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  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Thomas Shutt. You were a good editor and better friend. You will be missed.

  Dedication

  KNUCKLES

  Six Years Ago: After the Storm

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  END

  Author’s note

  Knuckles

  Insatiable Series Book 4.5

  Patrick Logan

  KNUCKLES

  Six Years Ago: After the Storm

  Chapter 1

  Coooome

  Coooooooooooooome

  Bradley Coggins’s eyes snapped open with such veracity that they immediately rebounded closed again.

  “Fuck,” he groaned, waiting for the impending headache to assault him.

  He didn’t have to wait long; less than three full breaths later, and his head started to pound.

  And with these rhythmic thumps came a bout of nausea that left his mouth filled with bile.

  He brought his hands to his head and placed his cool palms on his forehead and repeated the curse. It had been six months since witnessing the horrors at the Wharfburn Estate, and he had yet to come to terms with what had happened.

  At this juncture, he doubted he ever would.

  Coggins swallowed hard, grimacing as the acid leaked down his throat, and opened his eyes again, this time slowly. As he waited for his pupils to dilate, he ran his tongue over the roof of his mouth and shuddered at the foul taste of sour alcohol and bile.

  Every time his eyes closed, he saw Sheriff Drew’s bastardized face, hard and green, almost reptilian, with its horribly stretched mouth with those black elastic bands for lips.

  And then in this dream or vision or whatever it was, Coggins would fire the shotgun. Only when the smoke cleared, it wasn’t Sheriff Drew’s face that had been obliterated, but his own.

  Coggins looked around, trying to remember what he had done the previous night to leave him in such a state. He remembered standing watch as one of the bikers picked up a dead drop package, then coming back here, to the shithole of an apartment he had rented, after first spending half of what he had made on a bottle of Red Mash whiskey.

  The empty twenty-sixer, the source of his headache and nausea, was lying on its side on the blistered coffee table, only a thin layer of brown liquid coating the glass.

  His drinking was getting worse.

  After dealing with others’ addictions for the past few years, he had finally acquired one of his own. Inevitable, perhaps, and also something he was helpless to prevent; every time he closed his eyes he saw that horrible thing, Oot’-keban, in his mind.

  And then that singular word—Coooooome—would repeat over and over in his mind with such force that he soon lost track of whether he was remembering it, or if it was real all over again.

  Drinking was the only way to make sure that when he closed his eyes, all he saw was blackness.

  Now it was the waking part that was hard.

  Coggins slowly moved to a sitting position and rubbed his sore neck.

  He had been lying between the coffee table and the pleather couch, which meant he had fallen off the latter sometime shortly after passing out. It was some miracle that he hadn’t vomited while on his back and choked to death.

  He wondered how long it would be before someone found him like that and if anyone would care.

  The only person he cared about, the only one that meant something to him now that Dana was gone, was in a coma.

  Coggins sniffed, trying to force the tears away. Even after six months, thinking about Alice brought about visceral feelings of guilt, remorse, dread.

  And pain; most of all, pain.

  He had somehow missed the signs that Alice was going to relapse, and the fact that he hadn’t protected her from the demon that had swallowed her mind and had left her comatose gripped his every cell like tiny, icy fingers.

  Coggins pulled himself to his feet, then quickly sat on the edge of the couch to avoid falling again.

  What the hell am I doing? I abandoned Whitey to come here? To what? Drink myself to death?

  But before the rational threatened to rear its ugly head, Coggins’s other side, the dark side, took over.

  He didn’t see what you did. He doesn’t—he can’t ever know what really happened to Dana.

  Throughout all the interviews with Paul White immediately following the incident, after the storm, Coggins had remained obtuse, ambiguous.

  The demon in his head had taken Alice, but he wouldn’t let it take Paul.

  With a trembling hand, he reached out and righted the whiskey bottle, and then his phone buzzed.

  The sound, despite being on vibrate, was like a pickax in his brain.

  Coggins didn’t want to answer it, but the notion of letting it buzz a second time was even more unbearable.

  He picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  Every time it rang, he expected to hear Alice’s sweet voice on the other end of the line. It was stupid, he knew, idiotic even, especially because this was a new phone. Even if she ever awoke, she didn’t have this number.

  And yet he was disappointed when a gruff voice answered.

  “Coggins, you awake? Need you for another drop today.”

  Coggins closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  Oh, how far he had fallen, from an Askergan County deputy one day, to a low-level street thug in Pekinish, the county over.

  “Coggins? You there?”

  “Yeah,” he replied softly.

  “Yeah what? Yeah, you’re there? Or yeah you’ll do the job?”

  Coggins opened his eyes and stared at the thin layer of whiskey in the bottom of the bottle.

  “Both,” he croaked. “Yes to both.”

  “Good. I’ll see you in an hour.”

  Coggins flipped the phone closed and then grabbed the whiskey bottle off the table, his hand suddenly steady.

