by Brook Wilder
“Don’t even think about it,” Amy finally cut in, her voice wavering as she lowered her gun. “We will be alright.”
Sydney blew out a breath before she did the same, looking beaten.
“You hurt him, and I will peel your face off your skull, cop or no cop.”
“He’s perfectly safe for now,” Michael answered, glancing over at me. “Rox? You going to join these ladies, or do I need to show you Neil’s live feed next? I’m watching him too, you know.”
I didn’t doubt he wasn’t. The rage inside was killing me, knowing that I had wasted time, blaming Neil for Leo’s death when Leo’s killer was someone coming out of left field.
“Why?”
He shook his head, motioning for the guys to move to the others while he walked toward me, his hand outstretched.
“Not here. I will tell you in due time, I promise. Give me the fucking gun, Roxy.”
I didn’t want to. I wanted to put a bullet in each one of his knee caps, just so he could feel the pain I had felt for the last few months. I wanted to inflict on him what he had inflicted on me not just because he had killed my brother, but also the pain and anguish he had caused Neil and me.
But in the end, I knew I couldn’t sacrifice Neil’s life. I was dead, regardless of whether I handed over the gun or not. Taking my finger off the trigger, I dropped it into Michael’s waiting hand, crying out when he grabbed my wrist and roughly pulled me toward him.
“That’s it,” he whispered, his nose buried in my hair. “Maybe I will sample what Neil has enjoyed. We are family after all.”
“Over my dead body,” I said angrily, struggling against his grip.
He laughed and pushed me toward the waiting hands.
“We might make that happen.”
I didn’t fight as they led me to one of the trucks, roughly pushing me in and separating us from each other.
As the truck peeled off, I clenched my jaw. One thing Michael didn’t know about me or about any of us was that we weren’t just a trio of women.
We were survivors, and he had just signed his death warrant.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Neil
I took another swig of my beer as I stared at the box, knowing I had put it off long enough. After two rough hours of sleep, I didn’t feel any better, but I could keep myself on my feet at least, and that was going to have to be good enough for now.
I had shit to do, and none of it was pleasant. If I wanted to get Rox back, I had to look in this box and hopefully have enough to clear Leo’s name. If I did that, then maybe she could see past the lies I had told her and the fact that I was the reason Leo had died.
It had to be something in this box.
Pulling out the key, I inserted it into the box and turned, hearing the click. One down, one more to go. I picked up the letter on the table and scanned the contents, looking for any secret encoding that could lend itself to being the four-digit number I needed.
There was nothing at first. Red was three digits, and nowhere did he say Roxy, which would have been my first guess. My name was in there, but I knew it couldn’t be that easy.
Re-reading the words, I looked over at the diagram I had drawn out, matching the letters to the numbers like it was on the key pad of a phone. What could it be? There were only a few things that Leo loved in his life, one being his sister.
The other was the club. The club! I dialed the numbers to match the code DHMC, grinning as the box clicked open. Son of a bitch, I had done it.
Reaching in, I pulled out a small notebook and a cell phone, along with a bag of white powder and some crumbled pages, presumably out of another notebook that hadn’t made it into this box. I laid the items on the table before rooting around to find anything else in the box.
There was nothing. That meant these items were the most important pieces to the puzzle. Grabbing the notebook, I thumbed through it, reading some of the scrawl that Leo had put down on the paper. Hell, the man should have been a cop. There were dates and times of nearly every move Grayson Barnes had made, right down to the locations of his hideouts and even some crudely drawn maps to show the exact spot.
When had Leo found the time to do this? I barely had enough time to copy down my targets during stakeouts, not when I was following them without their knowledge. Leo had done this while in Grayson’s back pocket, pretty much, and with this information Grant was going to fucking hit the roof with excitement. This was what we needed.
And my best friend had died because of it.
“Shit Leo,” I muttered, rubbing a hand over my face wearily.
Roxy had been right. Her brother was not a traitor but an informant who had gotten caught while trying to help out the ‘good guys’.
If you could call us that.
At this point, I didn’t know how I was going to make it up to Leo, or to Rox.
Reaching for the cell phone, I was surprised when it came on, no passcode required to gain access to the information. The contacts were full of code names, such as dark and yellow, but it wouldn’t take our guys long to crack those names.
The pictures were grainy shots that didn’t really match anything I could recognize, but my heart skipped a beat when I realized some were videos.
Shit, Leo had been a smart son of a bitch after all.
