Arran’s Obsession (Body Count, #1)

Divine had been trashed, bottles spilled and cracked plastic glasses underfoot. Tables had been tipped over and chairs broken in the stampede to leave. Half-naked dancers clustered at the back of the stage, uniformed police blocking their exits and corralling them into a huddle. At the main entryway, customers filed out, a flood of red-faced men hurrying away with their heads down.

Natasha slipped out with them, the cowardly bitch.

In the centre of the floor, Alisha held her own against two cops, a manicured finger swinging from one to the other and her lips running loose with a torrent of venom.

We’d flipped roles. Now, I was frozen up, fright holding me to the spot.

Never once had I been in trouble with the police. The only times I’d encountered them was when I’d come home from school and found one at my door, there to tell me Mum was in hospital. Actually dead, but they didn’t say that. Then the last was the beat cop who’d given up the scant details of Cherry’s murder. I didn’t blame them—they were only doing their job—but I had no idea what my role was now.

If I was so inclined, I could probably walk straight out the door, like Natasha had done, and undoubtedly Moniqua. There was no way that gang-affiliated woman would’ve hung around for my sake once the police had raided.

But I didn’t want to go. I’d done nothing wrong. They could arrest me if they wanted.

I’d switched sides.

Against the tide, Arran stalked through the room. Fear stabbed my heart. He shouldn’t have come in, but I knew in the same breath that he’d never leave his staff to handle this alone.

Staring at him, I took a step. With the smallest glance my way, he flattened his lips. At his side, his fingers made a slicing gesture.

A hand took my wrist. “Don’t let them know who ye are,” a man said in my ear.

Jamieson. I glanced up to be sure.

He muttered something to Manny, and both men moved casually to bracket me.

Arran didn’t stop until he was face to face with a huge policeman. A brutish older man with an unpleasant, self-confident smile. At a word from Arran, the man produced a piece of paper, a warrant of some kind, I guessed. Arran read it then folded it and slid it into his back pocket, all while the big cop watched.

On previous nights, Arran had donned a suit to be seen out in the club, but today, he was still in his jeans, his blood-stained clothes unchanged from earlier. Yet his expression was neutral, no visible sign of the anger I knew he had to be feeling.

He looked like a gang member caught in the act. This couldn’t have been worse.

To my right, the cops surrounding Alisha suddenly rotated her, yanking up her hands to be cuffed. Horror joined my fear. At the same moment, up on the stage, five or six of the dancers were also clamped in handcuffs.

“Suck my ass, fucking pig,” Alisha snarled at the one holding her. Her wig of long, dark curls had come askew. “If you don’t think we can all see your dick is hard from touching us up, think again.”

“Alisha,” Arran’s voice cut through the hubbub. She fell silent, and he snapped at the guy who had to be the lead officer, “Is any of this necessary?”

“You tell me, Mr Daniels,” the officer replied.

What he said next was too quiet for my ears, but I saw the result in gut-wrenching slow motion.

Arran offered up his wrists. The police officer snatched them behind his back and handcuffed him, yanking hard to test them.

A shout reared in my throat. I cut it off, finally learning my lesson about being impulsive. Instead, I pressed my fingers to my lips, waiting for the second where his gaze sought me out again. Arran cut me a look, right as he was being marched outside.

There was not a single thing I could do to help him.

Along with Arran, they took a red-faced Alisha and six of the dancers, fearful expressions on all of the Divine staff members’ faces. A number of police officers were still in the room, questioning others one by one.

“Genevieve?”

I turned to find an ashen-faced Lara approaching.

“What do we do?” she asked.

For a second, I had no idea why she was asking me, but then it clicked in. Arran had gone, Alisha, too, and Shade was nowhere to be seen. She hadn’t asked Manny. For now, I was in charge.

The remaining police officers moved together and spoke in low voices. I marched over.

“If you’ve finished doing damage, the staff need to lock up and get this place back in order.”

One with a tidy moustache regarded me. “And you are?”

“Unless you’re arresting me, that’s none of your business.”

His lip curled under the hairy caterpillar decoration. “Do you work here?”

“Nope. Just trying to help these good people out.”

They swapped glances then shrugged, two peeling away to the exits. Moustache Cop stayed with me. He leaned in, a glance spared for Jamieson and Manny who’d remained at my back.

“Say the word and I’ll take you out of here. In handcuffs, if you need it to be believable.”

I recoiled. “Why would you think I want that?”

A week ago, I would have taken that rescue and walked right out. Everything in my life had changed.

