Out Of The Shadows (HADES) (Whiskey Bend MC Series, Book #4)

Drake looked down at the clubhouse from his vantage point and grinned. The fact his grin didn’t mean he felt joy was nothing new for him. The only pleasure he had anymore was the kill. All other emotions had died a very long time ago in a place very far away from this little town.

He had survived Danbury, but only just. That place had deserved to be burnt to the ground with everyone in it, especially Doctor Winger. He was the worst of them all. He had enjoyed inflicting the pain back onto the good doctor that he’d suffered with for thirteen years.

He’d seen Charlie go into the building and he caught sight of him coming back out, but didn’t really pay attention to him until he opened the trunk of his car and began unloading familiar items.

Drake swore. By chance, they’d found out where he’d been staying. While he’d been staying at several places around town he’d left most of his possessions in one place far enough away they wouldn’t be taken by anyone else. He thought after the fire the other night, his possessions were long gone but apparently the local fire department had done its job. It couldn’t be their brilliant minds. He was much cleverer than they were. He’d purposely hadn’t gone back to the church because he knew that place wasn’t safe to go to. He didn’t want to give them a chance to find his stash and now it looks like they found it anyway.

Drake craned his head as far as he could to see what all they’d found. Damn, they found everything I had. He had to get out of here and regroup. Looking up and down the street, he jumped from the tree limb he had been sitting on into the nearby bushes and after he checked again to see if anyone had noticed him, he escaped from the area.

He knew there was nothing left for him at the church. All his personal things now sat in the club house. He knew he would miss his journals most of all. They were never intended for anyone else to see, as neither were his knives. He had quite a collection of different knives he’d used over the years. Each knife had a history with him and he knew he had to get them back.

But how could he get his items back? He couldn’t get inside there again. Caden and the others would be on alert for him now. No, he would have to find another way to get his stuff back.

~*~

Caden looked over the items Charlie brought in and was amazed. He picked up a book and began flipping through it. He didn’t expect to find it contained much but when he really looked at the book again, he was stunned by the words written there.

He quickly glanced through the rest of the items and found three more books. Before he could sit down in a chair, Hades let out a whistle. Caden looked up and saw him pick up a wicked looking knife.

The blade was set in a bone handle. The handle was smooth and contoured, but it was the blade that drew Hades’ attention. It was about nine inches long and as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. He looked at the other knives in the roll up. Each was unique in their own right and each was as sharp and wicked looking as the first. Hades glanced over at Caden. “We’ve got his weapons. I wonder what he’s willing to do to get them back.”

“Probably kill someone,” Caden answered. “We also have his most intimate thoughts and desires. Shall we find out what makes him tick?”

Cole came over and picked up one of the books. As he paged through it, he too was sucked into the words Drake had written. After a few pages, he had to put the book down. The thoughts and ideas Drake had written were truly those of an evil mind. He looked over at Caden.

Caden caught Cole’s stare. He lifted an eyebrow. “Pretty raunchy stuff huh?”

“That is some of the sickest stuff I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. My god, what sort of person would actually get pleasure from this stuff?”

Hades stared at them both. “You two are cops. You’ve seen the worst, but when you have lived on the outside of societies edges, you’d better be able to deal with cancers like this freak. I say we fucking kill him outright as soon as we see him. Cause believe me, he is gonna kill the both of you just for kicks.”

“This stuff is from someone who is pure evil.” Cole shook his head.

Caden nodded his agreement. “But how did he get that way? That’s the question we have to answer.”

“Does it fucking matter?” Hades raised a brow at hem. “He will die the same way as he lived…badly.”

“No wonder no one wanted me to remember him.” Cole looked away.

“So how do we catch him?” Caden asked.

“To catch a killer, we have to think like a killer,” Hades told him.

“But we aren’t cold blooded killers, and I don’t plan on becoming one,” Cole argued. “I don’t plan on becoming one either, but in this instance we may not have a choice.”

Cade shook his head. “That’s where we differ from Drake. He gave into his urges, we don’t have to.”

Hades rolled his eyes at the pair. “You two have never seen war…that I can tell.” He stepped closer and looked at both men. “I do have the urge to stop this freak. I will give into that urge, period. No pause, no fucking hesitation. That gets you nothing but dead.” He turned to survey the knives again. “Like how many throats were slit with those? You don’t know. And if we don’t kill him, he will use them again.” He swung his steely gaze back to the two cops. “On women and children.”

