Checking in with my brothers and watching them for an hour or so, it was easy to see they were following orders. No one was being hurt, none of them looked hurt on the cameras either, they just looked resigned. They’d been here for days.
“How long you been here?” I asked Cueball, the fluorescent lights above bouncing off the shiny dome of his bald skull and the reason for his road name.
“Since the night at their warehouse.”
I couldn’t even figure out how long ago that had been. It was time to switch people up here. There were rooms with beds where the guys were staying, a decent kitchen and obviously plenty of take-out containers, so they weren’t suffering here.
I happened to glance at the laptop in front of me, as I was about to suggest I’d speak to Ballistic about rotating them, when I saw a face in the group of men. He was sitting to the rear of the room, the others were chatting amongst themselves, some of them laying down with their eyes closed but this guy. He was familiar. I pulled the laptop closer to me and asked if we could zoom in but the cameras weren’t that sophisticated. I didn’t need the zoom to remember who he was.
“This guy, he said anything?” I pointed. Cueball leaned forward and shook his head. “Get him out of the room for me.”
I pushed back from the chair and headed over to one of the rooms that was currently unoccupied. I nodded my head for Raptor to come with me and he left the conversation he was a part of without question. He was a good guy, solid and dependable, he never asked questionswhen he was called on. He was close with Felix, another good brother. I’d been looking at putting together a crew of my own for a couple of years, had even talked to Ballistic about it.
One night we’d sat up to discuss my taking over his role at some point in the future. It wasn’t a given but everyone knew Ballistic had been priming me for the role for years.
I wasn’t someone who wanted to just sit back and wait for him to hand over the reins. So he’d come up with the idea of giving me something of my own, he’d liked the idea of having a Captain beneath him, someone who had autonomy to run jobs but reported into him. It wasn’t an ego thing, it was a good solid hierarchy that would only help the club.
I hadn’t thought about it much since Waverley turned back up but now, it might be a good idea to start putting that crew together. Raptor would be a solid choice.
Cueball came into the room dragging the reluctant guy behind him, he’d zip tied his wrists behind his back so he couldn’t cause any shit. He pushed him forward and lifted his brows.
“Thanks,” I told him, and he took that as his cue to head out. He closed the door behind him.
I gave Raptor a nod and he walked behind the guy then stamped his boot into the back of his knee, making his legs give out and he dropped like a sack of shit. The guy hissed as he dropped down, but Raptor wasn’t a complete asshole, more the pity, I’d knock that shit out of him soon enough. He held the guys shoulder, so he didn’t fall forward and smash his face into the concrete floor.
“What do you want with me?” he snarled. “You guys are supposed to be leaving us alone.”
That said a lot to me about this asshole, he was fully aware of what was going on around him, paying attention to his surroundings. It didn’t matter to me what he had to say. We’d been looking for him for a long time and I was lucky enough to have discovered him hiding himself away in here.
This was the fourth man involved in beating up Connor and putting him in the hospital all those months ago. The one Kansas hadn’t been able to track down. I gave him a feral smile. I should call War here to deal with him, but my best friend had enough on his plate. Plus,this would be the first time I actually had a chance to take my own retribution against one of these pricks.
“Well, unlucky for you, we decided to go in a different direction.”
“You’re fucking scum, all of you Devil’s Chaos fuckers.”
I tilted my head and let him rant and rave about how we were gonna get ours, how the Kingsmen were gonna take us over and we were nothing. He was clearly in Nytro’s camp, not one of the guys Mace seemed to be so worried about.
Raptor was slowly shaking his head behind him, like he couldn’t believe what a dumb ass this guy was. War’s words came back to me about not wasting any time on the guy who killed his mom. We knew his crime, what was the point in giving him the satisfaction of living any longer than necessary.
I shocked the shit out of Raptor when I pulled my gun out and shot the guy in the forehead. I’d waited until he’d moved and angled myself, so he wasn’t in the line of fire. He jumped, but he didn’t say anything. He just watched, his eyes wide as the Kingsmen did actually fall face first, the sound of his whiny pissant voice cutting off instantly.
I put my gun back in the holster under my cut and looked up at Raptor. “Call Hammer. The asshole will be glad he’s got someone to play with.”
I stepped over the Kingsmen and went back outside into the main warehouse. People turned to look over, clearly having heard the gunshot. I wasn’t going to explain myself, but I did tell them it was warranted and didn’t mean anything had changed for them while they were watching the guys here.
I called Casper back over and waited until Raptor came out and let me know Hammer was on his way, then we headed out. It may not be a lot in the grand scheme of things, but knowing we’d taken out another one of those fuckers who attacked Connor the first time, had me genuinely relaxing for the first time in days.
Back at the clubhouse, I sat sideways at the bar, my elbow leaning against it as I held a cold beer. There was a bit of a party in the clubhouse tonight. We didn’t have an awful lot to celebrate but there was an air about the compound, it was like everyone knew a plan was formulating and we were going to make a move on the Kingsmen.
King hadn’t shared his plan with everyone, but War filled me in they were going to go with the idea of using Mace as bait. We just had tofigure out the coordination of it, make sure it was something Nytro wouldn’t be able to resist. Ballistic had gone back down to Haskell to talk Ranger into letting us move him. King wouldn’t make a move until we had all our pieces in place.
I’d been quizzed about the guy at the warehouse but once I explained who it was, King nodded his approval. War had stared at me in silence, his mouth in a grim line but I’d just stared right back and finally, he relented. At the end of the day, it didn’t matter who took them out, as long as it was done.
I took a sip of the beer and watched Waverley across the room. She was sitting with Rosa and Isla, Dirt’s old lady. She was keeping away from the club girls, couldn’t blame her after the shit with Tanya. Fuck, I hadn’t thought about that bitch for days. That whole mess seemed like it happened years ago. Felix was sitting next to me, his leg was bouncing up and down and he was tearing strips off his beer bottle label.
“What the fuck is up with you?” I asked.
“Lana’s been getting pains. She said it’s nothing but…” he shrugged.
