Page 92 of Reckless Seduction
“This one of them?” my father asks, pointing to a tall woman seen talking with Kiernan. My brother nods. “You can’t tell much because of how grainy the footage is, but that is Sarah Crowe.”
“That is Bailey’s ‘stepmother?’” Kiernan asks in disbelief.
“The old witch herself,” my father mutters darkly. “Quite the social climber, that one.” He points to another woman whose back is turned toward the camera. “That is Lina.”
I squint at the photo.
“How can you tell?” I ask. “You can’t see her face.”
“The jacket.” He points to the other photo. “It is the same as the one Lina is wearing in this photo. Look at the patch.”
Peering closer, I am able to just make out the patch of the Iron Horsemen. Underneath the main symbol is something I don’t expect.
“She’s Eriksen’s old lady?”
My father nods. “You can’t see it as easily in the other photo because the back of her jacket is more obscured, but you can see that both jackets have matching symbols that have the president’s moniker on them.”
Well, fuck.
“All this time, she pretended to be Bailey’s best friend,” I hiss darkly. “Her mentor. But really, she was just keeping an eye on her investment.”
“So who works for whom?” Kiernan asks, puzzled. “I think Lina works for Sarah, but now I’m beginning to think Sarah works for Lina.”
“She does.” Ava’s quiet voice sneaks up behind us. She is stealthy that way. Years of being invisible and having to sneak around gave her some pretty neat ninja skills. “So does her ex-fiancé, Drew.”
“And you know this because…” Kiernan lets the question hang in the air. Ava smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Well, we know Drew works for Christian. His logo is on the side of the containers he is using to ship his cargo. Bailey confirmed that.”
“All right, that is a gimme,” I joke. Ava chuckles, the sound full of sorrow. She will be hurting for a while. Two weeks is just a drop in a pond when you compare it to an eternity of grieving. But she will never be alone. We will always be right beside her. We are family.
“That woman”—Ava points at the picture of Lina—“is the one Elias placed in charge of the strip clubs and brothels.” She moves her finger to point at the photo of Sarah Crowe. “She is an investor. One of his top investors, in fact. They are the only two women he lets in on his business dealings.”
“How progressive of him,” Kiernan drawls sarcastically.
“Elias believed that he would have less trouble with a woman in charge than a man,” Ava elaborates. “Said that men think with their dicks, but a woman thinks with her bank account.”
Our father chuckles. “I’m putting that on a T-shirt.”
“But why Bailey?” I wonder. “We know she wasn’t supposed to be in that alley, but everything points to the fact that she was meant to see Drew cheating on her, and she was meant to break down. They wanted to grab her.”
“I have a theory about that,” our father says. “I’ve gone over everything Bridgett compiled on Bailey. She had to do some further digging, but once she caught a thread, she followed it.” He sits in one of the chairs at the table and takes a gulp of his beer.
“Let’s start with what we do know, or at least what Bailey knows and told us,” he continues. “She was born to a crack addict who died of an overdose. Crowe somehow found her, but no one is sure how. He took her in and pretended that they adopted her but tells Bailey that she is his illegitimate daughter.”
“Yeah,” Kiernan sneers as we take seats across from him. Ava slides in next to our father, her head resting against his shoulder. “That about sums it up. But I doubt that crack whore is her real mother.”
“That’s right,” our father confirms. “The woman Bailey thought to be her mother is, in fact, nothing more than a jealous biker bunny who, at some point, most likely kidnapped Bailey. When I suspected this, I had Declan down at the crime lab runBailey’s hair through CODIS, and it popped up with a match for a woman named Elizabeth Winters.”
Kiernan and I glance at one another. “That is Bailey’s mother, right? Bridgett mentioned her name when I had her searching for Eriksen’s daughter. Before we knew who it was.”
“Elizabeth Winters was the president of the Vixens MC. Her father was the president of the Iron Horsemen out in San Diego.”
I give a low whistle. That is a piece of information I didn’t expect. The Vixens Motorcycle Club was well known for their sudden and gruesome deaths nearly?—
“Well, fuck,” Kiernan and I breathe at the same time.
“Their deaths are still an open case,” my father tells us. “But knowing that Lina is most likely the one pulling the strings from behind the curtains, it makes me wonder if she had a hand in their deaths.”
“Did we ever get a name for the woman Bailey knows as her mother?” I question. “I can’t remember her ever mentioning it.”