Caden looked shook up by Hades cold reasoning as he picked up the book again. “Okay, so as distasteful as this is, we need to know as much about him as possible. The only way I know how to do that is to read this stuff.”

“What about everyone else here?” Charlie asked as he joined them.

Cole got up and walked down the hall to get a cup of coffee.

Caden put the book down and looked over at the other man. “What about them?”

Hades stared at Charlie wondering the same thing.

Charlie shrugged. “I’m just wondering how Cole is handling this situation.

“How do you think you would feel if suddenly you found out a serial killer had been following you over nine states for eleven years then you find out the serial killer is your brother?” Caden reasoned.

Suddenly, from the doorway came the answer from Cole, “He would think his brother needed to be stopped and would be willing to do whatever it took to stop him.”

“The only questions I have for you are can you forget Drake is your brother and take him out if the need arises?” Hades stated.

“I’ll take him out in a heartbeat,” Cole came back.

“The same blood running through your veins runs through his. We need to know if it’s going to be a problem for you,” Caden insisted.

“That may have been true a long time ago, but not anymore. I can’t help the fact my parents gave birth to both of us, but he stopped being my brother before I even knew him. To me, he’s nothing more than a stone cold killer,” Cole confided. “And don’t forget he’s the man that murdered the love of my life not to mention my child.”

“That’s good to know, because if you hesitate out there and someone dies, I’ll hold you responsible,” Caden assured him. “Speaking of children, I should call Jake with an update on Ethan.”

Hades remained silent. These two could think what they needed to. They were on the right side of the law. He and his brothers had been on the other side many times. While he’d fought in defense many times, he had been known to quietly take men out with a knife blade when silence was necessary to save other lives and so had many who’d served with him. Taking this fucker out gave him no qualms to his conscience. Hope was his, and as his, he would protect her first and fuck the rules.

Cole pointed to the items on the table. “So what are you going to do with all of this stuff?”

“Hopefully we’ll be able to find out what makes Drake tick so we have a chance of tripping him up,” Caden answered.

“What can I do to help?” Cole asked.

“If you can stomach it, you can help me read these journals, I have to warn you though, they are very graphic and very disturbing. He wrote his thoughts and feelings down and what he wrote was enough to make you want to puke,” Caden warned as he reached for his phone to call his partner in Chicago.

“I know I read some of them, didn’t I?” Cole responded.

Hades was already reading one and he snickered.

The two men looked stunned as they glanced over at him.

Hades shrugged. “He’s a waste of space. A loser with a knack to kill. So don’t worry about taking him out. I don’t like too much company.”

They simply stared at him.

“Cops.” Hades again snickered and began to read.

Cole picked up one of the books and sat down to read it. After an hour’s worth of pages, he wanted to puke but held it back. “I have to talk to Raymond again.”

Hades and Caden looked up. Neither said a word.

He stood up and dialed the number Raymond had given him. Then put it on speaker phone. When Raymond answered, Cole had to ask, “Are you packed yet?”

“What do you mean?” Raymond asked cautiously, but there was a hint of panic in his voice. Only Cole would have picked up on it, and it was sending up a red flag.

“Don’t you dare,” Cole warned his brother.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t take off for places unknown. You have a habit of doing that sort of thing and right now I need your input,” Cole told him.

Raymond sighed deeply. “I can’t help it. Drake scares the hell out of me and I have to take off. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to be within a thousand miles of him.”

“Hey, I know how you feel. How do you think I feel about the last eleven years? Knowing he’s been following me, watching me, and killing innocent women wherever I went?” Cole paused and continued, “I almost feel responsible for those women, but I know I’m not. I didn’t even connect it all. Someone else did that.”

“Did you have a reason for this call, or was it just to chat?” Raymond asked.

“I wanted to tell you, last night Drake pulled off his boldest move yet.”

“What did he do?” Raymond asked. “I have a feeling I’m not going to like the answer.”

“He came right into the locked down compound in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep, and left us a note written in his own blood. We never heard a thing and woke up about an hour too late to catch him.”

Raymond was silent on the other end of the phone line.

“Well, aren’t you going to say anything?” Cole asked. When there was nothing but silence on the other end, Cole was angry. “Are you going to help us or not? I really don’t have time to beg you for help.”

