Page 43 of Thor
“But you ordered them to kill my brother Thor, here.”
“Thor?”He looked confused.“Who is Thor?”
I spoke up.“I am.And it makes me angry when people try to carve me up in an alley or take potshots at me from rooftops.Makes me fucking furious when they threaten my woman.”
Comprehension lit his face.“You’re John Stennson?”
I narrowed my eyes.“How do you know my legal name?”
He gulped and shook his head.“No.Not going there.”
Ace slapped a hand on my shoulder.“You might have to answer questions on this if the police stumble across the corpse.Let Beast and me find out what the hell is going on, and we’ll fill you in later.”
Beast picked up a leather strap and ran the knife over it a few times, stopping to test the sharpness of the blade with his thumb.He glanced over at me.“Go.Your woman is waiting for you.”
I turned and strode toward the door.
“What the hell does he mean, corpse?”Behind me, I could hear Randolph Amundsen struggle against the ropes that held him to the chair.“Hey!You can’t just leave me here with these psychos.”
This was a game we’d played out more than once.Good biker, bad biker?Cute that he picked me as the good guy, after paying to have me killed.I turned back toward our captive.“Tell me why, and maybe I’ll see what I can do.”
“Why?”He looked confused.
“Why you want me dead.Better make it good.”
The man looked from Ace to Beast with a terrified expression.“It wasn’t personal.Honestly.“He gulped, his eyes fixated on the knife shining in Beast’s hands.“I have a client, an old lady.Mary Lansky.She didn’t have any kids, never got married, and she was going to leave her fortune to my charitable foundation.I already had plans for that money.Then she did one of those stupid DNA things that tracks down relatives you never knew you had.It turned up you, and she hired a private investigator to track the connection.Luckily, I managed to have him report to me.She trusted me, you see.I’ve been handling her affairs for decades now.Turns out your father was some kind of distant cousin she’d never met.So she asked me to try and find you.Stupid bitch wanted to meet you, get to know you, all that shit.The cunt planned to rewrite her fucking will in your favor.”
“Watch your language.”Ace’s tone was mild, but that just made it more terrifying.
Randolph whimpered, and a wet stain spread across the front of his pants.Damn wussy pissed himself.
I felt like someone had hit me with a two by four.“I have a blood relative?”I’d grown up knowing I was an orphan, and I’d accepted that a long time ago, but I’d always longed for a family.That was the reason Riptide meant so much to me.They became the family I desperately wanted to belong to.
“We’ll need information on this lady.”Ace pinned the asshole with his gaze.“Where to find her and that sort of thing.In case Thor here decides to look her up.”
The captive nodded eagerly.“I can give that to you.It’s all in my cell phone.”He made to get it and then realized he couldn’t move his hands.“It’s in my pocket.”
Beast reached over and plucked the phone out of the coward’s pocket, holding it up to his face to unlock it.He thumbed through it for a few minutes, before looking over at Ace.“He’s telling the truth.I can see her name, address, all kinds of shit about her.Looks like she’s worth a lot.”
“A fortune.You can see why I did what I did.Think of all the good my foundation could do with that kind of cash.”The pleading note in Randolph’s voice turned my stomach.
“So you think it’s okay to murder someone so that you can use their inheritance to do good?Explain how that works, because it sure sounds like bullshit to me.”Ace shook his head.“What happens to this foundation of yours if you die?”
He blinked.“If I die?I guess my wife and son would take it over, or hire someone to run it.”
Ace turned to me.“We’ll take it from here.”He handed me the phone.“Give that to Shadow.He can get the information about your relative and you can decide if you want to make contact or not.”
I nodded and took the phone from him.What he said earlier still applied.I needed to be elsewhere when this fucking waste of a life breathed his last.“Thanks, man.”
I turned on my heel and walked away, closing the door on the panicked screams of the man who’d ordered my death when he realized it wasn’t me who was going to die today.
Chapter Twelve
Janet
I’d tried to pretend I wasn’t worried, but as I chatted with Sophia and the rest of the old ladies, I kept one eye on the door.When Thor walked in, I jumped to my feet and ran to him.“It’s over?”
He wrapped an arm around my waist and lowered his head to sear a kiss across my lips.“It’s over.”
