{Nauti Boys 5} - Nauti Deceptions (29 page)

“I should bash you over the head myself and drag your ass home,” he snapped. “From what Father says, Zeke Mayes isn’t some paranoid fool, Rogue. He was worried enough to call Father; that means there’s something to worry about.”

“Yeah, he’s real damned worried someone might touch that frozen heart of his.” She swung her legs out of the bed, fury erupting inside her. “Let me tell you what Zeke’s problem is, John. He can’t stand to keep his hands off me, so he had to make certain Daddy hauls me home for his own piece of mind. Now I really don’t give a damn if either of them are resting easy at night. I’m an adult; I’ll decide for myself when to tuck my tail and run, if you don’t mind.”

Her voice was rising. She was so furious she could barely stand it. How dare Zeke call her father and upset him this way? How dare her father sic her brother on her rather than calling himself?

That was just like Daddy. He knew if he called himself that Rogue would go ballistic. Rather than facing her anger, he called John. Because John would rather fight with her as to breathe some days.

Yes, sibling rivalry was still alive and well.

“Rogue, don’t make me get on that jet and come after you,” John warned her.

“John, don’t make me call Daddy and fight with him over this. You know it will only end up coming back to slap you on the ass. I’m his favorite, remember?”

“You’re his favorite because you’re as crazy as he is,” John accused. “You can fight it out with him here. I’d suggest you pack.”

“I’d suggest you take a flying leap,” she raged back at him. “Good-bye, John.”

“Rogue, don’t you hang up on me.”

She hung up the phone, then turned it off. Rogue inhaled slowly, deeply. If she didn’t get a handle on the hurt and the anger churning through her, then she was going to explode. Exploding wasn’t a good thing. She never failed to hurt herself more than she did anyone else whenever she lost control of her temper.

Damn Zeke, she thought as she stalked to the shower. Damned tattletale. He should have never called her father and gotten him involved like this. She knew her family. She could expect every damned one of them to descend on her like a plague of locusts now. She’d be lucky if her grandparents didn’t fly in with the rest of the brood.

She shuddered at the thought. She loved her grandparents, she really did. But they were dangerous. Forget the upper-crust Bostonian reserve they used like a shield. Her grandparents were wicked. And they didn’t take prisoners or show mercy.

She was going to kill Zeke. She was going to string him up and make him scream for mercy. Oh, he had seriously underestimated her.

An hour later, showered, dressed, and ready to rumble, she pushed into the main section of the bar and behind the long teak counter where Jonesy was checking liquor. He straightened from his stooped position and glared back at her.

They hadn’t talked much since the night Zeke had caught him trying to throw her across the room, and Rogue was saddened by the fact that the friendship she had once believed they had was disintegrating.

“You working that damned restaurant today?” Jonesy barked. “It’s a sad day when a Walker is more concerned with other folks’ businesses than they are with their own.”

Rogue ignored the comment as she moved around him to the register and collected the receipts from the past night’s sales.

“We gotta put orders in today,” he snapped. “Or do you care?”

“Then put the orders in,” she told him. “You know how to do it.”

“It’s your business,” he sneered. “You do it.”

“I could always fire you. Again. And hire someone who will do it.” She shrugged.

She hated to admit that she preferred working with Janey over working at the Bar. The Bar had saved her at one time; it had helped to remake her at a time when she had been smarting from the loss of her teaching job and the humiliation of the pictures that had hit the Internet.

Over the years the bikers that had helped her survive had slowly drifted away. A few had died, others had found lives, until there was just her and Jonesy. And now, Jonesy was drifting away as well.

Maybe it was time to admit what she had sensed all along. The bar wasn’t a permanent part of her life. It was a way to piss folks off and a means of survival. It wasn’t what she enjoyed doing though.

“There were comments made about you sneaking off with that sheriff last night,” he spat back at her. “Folks are gossiping over it. It’s going to hurt business.”

She rolled her eyes as she shoved the receipts into a large envelope to go over later.

“My private life is just that, Jonesy,” she informed him. “If folks don’t like it, then they can find another bar to go to.”

She was wary around him now. She kept him in her peripheral vision and made certain she had room to run if she needed it. She should have ordered him out of the bar the night he had thrown her across her office. Where would he go though? Rogue knew him; she knew he had nothing but the bar and the little house he owned a few miles away.

Jonesy didn’t have family, with the exception of a daughter that rarely spoke to him, and the only friends he had worked at the bar. He was always snarly and grouchy, but lately, he had been extreme, tense, and hard for anyone to get along with.

“Lea quit last night,” he informed her.

Somehow, that didn’t surprise Rogue.

“Then hire someone else,” she told him as she looked over the liquor that lined the wall and the shelves beneath the bar.

“It ain’t that easy,” he ground out between clenched teeth.

Rogue straightened and stared back at him suspiciously as he towered over her.

“What would make it easier, Jonesy, is if you didn’t scare your bartenders away,” she told him. “You’re like a rabid junkyard dog and the employees get tired of taking it.”

She should have done something about him before now. She’d always convinced herself that Jonesy was just like that. It was a gruff exterior, and it didn’t mean anything. But now, she was beginning to wonder if it didn’t go deeper.

“Pussy-faced employees are what they are,” he snapped. “None of ’em have a lick of sense. I told you to let me take care of hiring them, but you have to just stick your nose in it, don’t you? You tell me to take care of hiring, then you turn around and get all nosy and bossy. What good does it to do me to even consider anyone?”

“Jonesy, what the hell is your problem?” She swung around on him, anger beginning to beat harshly inside her. “What makes you think you can tell me how to run my life or my bar? And what in the hell made you think you could manhandle me the way you did the other night? Are you losing your damned mind?”

He stared back at her in surprise now, his face flushing before he turned away and ran his hand over his bald head.

