“When…I mean…how?” There, next to the old Ford truck, sat Susan. Not only was she there, she was clean.
“You didn’t exactly keep the place you hid your key a secret.”
“When did you do this?”
“To be honest, I had someone else do it.”
“Well…thank you. I’d ask what I owe you, but maybe you should add it to my tab.”
Edge spun around. “Stop that.”
I turned around to see if there was a clock anywhere, but there wasn’t one. “Sorry, but what time is it?”
“We need to go.”
“We?”
“Get in the truck.”
“But my car is here.”
“I don’t want you driving it until I’ve had it checked out.”
I put my hands on my hips. “For what?”
“To make sure it’s safe.”
“I guess it was safe enough for whoever you had drive it here.”
“It was towed.”
“Oh.” So much for me thinking I might have a small amount of independence. It probably still needed a battery.
I stalked over to the truck, and before I could open the door, Edge’s hand covered mine. “I told you not to do that either,” he growled.
I stared him down. “For God’s sake. I’m capable of opening a door, Edge. I’m also capable of having thoughts I don’t want to share with anyone.”
What did he do? He kissed me. Kissed me! What the fuck? “Why did you do that?”
“Because you are fucking hot when you’re angry. Now get in the truck. You don’t want to be late for your job. The one you’re getting paid to do.”
I refused to look at him as we drove to the dining hall. When he pulled up, the truck wasn’t even in park before I opened the door, jumped out, and stomped off. As I was learning to expect, Edge got to the dining hall first and blocked my way.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“What does that mean?”
He wrapped his arm around my waist. “We’ll deal with your consequences later. Have a good morning at work, darling.”
I turned my head when he leaned forward to kiss me.
“And the list continues to grow. I’m going to enjoy this.”
“Enjoy what?”
“You’ll see.” He stepped out of my way, waved his hand, and walked back to the truck.
I was about to put my hand on the pad by the door when I heard him yell, “Rebel, hold up!”
Exasperated, I spun around. “What now?”
“My number as well as Tee-Tee’s, Shadow’s, and Grinder’s are already programmed in,” he said, handing me a cell phone. “But don’t call him unless it’s an emergency.”
16
Edge
I checked my mobile as soon as I got back in the truck, brassed the hell off that I still hadn’t heard back from Hammer. It was too early for me to ring him again, so I drove over to the barn. I was too late to make the morning chore ride out, but I could check the board and try to catch up.
I walked into the barn manager’s office. “Mornin’, Boon.”
“Jesus, you sound more like a Yank every day, Edge. Might even be pickin’ up a Texas accent.”
“Ah, don’t say it if you don’t mean it, Boon,” I fired back with an exaggerated drawl.
“You’re late.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Had to give my girl a ride to work.”
“Heard somethin’ about that.”
“Yeah? Who from?”
Boon raised his eyebrows as though I’d insulted him by suggesting he didn’t know everything that happened on the ranch—sometimes even before it happened.
“Tee-Tee told you, didn’t she?” I’d been teasing, but the look on his face told me I’d hit on something.
“The crew is headed up to Schoolhouse if you want to be of any help this morning.”
“Thanks, Boon.” I’d have time to tease him about Tee-Tee later. Morning chores didn’t wait.
Schoolhouse was a pasture I was familiar with, and not in a good way. Over a year ago, I’d ridden out with Quint and a couple of the other cowboys when we were ambushed by a gang out to kidnap someone who was at the ranch under MI6 protection.
Not only had the way I rode from that day on changed, the already over-the-top security system got even more complex. Turned out it wasn’t as compromised as it had appeared that night. As we later learned, Decker had it programmed in such a way that even if it was disarmed, there were drones and cameras all over the ranch, recording every move made. Less than two hours after the ambush, all ten of the bastards who thought they’d gotten the better of us were stone-cold dead. I couldn’t help but smile. That had been a damn good night. Nothing I liked better than putting evil-doers down. Well, almost nothing. I liked shagging a whole hell of a lot better.
Thinking about shagging made me think about Rebel. If she thought I was joking earlier, she was in for a big surprise. I’d warned her about consequences, and I intended to deliver on my word. Stopping myself from fucking her after that would be the ultimate test of my control—one I didn’t intend to fail. I’d just make that the last of the consequences.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end when I heard the sound of someone on horseback headed my way. I spun my horse around and drew my gun, only to put it back when I saw it was Grinder approaching.
“Tried to catch you before you left the barn.”
“What’s up?”
He rode up next to me. “We need to talk, mate.”
“Get on with it, then.”
“I found something in Rebel’s car last night.”
I motioned for him to continue.
“A gun. Same caliber as what killed Possum.”
“Jesus Fucking Christ.”
“Sorry, Edge.”
“Where?”
“In the boot and not very bloody well hidden.”
“Where in the boot, Grind?”
“Under the torn carpet.”
“You’re certain?”
“Quite.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Albeit temporary.
“What of it?” he asked.
“It wasn’t there two nights ago.”
