Page 78 of Acceptance
He looks at the clock and realizes it’s been over twelve hours since he laid down. The last time this happened to him, he’d just returned home to find out Aaron was dead.
Depression.
Walking out to join everyone, he sees Jamie sitting on the stairs next to Lex. He stops in front of her, and she looks to have gotten as much sleep as he did last night.
“When this is finished, can we talk? Please?” Undertaker asks.
“I have to go to the house and grab the rest of my things, so I’ll wait there,” Jamie says. “It seems like it might be a better place to talk considering this place has cameras and ears everywhere.”
Lex looks at him and nods. She’ll keep an eye on his girl. Former girl. Whatever it is Jamie is now.
“Where are we going?” Undertaker asks Colt.
“There’s a warehouse Brock found in the abandoned industrial area of town. There aren’t many working cameras around the place, but we’re pretty sure he’s still there. And he might have his next victim in there, too,” Colt says. “We’re in agreement, right? No killing him?”
Gunner was right last night. Colt is Undertaker’s superior, and he needs to carry out orders whether he agrees or not. “Agreed.”
They head out, following Brock, with Grayson pulling up the rear with his bullet-riddled SUV on new tires. When he joins them, gun in hand, Undertaker’s surprised to see him with them. He’s not a member, and he’s a former cop. By all accounts, he shouldn’t be here alongside them.
As he looks up at the warehouse, Undertaker pauses. Guilt washes over him, and he momentarily can’t breathe.
This could be where Nina was last alive. The place she was when she took her final breath. The report said her cause of death was inconclusive. There was so much damage done that the medical examiner couldn’t determine whether she died from blood loss, asphyxiation, or blunt force trauma. She was so close to me, and I didn’t know. I didn’t save her.
A blood-curdling scream from inside pulls him from his thoughts. “Definitely has another victim.”
“Perfect place for it,” Grayson says, his voice low. “No one around to hear it. And if they did, they’re not likely to call it in. This isn’t known to be an area for upstanding citizens.”
“Do not kill him,” Colt reiterates. “Beat him, but he stays alive. Got it?”
They nod, and Undertaker takes the lead. He wants this motherfucker to see him first, and he gasps when he bursts through the door to see a blonde woman suspended from a fixture above. She faces the ground, horizontally, her body held by ropes and chains. A large gash on her stomach has her intestines hanging from the open wound as blood pools on the ground beneath her.
He’s seen a lot in his career, and it takes a good amount of gore to really affect him. The sight in front of him makes him sick. He can’t fathom how someone can do this to another human being. Aninnocenthuman being.
“Jesus,” Venom mutters right behind him.
A sound echoes in the building, and Undertaker thinks the guy got away. Turning to run after him, he feels something slice into his side, and he lets out an involuntary cry. A familiar man yanks the knife out and slips back into the shadows.
“Motherfucker,” he growls and lunges, tackling the guy who got away at Marnie’s apartment.
It takes next to no effort to disarm him, and Undertaker holds him on the ground as Grayson runs over to zip tie his hands and feet quickly. The urge to just snap his neck is overwhelming, and he moves away before he disobeys orders.
Or, better yet, I could take his knife and gut him like he did this poor girl.
“Lower that lever!” Colt shouts as he fumbles to put her organs back inside her body. “Someone, cut these ropes!”
“I’m calling this in,” Grayson says.
The scene becomes a chaotic flurry of men in leather rushing to aid the woman about to become the next victim of the De-Identifier. They work with the chains and put her onto the ground where they can better assist her.
“You’ll never get a conviction, you know,” the guy says from the ground. “None of those women have been identified.”
He holds a hand to his wound as he looks around the room, and a reflection catches his eye. Walking over to it, he stares, paralyzed.
“Hey, Taker, you good, man?” Venom calls. “You’re bleeding!”
“Asshole stabbed me,” he says and stares at the dog tags hanging from a nail. “These are Aaron’s dog tags. He was a reservist, and Nina never took them off after he died. Now he has them on a nail as his fucking souvenir.”
“Don’t touch them,” Grayson says as Undertaker reaches out to take them. “It’s evidence. These other items he’s kept from his victims may help us identify who they were if he doesn’t talk.”
