“We’ll cross that bridge if he wakes up. I’ll keep it in mind.” He looked over to Ink.
“We checked out the bar in Phillipsburg,” he told us. “We raided the place last night after closing. The people there didn’t know shit. We kept an eye on them while we searched the place but didn’t find anything. She isn’t there. We fucked the place up though, it won’t be opening for a long while.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Where the fuck did they have her? Omen was really our best chance and it was going to be really fucking hard being patient, no matter whether it was the right thing to do or not.
“Have you had any communication from them?” War came back to the table but he didn’t sit, he pushed his chair in and stood behind itwith his hands on the back. “They must know what we’re doing, that we’re attacking their places, taking their brothers.”
“Nothing,” Dirt said with another heavy sigh. “No ransom demands.”
“What the fuck do they want with her? And if they had the opportunity to take her at any time, why wait this long? And what about that photo, the one with the crosshairs over her face? They made out like their plan was to kill her, so this doesn’t make any sense.”
War was making fairly good points, no one knew the answers. I was glad no one made the obvious link that she might actually be dead. That made my gut twist. Lily and Omen could have killed her long before any of this happened. They had taken her for a reason.
King looked away and something about his expression had me staring harder at him. I’d grown up around this guy, he’d always kept things close to his chest, hell, Ballistic had more or less told me he was keeping secrets.
“What aren’t you telling us?”
I wasn’t surprised War asked. We’d talked about the fact King was keeping something from him. I was glad he’d asked because I had been about to.
“There is nothing I’m not telling you, because I don’t have a fucking clue what they are doing or why they’re doing it,” King said, getting to his feet. He wasn’t usually one to show emotion but it was clear he was pissed at the question. The two of them stared at each other from opposite ends of the table. Everyone else was silent.
“I’m not stupid, you know more,” War snapped. “Something about what happened in the past.”
“Which has no bearing on what is going on now. What happened back then is irrelevant.”
“How can I believe that when you just admitted to me you aren’t telling me something.”
“Because all the people involved are dead,” King said, his voice rising angrily. “And they’ve been dead for a long time. And,” he added, moving away from his chair. “It has nothing to do with you or this situation. We have more important things to do than stand here arguing.”
He held up his hand to stop War interrupting him.
“We follow through on this plan with Omen, if we get nothing, we bring him back here and once we’ve spoken to him, he's yours. If you push this or keep questioning me, I take that away from you.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Don’t make me,” King snapped. “Leave it, War. It’s ancient history.”
We watched him walk out of the room without a backward glance.
“You all know what it is?” War asked around.
“You heard your old man,” Dirt got to his feet and slapped War on the shoulder. “Best leave the past in the past. We focus on Omen. Kansas is still doing everything he can to find Waverley, we’re still questioning everyone, and Casper is leading a crew hitting their businesses.”
“Won’t that put Wave in danger?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” Dirt said. “Like we’ve already discussed, they had a chance to hurt her while they were here. King is right, what happened in the past is irrelevant to this. We need to figure out what is going onnow.Us going after their shit may make them come at us. And we’ll be ready.”
The meeting more or less ended there when Dirt, Ink and Banshee walked out. War watched them, then looked at Ballistic, who had hung back.
“This is bullshit,” he said.
“Just know what they’re saying is true, it has no bearing on the here and now,” Ballistic told him.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? I’m part of this council and you all know something I don’t. How am I supposed to trust you?”
“Because it went down a long time ago, you weren’t even out of diapers.”
“Oh, great. So that makes it okay to keep me in the dark. My bad.”
