Sinners' Playground Read online

  SINNERS’ PLAYGROUND

  The Harlequin Crew Book 1

  By

  Caroline Peckham & Susanne Valenti

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Author Note

  This book is dedicated to JJ’s condoms.

  Big, thick, long and wide,

  Ribbed and studded with spermacide.

  Strawberry, bannana, peaches and cream,

  One tossed in a bush, another in a stream.

  Trojan, Durex, SKYN and Crown,

  Rip it open and go to town.

  Double wrapped or ultra thin.

  Pick your poison and enjoy within.

  I ’m not dead.

  I gasped as those three words resounded through my skull and the memory of Shawn’s hands locked tight around my throat threatened to drown me in terror.

  I’d seen my death in his eyes, watched as the bright blue colour of them seemed to flare with energy and excitement as he pinned me to the wall and choked the fucking life out of me. “Sorry about this, sweetcheeks. I’m really gonna miss that ass of yours, but I can’t have witnesses. You understand.” Those were his last words to me as I fought for my motherfucking life, thrashing and scratching and gouging at his arms as his grip never faltered. The last words I ever should have heard as he squeezed and squeezed until my ears were ringing and darkness closed over my vision and I fell into the deepest depths of oblivion. I’d thought I was dead. Hell, maybe I was.

  But then why did my throat hurt so fucking much? My head was pounding and there was a heaviness to my body unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

  I groaned as I opened my eyes but all that escaped my lips was a hoarse croak which felt like fire burning up my throat. Even with my eyes open, the darkness didn’t let up. It was pitch black and the air I sucked into my lungs was stale and left the scent of damp earth coating my tongue.

  “Shawn?” I rasped, but it barely even sounded like his name and he was the last fucking person I wanted to see anyway. But my mind was a fog of confused, disjointed thoughts and memories and he was the only person my malfunctioning brain could latch onto right now.

  I tried to lift my arm to push my hair away from my face, but I found it trapped against my chest.

  As I sucked in another breath, some rough, scratchy fabric was drawn against my lips and my heart leapt in fear as I realised the heaviness I felt wasn’t in my body – it was on my body.

  There was a weight pressing down on me, pinning my arms to my sides and trapping me in the dark. That damp earth smell surrounded me, drowning me in it and a croak of fear escaped my lips as a terrifying thought occurred to me.

  I wasn’t dead. But I was buried.

  With a cry of alarm which sent more pain through my tender throat, I yanked hard on my arms and I almost sobbed with relief as I managed to drag them up my body until I was shoving hair away from my face and pressing shaking fingertips to the rough material I’d been wrapped in. It felt like some kind of heavy duty sack or sheeting.

  Panic dug its claws into me at the thought of being underground and a shiver of fear passed through my skin as I wondered how much air I even had left down here. Every breath I sucked in seemed thin, full of that damp earth scent which made me want to heave. But puking right now seriously wasn’t going to improve my situation and I really needed to improve my fucking situation, or I was pretty sure this dead girl was about to get a whole lot deader.

  I pressed my palms against the sack in front of my face and tried to exert pressure against the weight above it as I began to wriggle my legs.

  As the heaviness above me shifted, the weight on my chest suddenly increased and a hoarse shriek of terror escaped me as I started thrashing and kicking with more vigour. I cursed and kicked and clawed at the rough material which was wrapped around me until my fingernails managed to tear through it.

  Cold, damp soil poured through the hole the moment it was created and I screamed a broken, shattered sound of pure terror as the dirt spilled over my face.

  I kicked harder, clawing huge clods of dirt into my hands and somehow managed to shove myself into a vague sitting position as I tried to hold my breath, and dirt cascaded over me in a never ending torrent.

  I scrunched my eyes up tight and fought with everything I had as I dug and crawled and battled my way towards the surface.

  My lungs ached with a desperate, urgent kind of need and the fear pressed in on me almost as tightly as the dirt I’d been buried in. But just as my body felt ready to give out on me, my hand thrust through the surface and balmy air washed over my palm.

  With a snarl of determination, I kicked harder, clawing the dirt away from me until I managed to push my head free of it and I sucked down a shuddering breath of relief.

  I coughed and heaved as I pressed my cheek against the cool earth, still half buried beneath it and suddenly lacking in all energy as I just fought to calm my thrashing heart.

  The dim, pale blue light of dawn fell through the trees which surrounded me and I slowly cracked my eyes open as I tried to get my bearings. The sound of gulls calling out to one another and the tang of salt in the air told me I was near the sea and I groaned as I tried to figure out how I’d ended up here.

  But it was no good. The last thing I remembered was Shawn’s hands wrapped around my throat as he tried to kill me in his club. Then darkness. It had been night then…how many hours had it been? How long had I been underground? How close had I just come to actually dying?

  I rasped out another groan as the pain in my neck drew all of my attention for a moment and the pounding in my skull had me praying for oblivion again.

