The Seventh Sons (Sycamore Moon Series Book 1) (20 page)

"I saw what she did," she said lightly, "on the news." Melody brushed her eyes again to fight back any remaining urge to cry. "I didn't know."

The detective nodded understandingly. From what he could tell, the girl lived a life of blissful ignorance, in some ways probably more innocent than any of the other club members.

"Was she here?" he asked softly.

She nodded. "After the rabies hit the news, she told me to hunker down in the cabin. She said things might get worse before they got better. I didn't know what she was gonna do! I never questioned her."

"It's okay," said the detective. "Just tell me when you last saw her."

"She came here, earlier today." The girl pulled her knees up to her chin and covered her bare feet with her hands. The red paint on her fingers matched her toes, but the spatters of dried blood were a darker shade altogether. "I was just here waiting, like she asked, and she showed up, dragging that CDC woman with her."

"Nithya's alive?"

Another nod. "She was hurt real bad. I didn't know how, at first, but I'm pretty sure Mom bit her. She looked awful. Real pale."

The three other officers returned to the room. Hitchens looked frustrated. "The house is clear. There's no one else here."

Gutierrez raised his eyebrows as he saw the sliding door. "Bro, what happened here?" The detective looked back to Melody.

"She's a different person!" exclaimed Melody. "She came in here, demanding that we leave Sycamore. She wanted us to run away, but I told her I didn't want to leave the club. I didn't want to leave Angie." Melody crossed her arms on her knees and buried her face in them. "That's when Mom flipped out. She said I was abandoning her when she needed me. She never liked me hanging around Angie and accused me of being depraved, so I slapped her."

Gutierrez was more impressed with the story than with the damage. "A catfight over another girl? That's hot." Cole gave the rookie a smack on the back of the head.

Hitchens stepped closer to the girl and waved at the destruction in the house. "You two did all this?"

"No," she answered, lifting her head. "I mean, we did get rough, but out of nowhere, Angie burst in and jumped on her. I don't know how she got here. She fought Mom off a little. She was trying to defend me and help Nithya, I think, but you know Mom. She doesn't back off. She's too strong." Suddenly, she burst into tears again, failing to fight off her sadness any longer. "Everyone was bleeding. Everything changed!"

"What happened?" asked Maxim more urgently. "Where did they go?"

The girl covered her face with her hands. "I don't know," she said. "I hit my head. I woke up a few hours ago. Alone."

Maxim pushed himself up and kicked over his wicker seat. This was worse than he thought. Deborah had been trying to run, but now revenge might have been her priority. He couldn't let that happen, even if it meant doing something he didn't like.

"Melody," he said, taking some steps back and motioning to the officers, "I need you to work with us, okay? We're going to need to take you down to the marshal's office."

Hitchens nodded to his friend and Cole whipped out a set of handcuffs and stood the girl up. Melody complied with wet eyes, hands behind her back, apathetic to the world. "She's not my mom anymore. She doesn't love me."

The poor girl. Maybe it would do her some good to be under watch.

"I don't get it," said Gutierrez. "Why would a fugitive drag two people around with them? She can't get far. What's her end game?"

The rookie was quickly realizing what Maxim feared. Nithya may have been deluded, but she wasn't as dangerous as the ex-president. Doka was just a mercenary, not a fanatic. Deborah, on the other hand, was spiteful and had plenty of people that needed a lashing.

Maybe Gutierrez had a point, though. Maybe Deborah would stay close out of necessity. Unfortunately, in the dense brush of Sycamore, everything was close and impossibly far away at the same time.

"Where can she go, Melody?" asked the detective.

The girl just stood quietly, forlorn, and shrugged in helplessness.

Maxim put his hand on her cheek and lifted her head to his. "Did she say or do anything suspicious?"

"She said she was gonna kill them both."

"Anything else?"

Melody blinked several times as if she was reliving the bad memory but her thoughts found purchase on something worth remembering. "When she first got here, before we started arguing, I was cleaning the CDC woman up in the kitchen and Mom was doing something out back somewhere. When she came inside, I could tell she was crying before anything ever happened between us." Maxim nodded gently as he wiped Melody's eyes and pulled his hand back. "We always did wear our hearts on our sleeves, me and her. She tries to be colder, but it's not her nature."

Maxim watched as the officers walked her outside and loaded her into the squad car. "Keep an eye on her and go over everything inside that might lead us to Deborah." As for the detective, he walked into the kitchen and through the portal of broken glass.

Sycamore. This cabin was smack in the middle of it, just as it seemed everything was. This lot had no real fences or landlines; it was just a small clearing surrounded by an army of trees. Fortunately, the backyard was smaller than most.

