“On it, Boss.” The call disconnects, and she looks around the room.
“Holden, did you find anything else?”
He shakes his head, flopping beside Ryder on the loveseat when he sits back down. “No.”
“Are you sure it’s Mani?” Ryder asks, squeezing his thigh.
“A hundred percent. For the last three years, he’s been getting large money transactions that didn’t come from Les. I traced it back; at first, it was attached to Hoover Enterprises. Now Viktor. They just buried the trail.”
“But not deep enough,” Gage says, slapping Holden on the back from where he’s standing behind him.
“Makes sense,” Zane muses, then looks at Alessa. “You remember the night of the shooting?”
“The night you saved us, yes.” She smiles at that.
“He’s the one that went and got my truck. He was pissed, but that wasn’t all hate aimed at me. He was pissed because I got you guys out.”
Alessa’s eyes widen. “It wasn’t a coincidence Viktor found us. Mani put a fucking tracker on it. Viktor is bankrolling all of this, which means Jay knows what he knows.”
“Probably did the same thing with all of them. No matter what car we took, someone always found us,” I add.
“That’s how Jay knew where to find us,” Alessa says to Zane. “He was tracking your truck.” She runs her fingers through her hair. “Which means my house was bugged. He knew everything that was going on in that house.”
Dex wiggles his phone in his fingers. “Anyway, these are?”
Holden shakes his head. “No. I have them loaded down with software that, if detected, fries the whole phone.”
Holden had his cell phone warehouse in his office, so if any of us lost a phone, which was a lot, he could reload all the information on a new one.
Alessa redials Micah. “Where are you?”
“Your house. Why?”
“Inside or outside?”
“Outside.”
“Where were you when I called a minute ago?”
Micah gets quiet. “Inside.”
“Fuck,” Alessa breathes, “Micah. Get out of there now! Get everyone out!”
You can hear Micah shouting at the other guys in the background; it gets eerily quiet, then shots ring out before the line goes dead.
We’re up and running before the call completely disconnects.
Ryder roarsup in front of the house, stopping with a screech of tires behind Micah’s destroyed, bright red Ferrari. There are bullet holes all over it; windows are shattered with no sign of them. Even with Ryder driving way over the speed limit, it still took us thirty minutes to get here from where the new safe house is.
When Micah met us, he made sure he brought our bulletproof vests and the specially equipped hoodies, so on the way over, we strapped in and made sure the automatics are locked and loaded.
Alessa spins in a circle, gun raised. “Do you hear something?”
We all listen closely, and that’s when we hear someone screaming. We take off toward the noise toward the back of the garage. Dex gently nudges her out of the way so Ryder and Zane can step in front before slowly pulling it open, sweeping for anyone who could be hiding. Once it’s clear, Ryder signals for us to move forward and stops in front of the big metal shelf where they keep the weapons locked up. He leans forward. “It’s coming from this way,” he whispers.
He jerks the metal shelf forward and then slides it out of the way to reveal the second hidden door that takes you to the basement. Ryder looks back at us when he realizes it’s already open. Gun at the ready, Dex shoves it open, sweeping the entrance.
We fall into single file to the next door, where they do the same. “Get ready,” Ryder whispers.