A lump in my throat formed as I pressed play on the first video, mentally preparing myself to hear Leo’s voice. The camera was angled up, as if Leo had hidden it on the table somehow, but it was clear when Grayson Barnes’s voice filled the air.
***
“Shit, man, I hate this shit! I’m tired of being second string to that… that nobody! I could run that club ten times better than he could.”
“What do you have in mind then?” Leo asked, the sound of the diner nearly drowning out his words.
Grayson shook his head.
“Hell, man, I don’t know. Grant has gone soft and the horsemen are becoming the laughing stock of Cibolo. The man hasn’t sanctioned a hit in months, and people are starting to talk, man. They are starting to think we are nothing but a bunch of sissys.”
He then leaned forward, a grin on his face.
“I know how to fix this man. I know what to do.”
“What?” Leo said, adjusting on the plastic bench. “Grant isn’t going to let you just take over, man.”
“We need to get powerful,” Grayson answered, slapping his hand on the table. “We need to show him we don’t need his ass to provide for us anymore. I know some guys. There’s money outside the club, man. There’s lots of it. We could be rich.”
“But Grant, he’s not gonna let us do that,” Leo protested as their food arrived at the table.
Grayson laughed as he tucked his napkin in the collar of his t-shirt.
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
Leo chuckled as he dug his fork into his food.
“Surely you don’t want it to be just us then.”
Grayson shook his head.
“No, man, I have an army ready to follow at a moment’s notice. I can count you in, right?”
“Sign me up.”
Grayson pointed his fork at Leo.
“I knew you were the type of man I need at my side. This is fucking great!”
“A lot of money, huh,” Leo answered, lifting his fork to his mouth. “I hope you are right.”
Grayson grinned.
“Too bad we can’t sell Travis’s daughters. Now that would rake in some cash.”
***
The video ended there, and I blew out a long, hard breath as I realized what I had in my hands. This was proof that Grayson had planned this shit long before we thought he had.
Why had Leo decided to record this? Was it because he really wanted to expose Grayson for who he really was, and the shit got too deep?
Or was he protecting himself in case the plan went south, and Grayson tried to peg it on him?
Either way, I couldn’t blame him. Leo was a smart son of a bitch,
to cover his ass when the time was right.
It had just gotten him killed in the end.
I thumbed through some blurry photos before finding another video, shot a few weeks after the first one. The background was pretty dim as I pushed play, with one source of light behind Leo’s phone, facing a wall.
I had no idea how he had gotten the phone in this situation without someone seeing it; I couldn’t believe that Leo had taken these kinds of chances. I had always been the one to step up to the plate first, the daredevil out of the group.
But this… I didn’t know if I had these kinds of balls.
***
“You got everything in line?”
“I got the guys to come to the bar,” Leo said. “They are all in, but they are also concerned about Grant’s retaliation when he finds out that they have turned their backs on him.”
Grayson’s laugh filled the air.
“Tell them not to worry. I got it all handled. Grant won’t know what hit him.”
“How are we gonna protect our own?” Leo asked, shuffling heard in the background. “I got a sister to protect.”
“Relax, Leo,” Grayson said in a low voice. “Grant will be so wrapped up in the fact that his precious club is breaking apart that he wouldn’t even think about taking it out on anyone else but me. Roxanne will be fine. I won’t let anything happen to your sister.”
“Good, good,” Leo said. “Who’s he?”
“I’m here to help you protect yourself,” a voice from behind Leo stated, a chuckle filling the air. “I’m the man with the guns.”
“He can get us whatever shit we want,” Grayson added. “A whole arsenal if we want.”
“Good,” Leo responded. “We will need them.”
***
The video ended, and I wondered who the other person was. I didn’t recognize the voice, but it was clear that, whoever it was, he was betting on making the gun sale to Grayson.
Either that or he was going to be a partner, and there was only one Brotherhood that would pull some shit like that.
The Teutonic.
I rubbed the back of my neck to relieve the cramping there, my thoughts drifting back to Michael’s conversation with me at momma’s house. Did he know who this person was? What if he had been baiting me to find out if I knew anything about Leo’s plan?
I thumbed through the last pictures that were on the phone, finding one last video. Leo’s face covered the screen and I sucked in a breath, suddenly finding it hard to breathe. This whole time it had been like a bad dream that Leo had died, but now, seeing these videos and hearing him talk, I realized he was dead. He wasn’t coming back.
It fucking sucked.
Pressing the play button, I listened to him talk.
