asking.” He stood up and started pacing back and forth in front of me. “You see, at first, I wasn’t out to kill anyone. I was going to simply break the club apart from the inside. Gain their trust, become a faithful confidante and use whatever intimate knowledge I had to unravel the MC inch by glorious inch. And my plan was beginning to work. A few ruined deals here and there, a few phone calls to the Knights or the feds. And I have to say, Indy, it was a pleasure to sit amongst them and feel their frustrations when their run of bad luck began. And to know that I was the cause of it all, well, that was truly poetic!” He grinned again, clearly pleased with himself. But it suddenly vanished and his eyes settled on me again. “But then your old man died, and man, I’d seen nothing like that outpouring of grief in my six years in the club. It was magnificent, and that funeral, hell yeah! That was some ostentatious bullshit right there!” The darkness in his eyes zeroed in on me and he stopped pacing again. “You think my sister got that when she died? You think she got a send off like that?”
Blood whirled in my ears and again I struggled to swallow “I don’t know.”
“Eight people. That’s how many people came to her funeral. Eight. And not one of the men who stuck their dick in her showed up. Yet, when a dried-out, old, wife-beating drunk goes flatline, he fills up a church and draws chapters in from near and far.” He shook his head. “That’s when I figured, hey, nothing impacts these guys like a good old death in the club. And since I failed to get any real traction with the screwed-up business dealings, I thought to myself, hey, why not create more deaths in the club? And just like that, a new plan evolved in my head.”