Denise nodded, trying to picture the nervous, inexperienced girl she’d known with the confident woman in front of her. No telling what kind of thoughts she was having aboutDenise.
“What’s the situation you need help with?” Grahamasked.
She cocked her head toward the back of the building and led theway.
“Did you lose any dogs?” heasked.
“Not to the fire. A couple took off when we got out of thebarn.”
He stopped her with a hand on her arm. “What do you mean whenwegot out of thebarn?”
“I was in the barn when the fire wasset.”
His eyes narrowed to a squinty glare she recognized. He pointed at the door. “This part of that issue aswell?”
Denise pursed her lips and looked at thedoor.
Paige leaned close. “I think you should have saved that piece of information for later,” she said in a stage whisper. “He’s already pissed off one of our guys lost thekids.”
She snapped her head around. “What do you mean one of your guys lost thekids?”
Paige leaned back, glanced at Graham, then back at Denise. “Shit. We had a guy watching the school. He got run off by the neighborhood watch around the same time Eddie Perry showed up at theschool.”
Denise closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It was no use getting angry. She couldn’t change the past, but would it be too much for life to have given her five fucking minutes? That’s all it would have taken for Graham’s guy to realize what was going on. Pressing her lips together she opened the door to thestoreroom.
Graham went in and stopped, looking down at the guy slumped down in the chair. His chest rose and fell, so he’d either passed out from the pain or had simply fallenasleep.
“Hammer?” Grahamasked.
“Ballpeen.”
Graham reached for the guy’s collar and pulled it away from the side of his neck, revealing the top of a gray and blacktattoo.
“He’s Rebel Yell, not SA,” he said as hestood.
Denise shook her head. “What’sthat?”
“They’re another motorcycle club. Except for some minor infractions, they’re a bunch of good ol’ boys who like to ride and get a little rowdy. There’s a faction that wants to take a more profitable, but illegal, route. Didn’t know any of them were working with the SA’sthough.”
“How do you know that if they’relocal?”
“It was started by a former Army guy. There’s a few chapters around other bases, includingHunter.”
There was more to his story, but before she could ask her phone rang and she pulled it out of her pocket. Chris’s name flashed across thescreen.
“Go on. We’ll take care of this.” He pointed atJeffrey.
Denise stared at Graham, then at the guy she’d tortured. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, then looked at her phone as it stoppedringing.
“We’re not going to kill him, Denise,” Graham said. “We don’t do that kind of clean up. Honestly if you were anyone else, we wouldn’t dothis.”
“What are you going to do then?” She didn’t want his death on her hands, but at the same time she didn’t want to be constantly looking over her shoulder for anotherattack.
“We’ll drop him off at the local Rebel Yell chapter house with a note tying him to the Southern Anarchists. His people will take care of him. How they do that, will be up tothem.”
“We’ll do our best to make sure it doesn’t come back to you,” Paigesaid.
Her phone rangagain.