***
“Whoever finds this, you can pretty much put the notes and videos together. I am not a traitor to the Horsemen. That club was my life, and I would never go back on what Grant Travis has done for me and my own. Neil, I’m fucking sorry I couldn’t tell you the truth, but I didn’t want to drag you into this shit to begin with. After all, someone needs to look after Red, and you are the only man I would trust with my sister.”
Leo ran a hand over his hair before lighting a cigarette, his eyes haunted.
“I know I will probably die for this shit, either by a bullet from the best damn sniper in Texas or by Grayson himself if he finds out what I have done. But it’s gonna all be worth it in the end. I am going to help to bring down this bastard and the real traitors to the Horsemen.
Leo winked.
“See ya.”
***
The video ended, and I sat there for a moment, Leo’s grinning face staring up at me from beyond the grave. He had known I was hunting him, and no matter how much he could have cleared his name, he hadn’t.
“Dammit Leo,” I whispered, dropping the phone on the table and grinding out my eyes with the palms of my hands.
This was definitely enough to take to Grant and prove that Leo was not the traitor we had all thought him to be.
Rox had been right all along.
My cell rang suddenly, and I picked it up, holding it up to my ear.
“Yeah?”
“Neil,” Zack Hale’s voice barked back. “Have you seen Rox?”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat, my emotions running high from everything I had learned about Leo and the fact that Rox was not sitting beside me.
“Um, no, I haven’t.”
“Shit,” Zack breathed. “I was wondering if she had heard from Syd. I-I… hell, I can’t find her.”
Now that was odd. I knew that the couple were close, and it was rare that when you saw one you didn’t see the other, especially since they were working on the Barnes case together.
“Have you called Amy?”
“I did,” Zack growled, as if it was a stupid question on my part. “It goes to voicemail, just like Syd’s and Roxanne’s. I… hell, I don’t want to blow this out of proportion, but this isn’t like Syd at all.”
I knew it was futile for me to call Rox’s cell, as if she would pick up. I doubted she would piss on me if I was on fire.
“I don’t know man.”
“I-I’m gonna keep trying,” Zack answered, his voice sounding frantic. “Call me if you hear anything.”
He hung up before I could answer him, and I started to lay the phone down before it buzzed again, this time with Grant’s number flashing on the screen.
“Yeah?” I asked as I pressed it to my ear.
“Have you heard from Amy?”
I straightened. First Zack, now Grant.
“I… no, I have not. Zack just called saying he can’t find Sydney.”
“Shit,” Grant swore. “She was supposed to meet me for dinner, and she’s a no show. Amy never misses our meals together. Do you think that this is another Harley abduction?”
Grant’s youngest daughter, Harley, had been kidnapped by Grayson, and it had been Sydney and Zack that had found her, unharmed for the most part. Ever since then, Grant had posted two guards to follow his daughter around at all times, and she hated it. I think she spent more time trying to dodge them than she did actually allowing them to protect her.
But Amy… she was her own person, tough as nails and letting everyone know that she wanted one day to take over the club from her father. I personally thought she could do it, but there was a great deal of discord at the thought of a woman running the Horsemen.
That, and with Sydney missing as well it meant that Rox was likely with them, and that didn’t sit well with me.
“Where’s Harley?”
“Sitting in front of me,” Grant growled. “She’s safe. I made her come home. Dammit! This is my family!”
A memory hit me full force, nearly causing me to drop the damn phone as I shot off the couch, my heart hammering against my chest wall. I knew who had the girls.
“It’s the Teutonic.”
“Shit,” Grant swore into the phone. “Are you serious? How do you know that?”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat.
“I just know. Let me do some rooting around and I will get back with you.”
“What the hell?” Grant said right before I ended the call.
I ran a hand through my hair. I remembered what Michael had told me the day he was at momma’s, how the Brotherhood would go after what a person loved the most in life.
At the time I thought he was talking about momma, but the quickest way to get a man to bow down to another is to take their woman.
He had taken Rox.
“Dammit,” I growled, moving quickly to the bedroom to suit up, punching a hole in the wall in the hall for good measure along the way.
My own damn cousin had taken my woman, the one thing he knew I loved more than life itself.
Well, next to momma. But he knew momma would shoot him in the gut if he tried to take her anywhere.
But why? It didn’t make any sense.
After strapping on
a few guns and knives, I walked back into the living room and looked down at the information that Leo had provided. Surely the Brotherhood hadn’t taken the girls over this. The Teutonic had no reason to want to hide the fact they were working with Grayson and his traitors. I had never known them to shy away from anyone that could provide the cash for the guns.