Carmela was the daughter of Raul Estavez, and Estavez was Machos. He was their president, but more than that he had fought tooth and nail to tear that club away from his blood brother, Carlos. Retaliation for Carlos’ abduction of Carmela. Missing then, found by Watcher and Slate. Missing now.
Bones knew eight of the men on that assigned escort ride were Southern Soldiers. Watcher’s men, now Mason’s, but at the time still wearing the Soldiers’ patch.
Hurley was Rebels, through and through, raised around the club.
“What information is available on the Soldiers who went missing?” Gaze still fixed on where his arms crossed in front of him, Bones didn’t look up at Mason’s grunted negative response. “So we have nothing special there. Carmela is special all in her own right, with ties to many clubs through her father, her near-father, and her Tio Andy.” Slate had…has been close to the girl for years, and she still calls him her uncle. “Hurley, though. His father was not club, was he?”
“Nope. Friend, but not member. Owned a bike shop in Fort Wayne that Winger used. Got tight with the club that way.” Leather rustled as Mason shifted in his chair, but Bones stayed focused inside his own head. “Where you going with this?”
“Not certain, give me a little more rope to play with.” Bones waited, comfortable enough to let the silence grow between them for a moment. “Hurley seems smart. Do you feel he is loyal?” Pressing his lids shut, he stared into the darkness forced around him. “Do not answer. I know he is. The Soldiers on that run, do you have names? Something is circling my mind.” An image of Ester rose, and he saw her seated on the rug as she had been a few days before, telling him in her way that she’d never leave him.
Mason rattled off eight names and Bones mulled over each. Most were unknown to him, but one name stuck out. “Diamond. Was…is he a Soldiers’ original?”
“Not a founder, but one of the first after Watcher moved out there. He’s been with ‘em for a long time. I’ve only met him a couple of times. You’ve probably had more exposure than me. You’ve been out to see Watch and Juanita often enough through the years.” Papers shuffled, and Mason sighed, repeating his earlier question, “What are you after, Bones? Where ya going with this?”
“Diamond. He was shot in a scuffle once, correct?” Whatever this was he was chasing felt just out of reach. Like a mostly remembered word on the tip of his tongue, it was right there, but yet not. “Andy was with Watcher at the time. This was before he came to Chicago, before we met him. Before he became Slate to us. I remember hearing Diamond nearly left the club. Is he close to any of the members in particular?” Lifting his head, Bones opened his eyes, staring at Mason, blinking against the water flooding them at the intrusion of the light. “Are there things that stuck out about him?”
“Spider. He’s tight with Spider. They’ve been friends since before the club. I think he was the one who recruited and sponsored Diamond into the Soldiers.” Mason shook his head. “Spider still ain’t right, Bones. I’m worried about him.”
“Call Myron. I have a hunch about something.”
Mason stood, stepped to the door and opened it, calling to someone in the main room. After a moment, he seated himself again, leaving the door open slightly. They sat in silence, waiting, until Myron walked in. “Sup, boss?” Myron glanced over, and Bones saw the muscles in his jaw tighten, teeth clamped together. “Ester okay?”
“Ester is fine,” Bones told him, trying to decide what looked different about the man today. Shaking his head, he dismissed the thought. “Can you look at phone records on the day Watcher was killed? Can you see what calls were incoming to a specific number, even if it is not a club phone?”
Every member who was issued a phone knew the club had full visibility into the usage of the device. Nonclub phones might not have the same capability. Only club phones were allowed to be used inside the clubhouse, and no phones at all were allowed in their closed-door meetings. Myron had built a small Faraday cage for the clubhouse, and during church, all devices were deposited there, effectively blocking any remote listening by rivals or federal authorities.
“Yeah. I can do what’s needed. Whatcha got?” Myron tipped his head to the side, looping his thumbs through his belt loops in a stance so casual it looked studied.
“Diamond. He was with Carmela—”
“What do you need?” Myron cut him off. “I have his records. Lemme get my tablet.” Two minutes later he was back in the room, door closed, tapping on the screen. “What are we looking for?”