“I didn’t mean to get rough with you,” he snarled, his back to her. “It was an accident, and I shouldn’t have touched you.”

An apology from Jonesy?

“Then why did you?”

He turned slowly, his expression fierce as he stared back at her. “You don’t listen anymore, Rogue. You’re tramping yourself out to that sheriff knowing damned good and well he won’t stick around no longer than it takes for him to get his rocks off. Just like Joe and Jaime. I told you they were bad news. Always in here bumming beer and sucking up to you. You were going to give them part of the bar, weren’t you? I heard you talking about it.”

That had been her plan. Joe and Jaime had loved the bar; Rogue had known she was growing discontented with it. But she wanted it to remain in Walker hands.

“Joe and Jaime loved the bar, Jonesy,” she said, a sense of sadness enveloping her. “They helped me a lot here.”

“They got in your damned way and conspired to take this damned bar from both of us,” he snarled, his beefy arms crossing over his heavy chest. “They were good for nothing, Rogue. You just couldn’t see it. Just like that damned sheriff. He’ll get you killed as dead as he got his wife killed.”

Rogue stared back at him in surprise.

“Zeke had nothing to do with his wife’s death,” she shot back furiously. “She was killed in a car accident while he was still in L.A.”

A flash of cunning glittered in his gaze for a second.

“Well, there’s a piece of gossip you didn’t know,” he chuckled coldly. “No, little girl. Zeke Mayes’s wife was murdered because he was sloppy. He was working an investigation in L.A. into the bondage scene. Good ole married detective Mayes was bopping pain whores and one of them found out who he was and what he was doing. His wife died and his son almost died. He was the reason she died, just like he’s going to be the reason you die.”

Pain whores. It was a term Rogue had heard used for women who liked sexual pain. Whips, chains, multiple sexual partners, cutting, the list went on and on.

“Where did you hear this trash, Jonesy?” she asked in disgust. “Zeke is not into giving pain, and I doubt very seriously if he did anything to cause his wife’s death, no matter why or how she died. And you need to stop this now, before I call Alex Jansen and have you escorted off my property.”

“Gonna fire me, are you?” He snorted, dropped his arms from his chest, and moved farther back along the counter. “Check it out yourself. Ain’t many people that know what happened, but I was here when he came back with that kid of his, and I was here before his old man died. His daddy blubbered the whole story into his beer one night, whining like a little girl ’cause his boy was a failure.”

Jonesy didn’t lie. He was mouthy, he was pissy, but he wasn’t a liar. He believed what he was saying. Rogue refused to accept it. Zeke’s wife might have died because of his involvement in an investigation, but it wasn’t because he had failed. She knew him too well for that. His steely control wouldn’t have allowed for such a failure.

“Jonesy, don’t make me fire you.” She faced him, shoulders squared, fury beginning to build inside her. “Don’t push our friendship any further.”

“In other words, don’t tell you the truth about that jackass you’re fucking?” he sneered.

“If that’s how you want to see it,” she replied coldly, “then that’s exactly what I mean. Because the next time this trash comes out of your mouth, you’ll be out of here.”

With that she turned away from him and began making the order list for the liquor. An hour later she was in the kitchen in the back getting the order list the cook had left last night before moving to her office to make the necessary orders.

She still had her own financials to go through and get in shape for monthly taxes, and those for the Mackay restaurant were waiting for her to complete as well.

She had a full day ahead of her, and one little side trip to make to the sheriff’s office before she headed to the restaurant. Zeke, like Jonesy, would find out just exactly how much she thought of tattlers. Which was nil. Zero. And she was getting fed up to her back teeth with autocratic, arrogant men. It was time to do something about both of them.

*****

That evening Zeke ran his fingers over his short hair and stared at the reports the county and city coroners had submitted. The county coroner, Jay Adams, sat in the visitor’s chair on the other side of the desk, his lined face creased into a worried scowl as Zeke read the report.

Long minutes later Zeke lifted his head and pinned the other man with his eyes. “You sure about this, Jay?” he asked quietly.

“Gene and I both ran the same tests and came back with the same conclusions, Zeke. I don’t know who killed those boys, but they were unconscious before the shots were fired. Both boys were pumped full of heroin, not just Joe. Evidence shows they were nearly dead before those shots were fired. I don’t know what you have going on here, but I’m ruling it a double murder and I’m using those grounds to justify holding their grandmother’s body for an autopsy as well.”

Zeke rubbed his hand over his jaw and shifted through the reports before blowing out a heavy breath.

“Why?” He lifted his gaze back to Jay. “Why go to these lengths to hide a murder?”

Jay shrugged. “Hell, it looked like a murder-suicide, Zeke. Chances were, we’d never have run these tests this in depth. Even with your suspicions I wouldn’t have normally justified it myself. It was a damned slow week though, so what the hell. Whoever did this, they almost pulled it off. We had to look for this.” He waved his hand to the report. “It didn’t come easy.”

Zeke stared down at the file and he knew, knew in the pit of his stomach, that the Walkers had been killed by the Freedom League’s killer. The why of it was driving him crazy. There were no answers to be found, no way to tie Joe or Jaime to any one particular woman, or to pinpoint if this was simply a League hit and the woman was an incidental.

“The Walkers were rumored to be courting one particular woman,” Zeke said. “They told their grandmother they had a date with her that weekend. The day of that particular date they’re killed. According to their sister, their grandmother was trying to contact me in regard to that girl’s identity. She never called, but she ends up dead the same day.”

“Sounds like you’re looking for a very smart little girl, or a really pissed off husband or lover.” Jay shrugged as he rose to his feet. “If you learn anything let me know. Until then, you have our reports and your evidence to continue the investigation. Good luck on that.”