by Blair Grey
I didn’t want to know what new business Ray and Grant were meeting with. I didn’t want to give Ryan another easy target. The less I knew, the safer they were going to be. I hated that I had to feel that way.
“But I’ll give you a call about the fishing?” Grant suggested. “I’ll see if I can talk to some buddies of mine to get us a good spot to go. Are you okay with boats?”
“I love the idea of being out on a boat,” I said. “Although we probably shouldn’t ‘explore each other’ out on a boat.”
Grant grinned at me. “Maybe not,” he agreed.
We finished up lunch. When I looked at my phone afterward, I saw that I had a missed call from Ryan, wanting me to meet him at our usual place. I sighed and headed there.
“I wanted to check in,” Ryan said, as usual. “See if you had any new information for me.”
I debated telling him about the meeting between Ray, Grant, and the mystery shopkeeper the next day. If I didn’t know which shopkeeper, what could Ryan do about it? But I knew deep down that he would have someone follow Ray, or he would tell me to follow Grant. He would get that information one way or the other. If I didn’t want to be tangentially involved in another bout of arson, I would be better off not saying anything.
I had never realized that the police force was this corrupt. I knew that Ryan wanted to bring down Red Eyes and that one way to do that was to cut off the businesses paying dues to the club. But all the same, this really didn’t seem like a fair way of making sure that the community was safe. I knew a lot of those businesses probably wouldn’t be paying dues if they had any choice in the matter.
I tried to imagine Grant using aggression to coerce one of the businesses to pay him. But I couldn’t imagine it. He was so nice to everyone, as far as I had seen. Me, that recruit, Ray, the owner of Candy. I couldn’t turn him in.
So I shook my head. “Honestly, if he knows anything, if Red Eyes has any sort of plan, Grant isn’t sharing it with me,” I told Ryan.
Ryan frowned, and I wondered if he knew that I was lying. Or if he was thinking about reassigning me to something else, taking me off the case.
As much as I liked Grant, I didn’t want to be reassigned. Not least of which because whoever was put next on his case wouldn’t be nearly as forgiving toward him, I was sure. In order to protect him, as well as to protect my job, I had to stay on this case.
“But I had lunch with him again this afternoon, and it seems like things are really progressing,” I hurriedly told Ryan. “It’s only a matter of time before I have him wrapped around my finger and spilling all of the club’s secrets.”
Ryan looked like he didn’t quite believe me, but what was he supposed to say to that? It wasn’t like there was anyone else in the undercover group who would even stand a chance of getting as close to Grant as I had. Finally, he nodded at me. “Keep plugging at that angle,” he said finally. “And let me know when you find out anything.”
“I will,” I promised. But the words rang hollow. To me, they were nothing but a lie. I just needed to find some way to get Grant out of all of this, or to get the police to direct their attention away from Red Eyes. I wasn’t sure how to do that, but I had to try. These guys weren’t the enemy.
I was starting to feel sick to my stomach, realizing that Ryan was.
I hurried out to my car, needing to get out of there. It felt like everything that I had ever been working toward was a lie. But I had to believe that it wasn’t the police force as a whole. There might be some bad apples: Guys who planned things the wrong way. Guys like Ryan who were just so focused on one problem that they didn’t realize they were making another problem of their own.
Not for the first time, I wished that there was someone I could talk to about all of this. But I couldn’t go to the other guys in the force and accuse Ryan of misuse of power or anything like that. He was my superior, and I hadn’t been on the force for long enough. I didn’t even know where the others’ loyalties lay. Maybe there were other guys in the force who thought that what Ryan was doing was exactly the right thing. I didn’t even know.
And I definitely couldn’t talk about any of this with the person I most wanted to: Grant. He couldn’t find out that I was an undercover cop. It would destroy everything with him. I was almost beyond the point of caring about my career and ruining that, but I definitely didn’t want to ruin my relationship with Grant, which I would surely do if I admitted that I’d been lying to him from the very start.
With Vera and I fighting, I couldn’t even go to her about this, as much as I wanted to. It was probably better anyway. She wouldn’t understand. Her life wasn’t nearly as complicated as mine, and she was bound to bring things back around to my relationship with Grant. I didn’t want to fight with her again. This icy silence was better than another screaming match.
I felt alone, though, in a way that I had never felt before. I had to imagine that this was how Grant had felt before the MC had brought him into the fold, before Ray had taken him under his wing. I knew that Grant hadn’t done anything wrong. He just wanted to feel like he had someone to talk to when everything in life seemed to be going wrong, when everything was so incredibly complicated. I couldn’t blame him for that.
Ryan surely couldn’t blame him for that, either. But I knew that he would. If I couldn’t find a way to get Grant out of this, Ryan was going to come down on Grant and the rest of Red Eyes with as much judicial might as he could.
27
Grant
I wasn’t sure why Cameron and Ray wanted to meet at the clubhouse on Tuesday, but I was surprised to see that neither of the twins, or any of the other members of the club, were there when I arrived. I raised an eyebrow at both of them. “I thought that Landon and Braxton knew about the lung cancer,” I said, partially joking but also partially curious. “I thought that meant we didn’t have to sneak around behind their backs anymore.”
