by Hart, Eve R.
“Let’s ride,” he finally said as he got to his feet.
I said nothing as I followed him out of the office.
Downstairs, he filled in Mase and Knight. Since this Keften shit had rolled in, they’d started staying closer to home even if they lived off the compound. Mase had just rented a house in hopes that it would make his son’s mom happy so that she would let him see his little boy. So far, that plan hadn’t worked out.
I didn’t even have time to call Bridget back, but I guess she figured that out when we pulled up next to the club SUV that she’d borrowed.
“This feels awfully familiar,” she joked as she jumped out of the SUV.
Iron chuckled as he dismounted his bike and made his way over to her.
“You alright?” he asked and I could sense a soft spot for her.
But then again, I think he had one for all of them. Gwen, Cami, Chris, and Laurel. I was sure that the next one that came along, he would treat like one of his own too.
Papa Iron.
I chuckled to myself at the thought.
Really, he may not have been that old, but he was like the dad, looking out for us all.
“I’m good,” she answered the unsaid question. Because he was really asking if she was okay being dragged into all of this.
For a beat, I felt a little bad.
I liked Bridget and I would never want to do anything to make her feel uncomfortable. But I also knew her well enough that she would tell me she couldn’t help me if she was unsure.
“So… do we knock?” Bridget asked because last time we’d been here, someone just came out.
It didn’t take long before a group of her goons came out and greeted us with scowling faces.
“What do I owe the pleasure?” Petra asked once we were escorted into her office.
I hadn’t seen more than the path to get to Petra’s office, unless you counted what played on the dozens of screens behind her. I could admit I was curious, but not enough to ever ask or attempt to get a membership. Not that I could afford it.
I stood back, letting Iron take the lead.
Petra kept her eyes trained on Bridget. There was something about the Prez that shook this woman. Maybe not everyone would have been able to tell, but I could. I was sure Iron and Bridget could as well. Bridget was amazing at reading people and situations, it was practically in her genes. And Iron, well, he was just smug enough to catch onto how she reacted to him.
“I want to know about the man that was hanging around earlier. And his connection to a Claire Lively,” Iron stated coolly.
Petra’s eyes darted over to look at him for a split second before moving back to Bridget.
“You.” She nodded in Bridget’s direction. “You, I like. Him, not so sure about.”
She didn’t outright say it, but she would tell Bridget what we wanted to know as long as Iron wasn’t in the room.
I think it was her way of saying that she trusted Bridget to a certain degree. Which, hey, I’d fucking take at this point.
She cut her eyes over to Iron again then her gaze flicked to the door behind us.
Yeah, yeah. We got it, lady.
With ease, Iron rose to his feet, his eyes pinning Petra the entire time. Then, with relaxed steps, he made his way out the door and I followed behind.
I knew Bridget was safe and that was the only reason I went without protest.
One of her goons followed us out and stood guard at the door.
The hallway was lit just enough to make it feel eerie like a horror movie. My fingers danced against my thighs. I wasn’t as easy going when I was out of my element and it showed. Iron, however, was cool as a fucking cucumber, standing against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest and a blank expression on his face.
The wait had me on edge. It seemed like forever that we stood silently outside of that office.
Finally, Bridget emerged looking awfully pleased, but said nothing.
It wasn’t until we were on the street again did she even attempt to start talking.
“Get in,” Iron said as Bridget opened her mouth.
She took the driver’s side while Iron went around and slid into the passenger’s seat. I slid into the back and scooted so I was in the middle of the seat.
“So, Petra thinks the guy is an ex-boyfriend. Harmless but a little obsessive,” Bridget said.
“Sketch seemed to indicate that she didn’t have the best taste in men,” I interjected and kept the eye roll to myself.
“He’s been coming around,” Bridget went on. “I guess he knew she was working here. Which, she was for a few weeks.”
Why the hell couldn’t I find that? Petra did her best to run her business as legitimate as possible. On record, the Gilded Rose was a nightclub of sorts. There were employees, real employees, with tax forms and the whole nine filled out.
“She doesn’t do the paperwork until they’ve hit their sixtieth day,” Bridget said seeing the confusion on my face. Well, okay then. There was no need to beat myself up over that then. “She pays them under the table, keeps them off the records until she knows they are going to stick around. I’m sure you’ve seen her employment history, most of them have been there a while. It’s a smart move.” Her shoulders rose and fell with a small shrug.
“What happened?” Iron cut in.
“She doesn’t know. One night, Claire took a man back… for things, and then she told Petra that she was moving on. Petra assumed she just couldn’t hack it and she said Claire didn’t seem like she was in any sort of distress. I didn’t know she had apartments on one of the floors for her employees to stay in. It’s like added security, which is smart. But anyway, she let Claire stay in one of the rooms up there.”
“She gave Claire one of these right off the bat?” Iron asked.
“Yeah,” Bridget answered right away. “I guess she… felt sorry for her.”
That was hard to imagine. Petra seemed to have a heart of stone and the exterior to go with it.