The detective strolled past a flower garden lining the outside wall. Colorful purple blossoms with red tips and other unfamiliar flora looked generally well-kept. While the non-potted plant life did grow in wild patches, Maxim's overall impression was that this had been managed by someone with a green thumb. That was something he had never known about or suspected of Deborah.

He turned and looked at the house and surroundings. It would have been easy for Angelica to sneak up on the property through the thick vegetation. With her newfound strength, Diego's little sister was probably confused and desperate. Could Melody have been correct about the woman's motivations?

Being a wolf was, in all likelihood, something that Angelica did sign up for, whatever Diego would let himself believe. After the train yard, there was no love lost between her and Deborah, but maybe the girl did see Nithya as a friend and truly wanted to rescue her. Perhaps, in her own strange way, Nithya actually did think she was helping her victims.

The detective spun in a slow revolution to take in a panorama of the grounds. A tangled hose lay parched and cracked in the sun. Some long grass had overgrown a little-used brick oven. The sound of wind chimes picked up in a new chill breeze as the sun, fighting its last of the day, shone down and reflected a glimmer of light from deeper in the woods.

It caught the detective's eye.

Maxim approached, stepping into a clumped patch of leaves and ducking under bare branches. He noticed some ivy draping around a piece of stone and saw an object resting on top of it. It shimmered in the spotty sunlight that managed to pierce through the evergreen canopy.

Maxim Dwyer stepped up to the slab and picked up a silver wedding band and the piece of paper it sat on. The ring was smaller and thinner than the one on his finger but it held the same brushed sheen. Like his, there was a small imperfection etched out of the face. Maxim removed his band and lined it up next to the other. Both half heart symbols merged flawlessly into one.

Maxim's heart skipped a beat and he unwrapped the paper slowly and deliberately. It simply said, handwritten in blue ink, "You were right, Maxim. It was my fault."

The detective brushed away the strands of ivy as a pit formed in the center of his stomach. The rock was an unmarked headstone, but Maxim knew for certain who was buried underneath.

 

 

 

 

 

Sycamore Lodge was not its usual self tonight.

The weather was crisper than it had been all year, the first cold snap of the season, but there were no lights on inside the roadhouse, no lively fires on the polished stones of the patio. The line of parked cars and Harleys was absent, in its place only dirt and the occasional car belonging to the most dedicated of all-day drinkers.

It was an odd night. Even the moon was strangely absent from the vast, star-filled sky.

What the hell, thought Maxim. He wasn't here for company or celebration. He had just found out that his wife, Lola, was dead. He had already suspected as much, but after two years of being without her presence, it felt like a great release to be able to know with certainty. No, the detective did not need company on this night, but he was not here to drown either. He just wanted a single drink, a final toast to the life of his love.

There was nothing else to be done for now. His gambit of tracking Melody down had seemed promising, but they'd missed the action by hours. Now, the CDC was packing into the Sanctuary Marshal's Office and combing through the new information. It was only a matter of time before they came to the same conclusion as Maxim: there were no leads to Deborah remaining.

As the detective bounced up the patio steps and approached the door to the building, the eerie stillness overcame him. A slow night would have been desirable, but what he was witnessing was the quietness of death. The red wooden blinds had all been pulled down to cover the windows. Even the glass door was barred with a screen, and Maxim was deflated to find that it was locked.

That was strange. It wasn't especially late. Today wasn't a holiday. Even if it were, that would have proven a boon to business. Maxim tried to peek in past the screen, but it was too dark inside to see anything of note.

The detective turned to go and held his face in thought. Of all the nights for him to be barred from his drink, why tonight? As Maxim strategized his next course of action, he was interrupted by the ringing of his phone.

"I'm off work, Gutierrez," he answered.

"Sir," started the rookie excitedly, "I hope you don't mind, but I was looking at the land deeds. Remember you mentioned that Holton doesn't keep any property in her name? Well, the cabin we raided is registered to a Regina Beale."

"Huh." Where had Maxim heard that before?

"It's a DBA set up, a corporate shell name. I figured Holton might have used the company for other purchases. I was right. Guess what local business was recently purchased by Regina Beale?"

The detective turned his head and stared at the roadhouse behind him. "Sycamore Lodge."

"What—? How'd you know? Did you already find this?"

"No," said Maxim. "Just a feeling I suddenly got." Maxim scratched his beard as he pondered his next move. "Are you at the marshal's office? Put Diego on."

Gutierrez was chagrined. "Well, sir, you see... Diego skipped out of the clinic."