Ray chuckled, but the sound was strained, and I knew it must hurt his lungs. “It’s not that,” he assured me. “But I wanted to go check on Linda today, like I said, and I thought that the two of you were the best choice of people to take with me, since you were there for her when the building was still burning down.”
Ah yes. The meeting that I had hinted about the previous day with Holly. To be honest, I was mostly trying to check out whether or not she was a spy. If she was, I expected there to be surveillance vans there today, trying to figure out where we were going and what Ray was up to. If there were no vans, I’d find it hard to believe that she really was a spy for the police. I’d practically handed her the information that she must have been waiting for, and if she did nothing with it, it would be a sign that she wasn’t trying to bring Red Eyes or me down.
I hoped that was the case. I didn’t know what I’d do if I found out that the only reason that Holly had been trying to get close to me was because she wanted to know all the secrets of the MC. That she wanted to bring me down.
It would be just one more thing in a long string of terrible things that had happened in my life, but I actually had feelings for her. A betrayal by her might be the worst thing that I ever had to suffer through.
I hated to be so dramatic, but that was definitely the way that it felt.
We headed together toward the café next door to Candy to meet up with Linda. She looked a lot more put together than she had the previous time that I’d seen her, and I breathed an internal sigh of relief at that. Of course, Ray and Cameron both would probably have known exactly what to say to calm her down this time, but I couldn’t help feeling relieved that she wasn’t nearly as emotional as she had been before.
The whole way over there, and the whole time that we spent greeting Linda, I was on the lookout for surveillance vans, but I didn’t see a single one. I tried not to let on how relieved I was. Holly couldn’t be the snitch if there was no sign that the police were watching us. They would have to want to know what our next step was, especially if Ray was right and they were the ones who ha
d started the fire.
If they wanted information about us, there was no better way for them to get it than by waiting here, while Ray, Linda, Cameron, and I met together.
There might be a rat, but it wasn’t Holly.
“I have to let you know how truly sorry I am about your business,” Ray said to Linda. “And I’m doubly sorry that I wasn’t here when all of this was happening. I trust that Cameron and Grant took good care of you, though?”
“Yes, they did,” Linda said, smiling over at me. “Grant and a friend of his even helped me gather all the things that were left in the bar after the fire was out.”
Ray gave me a sharp look, and Cameron was quick to echo him. No doubt they were both wondering who the friend was. I wondered if I could lie and say that Braxton had helped. But no, Braxton was Ray’s son. The truth was bound to come out if I tried to use him as my alibi.
I grimaced, knowing that I was probably going to have to tell them that Holly had shown up and that she had been the one to help Linda and me with checking for things that were salvageable. What would they think if they knew? At least I didn’t feel as bad about it now, knowing that Holly wasn’t the police rat, but still, I shouldn’t be bringing her into club business.
I didn’t bring her into club business with this, though, I reminded myself. She had been the one to show up out of the blue, and she had been the one to start helping out before I had even told her that it was okay. I hadn’t done anything wrong.
I still felt guilty as I sat there next to Ray and Cameron. But fortunately, the conversation moved on from there, thanks to Ray.
“I know there’s a lot of work that needs to be done before you can be back up and running,” he said. “But I wanted to let you know that I have a remodeling company lined up for tomorrow for the building. You’ll probably want to be there to give your input. You can have the place look as much or as little as the previous place as you’d like. Don’t worry about the bill. We’ve already covered that.”
Linda’s eyes shone with excitement. “Really?” she asked, as though she thought this was some sort of trick. “That’s so wonderful, Ray. I can’t thank you enough. You and your guys have been so excellent to me through all of this.”
“You’ve always been excellent to us,” Ray said gently. “It’s only fair that we return the favor.”
I was actually surprised to hear Ray say that he had remodelers coming to help out. I had suggested that we pay Candy’s employees their salaries until the business was back up and running, but I didn’t think things were going to go even further than that. It was the first time that I had seen that the MC wasn’t all about strong-arming the opposition, about keeping a tight hold on the local businesses. The MC might be tough sometimes, especially for those new businesses who could barely afford the dues, but in the end, it was fair. Red Eyes cared about the people who paid into the club.
And I realized suddenly that when Ray was gone, there would be no one to replace him. There was no one who was simultaneously so kind and just and also so willing to get his hands dirty as Ray was. Braxton tended to forget about the businesses. He was only thinking about revenge. Cameron tended to forget about the businesses and the revenge. He was only thinking about the bottom line. And I knew that my shortcoming was that I didn’t think about revenge. I only thought about the businesses. And while I thought that was the best way to be, I knew that there were shortcomings to that approach too.
Sure, there were the other guys. The recruits, the noncore members, the guys who we just called on when we needed something specific. Or in a broader sense, the members of other chapters of Red Eyes. But either those guys didn’t know the community well enough, or they didn’t care about them the way that Ray did.
No, when Ray handed over the reins of the club, it was going to be the end of an era.