“You’re certain?” he repeated my words.
“Quite. Someone planted it between then and now, which means that someone was watching us.” Something else occurred to me. “Have it swept.”
“Understood.”
When my friend rounded his horse and took off, I was right behind him.
Decker took care of having Rebel’s car swept for devices of any kind while Grinder and I waited at his new place for Rile to arrive with Casper and Kick.
Calla “Casper” Rey and I had worked together on a number of ops both for SIS and privately. She liked to say she was a hardworking hard-ass with a hard body—all of which were true.
Even though Kick had been well vetted, the fact that, to my knowledge, none of us had ever run an op with him still bothered me. I flexed my hand; it was becoming a reflex, and I needed to get it under control. It happened increasingly more often when I was stressed. That couldn’t happen while I was undercover.
“Everything okay?” Grinder asked, looking at my right hand.
“Something about this Kick guy isn’t sitting right with me.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Where’s Jagger?”
“Rile asked me to put him and Rage on standby.”
“For?”
“If necessary, he wants to send Jagger into Los Aztecas.”
I raised a brow. “Interesting call. He plans to send Rage into the Crips?”
“Affirmative.”
It made sense to have them available to go undercover in the ABT’s biggest allies. “Anything else I should know?”
“Rile thinks it was an inside job. Someone within the ABT wanted Possum taken out.”
“Which is why they pinned it on Rebel instead of a rival gang.” Possum wasn’t important en
ough for the ABT to risk a gang war. Instead, they saw the opportunity to pin the murder on someone completely outside that world.
This theory also explained why the ABT didn’t try to get to Rebel while she was in jail. They had no reason to want her dead; they wanted to ensure she was the one to take the fall for the murder. The fact that we were working to exonerate her might put her in more danger than she already was. However, that wouldn’t stop me from proceeding. It only meant that her level of protection had to be high and airtight.
“Did the two of you discuss my cover?”
“Colonel in the Aryan Nation.”
Another thing that made sense. The Aryan brotherhoods were local entities, reporting to the bigger organization—the Nation. They used rank in the same way the military did, with captains, majors, colonels, and generals. The highest rank at any state chapter, like at the ABT, would be a major.
“Someone higher up is pissed about the hit on Possum?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Did Rile find out if the agency still has someone inside the AN?”
Grinder smiled. “Smoke, and he’s been briefed.”
I smiled too. Broderick “Smoke” Torcher was the kind of intelligence agent I’d always aspired to be. No offense to my brother or any of the other men on the Invincibles team, but Smoke was a warrior, a renegade, and a bloody genius. Out of anyone I’d ever worked with, or even known of in the field of intelligence, Smoke was born to go undercover in a world as potentially deadly as the Aryan Nation.
“Incoming.” Grinder motioned out the front window. “He brought them in dark,” he added, laughing as he walked to the garage to open the door.
I shook my head at Rile’s chosen mode of transport. Somehow he’d gotten his hands on a flower delivery van.
“Casper, it’s good to see you,” I said as she came inside, rubbing her arms.
“The damn van was refrigerated in the back. And it’s good to see you too, Edge.” We exchanged cheek-kisses before I turned to Kick and shook his hand. I wished I could say I felt better after having met him, but it was the opposite. The bad feeling I had, intensified.
A few minutes later, Decker pulled up.
“He doesn’t look happy,” commented Grinder.
“How can you tell?” It seemed to me that the man always had a scowl on his face.
“He’s been happier lately. Since he and Mila got married.” Grinder motioned toward the road. “This is unexpected, though.”
I turned back to see what Grinder was referring to and was as surprised as he to see the sheriff pull in behind Deck. “Did you know about this?” I asked Rile.
“Yes.” He brushed his finger over his lower lip.
I walked over to the table where he was seated and pulled out the chair next to him. “What’s he doing here?”
“He received an anonymous tip about the gun.”
My eyes met Grinder’s. “Where is it?”
“Bloody hell,” seethed Rile. “Don’t tell me you wankers have done something with it.”
“I gave it to Mac to run ballistics.”
No one said another word until Decker walked in with Mac.
“Ballistics confirmed that the gun found in Rebel’s trunk is the one that killed Possum,” said Mac after we’d said hello and made introductions.
“Doesn’t prove anything,” I muttered, immediately feeling foolish for having done so, particularly when Rile glared at me.
“No, it doesn’t,” said Mac. “And it hasn’t been admitted into evidence yet either.”
It was one of the things I liked best about Texas, especially outside of the bigger cities. The sheriff had a hell of a lot more say in how stuff like guns were and weren’t logged in.
Rile motioned for us to be seated at the table. “Let’s run through this.”
“Before we get started, there’s something you all should know.” All heads turned to Mac.
“Rebel wasn’t Possum’s first rape, attempted or otherwise. Word from one of my sources is that he was warned about the attention he was drawing to the organization. My guess is that his arrest at the Branch the night he assaulted Rebel was the last straw. He wasn’t out of jail twenty-four hours before he was found dead.”