  With a curse that didn’t even sound like it was me speaking, thanks to the damage that asshole had done to my vocal cords, I dug my fingers into the ground in front of me and dragged the rest of my body up out of the dirt. It took way longer than I would have liked and I couldn’t help but think that I must look like some kind of undead asshole right about now. Or I would have if anyone was here to see me. But as I appeared to be slap bang in the middle of fucking nowhere, I guessed there wasn’t much chance of that.

  When I finally managed to drag my feet free of the shallow grave my boyfriend had gifted me, I fell down onto my knees before collapsing to the ground and rolling over so that I could look up at the canopy of trees above me and lay there panting as tears pricked the backs of my eyes. But I wouldn’t let them fall. I’d cried my last tears a long damn time ago and I’d sworn never to let anyone get close enough to hurt me like that again ever since.

  The Harlequin boys had broken my heart once and I had no intention of ever giving it out to anyone again.

  The dirty, brown material I’d been buried in was still tangled around my legs and I
tugged it off of me as I stood, clutching it in my fist as I looked down at it, wondering if I’d ever meant anything at all to the man who had killed me so casually.

  I turned the torn piece of sack in my fist, frowning as I spotted a logo stamped across it, hidden within the mud that stained it.

  Pappa Brown’s Russet Potatoes.

  He’d buried me in a shallow grave wrapped in a fucking potato sack. Anger flooded through my flesh unlike anything I’d ever known at the fucking callous disregard that asshole had held me in. The feeling was quickly followed by disgust for the fact that I’d ever let that vile excuse for a man lay his hands on my body. But you didn’t say no to Shawn Mackenzie, everyone knew that. I could have just run when he set his sights on me, but I’d foolishly believed that being his girl would offer me some level of protection in these fucked up games I ran in, where men played at being kings and everyone died with a knife in their back in the end.

  My mouth was so dry that my tongue felt swollen and the headache was making me dizzy as well as nauseous. I was coated in damn mud, my blue crop top and ripped jeans clearly ruined and my once white sneakers now very much brown. A quick swipe of my hand over my long, brunette hair told me that it was no better.

  I swallowed against the lump in my throat and looked around for some sign of where I needed to go to get out of here, but there were just trees everywhere. The ground sloped down to my right though so that seemed like the easiest path to take.

  I stumbled downhill, my feet catching on roots as my tired limbs ached and the pain in my body threatened to overwhelm me. But I needed to keep moving. Had to get away from here and find somewhere safe so that I could figure out what the fuck I was supposed to do now.

  The sound of the waves reached me and the light ahead brightened before I stepped out onto a white sandy beach, a sigh of relief escaping me at the sight of the ocean. Fuck, I missed it sometimes more than my own mother. I mean, my mother was a total bitch who I barely even remembered, so I missed my period more than her whenever I wasn’t on it, but still, the ocean held a special place in my heart unlike any other. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d been swimming in it though, let alone surfing.

  I drew in a deep breath of the crisp, ocean breeze and looked out at the horizon for a long moment as I tried to process what had happened last night. But all that came back to me was that one, all important thing. I was a dead girl walking. And Shawn could never find out about that unless I wanted to live to see that fate brought to reality. Of course, if I managed to get to him before he got to me…

  I shook my head before I got carried away and started thinking about anything crazy like revenge. I certainly wasn’t in any shape to be carrying out hits on gangster assholes right now anyway. And the leader of The Dead Dogs would be a damn difficult target to get close to. First things first, I needed water, food, clothes…money.

  I dipped my fingers into my back pocket where I knew I’d had a twenty stashed and closed my eyes for a brief moment with a smile tugging at my lips as I found it right where I’d left it. That was something. Admittedly, not a whole lot. But it was a start.

  Any normal girl would have been afraid right now, but every moment since the Harlequin boys had betrayed me, I’d been growing tougher like a rose growing thorns. I knew how to take things in my stride, even my own death. I was either one lucky bitch or the Grim Reaper had been preoccupied tonight and he’d come looking to claim what he was owed soon enough. I was banking on the former.

  As I opened my eyes again, I turned first to my right and then to my left, looking out along the horizon for any sign of anything which might tell me where the fuck I was.

  “Motherfucker!” I yelled loud enough to startle a couple of seagulls who had been fighting in the sand...oh wait, they were fucking actually and looking rather scandalised at the interruption, but that wasn’t the point.

  The point, was that beyond the cerulean sea and the long stretch of white sand, far off in the distance lit up by the first rays of the rising sun, I could see a goddamn pier with a goddamn Ferris wheel parked up at the far end of it. Not just any pier and Ferris wheel either, oh no - that right there was what me and my former boys liked to call Sinners’ Playground. It used to be my favourite place in the entire world once upon a time. But the thought of coming back here now had me wishing Shawn had done a better job of choking me to death. My gut tightened and a lump of dread rose in my throat.

  This place had been my home once. The only one I’d ever known. Where I ran the streets with the Harlequin boys at my side and the world seemed full of endless blue skies and a thousand possibilities. And look how quickly that had gone to shit...

  Fucking Shawn in his final act of fuck you had driven me out here to bury my still warm corpse in a shallow grave in the one place in this world that I hated above all others.