“Please, don’t, okay.” Raymond begged. “Drake found me once about fifteen years ago. At the time, he was still in Danbury. He told me he was going to get out one day, and he told me he was coming after me when he escaped. He told me details about how he was going to make me suffer everything he had suffered over the years. It was horrible.”

Cole thought about what his brother had told him. That was the reason he moved all the time and why they had lost touch more than once over the years. “I know this may not be the right time to ask, but I need to know what happened to him in that place.”

Raymond groaned. “You really don’t want to know. It was horrible.”

Cole sighed. “I probably don’t want to know but I need to know. The information might give us a chance to catch him. We need to know about any weaknesses, any details you might know about what freaks him out.” Cole paused then added, “We’re trying to get him to make a mistake that will help us catch him. I know it’s a lot to ask, but you know him better than anyone else and right now we need this.”

Raymond was silent. “I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t even want to think about what he told me.”

“You are the only one who can,” Cole argued.

“You have to understand something here. All my life Drake was the older twin, the more aggressive twin. Even as kids, he was the leader, I was always the follower. That comes from being scared to death of him. Once when we were about three, we were out in the yard and Drake wanted to see if I would really turn blue if I held my breath. I tried, but it wasn’t good enough for Drake. He put his hands around my neck and literally squeezed the breath out of me.” Raymond paused in his story. “Mom thought it was an accident, but she didn’t see his eyes before I passed out. They were glazed over with something I’ve never seen in anyone else. I learned to be very wary of being alone with Drake.”

Cole waited for him to continue. He could hear the sound of Raymond striking a match and heard his brother take a deep breath then exhale. Cole knew Raymond only smoked when he was stressed.

“There was only one thing that ever scared Drake. It wasn’t the dark, like you would think most kids would be afraid of, and it wasn’t the boogieman or monsters under the bed. Drake’s biggest fear is becoming blind.”

“Being blind? Why would he be afraid of that?” Cole was surprised as he glanced at Hades and Caden.

Raymond sighed. “I know it’s unreasonable, but that’s what he’s afraid of. He would never play any kind of game as a kid that required a blindfold, and he hated anything to do with blindness. I think that was one of the reasons he killed Grandfather’s dog Duke. Duke was getting old and going blind.”

“What else can you tell me?” Cole asked.

“When he was in Danbury, as punishment, they would tie him down and blindfold him. It was on the order of one of his doctors. Just before he escaped, he permanently blinded that doctor by spraying his eyes with lye. It almost killed him.”

“Please don’t run away. Not this time. Drake is here and he will never find you,” Cole begged his brother.

Raymond waited for a moment then told him. “I’ll wait, but if you don’t catch him, I’ll be gone so fast. I won’t wait around for him to find me.”

“Okay, fair enough. Wish us luck that we can stop him,” Cole said.

“You don’t need luck, you need a miracle,” Raymond added before he hung up.

“Maybe that’s what turned him into a killer.”

Caden looked at Charlie and they both looked at Cole.

Hades shook his head as he dropped the journal he’d been reading. “I don’t think so. Drake was born a killer.”

Charlie agreed lifting one of the diaries he was reading. “He likes the hunt, stalking his victim and moving in for the kill a little too much and way too often. You know what he does to his victims, you comprised the files. I think whatever is wrong with Drake, there’s more to it than retaliation for being punished.”

Cole took a deep breath and admitted the truth, “I guess you’re right.”

“Maybe we should call all the hardware stores and hunting shops and tell them to let us know if anyone comes in to buy knives,” Cole suggested.

“We’ve already done that. We know Drake will need to replenish his collection. We also have some of our officers working in the stores undercover,” Charlie told him. “We went back out to Doc Jones’ and picked up everything sharp out there that he may have taken after he killed that poor couple. And we notified the other clinics and vet’s office. Hopefully we’ll get word back soon if he tries to purchase or steal his choice of weapon.”

“He may not need more than the weapon he already has,” Hades added. “These are his collection, but a killer like him would keep his most trusted with him.”

“So what are we going to do about this weakness of his?” Caden asked.

Hades laughed. “That’s an easy one. We’re going to arm everyone with mace. The mace won’t blind him but it will put his eyes out of action long enough to catch him…” he paused. “…or to kill him.”

Charlie looked up. “Hades—”

“No don’t even try that Charlie. This man is set to kill Hope. I’m going to make sure he can’t.” His phone rang and he rolled his eyes. “Yeah, his ears must be fucking ringing.” He swiped his phone screen.