“Anything to or from Diamond that afternoon, especially as we neared the time when Mason got your message.” Myron had texted Mason about the approach of enemies on the interstate, hoping to guide them around the rival club. When Watcher found out who was headed their direction, he had taken off in an instant, focused only on retribution.
“I got my heads up from Diamond, so I’m on those records.”
Bones jerked. “Diamond told you Diamante were headed east? What time?”
“Right before I texted Mason, why?” Myron’s head tipped to the side, and he looked genuinely puzzled.
“Because that gives us a frame from which to search.” Frustrated, Bones stood and bent at the waist, slapping his hands on the top of the desk. “If he saw the Diamante rolling east, that would mean he was west of where Watcher and Mason were. If he were west, but not yet to Las Cruces, then we have a—”
Myron cut him off with an anguished shout. “Fuck. You’re right. Dammit, I didn’t even think about that. Didn’t put it…Jesus. What a fucking—”
“We’re all in the same boat, Myron. Don’t travel there. Let’s see what we can do with this information.” Mason’s tone wasn’t quiet, and the tension in his voice rippled through the room, the anguished emotion he still held from Watcher’s death rolling over Bones’ skin and raising gooseflesh in its wake. “Still a fuckton of highway. Tiny needle and a big fucking haystack.”
“But smaller.” Bones offered, and stood, turning to look Myron in the face. “What can we do with this knowledge? Can we—”
Whatever ideas he’d been about to offer were cut off again, this time with a gesture, Myron slicing his hand through the air in a sharp movement. “I can look at video, pull in traffic camera footage as long as it’s not been cycled. They don’t hold shit too long, even digital takes up space so they write over the top periodically. See if I can pinpoint where they were when Diamond made the call, and then we can follow them to where they went next.”
“What do you need from me?” Bones stared at the man’s face, puzzled because the anxious expression was somehow familiar. That made him remember the thing which had been circling his mind earlier, because something about Diamond was familiar, too. “Diamond.” He paused, gathering his thoughts for a moment. “Diamond called you. He called and told you the news. Lalo and Chismoso were rolling, they were on the highway, so it wouldn’t have been a set-up from Lalo. He was clueless about what was coming. As clueless as Watcher would have been without that call.” Squeezing his eyes closed, Bones used the self-enforced darkness to focus. “Diamond always reminded me of someone. Mason, do you have any pictures from the old Fiends’ days?”
A scuffle of movement from behind him, the creak of wood followed by the slide of a drawer. “Got a couple of pics here. Full group in one. Whatcha looking for?” Bones turned and opened his eyes just as Mason laid an envelope on the desk. “I keep ‘em here, no need to show folks old history that don’t mean anything.”
Bones leaned across, picking up the folded cardboard and hefting it a moment. Thick and weighty, there had to be more than a couple of pictures inside. Fingers to the clasp, he bent the prongs and tugged open the flap, upending the envelope to let the pictures slide out into a tidy pile.
There, he thought, as in the top image he saw what he wanted. A long line of men, arms around each other’s shoulders, scowling at the camera. Prospects were kneeling on the ground in front of them, backs to the camera, their lowly place in t
he organization making them not worthy of being immortalized. In front of one man, there was a boy about fifteen years old, not scowling, not smiling, just staring at the camera. The man behind him had an arm wrapped around the kid’s chest, pulling him back into a hold. Their faces were similar enough it was easy to tell this was a father and son pair.
Bones pointed to the man, already knowing the answer to his question. “That is Deacon, correct? This would have been taken about the time you joined the Fiends?”
Mason reached out, pulling the picture towards him and turned it so it faced him. “Yeah.” He pointed to a kneeling body, back to the camera, on the opposite end of the line from where Deacon stood. “That’s me.”
“And the boy in front of Deacon?” Bones gaze lifted to meet Mason’s, and he saw the question in his friend’s eyes, read that he wondered why this was important but Bones had to wait until he was certain. “That is his boy, right?”
Nodding, Mason held their gaze steadily. “Yeah. His kid. I don’t remember his name. Not long after this picture, Deacon’s old lady took the kid and booked. Kid wasn’t around much after that. Summers and shit. Typical divorced family.”