  Then he swallowed what was left of his shame.

  Chapter 2

  “This is a joke, right Chris? A fucking stupid, April Fool’s prank?”

  Chris Davis lowered his gaze, unable to meet Tony’s eyes. Usually calm and collected, the man across from him had suddenly transformed into something else. He was intimidating, and the scar that cut through his thick black eyebrow and continued halfway down his cheek now look sinister. Tony was no longer the soft-spoken man with kind green eyes.

  “It’s all I got,” Chris stammered. “I tried—”

  “You tried? You tried?” Tony ran a hand through his thick black hair and sighed.

  Chris nodded vigorously.

  “I tried, I really did. I was using the money to get a printer, for the bills, you know? But this guy—this asshole—ripped me off. The printed bills look like shit—they�
��re never going to pass.”

  Tony did a decent job of keeping his emotions in check, but his cheek, the one with the scar, twitched and Chris knew that he was stifling a laugh of some sort.

  Or a sneer; with Tony, these were sometimes interchangeable.

  “Show me,” he said simply, crossing his arms over his round chest.

  Chris hesitated. When he realized that his counterfeit money printing scheme wasn’t going to work, he had been left with two choices: one, come here to speak to Tony, and admit that he wouldn’t be able to return the ten grand he had borrowed and face the consequences; or two, run.

  But Chris was sick and tired of running. It was time for him to own up. At least, that was what he had thought up until he had entered the small office in the back of the gym. But now, seeing Tony sitting in the chair that looked almost comically small, surrounded by shitty, wood-paneled walls that looked right out of the 70’s, he was beginning to reconsider.

  And then there was Yori, the fucking skinny prick, standing silently beside the desk, his goofy arms hanging low, his buck-toothed smile seeming to just fill the entire room.

  Yori was the worst; in all of his dealings with Tony, the man had said no more than two words, if that, and yet this seemed to heighten the way he grated Chris.

  He did his very best not to look at Yori, for fear that his blood pressure might rise to unhealthy levels.

  “Show me,” Tony repeated, drawing Chris back to the present.

  Chris bit his lip. He wasn’t sure if it was worth the embarrassment.

  Tony sighed again.

  “Look, Chris, I think you know how this is going to go. Don’t you?”

  Chris nodded. Yori snickered, and Chris grit his teeth and looked up at the man with the stupid buck-teeth and round spectacles. The man looked like a fucking caricature.

  “What? You think this is a joke? A fucking joke?”

  The man stopped smiling, and the hands on the end of his ridiculously long arms balled into fists. Chris swallowed hard, put his palms on the sides of his chair, ready to spring to his feet.

  “Easy now,” Tony said, gesturing with a large hand for Chris to stay seated. “Look, Chris, this is how it’s going to go. I like you, I do. I mean, you got some stupid ass ideas that are gonna get you in trouble, but you’re a good kid. But here’s the thing, I told you when I lent you the money—in fact, even before I lent it to you—I said not to take it. But you insisted. I also told you what would happen if you came back here in two weeks without the money and the vig. Personally? When two weeks came around, I thought you would run. But I see now that you are more of a man than that. So here’s how it’s gonna go down: you are going to sit there, you’re not going to cry, whine, or beg, not that I think you would, but I’m just saying, and then I’m gonna do my thing, and you’re gonna walk out of here. Then in exactly seven days, you are gonna come back here with the money. That sound about right?”

  Chris’s eyes remained locked on Yori.

  “Yeah, I understand.”

  “Good, now—hey, eyes over here—” Chris reluctantly looked over at Tony, “—show me the money.”

  Chris grumbled under his breath, but then grabbed his wallet out of his back pocket and pulled out a one dollar bill and tossed it onto the table. He had meant to ball it up, for it to hit the table with some semblance of authority, but, of course, it wasn’t the right weight or texture, and it just floated, taking a ridiculously long time to finally come to a rest on the wood.

  Tony looked at the bill, and despite everything, despite what he knew was coming, Chris felt his ears start to get hot.

  “Seriously? You printed ones?”

  Chris shrugged.

  “I thought that nobody would notice, that they wouldn’t raise eyebrows. Because, who would fake ones, right?”

  Tony stared at the bill.

  “But…but how many would you have to print? Could you even break even? Wouldn’t the materials cost more than the actual bill is worth?”

  Chris shrugged.

  “Eventually. I mean, if it worked and if I could ramp up production.”

  Tony’s expression remained incredulous even as Yori reached for the bill.

  “Don’t fucking touch it,” Chris warned. The man’s hand hovered an inch above the dollar for a moment. Then he smiled again and picked it up, and Chris sprang to his feet.

  Tony rose with him.

  “That’s enough, Chris. Now put your hands behind your back.”

  Chris obliged, still glaring at Yori.