We chatted with Linda for a little while longer, and then she headed to an appointment that she had. Ray turned toward me, narrowing his eyes. “I wasn’t aware that you were over here giving Linda a hand getting her things out of the building,” he said.
I sighed, knowing what he was probably thinking. If he thought that the police were involved in all of this, then I had just compromised myself by being seen as a friend of the business owner of a business that they had burned down. But I didn’t feel wrong for helping her out, even if I hadn’t found anything out.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I thought that if I was here to help out, then if there were any clues left behind, anything that the police might have missed, maybe I would find something.” I glanced over at Cameron. “We were thinking that maybe it was the Unknowns. While Braxton and Cameron were checking in with their sources to see if they’d heard anything, I was here with Linda.”
“And a friend?” Ray asked sharply. “One of the recruits?”
“No,” I admitted. “Just another friend. She happened to be driving by and saw that I was here. She got out to ask what was up and then volunteered to help. I didn’t know how to stop her.”
There was silence at the table. I could tell that Ray was speculating on the nature of this friendship with the mysterious girl. But he didn’t ask anything. Neither did Cameron.
Finally, Ray nodded his head. “I think it’s a good thing that you helped out Linda. But make sure you’re not showing too much of a soft side. It could be dangerous for a man in this industry. There’s a thin line that you need to balance on at all times.”
I stared at him for a moment and then nodded.
“Any thoughts on who our rat might be?” Ray asked, looking between Cameron and me. “I know you’ve both been working to figure it out.”
I shook my head. “I thought I had an idea, but it turned out to be wrong,” I told him. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure that Holly wasn’t the rat, of course, but it seemed pretty likely that she wasn’t. And I definitely wasn’t about to tell Ray and Cameron about those suspicions that I’d had now, not when I had just admitted that it was a female friend who had helped me with Linda’s things in the aftermath of the arson attack.
They hadn’t met her, and they would probably be sure that she was, in fact, the rat, all evidence aside. I didn’t want to have to defend her against them, and I definitely didn’t want Ray to tell me that I could never see her again.
Because after this, I definitely wanted to see her again. I needed to see her again, with every fiber of my being. I needed to get away from everything to do with the MC, even if it was just for an hour or two of the day, one day this week. She was my oasis, my little beacon of calm. I didn’t know what I’d do without her.
We’d go fishing the next day, I decided. I only hoped that she would be free. I could use a little time away from Las Cruces, and a little time alone with her. I wanted to forget about arson and police surveillance and Ray’s illness and everything else. I just wanted to sit there, in the middle of nowhere, just the two of us, on a calm body of water, waiting for the fish to find our lines.
28
Holly
Vera and I were curled up on the back porch together on Wednesday morning when I got a call from Grant. “Hey, good morning,” I said.
“Good morning,” he replied.
“How’d your meeting go yesterday?” I asked, trying to sound normal. Trying not to sound like I was fishing for details. I should have told Ryan about the meeting, I knew. But at the same time, I couldn’t help but feel selfishly glad that I hadn’t.
“Pretty boring, actually,” Grant said, and he sounded utterly normal, leading me to believe that he hadn’t suspected anything at all in the first place. Phew. “I was wondering if you wanted to do that fishing trip today,” Grant continued.
“Yeah, I’d love to,” I said, grinning at the thought of it. I wanted to spend more time with him, and it would be good to get out of the house. Plus, after already seeing places around here that I had never known about, I had to wonder where he was planning on taking me. It would be interesting to see. That was for sure.
> “Why don’t I pick you up at your house,” Grant suggested. “Can you be ready to go in half an hour?”
“No problem,” I said, already thinking through what to wear. “Do you need me to contribute anything to the picnic?”
“Nah, I’ve already called and made an order with one of the local shops,” Grant said. “We should be good to go.”
I laughed. “You were that sure that I’d be free today?” I joked. “What, do you think I have no friends other than you?”
Grant laughed as well. “I just have to get out of town for the day to clear my head,” he admitted. “I figured that even if you couldn’t come with me, I was probably going to want to go somewhere. The fact that you can come along is just an added bonus.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Well, let me go get ready, and I’ll see you soon. I’ll text you the address.”
“Perfect,” Grant said.
We hung up. I noticed Vera staring at me. “That was that Red Eyes guy, wasn’t it?” she asked.
“Yeah, it was Grant,” I said, already steeling myself for an argument. “You know I need to keep hanging out with him if I’m going to get the information that Ryan needs. It’s just work, like I told you before.”
“What you told me before was that you have feelings for him,” Vera countered. “But that’s not what I’m upset about.”
I rolled my eyes. “Then what are you upset about, Vera?” I asked. “Because lately, it seems like you disapprove of every single one of my life’s choices, and it’s starting to get old.”
It came out harsher than I’d intended. We’d been back in a good spot again, past the fight that we’d had on Sunday, but I could tell that her temper was about to flare again, and I could feel that mine was right behind hers. I couldn’t help it, though. I knew she just wanted to give me good sisterly advice, but couldn’t she tell that this was just as difficult for me? Couldn’t she tell that I wished that I had developed feelings for someone else as well? But I had developed feelings for Grant, and I had to keep seeing him.