“You don’t remember his name? Look at his face.” Bones willed Mason to see, to understand. Needed him to recognize it without things being pointed out, not wanting to sway him if Bones was wrong. “Look, Mason.”
Dragging the image closer, Mason finally broke the stare, angling his head down to the desk. Bones tracked the way his muscles tightened across his shoulders, saw the already square jaw become more angular, taut. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Do you see it?” Bones asked, and then jolted when there was a sudden movement at his hip, a hand reaching into view. So focused was Bones on Mason’s reaction, that until he’d moved, Myron had been forgotten. “Jesus.”
“See what?” Myron studied the image, leaning in to focus on the boy. “He’s just any kid, Bones. What’s so special about Deacon’s boy?”
“Look at Deacon, then the boy,” Bones offered, and waited. “Look and tell me, what do you see?” He paused, then feeling a sudden urgency for corroboration, asked, “Who do you see?”
“Fuck.” Myron tossed the picture back on the desk, and all three men looked down into the face of a fifteen-year-old boy who grew up to become a biker known as Diamond.
***
“Found ‘em.” Myron’s voice was hoarse and rough with fatigue. It had been nearly fifteen hours since the realization they had a time and place from which to begin looking. Fingers flying on the keyboard of the laptop he’d brought into the room, deeming the tablet underpowered for what he needed, Myron had worked to pull together video footage from a hundred different cameras. Then he’d begun running it through a facial recognition software he claimed was better than the one used on any social media websites, using images of Carmela and Hurley as their base.
It hadn’t taken long to locate a video snippet of them getting onto the interstate highway just minutes after Diamond’s call to Myron. At that point, they had a timestamp and a direction, but because the department of transportation’s cameras were spaced far apart, it had taken some effort to track them the hundred miles to where they’d exited, heading south. Then Myron began piecing together a timeline based on video footage from bank ATMs and other security cameras near the small highway the group traveled.
Twice the group had stopped for gas, and they’d clearly seen images of Diamond talking on the phone. The timestamp placed this exchange about an hour after Watcher’s death, and the phone records showed the call had been from Opie. As Mason had requested, there hadn’t been a mass text message sent to all Rebel and Soldier members, each leverage member instead receiving a phone call. Bones expected when they talked to Opie—and they couldn’t delay much longer, so Mason had already called for Opie to come in and wait in the main room for now—they’d find out Diamond had offered to tell the rest of the group he traveled with, probably with the stated intent to keep it from Carmela until they reached the safety of the Otey compound in Las Cruces.
“Fucking hell.” Myron clipped the words, his tone harsh and suddenly more alert and awake than he’d sounded for hours. “Jesus, no.”
Bones and Mason moved at the same time, gathering behind Myron to look over his shoulder. The video was dark and grainy, hard to make out individual details. Bones saw a cluster of bikes to one side, a small group of people, maybe two at the most standing nearby, and a scattering of dark objects on the ground. The video jerked and disappeared, and Bones watched as Myron clicked buttons. “Gimme a minute. Lemme save it down.” The mutter sounded thick, as if Myron’s throat were tight. Computer dialogue windows popped up and Myron clicked, tapped on the keyboard, and clicked again. “Okay. Jesus.” He blew out a heavy breath.
The video appeared again, larger, taking up the entire screen. The line of bikes came into view from the left, crossing the frame to park where Bones remembered seeing them on the clip. “Motel,” Myron offered. “This is the view from the shutdown gas station next door. Lucky they still had the electric on.” One figure moved away from the rest, out of frame while the rest of the riders dismounted and stood, stretching. Clustering together. Two figures stood apart, and from the swing of hair as the helmet was removed, Bones knew one of the two was Carmela. “Motel was closed for the night. Manager lives on site, so you can ring a bell, and he’ll come to the window. I already looked at this place when I started my sweep. No record of our group staying here. You’ll see why.”
The figure came back into the frame. “Diamond,” Mason muttered the single word, and it wasn’t a question, but Bones responded anyway.
