“How many of the twenty-four girls had friends taken with them?” Sunny asked, looking between Lana, Rocky, and Jayson.
“Eighteen. Six of the girls taken were supposed to have a friend with them, but the friend either got grounded, sick, or the parent sprung something on them at the last minute so they couldn’t go.”
“We need to interview those six girls that didn’t go, A.S.A.P. They have to know something. Jayson, can you get the files on those twenty-four missing girls?”
“Yeah.”
Jayson made a mental note to go by the office when they were done to grab all the files on the missing girls he knew about. He prayed to whichever deity that would listen that they found something he’d missed.
They took more pictures of the crime scene and the body for them to look over later on when the whole team convened together. Both Jayson and Ryan went by their offices and grabbed the files on all the missing girls that their departments were handling, while the women went to pick up a feast of Chinese food for everyone to eat for dinner.
Everyone eventually met up back at the house and got settled in with dinner and the files that they had picked up from the offices. Plates were passed out and filled, and they passed files around between the women for them to choose their first one to study.
The files were looked at, notes made, then passed to the person sitting to their left. They kept on doing the same routineuntil all twenty-four files were looked at and they made notes of observations and questions they had for Jayson and Ryan.
Jayson looked around the room and wondered about the normalcy of this whole scene. He couldn’t help but wonder if this was a normal occurrence for Lana and her team.
They seemed so at ease with sharing the different Chinese foods, eating while reading the files and taking their notes. None of them spoke as they ate, read, and made their notes.
“Is this a normal occurrence for you guys during a case?” Ryan voiced Jayson’s thoughts.
“The thinking circle dinner? Yeah. When one of us has a case that perplexes us, we’ll call a dinner circle, read the files while eating and write our notes. Then whoever’s case it is gets grilled about what’s on our mind and it goes from there.” Lana smirked at Ryan.
“For example, anyone notice the ‘SA’ brand is slightly off from its original design?” Hollywood asked around a bite of food.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
Lana looked up at Hollywood in confusion. When she handed Lana a photo from the file she’d been looking at, she pointed out what had caught her eye.
“Fuck! Could that be a mistake by the person who made the brand?” Jayson asked, feeling deflated like she did.
“It’s not an actual brand like the ones used on cattle. It’s a tattoo given to the girls within the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours of them being taken. The leader of the Soriano’s Army is very particular about their tattoo artist and the brand,” Lana answered in a heavy sigh. “I missed that. Son-of-a-bitch! This doesn’t make any sense.”
Lana leaned her head back and closed her eyes, taking herself back to the crime scene. She had to admit she hadn’t really been paying attention to what she was looking at, but she remembered there was something that had kept nagging about the scene in the back of her mind.
Hollywood pointed to the ‘S’ and then toward the ‘A’ having a light space between the two where they would have normally touched. Picking up all the photos to check to see if the brand was mentioned in all the files, she studied it on each photo a little more now.
“The tail isn’t going around like the original brand does. They are making the circle itself. The tail of the A is off, not like a devil’s tail with the spike at the end. They made the spike as an afterthought with the points shaped a little weird. Now that I’m really looking at it, it’s off all the way around,” Lana announced to the room.
“The horns on the ‘A’ are also off. More like an apostrophe than horns.” Hollywood showed Lana what she was looking at.
“Like it was also an afterthought. Kind of like they knew it was an ‘SA’ deal but hadn’t paid attention to the rest and wanted to do a quick dab,” Lana murmured as she studied the photo. “The letters aren’t even touching either. It’s barely there, but there’s a space between the S and the A.”
“So, we could be dealing with a copycat artist? But why would they have chosen the Soriano’s Army?”
Lana thought out loud, murmuring her thoughts after Sunny’s question about the copycat tattoo artist. While there were obvious answers, there was one that niggled at the back of her mind that sent chills down her spine.
“The others are here and could cause immediate retaliation. Major MCs like Hell’s Angels, The Outlaws, and The Pagans have their names and symbols trademarked. Anyone not patched into one of these clubs is asking for serious issues. Each of these MCs has chapters all over the U.S. Soriano’s Army is still relatively unknown and not currently on the east coast,” Lana spoke out loud.
“Someone knows about them. May have come across them in travel. But they know about them. My question is why do they want to start shit with this group? The SA is, I want to say, worse than the others that could cause them problems.” Hollywood shivered as she looked around at her teammates.
“Without knowing about the Enforcers, the Hellraisers, and the other clubs Kenwood mentioned, the others, even with thetrademarks, those guys are deadly. So, why go after an MC that will literally massacre your entire bloodline for crossing them?” Cullen spoke out, making every head turn her way.
Lana studied the photos of every girl still missing and studied them individually. Something kept bugging her about each girl missing.
“How deadly is this Soriano’s Army?” Ryan asked as he looked around at the women.
