“Ren tells me you found our thief.” His dark eyes held mine as I nodded.
“I did and you’re not going to like it. It’s someone who has your trust and...”
He didn’t give me time to explain. “Stop with the explanations. Just give me the proof and the name.”
I took the USB out of my bag and slid it across the desk towards him. “It’s all on there. We’ve lost close to 150k over the last eighteen months. It started off small eighteen months ago but over the last six months the amounts have virtually tripled.”
“Who?” He snarled.
Shit. He was going to explode because Lucy was his favourite girl. She has been with the club for many years and was in a position of trust. She ran ordering for the clubs and bars and a few other businesses, as well as serving the club as a club girl if and when they needed her. But she has been exclusive with Maniac for a while now. Mama had speculated that he was about to make her his old lady and she had been pleased because she liked Lucy and she liked her for him.
I drew in a deep breath then gave it to him. “Lucy.”
His stunned silence was freaking scary because He was never at a loss for words.
Rubbing my hands over my tired eyes and face I looked up and into his coldly furious eyes. “I’ve known Lucy for most of my life and this makes no sense at all. She’s not a greedy woman. Once I started looking for the missing money it was so damned obvious that it felt like it had been set up for me to find. All I had to do was follow the bread crumbs scattered along the way.”
“Are you tellin’ me you think someone set my woman up to take the fall for this shit?” Maniac’s voice had dropped and turned icy and rough.
I didn’t say anything, just nodded. And holy hell he called her his woman. Mama was right. She was going to be so pleased if he gave her his patch.
Turning to my dad he raised an eyebrow in question. As the club’s VP my dad was his president’s right hand and his sounding board. They were a great team.
“I agree with Leo. This is too fucking obvious, Prez. Pinning this shit on your woman makes you look weak. Makes it look like you have no control over your club or your woman. This could be someone making moves to challenge you for the gavel and to take over the club.” My dad laid it out for his president.
“Ren, what’s your take?”
“Leo’s got it right, Prez. You know what we’ve uncovered and this shit just confirmed our suspicions.” Ren didn’t change his position but I knew my brother and knew he was ready for anything as he leant against the wall.
Maniac had a finger on the USB and was moving it in tiny little circles on his desk. Then slapping his hand down over the USB he looked at me and smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile at all.
“Thanks for comin’ to me and layin’ it out straight, darlin’. I appreciate you standin’ up for my woman when everything points to her bein’ our thief. Not gonna forget that.” He sighed. “But while sayin’ that, we’re gonna let this one play out. Lucy is gonna fuckin’ hate my guts and have my balls when this is done but to flush the fucker or fuckers out we’re gonna have to make it seem like we believe she’s our thief.”
Shaking my head I violently disagreed. “No, no, no, no. You can’t do that, Prez. She’ll hate us, and she’ll hate you if we pretend not to believe her. And I’m not good at lying to my friends. She’ll know I was lying to her. Don’t do this to her. What if she leaves the club?”
Dad interrupted before Maniac could say a word. “She’s not going fucking anywhere except his bed. And you won’t be here for her to question you anyway. I’m sending you after Reid. I need you to go out there and find him. Your Mama and I haven’t been able to reach him for months now. Your brothers and I can’t leave with all this shit happening with the club, but you can. The other reason is I want you far away from that little fucker out there, I don’t trust him and his fuckin’ shit for brains friends. They are planning something and once we deal with it there will be no blow back on you.”
I ignored the mention of the asshole. “I don’t know where he is in SA or which club he patched into, Dad. He refused to tell me and he hasn’t contacted me in almost two months, same as you and Mama. I tried to call him earlier but all I got was that ‘number no longer in service’ shit message. He must have a new burner and hasn’t been able to call me with the number. I’ll go, but I first have to get shit sorted for Jamie to take over from me before I can leave. Okay?”
The three of them nodded in agreement. Something wasn’t right here but I knew they wouldn’t tell me anything. It was obviously club business.
“If you could get me more information on which club he’s at it will help my search a hell of a lot when I get there. And now I’m going to go home because it’s been one hell of a long day.” I pushed up out of my chair and reached for my bag but Maniac put his hand on top of it and drew it towards him. Sliding my laptop out he set it down on his desk then handed me my bag. I stayed silent throughout.
“You’ll get this back tomorrow along with whatever we have on Reid. Lure will be followin’ you home. You let him do a walk through then lock up tight and set your alarm. You get me?” He ordered.
Oh yes, something was definitely going on. “I do, Prez.” I said quietly.
Bending down I gave my dad a tight hug, did the same to my brother, and because Maniac did not allow anyone to touch him without an invitation I just waved goodbye. But he beckoned me over, pulled me down for a hug then tapped my booty and pushed me towards the door. Totally surprised and stunned I scooted out the door. Lure was leaning against the wall outside the office, obviously waiting for me.
“Hey, darlin’. You look fuckin’ bushed, let’s get you home, ‘kay?” He said softly as he a draped an arm around my shoulders and led me through the unnaturally quiet common room, where everyone avoided looking at me, and outside to my car. As I walked through the common room I looked for Dive and Gear but didn’t see either of them. Gear’s friends were no longer around and neither were Breaker and Magic and a few of the older patches.