Maxim raised his hand to his forehead. "What? Where did he go?"

"He said we could get in touch with him at the clubhouse."

"Shit." The last thing the police needed was another brawl between the bikers. What's worse, Diego's distaste for technology meant he wouldn't be carrying his cell phone. "Okay, just get him in your sight."

"Sure thing, boss," said Gutierrez. "What are you up to?"

"Having a drink. I'll get back to you if I need you. And good work, rookie. Looks like I can't give you shit for those community college business classes anymore." Maxim disconnected the call.

The detective stood in the cold night. His skin was alive but it wasn't because of the weather. He knew Deborah had to be inside Sycamore Lodge. Moments passed. He paced in the roadside dirt and stared at the shuttered bar and pulled his suit jacket tighter around his body for warmth. He was in this situation now and was determined to make the best of it.

Maxim drew his gun and marched straight for the door. He used his mass and momentum, as Cole had done hours earlier, and put his foot to the lock, careful to avoid the glass. The frame buckled under his solid kick and the door flung open and crashed into a wooden panel within.

Maxim pressed his shoulder flush with the outside doorframe and peeked both ways. As he had anticipated, it was dark inside, too much to make out anything past the first table. He took a minute to see if anything transpired but was met with silence. All signs pointed to him being alone, but the detective didn't buy it. He could feel the black warning him away. In a place like Sycamore Lodge, the quiet was more damning than the chaos.

Maxim stood with his Glock at eye level, elbows tucked against his stomach.

"Deborah?" he called out.

Everything, still, was quiet, but the detective waited.

There was an instant where he heard a breath, and then the ex-president of the Seventh Sons finally spoke. "Good work, Maxim." The southern tang on her words didn't mask her displeasure.

Her voice came from the back corner of the room, near the hallway to the kitchen. She was centered in the building there, with an encompassing view of the entrances and the option to run in multiple directions. Going around the back seemed just as risky.

Deborah didn't say anything else as the detective mulled over his options. No matter what he did, he thought, nothing would change the fact that she was a wolf and he didn't have silver.

Maxim Dwyer sighed as his grip loosened on the pistol next to his face. He looked at the wedding band on his finger and knew his outlook had changed. There had already been so much fighting, so much death. Maybe the solution was to skirt that path entirely.

The detective brushed his jacket back to place his weapon in his holster but paused as he noticed the bushy plant next to him. Maxim cocked his head in thought and then dropped his Glock into the base of the planter.

Maxim slowly moved out of his cover. He swallowed hard and stepped inside the darkness, ready to confront whatever he found within.

Suddenly the bar was filled with an evil red light. The sconces along the walls, ornamented with deer antlers, buzzed to life as Deborah hit a switch. The main overhead lights that would have allowed patrons to see what they were eating remained off, but she'd achieved what she wanted. There was an ominous glow in the room that allowed him to see her and the others whom she had taken hostage.

Three men, older Sanctuary residents, were sitting on the floor in a line against the right wall. They had probably been drinking here when Deborah had taken over. Helen, a motherly bartender who Maxim recognized, was also present, sitting next to a young cook. He was new. They all had plastic ties around their ankles and their hands were behind their backs, similarly bound.

The devious woman who'd orchestrated this affair was standing over Nithya, who was the only one sitting in a chair. Deborah had rested a gun casually on the woman's right shoulder and patted her on the head with her free hand as if she were a wounded pet. It was hard to determine Nithya's condition in this light, but it was clear that she was stricken with a subdued apathy, an unsettling detachment that caused her to carry her head in a dizzying sway.

Maxim examined the setting and wondered if Doka was here. There was a stage area, a step down and further to the side, with the stone floor where Varela had been stabbed. That was the event that had set all of this into motion, and Maxim thought it fitting that they might find a conclusion in the same place. Upon inspection, the stage area, as well as the bar and the kitchen hallway, were empty.

Maxim cleared his throat.

"How'd you know I was here?" asked Deborah, pursing her pink lips as she waited.

"Regina Beale," said the detective.

"Ah," she said plainly. "A creation of my own, a throwback to Edward Fitzgerald Beale."

That's where Maxim had heard the Beale name before. Deborah loved to talk about how the man was commissioned to forge the passage west. Sycamore Lodge was originally built as an outpost for that work.

"Interesting man, really," said Deborah, her eyes glazing over as if they saw another time. "You could say that he started our tradition in the West. Have you ever heard of the Camel Corps?"

Maxim did not respond, carefully scanning the surroundings while affixing his attention on her. He didn't see any other threats. The Yavapai weren't a worry—they were dead. It was just him and the old woman, but she was danger enough.