  If I hadn’t already wanted to kill him for putting his fucking hands on me, then I sure as hell did now. I was going to go ahead and slap a nice, big post-it note at the forefront of my mind holding a life goals to-do list, and right at the top of it would be the words kill Shawn Mackenzie. It would have helped if he wasn’t the current leader of The Dead Dogs, the second biggest gang in the state, but I didn’t care. He’d bought his death with mine, I’d see to that even if it cost me all I had.

  It was just a shame that right now, that was a sum total of nothing. Well…twenty dollars and the key I kept on a leather necklace around my neck.

  I sucked in a breath and quickly grasped at my shirt, right between my cleavage where the key always hung and relief filled me as I found it there. I wasn’t really surprised. Shawn had always called it my sentimental piece of crap so of course he hadn’t taken it. But that was just because I’d told him it was the key to my dead grandma’s liquor cabinet which I’d worn since her death to keep her close to my heart. Never had a string of bullshit served me so well. Because this key opened something far more precious than a cupboard full of booze. Even if my imaginary grandma had had expensive tastes.

  My gaze strayed to the Ferris wheel in the distance again and I licked my lips, tasting damp soil coating them.

  I used to think my life might just have been perfect. The Harlequin boys and me. One big, happy, unconventional, marginally fucked up family.

  Maverick told me once that all four of them were in love with me. He said one day I'd have to choose between them and that would be the end of it all. Our happiness dashed to pieces by me choosing one of them and rejecting the others.

  Little did I know that the end would come much more swiftly than that. The only kiss my boys had ever given me was the very same one that Judas offered up to the man he was supposed to love.

  At least when your heart breaks at sixteen you learn that lesson well. I’d never trust the promises of anyone who claimed to love me. I’d never believe in anything other than myself.

  When they’d cut my heart out and left me bleeding and alone, I’d done what any self-respecting runaway brat did best and ran the fuck away. But maybe it was time I stopped running. Ten years was a long time to bear a grudge and I still held the key to their dark, dirty little secrets. Perhaps it was time I claimed what we’d locked away…

  My fingers tightened around the key and I strode down the beach to the water. I needed to rinse the grave dirt off of me before I made any decisions. Because if I chose to let the Harlequin boys back into my life again, then I knew that I’d have to bring my A game. No falling for their bullshit, no listening to their sweet talk and no more talk of heartbreak – not even to myself. They could never know how much they’d hurt me that night ten years ago. How shattered my heart still was and how keenly that pain still found me when I thought about them. And over the years, that hurt hadn’t dulled a scrap. So it might just be time for me to pay them back for it.

  I walked down the sand to the waves which lapped against the shore, pausing to find a rock and wedge my twenty under it before striding right on into the water.

 
It was cold against my already chilled skin, but I tried to take comfort in the fact that I could still feel anything at all.

  Dead girls weren't supposed to shiver. In fact, dead girls weren't supposed to do a whole lot of anything. And seeing as that meant there were no expectations weighing on me any longer, I was going to shed every last hang-up I had.

  I walked until the water was deep enough for me to dive beneath the waves and I fought off the moment of panic that holding my breath delivered to me. This wasn't going to break me. In fact, I was determined that this was going to be my rebirth. For the last ten years, I'd been treading water, living on the outskirts of power and trying to survive each day as it came. I kept my head down, minded my own business and kept my shit together. But while Shawn had been drawing me closer, I’d kept my wits about me. I'd known what I was doing letting myself get tangled up with him and my eyes had been wide open for every moment of it. Last night wasn't the first time I'd heard or seen something I shouldn't. It was just the first time he'd caught me. And the last. Or so he thought.

  I swam away from the shore with confident strokes and a feeling of euphoria which I'd only ever been gifted by the ocean. There was just something so pure about the saltwater which felt like it was washing away my sins, though in all fairness I'd need to scrub a lot harder if I expected to remove those from my flesh.

  It might have been ages since I'd been beneath the waves, but my body remembered and as I swam, a lightness filled my soul which I grasped onto with both hands like a lifeline. This was what I needed. Just me and the water. Nothing and no one else. Because people were problems that I didn't want. I'd been alone for a long damn time, even though I'd been surrounded by people. But they were strangers charting their own course to hell. I didn't need any passengers on my ferry. Dead weight just dragged you down anyway.

  I kicked up to the surface and gasped as I drew in a deep breath to satisfy my aching lungs. The sun was rising higher now, gilding the tips of the waves as I rolled onto my back and floated there, looking up at the pale sky.

  I knew the price of heading back to Sunset Cove would be high. Probably the highest I'd ever paid for anything, even counting my death. If I did this, all traces of the girl I’d once been would be lost. But maybe they already were. I was just clinging onto the idea of them because it made all the fucked up shit I’d suffered through tolerable. But if I wanted out of this life. All the way out like I'd been dreaming of for years, then I needed to go back. I needed to take what I was owed then set my eyes on the horizon and run for my life. Not this sorry excuse for an existence I'd been festering in for years, but for the life I'd always wished for in the darkest corners of the night. The one I'd never really believed I could claim. But it was now or never. I was a dead girl walking and I needed to decide my own fate.