Sitting in my car I waited until Lure was on his bike before I drove down the road, his headlight following me all the way home.
He would not let me into the house until he had done a complete walk through then he stood on the front veranda and waited until he heard the loud beeeeep of me setting the alarm. Only then did he walk down the steps, got on his bike and rode away.
I was freaked out by this latest state of affairs at the club and the very first thing I did was take my gun out of the gun safe. Once it was loaded I slipped it into the back of my jeans. I had been too complacent lately, but no more, I wasn’t going to go anywhere without being armed until I left to go and find Reid.
After a long hot shower I pulled on sleep shorts and the faded black t-shirt I had stolen from Reid when he went on his first deployment and got into bed.
My last thought before I slipped into sleep was about my brother and why I hadn’t heard a word from him in so long. It wasn’t like him at all. I was so damned worried about him.
Reid and I had been born so close together we were more like twins. We had shared everything as we grew up and were each other’s best friend. He had started changing after he became a Marine. He hadn’t really talked about his deployments before he got hurt and not at all afterwards. I understood that the injury to his brain and the subsequent torture he had endured had robbed him of some of his memories and that it had made his temper much more volatile. But he was still my brother and my best friend in the whole world. I would not give up on him. I was going to kick his ass for disappearing on me yet again when I saw him.
I woke up gasping, crying, and dripping with sweat, the horror of the dream still clear in my mind. It had felt so damned real. In my dream Reid had been riding and his bike had suddenly veered off the road and he and the bike had gone flying through the air. The horrible dream played over and over in my head. I knew, deep in my gut I somehow knew, my brother, my best friend and other-mother twin had been
badly hurt.
It was the last part of the dream that stayed with me though. The part where he had spoken to me. He had been standing in a bright green field and smiled at me, his hazel eyes, so very much like dad’s, no longer shadowed, they were clear and happy.
“I’m free, little sister. I haven’t felt free in a very long time but now I do. I love you guys, even fuckin’ Ren. I’ll always be close, Leo, always. Love you little sis.”
That was the part of the dream where I woke up and the tears just kept on coming. Hugging my cushion to my chest I sobbed for my lost brother. Sobbed because I had this horrible feeling I wasn’t going to see him alive ever again. His crazy laugh, his incessant teasing, his instant dislike of anyone I dated, his short temper, his weird neatness, I missed all of it. I wanted him to come home. I needed him to come home.
My brother was loyal to those he loved and respected and even though he had refused to prospect with the club he had respected my dad and his brothers for their choices.
The Shadow Wraiths MC was a one percenter club but the Savannah chapter wasn’t as deep into the bad stuff as some of the other chapters. The national president left the choice up to the president and brothers of the individual chapters. Publicly Maniac and the brothers walked a fairly straight path but behind closed doors their path wasn’t as clear and they weren’t averse to stepping over the line into the dark. Their main business was gun running but every now and then they would take on protection runs if the money was right.
The shit between Reid and Ren was most probably a stupid misunderstanding and neither one of them would give an inch and resolve their shit. What if my dream was real and it was too late? How would it affect Ren if Reid wasn’t with us any longer?
Fuck, I couldn’t even think the d word.
I had to calm down the hell down. It was just a damned dream. Just a dream.
Checking the time on my phone I groaned. According to my phone I’d had exactly four hours of sleep and I knew there was no way I would be able to go back to sleep again.
Getting out of bed I dragged myself to my home office and started the task of arranging for my assistant, Jamie, to take over from me as soon as possible. I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave right away but I was going to do my fucking best to leave before the end of the week.
And until I knew exactly what was going on with my brother there was no way I could tell anyone about my dream. And why would I anyway? It was just a dream, nothing more.
All I had to do was get to South Africa, somehow get an appointment with the president of whichever club he had patched into then ask him which chapter Reid was at. Not an easy task at all. Hah! Try almost impossible.
Once I find him I was going to give him hell for not getting in touch. And then I was going to persuade him to come home for a damned long visit.
And if the worst had happened...
No way was I going to allow him to be put into a deep dark hole in a strange country far from his family, lonely and forgotten.
Never.
Never.
Never.
Reid hated small dark places after the shit that had happened to him in Afghanistan.
He always said he wanted to go out in flames.
If the worst has happened I was going to see to it that he got his wish.
My brother would go out of this world like a fucking Viking of old.
CHAPTER THREE
Wolf
Leaning against the door jamb to Ziggy’s office Wolf waited to see if he would be able to extract any information from Army’s fucked up phone. It had been crushed in the accident and Ziggy had spent the night trying to put it back together as best he could. Wolf didn’t think he was going to have much luck with it. Bullet, who was sitting in the only other chair in the room didn’t think so either.
“Fuck.” Ziggy swore as he carefully took the innards of the patched together phone and set it into the thing he had in front of him. “Okay, let’s see if there’s anything on here. I don’t have high hopes of this working, but it’s worth a try.”
As he tapped on the keys they all watched the screen to see if they would be lucky today.
Bullet sat forward when a short string of names popped onto the screen. But it didn’t help them much, they were all club members. Ziggy did something and another name was suddenly added to the string.