“Didn’t think you belonged here, but my mistake.” Moustache Cop gave me a final look then turned and followed his colleagues.

Lara hurried after him, bolting the doors. She came to me. They all did, a distressed group of dancers and staff.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” I told them.

I wasn’t sure if that was true—Arran was gone and Alisha with him—but I’d do everything I could to safeguard the business while they couldn’t.

“What do we do now?” one of the women said.

“We clear up so tomorrow we can carry on.”

Relief flowed over the group, and we got into the task of undoing the damage. Shade appeared with a quiet word about how Arran instructed him to hold back—it made sense that both couldn’t get arrested—and got stuck in cleaning. Tables and chairs were righted or switched out. Bottles and plastic went into recycling bins. A carpet cleaner handled the worst of the spills. A cleaning crew would be here in the morning, according to Lara, but even they would’ve baulked at the level of mess, and the act of resetting the space had calmed all who’d stayed.

“Good job, everyone,” I called. “Let’s call it a night.”

A few of the dancers remained while the others left.

Hayden, I thought his name was, approached me. “Genevieve? I have a shift that starts at midnight.” As if he was worried about being watched, he pointed upstairs with his other hand cupped to block his finger.

“I’ll take you through,” I said with a smile.

At some point after the raid had started, the interior doors between the strip club and the office corridor had been locked. Interestingly enough, the code Arran had given me for the lift and his apartment opened those, too.

Out in the hall, the thankful dancers continued on for their next shift.

Shade, Jamieson, and Manny stood in a line, watching me. They had done so for the past hour as if taking their eyes off me was tantamount to a death sentence. Maybe Arran had threatened that.

“Any news on our fugitives?” I leaned against the wall, suddenly weary.

I hadn’t eaten today, I realised. Nor was I all that hungry, not with Arran gone.

“Nothing yet,” Shade admitted.

“Manny, go ahead and return to normal duties,” I said. “Assuming these two are going to stare at me all night, I don’t need three of you.”

Manny nodded reluctantly. “I just got a message about a fight in Divide. Some crazy young woman was up dancing on the podium and four guys decided to brawl over who was taking her home. My team are handling it, but tonight’s made me jumpy. I’d feel better if I checked it out.”

I released him, and he stepped through the door to the nightclub side, the pulsing music becoming almost deafening for a moment then fading.

“Student night ends at one, doesn’t it?” I asked.

Shade inclined his head. “In an hour, that place will be empty, and the only customers will be upstairs.”

“Does that make things more dangerous for us or less? Arran called the public a human shield.”

His enforcer snorted. “Sounds like something he’d say. Don’t worry, we’ll keep you safe. This building is bombproof, fireproof, you name it.”

I recalled Manny saying it had been a goods warehouse, so fireproof made sense.

I focused in on Jamieson who stared at the doorway Manny had gone into. Something about the sharpness of his focus bothered me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He took a breath. “What’s the odds that the girl your head of security has gone in to tame is my sister?”

I groaned. “God, she said she wanted to dance and the strip club is closed. Shade, can you ask Manny for a description?”

Shade rattled off an instruction to Manny then spoke the answer he was being fed in his earpiece. “Black hair in tight curls. Short. Tiny dress, attitude, won’t come down. Fuck.”

A fraught Jamieson paced to the door. “We need to pull her out.”

“Manny and his team are handling the fight,” Shade reported, continuing to listen. “It’s getting worse in there, but we can’t leave Genevieve either.”

The worry in their voices infected me with the need to do something. Despite her anger at me, I’d liked Cassie. She had spoken sense and stood up for herself and what she believed in. A world I now believed in. She was also only nineteen and in a crisis. If she left or was thrown out, anything could happen.

“We can’t leave her. We’re all going in,” I decided.

“No fucking way,” both men stated.

“What if someone grabs her? What if she’s hurt?”

Shade pointed at me. “What if someone recognises and takes you? I vote we lock ye in Arran’s apartment,”

“But then you’d still have to leave me to get Cassie. It won’t work.”

Turning on my heel, I strode in the other direction to the changing rooms for Divine. Inside, I snatched up a baseball cap from a coat hook and bundled my hair under it.

“That’s a weak-as-fuck disguise,” Jamieson commented.

“Manny’s allocating two people to wait the other side,” Shade supplied. “Shite, if this goes badly, Arran’s going to fucking murder us. Genevieve Jones, ye don’t stray more than two feet from our sides. No eye contact with anyone. If anyone even breathes on ye⁠—”

“You sound just like Arran. But this is probably a good time to mention I saw my brother’s girlfriend here earlier. She left with the cops, but quick, let’s go. Cassie needs our help.” I launched myself through the door.

