by Jayne Blue
It could be years before the RICO case ever went to trial.
“You have what you need in here?” I asked. Protection. Right now, that was the most important thing for my brothers. In that, it was good they’d all been sent together. It had been a few years since the Wolves were into illegal shit, but we still had allies on the inside. I wondered what my time would have been like if I’d been affiliated with the GWMC when I was inside. It could have been better, but it also could have been worse.
“We’re putting some things in place,” Colt said. “There have been a few scrapes, but nothing we can’t handle.”
“They’re testing you,” I said. “Seeing how vulnerable you are. Whether old alliances are still strong. Colt, man, you gotta watch your back. All the time. Don’t let your guard down even for a second in here.”
“Relax,” he said. “I’ll take care of in here. You need to take care of out there. You understand what I’m telling you?”
The feds had seized almost everything. The bar was shut down. Even some of the bikes had been taken. I was technically homeless but had been crashing at Colt’s old house. He hadn’t sold it when he and Amy got hitched and used it as a rental now. It was empty. For now, it was mine.
“I understand,” I said. “But I’m getting a lot of questions. Amy, the other wives. You gotta give me something to tell them.”
“I don’t want Amy here,” Colt snapped.
“She told me,” I said. “She said you turned her away three times. Look, I didn’t come here to get into your personal business. But Amy’s been a rock. Calm, calculating. Even when the feds have come by.”
Colt stiffened. “How often has that happened?”
“Once or twice,” I said. “She’s got an agent tailing her. She brought him cookies one day.”
Colt laughed. “I’d like to have seen that.”
“You don’t have to worry about her. She knows the drill. She’s taking care of all the families. It’s under control.”
“Good,” he said.
“What about Catman?” I asked. Catman Wade, our former president, had gone up for murder a few years ago. He was still inside but in the state prison system.
“He’s got no reach in here,” Colt said. “You tell Amy. You make sure she understands.”
On the face of it, I understood what he meant. But his eyes hardened, and I knew we were talking about something else entirely.
“What about you?” he asked.
“What about me? I told you, I got it all under control out there. I’ll stay on George. I don’t give a shit if he thinks your bond appeal is a long shot. If he won’t get after it, I’ll find someone who will. It’s absolute bullshit they’re keeping you in here. You haven’t gotten so much as a parking ticket in almost ten years. They’re trying to stick the club with old shit. We’re not alone, Colt. That’s the message I was sent here with. I’ve been in contact with Nash in Florida, Sly in Cali, Sawyer in Grand City ... they’re circling the wagons. We’re gonna get to the bottom of who fucked us over.”
Colt nodded. “That’s good to hear. I was worried. This is big. They’ve set up their own houses.”
“You’re a Wolf,” I said. “That’s thicker than blood.”
A silence settled between us. I wanted to ask him more pointed questions. I know he had the same for me. The truth was, we were nowhere close to finding out who framed us and how.
“Somebody had inside info,” Colt said. “The routes. The cargo. Did George get anywhere with the driver? He’s supposed to come talk to me tomorrow.”
“He’s in the wind,” I said. “The feds were supposed to be sitting on the driver.”
Colt pounded his fist against the table. “Then you need to get on top of that.”
“I’m working it,” I said. I couldn’t give him more details. It had to be enough that he knew I was out there fighting for the club.
“Good,” he said. “Good. Torch, I’m proud of you. We’re gonna get through this.”
“This isn’t my strong suit,” I said. “I wish it was me on the other side of that table.”
Colt’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t. You don’t belong here. You never did.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “Neither do you.”
“Torch,” he said. “I need you to listen to me. Listen close. Whoever did this. It was tight. It was planned out. Maybe for years. We know who did it. That’s not even a question. The Hawks have been trying to move in on our territory for over a decade. They found a way. But they had help.”
“Are you worried?” I asked. I couldn’t get more specific, but he read my eyes. I was asking him if he thought they’d get clear of this. For real.
“Torch, I need you to take care of things,” he said.
“Boss, I swear to God, I am. Don’t you give up on me. Don’t start settling into this like this is going to be your life now. It’s not. It’s not just me working the problem.”
Colt stayed still as stone. He kept his eyes locked with mine. “Torch,” he said. “I need you to take care of things. I need you to make Amy understand.”
It felt like a blow to the gut. He was afraid to say the words because of all the ears around. But he was pulling the trigger on the doomsday scenario. It would be up to me to carry it out.
“Boss,” I said.
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” he said. “Torch, if you waver, Amy won’t understand. She needs to know this is coming directly from me. She needs to know I’m not playing.”
He was asking for the hardest thing any member of the club had to deal with next to burying one of our own. He was asking me to put the families in the wind.
“Fuck,” I said. “Amy. The kids. Colt …”
“Listen,” he said. “You can do this. You can make her understand. I want to sit here and pretend that this is a temporary situation. But we both know it might not be. This was deep. Surgically executed. And I think there’s worse yet to come. I can’t fight this the way I need to if my family isn’t clear of it.”
This was it. He was talking about bugging out. Sending Amy and his kids somewhere safe. New lives. New identities maybe. He’d want her to run and never look back.