The fallen president made a smacking sound with her lips, disappointed that the detective wasn't encouraging her to tell one of her stories, but she continued anyway. "For people of our affliction, camels provided a host of advantages over horses. They don't spook around wolves, for one, but they aren't as fast and don't fight like horses either. They live on less food and water. Out here, with supplies at a minimum, nothing is worse than having to feed your food."

Maxim knew the woman took a strange pride in carrying old traditions forward. She wasn't from here, having relocated from Alabama many years before, but she seemed to find solace by immersing herself in fresh histories. The detective clenched his jaw and let the woman say what she needed.

"Do you know that it's illegal to hunt camels out here?" She chuckled to herself and patted Nithya on the shoulder. "Not that you can find one anymore, but the animals became synonymous with werewolf activity. Edward Beale was a distinguished man who had special dreams, but his efforts out here didn't last long. He had to flee back east. But his empire, his legacy, still remains in us. Of course, I'm not his kin—I'm a noble daughter of the South—but our blood shares enough in common now. We have become a kind of family."

The detective peered at the woman, trying to get a feel for her state of mind. "Family is why I'm here," he said.

"Of course," she answered. "You know, it's natural to want to protect your kin. They provide you with a reach that, perhaps, drives you to expand it. That's why I may be guilty of being... overzealous with Ms. Rao's volunteers."

"It's past time for me to protect my family."

The woman looked directly into his eyes for the first time, sizing him up. It was as if the sudden realization of what was happening had finally hit her and she was forced to address what had to be done.

"It was plain stupid of you to come in here," she said. "You know that your authority don't mean squat to me now."

"I'm here for a trade," said Maxim, without emotion. His eyes swept the room. "Where's Angelica?"

"Safe," said the woman curtly. "I had to lock her up due to her recent developments."

Maxim nodded and walked over to the bar with soft steps. Deborah drew her pistol to him, but the detective merely raised his hands to show he meant no harm and continued on his way. "I found her grave and your note."

Deborah's mouth pinched into a frown. "I knew Melody would call the police after that little scuffle. She never had the heart to fight."

Maxim opened up a low refrigerator and grabbed a bottle. "She didn't tell me. Diego knew about the place."

"Oh that," said Mom, blinking back her anger. "You could say she had too much heart where that was concerned."

Deborah kept her pistol in the air and approached Maxim as he twisted the cap off of the bottle he'd procured. "Give me your gun," she ordered.

Maxim silently shrugged.

Deborah patted at his jacket and found his empty holster. She furrowed her brow and felt his arms and ankles. The detective just waited until she was satisfied.

"I told you. I didn't come for a fight." Maxim pulled a stemmed glass from overhead. "God, I fucking hate white wine," he said as he poured himself some. "She loved the stuff."

As the man took a sip, his dead wife's friend lowered her weapon. She fetched and poured her own glass.

"The last time I saw her, we split a bottle. Years before that, at our wedding, we drank it from the same glass. It was always special to her, so I shared the wine and the moments and never complained." A heavy sigh escaped from the bowels of his being. "Now, I can taste it for the last time and say goodbye."

Deborah watched in silence as the detective finished his words and then she held her glass high in the air. Maxim regarded the gesture dryly but then did the same before sipping from his glass. He took enough time to appreciate the moment, to draw it to a respectable conclusion, but he knew the impending business wouldn't allow him the serenity that he had hoped for.

"Lola's dead," said Maxim, picking himself up from his perch on the bar and walking back to confront her other killer. Deborah moved to protectively hover over Nithya once more. "We all had a part in that. But I loved her, even if I didn't show it, and I understand the bond of family. All of us here, we can still get out of this. You could see your family again."

The red light created jagged lines on Deborah's weathered face, and she shook her head with predetermined resolve. "Melody disowned me. She'll never look at me the same again after she found out what I did." The woman balled her free hand into a fist and pressed her lips tightly together as if she were about to blow, but then she let the feeling escape her hard heart. "I've made missteps. In retrospect, I had a funny way of protecting the MC. I don't expect you to understand, but she should. I did it for her. The cabin, this bar, Regina Beale, it was all set up for her legacy. No, Maxim, you and I do have something in common. It's that we were both big disappointments to our families. Unlike you, I've decided not to drag mine down. The best thing I can do for Melody is to leave Sycamore."

Maxim took a step closer. "Maybe you're right. Maybe we are both fuckups. Maybe neither of us deserve redemption, but Angelica is Diego's family. We can both choose not to destroy that. We can both choose not to spread our misery to others."