  “I’m sorry it has come to this, but I have no choice—I like you, but I like me more, and the people I work for have certain rules.”

  Chris bowed his head.

  “Just one more thing, Chris,” Tony said, his voice barely above a whisper. Chris closed his eyes and listened as Tony walked around the desk and made his way behind him. When he spoke again, he could feel the man’s warm breath on the back of his neck.

  “Are you right or left-handed?”

  Chapter 3

  Tristan Devon Owens didn’t want to open his eyes. The alarm was blaring somewhere off to his right not far from his ear, and he knew that he had to get up, but he resisted the urge.

  Because he knew what getting up meant, and he wanted just a few more minutes with his family even if they were still sleeping.

  “I hate this beard and I hate this hair,” his wife whispered, and Tristan opened his eyes.

  Lauren Owens’s pretty face was mere inches from his, and despite his apprehension, Tristan couldn’t help but smile.

  “It’s not that bad,” he replied, scratching at the three-inch growth on his face. “Not bad at all.”

  Lauren frowned and shook her head.

  “It’s terrible.” She lowered her eyes and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m gonna miss you… I’m really, really going to miss you.”

  Tristan hugged her back, breathing deeply, enjoying the smell of her blond hair. He was going to miss her, too, of course, but he bit his tongue and didn’t return the comment. Doing so would only get her started again.

  Well, if you’re going to miss me so much, then why are you going? Can’t you just stay here? You don’t have to go undercover, Tristan. Someone else can do it.

  And this time, given how difficult it had been to open his eyes, maybe—just maybe—she would be able to convince him not to go.

  Instead, Tristan said, “It’ll be fine. Six months, tops. Then I’ll be back here with you guys.”

  Tristan gently released the embrace and stared at his wife for a moment. Her eyes, despite being downcast, were moist.

  “Hey,” he said softly, using a finger to raise her chin. “It’ll be fine.”

  Lauren choked back a sob.

  “But how can you be sure? I watched Donnie Brasco and—”

  Tristan scoffed.

  “Donnie Brasco? Seriously? Lauren, I’m going undercover with a wannabe bookie, a low-level thug just a step up from purse snatching. Someone who hosts underground MMA and boxing fights. He’s not Donnie Brasco, and this had nothing to do with the mob—shit there hasn’t been a mob presence in Pekinish or Askergan in—fuck, forever.”

  Lauren wiped her tears away with the back of her hand.

  “Just because you look like one of them, doesn’t mean you have to act like them. You shouldn’t curse.”

  Tristan nodded.

  “Sorry, just getting into the act. I just don’t want you to be scared—this isn’t Donnie Brasco, Goodfellas, or Casino. Those are just movies, Lauren.”

  “Then why do you have to go undercover then? If this man you’re after is just a thug, why not just go in and bust him?”

  “Because—” Tristan paused, his mind going to the real reason he was going undercover: the heroin.

  His expression soured. “Lauren, you know I can’t tell you everything…”

  She nodded.

  “I know, but I would just feel so much safer if you—”

  Tr
istan leaned in and kissed her on the lips. To his surprise, she leaned into the kiss and he felt her tongue probe his lips, trying to gain access.

  He didn’t resist.

  Instead, his hand snaked out and he lightly grazed her breast. Her nightie was satin, and when his thumb brushed up against her nipple, it immediately hardened. Lauren gasped and pulled his hand more firmly against her. Tristan’s other hand went to his boxers, intent on tearing them off, when a small voice made him freeze.

  “Sun’s up, Mommy.”

  Tristan dropped his hand and peered around Lauren.

  “You’re right, Tiger. What do you say, eggs and bacon for breakfast?”

  ***

  Tristan took another bite of bacon, cracking it between his teeth. It was too crispy for his taste—he liked to chew a little fat—but Lauren and Tim liked it this way.

  “Like chewing on glass,” he muttered, but he smiled as he said the words.

  Tim, on the other hand, was scarfing down his rations as if he were expecting a great pork shortage. Four pieces, Tristan counted. And that said nothing of the mountain of scrambled eggs that he had also packed away.

  “You’re growing,” Tristan said.

  Tim didn’t even look up. Instead, as a response, he scooped another forkful of eggs into his mouth.

  Tristan walked over to him and tousled his hair.

  “Dad!” Timmy said, his mouth full of food.

  “What?”

  “Quit messin’ up my hair. It’s gotta look good for school, you know.”

  Tristan smiled.

  “Yeah, and why’s that? Got a girlfriend?”

  Timmy made a disgusted face.

  “Quit teasing him, Tristan,” Lauren said from behind her coffee mug.

  Tristan stared at his son. At just seven years old, he found it incredible that the boy cared about things like his hair, and maybe even girls given the way he had responded to the comment, but these were different times, he supposed.

  And before Tristan knew it, his Timmy the Tiger would be on the street stealing, beating up old ladies, doing everything he could to get his hands on some heroin.