“Yeah,” Bridget said like she could read my thoughts. “I guess Petra isn’t as cold as we all assume. Anyway, she sensed Claire wasn’t in the best of situations and offered her one of the apartments. Claire left some stuff behind, but it wasn’t much. Petra told me it wasn’t anything that would help me.”
“She give you anything that would help us?” Iron said with a bit of a bite in his tone.
I eyed him for a split second before Bridget stole my attention again.
“The last man that Claire was with…” she paused and looked down at the tiny slip of paper in her hand. “Andrew Baney, well, he gave an address when he signed up or whatever. Petra gave it to me with explicit instructions to be discreet. She doesn’t want it to come back to her.”
Iron nodded once.
“You check it out. Cable, go with her.”
Well, now he’d taken control of the situation. I guessed it was officially club business but I wouldn’t be caught dead telling Bridget that.
With that, he got out of the SUV and made his way to his bike. A moment later, he was gone.
“How do you want to play this?” Bridget asked me and I honestly didn’t know how the fuck to answer that.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cable
Since it was late, we decided that I’d look into this Andrew guy tonight just to make sure he wasn’t dangerous, and then track him down bright and early tomorrow morning. It sounded like Claire left willingly, so it wasn’t like there was a rush on it. I had a feeling Bridget was ready to get back to Lake, who was off work by now and didn’t have a patrol shift that night.
I couldn’t blame her.
Maybe if I had someone too, I wouldn’t be filling every free second with club shit.
Then again, maybe not.
Guess I wouldn’t know because it wasn’t like I had someone in my life that was even close to girlfriend material.
After we got back to the clubhouse, I made my way to the bar outside the compound.
&
nbsp; I sat beside Iron, who was there keeping an eye on his children.
I chuckled at the thought.
I gave him a quick rundown of our plan for this Claire stuff. Then I briefly told him the new stuff I was looking into for the Keften shit.
He didn’t have much to say so I ordered a beer and tried to relax a little.
“That a thing?” I asked him.
From where we sat at the far corner of the bar top, we could see most of what was going on. I got why he picked this position though I’d never say it out loud.
Currently, our gaze was on Mouse and his… friend? I’d seen her around a few times, every time she’d been with Mouse and I wondered if this was a thing now. I hadn’t heard anything so I wasn’t all that sure.
Iron grunted in response. I could tell he was just about as sure as I was.
“Want me to look into her?” I asked automatically because that was what I was there for.
He didn’t answer for a long while.
“Yeah,” he said in a low tone as he raised the bottle to his lips and then downed the rest of his beer.
I couldn’t tell if it was just me, but I got a biting sense of agitation in his tone. I wasn’t sure what that was about. He probably knew more than I did when it came to all of us and maybe there was something deeper going on there than I was clued in on.
I had noticed a change in Mouse the last few months. I couldn’t begin to say what it was. And he did well to hide it, but if you looked into his eyes you could see there was something heavy there. Who knew? We all had shit to deal with, club and not.
“You got it,” I replied with a firm nod.
I needed to get her last name from Mouse but I figured that wouldn’t be a problem. After all, he should expect it by now. Especially, since she’d been hanging out back at the compound a few times. Or so I’d seen.
“How much you trust Petra?” he asked me, his eyes staring straight ahead.
“I couldn’t find anything on her that would suggest anything other than what she represents herself as.”
“How much digging did you do?”
“Enough. Usually something pops up pretty quickly. At least I get a whiff of something that makes me feel like I need to dig more. Not with her,” I answered honestly enough.
Sure, Petra Novak was an intimidating woman and pretty much as stoically cold as they came. I imagined it wasn’t easy being in her position. After all, she did own a top notch escort service, which we all really knew was just high paid prostitution in this case. A fantasy den. A secret cathouse where men with endless pockets could discreetly cheat on their wives or let their kink hang out without it getting them into trouble.
Only a liar would have said they weren’t curious about the place. And I was no liar. But it wasn’t like I really had the funds or the need to get into a place like that. And since she had supreme security on her camera feeds there, I hadn’t been able to hack in and take a look for myself.
“You sure she doesn’t have a connection to Keften?” he asked and I could hear an odd tension in his voice.
Petra was Slovenian. Born and raised the first fifteen years of her life there. Keften was Croatian. Though the two countries shared a border and their languages were close enough that one could understand the other, I didn’t think there was a connection to be made there. Petra wasn’t selling her women unwillingly. She wasn’t kidnapping them and holding them hostage. She may have been cold, but I could see it in her eyes that she wasn’t that type of person. Maybe it helped that I knew her background.
“There’s always the possibility, but I don’t really believe that she would be in that type of business,” I answered with a small nod like I was nailing in how sure I was of that.
“I think I need to know more,” he said getting to his feet.
My head cocked to the side and I took him in with confused eyes.
“Alone?” I asked, my tone clearly voicing my confusion and concern.
“Yeah,” he grunted out. “Let me know about that one,” he added as he tipped his head in the direction of Mouse and… Amber. Pretty sure that was her name.