Bullet pointed at the screen. “I don’t know that name. Maybe it’s someone in his family back in the US.”
Leo.
Wolf frowned as he looked at the name. Who the fuck had Army been talking to?
“Can you call it, Zig?”
His brother nodded wordlessly. Tapping on the keyboard Ziggy sat back as it rang only to be cut short with a message they did not want to hear. The number was no longer in service.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
A dead end.
Ziggy went back to playing with his keyboard and by some miracle he accessed the call history. The last call Army had made was to Bullet on the day they were ambushed. The one before that was to this Leo person the night before and the call had lasted more than an hour. But it didn’t show the number that had been dialled, just the name. And the name only came up because Army must have programmed it into his phone. The number, as on their own burners, was blocked.
“Fuck, this does not look good.” Ziggy mumbled.
Bullet snarled angrily. “Don’t go seeing shit where there’s none. Army is fucking loyal to the club, he would never betray us. And if this was him betraying us then the wrong fucking man is lying in a hospital bed waiting for his fucking mother to kill him. I was riding with him when this shit went down. Those fuckers targeted him as much as they did the rest of us.”
“Bullet, brother.” Ziggy said softly. “Look at this from our point of view. He talked for a fucking long time to someone none of us know. Then you’re attacked. They might have targeted him to make it look legit, to cover his betrayal of the club.”
“Bull-fucking-shit!” Bullet snarled as he shoved his chair back and got up. “I know my brother and I know for a fucking fact he would never betray me or this club. There’s an explanation behind this name and I’m going to fucking find it.”
“We’ve searched every inch of his room, Bullet.” Wolf tried to calm his brother down. “We found nothing incriminating, but we didn’t find anything to clear him either. Where’s his laptop or his tablet? Why weren’t they in his room?”
Bullet snorted out a laugh. “He doesn’t have a tablet, only a very basic laptop and I don’t know where it is. He said technology is a curse. Always said people spent too much time chatting to strangers online instead of connecting with the real live people around them.”
“Okay, I believe you, Bullet.”
Wolf shrugged when Bullet looked at him in disbelief.
“Zig, brother, can you put out feelers to see if we can find this Leo person? Maybe he knows Army’s real name and how to contact his family. We’re going to need them to stop the bitch from turning the machines off and killing him.” Wolf pushed off from the door jamb and left Ziggy’s office.
He had to report the latest to his Prez. Army’s time was fast running out and they still had nothing. They needed a fucking break.
Sitting across the desk from his president he knew Hawk was as frustrated as they all were. They’ve found nothing. After reaching out to several of the big clubs they now knew there wasn’t anyone going by the road name of Leo riding with any of them. It was the smaller riding clubs that was the problem, those bastards didn’t keep proper records and even asking Wimpie hadn’t delivered anything.
They were stuck and had one day left to stop the machines breathing for Army from being turned off.
Wolf was just about to leave when Hawk’s phone started ringing and by the look on his presidents’ face he knew the call was from whoever was on duty outside the ICU.
“Beast.”
His president didn’t say anything as he listened but his face shut down and bec
ame hard, his eyes looked like they were glowing they were so bright a yellow.
“Fucking hell. Thanks brother, I’ll get Ice on it immediately. You stay with him, don’t leave him alone for a fucking second.”
Slowly and carefully setting his phone down Hawk breathed in before looking at Wolf then shook his head letting out a heavy sigh.
“He’s gone. Thirty minutes ago he had a massive brain bleed followed by seizures, they fought for our brother but couldn’t save him. Beast didn’t call immediately because none of us would have been allowed on the ICU floor. Our brother is gone. This is fucking bullshit. Bullshit!” Hawk’s hands were curled into massive fists on the desk in front of him. “This was too fucking convenient. We indicate we’re going to fight her and suddenly he has a brain bleed and dies. I don’t fucking believe this shit.”
Wolf rubbed his hands over his face, remembering the way Army always teased and laughed. He was their brother and now he was gone. This was going to fuck with Tori big time. He didn’t even want to think about how this was going to affect Bullet.
But they had another pressing matter to pay attention to.
“We have to insist on an autopsy, Boss. Get Ice on it.” Wolf rubbed his burning eyes as he shook his head. “Was he alone when this happened?”
His Prez’s head suddenly lifted and the predator that he was shone out of his eyes. “Yes, but the bitch had been in to see him less than half an hour before.”
The office door opened and Ice walked in and by the look on his face Beast had called him as well. He sank into the chair next to Wolf and shook his head.
“Fuck, Hawk. She’s going to fight us on the funeral but I’ll fix her shit. How the fuck do we bury a brother when we don’t even know his real name?”
That was the fucking question of the day.
“We don’t stop looking for his family, Ice. Somewhere, someone knows who he is and when they come forward we will do this the right way. Even if it takes us fucking years, we will know who he was and we will honour his name.” Hawk promised. “For the time being we will go with Steven “Army” Patel but during the service we will only use his road name. That is who he was to us and that’s the man we will be burying. With full club honours.”
Vengeance Of A Black Knight (Iron Dogz MC, #4) Page 3