“She won’t do it,” I said.
“She has to,” Colt said. “Because you’re not going to give her a choice.”
“Goddammit,” I said. “You already talked to her about it, didn’t you? She said you wouldn’t see her.”
“We talked on the phone,” I said. “She wasn’t happy. But when you talk to her too, she’ll know.”
“Fuck! You better know I’m not going anywhere. Fuck that!”
He scratched his chin. “I know. I wouldn’t ask you to stick around. You’ve been through hell already, Torch. But I’m gonna need you. I’m not an idiot about this.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re damn right you need me. And I won’t let you down. No distractions. This is my life now.”
Colt tilted his head. That half-smile lit his eyes. “No distractions?”
I didn’t know what he meant. Colt let out a sigh. “Torch, I’m going to need you to do better with Amy than you did with Sydney.”
“What the hell are you talking about? She’ll be on her way back to her daddy soon. It was nothing. She was nothing. It’s over.”
Colt shook his head. “And you’re full of shit. You better learn how to lie better than that and quick. That’s one thing Amy did tell me. Sydney didn’t go anywhere. She’s still at Shannon’s place.”
“Son of a bitch,” I said.
Colt started to laugh. “Meant nothing, huh? Jesus, Torch. That girl’s in more than your head. Look, I’m not trying to tell you what to do on that. But if it’s not safe for Amy, it sure as shit isn’t safe for Sydney. Make her understand. Once Amy’s on board ... and she will be ... she just won’t like it ... the rest of the girls will fall in line. Nicole, Mallory, Tara. It’s all set up. Amy knows what to do.”
I nodded. Sydney. Fucking Sydney.
>
“Dammit,” I said. “Of all the stubborn, pigheaded bullshit.”
Colt was still laughing. “She’s not such a little girl, after all, maybe.”
“Then she’s a fool,” I said. “After what I told her.”
Colt sat back. “What are you talking about?”
It was my turn to pound my fist on the table. One of the guards stepped forward. I dropped my shoulders, and he settled.
“She knows who I am,” I said. “What I’ve done.”
Colt whistled low. “You mean about killing Carl and Irene?”
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t say their names again.
“Well, if she leaves you over that, she wasn’t worth it in the first place. You did what you had to do. If she can’t accept that, she doesn’t belong in your world. Hell, what am I saying? I hope she doesn’t accept it. I hope she runs screaming out of town like she’s supposed to. But Torch, you look at me. You don’t have the devil in you. You’re worthy of Sydney. Do you hear me?”
I couldn’t hear anything. I just felt the ground turning to quicksand beneath my feet. Sydney wasn’t safe. She was still in town. Why the fuck was she still in town?
“I’ll make her go,” I said. “I’ll make them all go. You can count on me. But you know ... after this ... Amy and the others are all gonna hate me for it.”
Colt ran a hand down his face. “And I’m gonna need you to be able to live with that. Better they hate you from a safe place.”
I nodded. “It’s just you and me, Prez. Kellan. Brax. Joker. It’s all of us. We’re gonna survive. I’m gonna find a way, no matter what.”
“Good,” he said. “Good.”
“Time’s about up, Reddick.” One of the guards stepped forward.
“Five minutes,” he said. Colt waited for him to step back to the wall before focusing on me.
“Amy knows where to find some of what she needs. Not all of it.”
He went silent. It took me a second to read his expression.
Shit. The house. The one I was staying in. I gave him a slow nod of understanding.
“It’s a damn good time to plant the garden,” he said, his expression wistful.
If I knew Colt, he’d have a treasure trove buried under there. Enough cash to set Amy and the kids up. Fake IDs, if she’d use them.
“Colt,” I said through gritted teeth. “What do you think this is all gonna look like?”
I left the rest of my thoughts unsaid, but he followed me. If Amy and the other wives disappeared, it might only make the club look guilty, like we had something to hide. I knew that’s what Amy would argue. I said I’d take care of her, but as I sat there, I had no damn idea how the hell I was going to pull it off.
And I had no idea how I was going to face Sydney again. Pushing her away was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do, and I was a man who’d done real evil. Her tears. Her pain. I took it all into me. Now my prez wanted me to do it again.
I would. Whatever it took. The man sitting in front of me was more than a brother. More than a president. More than a friend. I would die for him if that’s what it took. I would protect his queen with my own life too.
“It’s gonna look like survival,” he said. “Cuz that’s the only thing that matters. You got me?”
“I got you,” I said. I couldn’t shake his hand. I could only lock eyes with him and let him read my mind and my heart.
“I got you,” I said again.
Then the guard moved in. I rose from my seat. I wouldn't turn my back on Colt. I waited for him to slowly rise and hold his wrists out. The guard cuffed him, then grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and led my president back to his cell.
A jolt went through me as the steel door shut, and Colt’s footsteps hit the cement floor.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sydney
My fingers trembled as I held the corner of the manilla file folder. It wasn’t a very thick file, only a quarter of an inch. But I knew the papers inside this folder could hold the truth at the center of Thomas Anthony.
Thomas. I wondered when the last time was that anyone had called him that. I took a breath and opened the file.