“You got it.”
Then he was gone.
And I was left sitting there like there were a million things I was missing. My fingers rubbed my temples as I tried to focus on one thing at a time.
Prez acted like he had the Petra thing handled. I had to have trust in him that he knew what the fuck he was doing.
Mouse, while he was a bit more distracted lately, I had to believe that he wouldn’t intentionally put the club in danger, no matter how much shit he had going on in his head.
Keften.
That was the number one priority.
But for now, I needed to check out this guy that Petra had given us information on. Bridget and I would look into it tomorrow and I wanted to have a direction for us to head in so we weren’t wasting time chasing our tails and shit.
And this Amber chick. I needed to add her to my list and hope to fuck that I’d be crossing her off soon. I couldn’t imagine it would take all that much time to check her out. But it was always better to be safe than sorry.
I waited until she slipped off to the bathroom then walked over to Mouse.
“You good, brother?” I asked as I slapped him on the back.
Women always took forever to do that bathroom shit so I wasn’t worried about getting straight to the point. Plus, I really felt the need to check on him. Sure, it was a generic greeting, but I’d said it with a different tone than what I normally used. And by the way his glassy eyes shifted up to meet mine and his brows practically touched his hairline, I knew he’d gotten me.
“Yep,” he answered a few beats later. It wasn’t convincing. Neither was the drunken sway of his body. Mouse wasn’t a big drinker. A beer here and there but never enough to get shit-faced like some of us. Unfortunately, I’d seen him this way quite a few times lately.
I got it. Everyone had their ways of dealing with shit. And it wasn’t every night or even once a week. But still, for him, it was unusual.
Knowing that he wasn’t going to talk, I moved on.
“Need her name,” I said in a low, no-nonsense tone.
His spine straightened and he blinked at me.
“She’s been seen around here enough to make us think you got something going on. That’s your business, but you know the drill,” I said pointedly.
“Yeah,” he said scratching the back of his neck. “I guess she has been around a lot. Okay. Sorry.”
I had no idea why he was apologizing. I didn’t give a fuck if he was hanging out with her or dating her or what the fuck ever he was doing with her. I just cared that she wasn’t going to be a threat to the club.
He rattled off her name, first and last. Her address and even where she worked without any forethought, which led me to believe that he’d hung out with her more than I’d taken notice of.
“Have a good night, brother,” I said as I saw Amber exit the back hall, heading this way. I bowed out with a cool head nod, making it seem like I was just making my goodbye rounds.
I had a feeling it was going to be a long night.
As long as I got to spend it alone in my room, that was fine by me.
“Hey, Cable,” Bocca from the mother chapter called out, catching me right before I was headed up the stairs and into the comfort of my own room.
“Hey,” I said turning to face him. “When did you get in?”
“Like ten minutes ago.”
I nodded, not saying anything back because I was sure he’d called out to me for some reason. Best to just let him get to it.
“I was thinking that we should take another approach to this whole thing.”
“I agree. Been trying to come up with other ways to get info,” I responded.
“Got any?”
I huffed out a laugh as he shot me a wide smile.
“Kind of. Come on,” I said with a head jerk, indicating that we should move this up to my ro
om. Didn’t need certain ears hearing any of this shit. Once the door was closed behind us, I started up again. “I was talking to Bridget, Lake’s woman, and since she has a background in PI work, I figured she might be able to give me a different way to approach it.”
“And what did she say?” he asked, brow raised high as he calmly sat down in the chair in the corner.
“Bunch of shit I can’t do from sitting in this room,” I said with a chuckle. “We need to start thinking about where and who. Where would be a good place for him to set up shop? Some place that is big enough and not too run down, but also hidden.”
“You know this town better than me. Any ideas?”
“Not yet. I haven’t had a lot of time to think about it since I talked to her.”
I sat down and started working on Amber’s background information while I talked. I was amazing at multitasking.
“Also,” I continued, “the who. He needs clients, right? So where would he go to look for those, who would he find to network through. I started high. Judges. Politicians. That shit. Looking for any large cash withdrawls that looked suspicious. Or big checks written out to fake charities. So far, everything has checked out and all the charities are real. I’m moving down the list and then onto old money types.”
“Sounds like you have your hands full,” he said with a knowing smirk.
“Yep.”
“Amber Smith? What’s this for? Is she connected to Keften?” he asked looking like he was about to jump out of the chair.
“No. Other club shit. Mouse has a… thing, I guess. Just checking into her since she’s been around a few times.”
“Oh,” he said sounding disappointed as he leaned back in the chair.
“I’m going out with Bridget in the morning to check out something, but after that, I was thinking about driving around to some areas of the city I think might fit that description. For some reason, I have this gut feeling that he’s got some place along the river. But don’t ask me why.”
“Do I even want to know? I’m going to assume that the Bridget thing doesn’t have to do with Keften either.” I sensed a tinge of aggravation in his tone but I knew he understood that sometimes you had more than one thing to deal with.