“Yes, I recognize him from the back.”
Mason grunted. Then at the movement on the screen, he bit off an anguished, “Fuck.” They watched as men fell, one after the other, to become dark lumps on the ground. There was no sound from the video, and no sound from the witnesses in the room as they watched the two figures to the side merge, becoming one, and Bones knew Hurley had pushed Carmela behind him, protecting her with his body.
The camera showed no movement for at least a minute. Bones felt himself growing tenser with each passing second, then slowly, her movements tentative, Carmela came out from behind Hurley. She stood clear of him for a moment before whirling to face Hurley, her hands on his chest. They remained in this pose for a minute before Hurley stepped to the side, facing Diamond head on again. This standoff had continued for a few moments before Hurley and Carmela moved, and to Bones it looked like they tossed small items to the ground, turning to their parked motorcycles. Hurley mounted his bike, his jerky movements communicating anger and fear while Carmela gathered something from her bike before climbing on behind Hurley. Diamond moved to his bike, lifting his phone to his ear for a few seconds. Hurley pulled out of the parking lot followed by Diamond, and their bikes moved out of the frame, leaving only dust swirling in their wake.
***
Bones studied him, as chin down, Opie watched the second segment of video. It was Opie’s third time to cycle through the video. Gaze locked on him, Bones watched as he reached out, tapped a key to pause the playback, and saw the shaking in his hand made his finger stutter on the button for a moment, turning it off, then on, then off again. There was silence in the room, and Bones held his tongue out of respect for a man he held in high regard watching the deaths of brothers at the hand of a traitor. The muscles in Opie’s neck moved, and his jaw clenched as he swallowed hard, fighting back the emotions that held him in their clutches.
Before calling in Opie, they had skimmed through the remaining video from the gas station and Myron isolated the section where two pickups had driven into the lot. A pair of men had stacked bodies like cordwood in the back of one truck, drawing a tarp tight across their bloody cargo. They had then moved to the bikes, rolling them up the ramp and into a closed trailer pulled behind the other truck. Less than two hours after the killing started, there was nothing in the frame except the
shifting shadows cast by the rising sun.
All of this had gone down the same day as Watcher, but no one had known. There were no memorials for these men, no process of mourning.
Voice shaking as much as his hands, Opie asked, “You able to follow those motherfuckers at all?” It wasn’t clear which group he spoke of, but Myron answered with what they knew.
“No. Got nothing on either group. Either they turned off the highway before the next camera, or they knew enough to route around it.”
Stepping back from the table where the laptop was resting, Opie settled his hips and shoulders against a wall. One hand lifted and he covered the bottom half of his face, roughly scrubbing the skin of his jaw and chin. His gaze stayed fixed on the screen where the video was frozen on an empty lot. Without looking away, Opie asked the question Bones had been waiting for. “Y’all call Raul yet?” For more than three weeks the Mexican MC had been burning up the highways and phone lines looking for her.
“Not yet,” Mason told him, and then continued, “wanted to make sure we had a solid lead before we called him in. Started with the location where Diamond made the call to Myron”—Opie’s head jerked around, this clearly was news to him—“and worked back from there. Wasn’t expecting this, not at all, brother.” At that word, Opie’s jaw tightened, and Bones wondered if this was because he felt guilt at living to be given that honorific while Watcher did not.
Mason didn’t have any such confusion because he cleared up things quickly. “Don’t do that, man. You think just because Diamond turned, took a dark path, I’d paint you with the same brush? No way. Watch told me over and over again what you were to him. Closer than blood, you were his brother, had his back in every way he could have asked. Had his back when it wasn’t a popular thing to do, and had his wife and kids in your heart when you dealt with anything to do with Soldiers. He knew, and because he knew, I know, too. Brother, you ain’t Diamond. And once we tell you what we’ve figured, you’ll see why I’m as confident of that as I am that the fuckin’ sun is gonna come up tomorrow morning.” He shook his head, reaching out to grip Opie’s shoulder. “Don’t think I have one iota of question in my head about you.”
Bones (Rebel Wayfarers MC Book 10) Page 17