It started out with a charging document. One count of first-degree murder against Carl Barrett. One count of involuntary manslaughter against Irene. The circumstances matched what Torch had outlined. He set the fire. Carl’s body had been found tied to the bed. Irene was found melded to him as if she’d tried to throw herself over him to protect him from the flames.
There were other police reports dating back several years. Carl had been arrested multiple times for domestic violence. Pictures of Irene, her face bloodied, her arm broken.
I felt hot ash in my mouth as I continued to turn the pages. The crime scene photographs of the fire were hard to process. At first, the bodies didn’t even look human. There was nothing left of them. Skin burned away, leaving something mottled and black behind.
But those weren’t the worst of what I saw in that file. I met Thomas Anthony. A young boy. Just barely fifteen years old. It was Torch, but not. All his features were there in his mugshot. His sandy-blond hair was worn just a bit too long. His hair had grown darker as he aged. Everything about him had. But in this photo, he was skinny. His face lacked the same hardened character as it had now. A thought occurred to me. This boy looked like he could be Torch’s son.
His son. Maybe my son. If …
I turned the page and let out a sob.
Thomas had been beaten. He was photographed in profile. His eye blackened. There was a shot of his torso with deep blue-and-purple welts. A belt did that. Carl had whipped him with the buckle end.
Torch thought he was a monster. These pictures told the truth. Thomas Anthony died that day in the flames. Torch rose from them like a phoenix. Tougher. Stronger. Scarred. He was a protector and a survivor. Even in the end, Irene had been so broken herself as to have chosen the man who brutalized her.
I wanted to hold that boy I saw in the photographs. Tears streamed down my face and hit the pages. There had been no one to comfort him. They had taken that beautiful strong boy and thrown him in a cage.
“I love you,” I whispered as I smoothed my fingers over his face in the photograph.
But it was more than love, I felt. Not pity. Not horror. Not regret. Torch thought his truth would poison me against him. Instead, it made me love him even more.
I closed the file and slid it under the bed. “Sydney?” Shannon knocked softly at the door. “Is everything okay? I heard you crying.”
“I’m fine,” I said, wiping my tears. I pulled out my laptop and attached a USB cord from my phone to the port. I pulled up the pictures I took of George’s ledger books. There was another truth in here. I knew it in my bones.
After a while, Shannon stopped knocking on the door. It grew dark outside my window as I worked through lunch, then dinner.
Most of George’s ledger entries were routine. The club had him on a monthly retainer. Ten thousand a month went into his trust account. At the end of each month, he’d transfer it into his business account and make payroll, the rent, utilities. Nothing seemed unusual until about a year ago.
There, buried in other client payments, I started seeing deposits coming in from a new account. They went out almost as fast as they came in. But they didn’t go into the business account. George was taking out cash.
I wrote down the incoming account numbers. I hovered my cursor over the firm billing software. George had me load it onto my laptop when I started working for him. I said a silent prayer as I hit my login.
The screen hung up for a second, but I was in. Just like the key to the office, George hadn’t yet removed my access.
I pulled up his calendar. Generally, his secretary Mona was the one responsible for entering his appointments as my Uncle George stayed firmly in the twentieth century. He liked to write down his appointments in a paper book that he kept in the top drawer of his desk. Usually, Mona would grab the book and tran
sfer his entries into the software. A few times, George had me do it for him.
At first, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Then, about the time he started getting the mystery deposits, Mona started carving out a block of time on the first Tuesday of every month. There was no client name. No location.
It hit me like a lightning bolt. I’ll see you next Tuesday. I’d overheard my Uncle George yelling that to his mystery man in the office the other day. Juice. He’d called him Juice. I thought he’d just said it as an insult. Code for a different C-word that I’d never utter myself.
But what if …
Shannon pounded on the door. “Sydney, you have to come out. Glover is here. He wants to talk to you. He said he has a message from Torch.”
I snapped my laptop shut. As I let the real world back in, I found myself shaky and light-headed. I hadn’t eaten in almost a day.
I caught my reflection in the mirror above the dresser. My hair was wild. I had dark circles under my eyes. I smoothed my tee-shirt down.
“I’ll be right out,” I said.
I took one whiff of myself and knew I wasn’t fit to be around other people. I changed my shirt. No, not my shirt. Just about everything I wore here was something I’d borrowed from Shannon. Soon, maybe today, I’d have to make a decision about my future. I ended up throwing on a GWMC tee-shirt and walked out into the living room.
Glover sat on the couch, his hands folded, knocking his booted heel against the floor. He was nervous. My own anxiety shot up.
“Is it Torch?” I asked. “Has he been arrested?”
“Nah,” Glover said. “But he sent me here to tell you some stuff.”
“Why couldn’t he do it himself?” I asked, crossing my arms in front of myself. “He’s not answering my calls, Glover. I need to talk to him. It’s important.”
“Look, a lot of this shit, I don’t want to get in the middle of. Between you and him, I mean. But I got a job to do. It’s also important.”
“Okay,” I said. “Talk.”
“You gotta get out of town,” he said. “Both of you.”