“Someone within the ABT arranged for his release,” said Grinder.
I looked over at Rile. “Either that or the Aryan Nation. Or both.”
He nodded and made a note. “I’ll touch base with Smoke.”
“Why pin it on Rebel, though? Why not a rival gang?” Casper asked.
“Possum wouldn’t be worth a war. All the ABT wanted was to get rid of him.” What I also knew and they didn’t yet, was what Hammer got out of Rebel that day at the jail. She’d admitted that she wanted to kill
Possum. She’d said it had something to do with her mother’s death. Maybe somehow the ABT knew that too.
“There’s more,” said Mac. “Word is there’s a splinter group supposedly loyal to Possum.”
I scrubbed my face with my hand. If that was the case, our job just got exponentially more difficult. “They’ll want revenge for his death.” I looked to Rile a second time. “It’s imperative we know if we’re on track with thinking this was a hit. If we are, we can’t go in until we know whether the ABT or AN ordered it.”
“Understood.”
When Rile left the room, every face at the table looked as solemn as I knew mine did. When he returned a few minutes later, he was brushing his lower lip with his index finger.
“What did you find out?” I asked, too impatient to wait.
“Smoke says the AN didn’t call for the hit on Possum.”
“Bloody hell,” I muttered.
Rile held up his hand again. “Therefore, this mission has two objectives. One, to get the ABT to give up Possum’s killer.”
“Why would they do that?”
Rather than respond, or even look at me, Rile continued. “The second objective is to neutralize the splinter group.” He looked at Casper first and then me. “That’s your job and your cover. AN is sending you in because there’s chatter about a split in the chapter.”
“You think they’ll give up Possum’s killer in order to smooth things over with AN and then clean their own house?”
Rile’s eyes stayed riveted on mine. “Exactly.”
If this went the way Rile was suggesting it would, the ABT would not only take care of Possum’s killer, but any threat from this splinter group would end too. Whoever they were, they’d all be dead.
17
Rebel
I should’ve known this whole gig was too good to be true. Or at least too good to last. When Tee-Tee asked me to clear the remaining dishes that a couple of asshat ranch hands had left on the tables in the dining hall, I thought they’d all left.
“I wasn’t done with that,” I heard a voice say from behind me as I dumped what little food remained on the plate into the garbage.
“Too bad. We’re closed until lunch,” I said without turning around to look at him.
Within seconds, I felt a tight grip on my arm. “I’ve been sent with a message, you bitch. Lynch wants you to know that, one way or another, you’re gonna pay for what happened to Possum. Call your dogs and your fancy lawyer the fuck off. Ya hear?” He shoved me away from him hard enough that I stumbled into the table behind me and the plates I’d been holding crashed to the floor.
“Que está pasando aqui?” Tee-Tee ran out of the kitchen and over to where I was on my hands and knees picking up broken pieces of glass off the floor. “What happened?”
“That asshole…” I raised my head, but there was no one else in the hall but Tee-Tee and me. I shook my head. “Um, I was cleaning off the tables and ran into someone on his way out. My fault.”
“On his way out. Is that what you said?”
I shrugged. “I don’t see him now, so he must’ve been.”
“What did he look like?”
“I couldn’t tell you.”
�
��I see.”
“I’m sorry, Tee-Tee. I’ll pay for the broken dishes.”
She walked away without another word.
She’d told me earlier that once I brought the remaining dirty dishes to the kitchen—the ones that the ranch hands were supposed to bus themselves—I could take a break. We had an hour before we needed to start on prep for the midday meal, which was very little work, considering how few of the cowboys came in for lunch.
As soon as I took the dishes into the kitchen, I took off out the back door, wanting to get as far away from other human beings as I could.
What I really wanted to do was go for a ride, but I’d never ask. Edge had mentioned it briefly at some point. Had that been yesterday? Maybe it was the day before.
I walked through the field, and when I came to a big boulder, I sat down and put my head in my hands. Up until that night at the Long Branch, I would’ve told you my life was boring. All I’d wanted to do then was get the hell out of Barton Creek and live my life anywhere else. Now, I just wanted to live my life.
I’d give anything to be able to go back to those simple days when I got up and went to work, got off, and went home. I’d hated my life then, but now it was so much worse. How many times had I heard my grandfather tell me to be careful what I wished for? Now I wished I’d listened.
While it wasn’t what I’d call hot out, the sun felt warm enough that I closed my eyes and let its rays beat down on my face.
“Well, well, well. Look who’s sittin’ out here all by her lonesome.”
I shielded my eyes and looked up at the same cowboy who’d threatened me earlier. I stood to go back inside, but he grabbed my arm.
“You tell anyone about this, and it isn’t just you who’s gonna get hurt.”
“What does that mean?”
“Figure it out, Mija.”
18
Edge
I gripped the phone so tightly I expected it might crack. “Where is she now?” I asked Tee-Tee after I answered her call and she told me what had happened in the dining hall.
Edged (The Invincibles Book 2) Page 9