Chapter TEN
MITCH COULDN’Tbelieve the stuff he’d said to Finn on the car trip from the city out to the old house where Finn lived. For God’s sake, he’d told him he wanted a relationship. Sure, Finn would have thought Mitch was talking about a relationship with a woman, but to say anything at all was inappropriate.What the fuck was I thinking?There was something about Finn that madehim relax, and he damn well couldn’t afford to relax. Mitch had to keep his head in the game and not let down his guard.
He left the car at the apartment he’d been given for the duration of his assignment. A two-bedder in an old red-brick building not too far from the city. It was miles from Finn’s place, though, and it took him an hour and a half to get back to the city, drop off the Range Roverin his parking spot, and another half an hour to make his way into the business district by train. He stopped to grab a coffee before making his way through the city streets. He was relieved to arrive at the safe house—a shitty apartment hardly a step up from a squat—without being followed.
“You’ve been smoking.”
“Hello to you too.”
Ross sat on the edge of the old dining table with folded arms.“How many times do I need to tell you those cancer sticks will kill you?”
“Yeah, yeah. You try quitting when you’re hanging around with nothing to do all day.”
“It’s been, what? A day? Besides, if you hadn’t gotten an in with Rocky, then you’d be bitching about that instead.”
“So what’s new on the case? Has there been any more contact?”
Ross shook his head. “Nothing. Nothing since the noteabout the warehouse where we found Russell Hutchins’s body.”
“Has there been any progress on that from our friends in Homicide?”
“They found the weapon. It’d been tossed in a dumpster on an adjoining property. Serial numbers were filed off, and there were no identifying prints.”
“It’s not hard to connect to the Brutes, though?”
“Especially not with the calling card they left.” Ross reachedin the yellow manila envelope he carried and pulled out a couple of photos and threw them on the table. Mitch looked at the autopsy images. They were graphic photos of Hutchins’s back. Mitch’s stomach roiled slightly at the raw red flesh where a large patch of skin was missing from between his shoulder blades. It was where his tattoo would have been—all the Fury boys had ink representing the flamesfrom their patches.
“Shit. That’s a new one. That sure makes taking someone’s patch to the extreme. Why just take a leather jacket when you can take the skin from a man’s back?”
“Have you heard any talk about it out on the street? Any of the Furies or Rocky aware of it yet?”
“No. I haven’t heard anything. But I’ve only been there a day. I spent most of it hanging around the workshop waitingfor instructions. Rocky wants me to babysit his brother.”
“The kid from Melbourne? What’s he need a minder for? Is Rocky worried he’s marked?”
“I’m not 100 percent certain yet.” Mitch drained the last of the lukewarm coffee from his cup. “I get a feeling there’s bad blood between them and that Finn doesn’t want to be here.”
“You think he doesn’t want to be involved with the club?”
“It’s hardto say. It could just be he hates Rocky, or maybe the kid has his own aspirations within the club.”
“Internal politicking? Sounds probable given the family machinations that have already taken place. First Carl Senior, then Carl Junior, and now Rocky. Maybe the kid’s got a taste for following in the family footsteps.”
“I’ll be digging around to get more of a feel, but Rocky’s position at thehelm seems pretty stable as per the intelligence we’ve gathered. He’s got a lot of support—”
“Or a lot of people running scared.”
Mitch nodded. “There’s no doubt about that. I’ll do some more digging to see what I can find out about Finn’s history with Rocky, see if we can’t utilize him in some way. Now that he’s working in the office, he’ll have access to information that could be useful.”
“Fingers crossed. So what’s the immediate plan?”
“I want to speak to Peter as soon as possible. I need to find a way to get him alone, to find out what’s really going on within the inner sanctum. This stuff with the murder has me worried—”
“Worried for Pete?”
Mitch’s gaze flashed to Ross. “Of course I’m worried about him, but it’s not what you’re thinking.” Mitch stood and picked up his coffeecup. Ross followed him toward the kitchenette. “It was strange to see him again and even weirder to see him in this scenario. I knew about the drugs, obviously, but knowing he’s more than a user—it’s hard. But only because we used to be so close. It’s weird, but seeing him again in person actually reinforced that any feelings I had for him are definitely in the past—long gone and buried. I don’twant him hurt, and there’s a sense of friendship, but I don’t feel any pull. What Pete did, what we went through, killed any of that.”
“I’m sorry.”