As Manny promised, two security officers in skeleton t-shirts met us the other side of Divide’s staff entrance. Instantly, I scanned the crowd. Near the main entrance, Manny was pushing his way through a throng of clubgoers, one scrawny student guy under one arm, and his meaty hand around the scruff of another. Both swung out punches but had no effect on the chief of security.

To think, he’d been babysitting me when this was clearly his element. Behind them, three or four of Manny’s team were deep in the middle of a boiling mass of bodies, some of them still involved in their scrap, others trying to get out of the way. Some sweaty-faced individuals danced on, oblivious.

Above it all, on a plinth at head height to the crowd, though clearly not meant for dancing, Cassie stood, her teeny silver dress matching her heels, and her wild, black curls loose in a thick wedge around her pretty head. She wound her body to the thumping beat from the DJ. A man broke loose from the fight and grabbed her ankle. At my side, Jamieson lurched, thrusting his way into the crowd.

Stalled in her movements, Cassie scowled down at the grabber, then with impeccable balance, stabbed her other heel into his hand. The man howled, though the sound didn’t make it over the music, and he fell away, clutching his injury.

I grinned at her, and at the same second, her gaze fell on us.

Cassie’s eyes brightened, and she mouthed my name, clasping her hands together, a little chaos goblin above her kingdom of admirers, as vicious as any of them.

We reached the edge of the brawling group, ten feet from the plinth, and thick within the crowd of sweaty clubgoers. My dress stuck to me with the humidity and the press of so many people, though Shade and Jamieson fought to make enough space so we could breathe.

Jamieson pointed at his sister then to the floor, an indication for her to come down. The cocky woman cupped her hand behind her ear in a pretence that she couldn’t hear, and Jamieson glowered.

Across from us, someone reared back an arm and tossed a missile at Cassie. It struck her shoulder, and the grin left her face. She clutched her arm and glared, going from fun-loving pretty girl to ice queen in an instant. I’d seen it before, and my hackles rose. I didn’t want her hurt.

Jamieson turned back to me and tilted his head at Shade, rage in his dark-blue eyes, then he turned and dove into the crowd, flattening people in his path to reach the person who’d hurt his sister. Or maybe to help her down, because she moved to the edge of the plinth.

Shade waved across the room to Manny then pointed at the DJ. To cut the music? At the far edge of the fight, Manny’s people pulled two more men out, leaving a gap for a second.

Through it, I caught a glimpse of a familiar face.

I stared open-mouthed into the crowd. I was seeing things, surely.

Then a surge followed, people shoved aside, and that same person drove right through until he was in front of me.

I took in every feature. His hair brown with dark-blond highlights, his eyes green, unlike mine. It had been weeks since I’d last seen my brother.

“Riordan,” I uttered.

That’s why Moniqua had been here, and what her glance across the room had meant. He’d come looking for me.

Just as I was taking him in, he reached for me. The heavy music cut out. Riordan captured me in a rugby tackle and threw me over his shoulder.

In the same instant, Shade wrestled me back then threw a punch at my brother. Riordan returned the act, laying his fist into Shade’s gut. The two men tussled.

“Get your fucking hands off my sister,” Rio yelled. “Gen, run for it.”

In shock, I staggered back on my heels, Manny’s skeleton t-shirt men right behind me. Overhead, bright lights sprang on, dousing everything in sudden, sobering white. At the club entrance, the big doors were thrown open, the team working to get everyone out.

“Time, everyone. Divide is now closed,” the DJ announced. “Blame your friends for the early finish and get the fuck out.”

Amid dismayed groans, the room began to empty.

“Go, now,” my brother repeated in desperation.

“No, Rio.” I rubbed my forehead.

“She doesn’t want to be here,” he yelled for whoever was listening, dislodging Shade from his vice-like grip before being captured again. “She’s been kidnapped. Fucking held hostage.”

My heart throbbed. “You came here to save me?”

“Of course I did. You’re my sister. It’s my job to protect you.”

Space appeared around us. With his arm around my brother’s neck in a chokehold, Shade forced him to his knees. Behind, a furious Jamieson had Cassie’s attacker on the filthy floor with a knee in his spine. Reluctantly, he stepped away to hand over the arsehole to the security team.

On the plinth, Cassie sat on the edge, her ankles crossed and her head tilted to one side. Her gaze was fixed on my brother, curiosity and fascination in her stare.

“That one,” she said, audible at last now the fuss had died. “I’ll take that one.”