Saint and Mateo were efficient soldiers. It wasn’t often they summoned me to clean up their mess, and never without good reason.
Today, though, I was failing to comprehend the source of their uncertainty. I eyed the unmarked and wrecked lorry from a concealed distance, its load—untold quantities of coke stashed in custard powder containers—spread out across the dual carriageway as the police picked their way through it, unaware that most of it had already gone walkabout and was now speeding towards a new supply line. “This was the plan. We disrupted the Sambini shipment with an unfortunate accident. No one saw you. You weren’t even here.”
Saint shot me a murky glare. “It ain’t gonna take rocket science for them to figure out it was us.”
“So? It’s nothing we haven’t done before. That’s the deal if they want to move this shit through our turf. We take a slice of it whether they agree to it or not.”
“They’ve never agreed to it.”
“Exactly.” I gestured to the road. “This is what happens. An organised fender-bender. A hell of a mess, but no one gets hurt.”
Saint shrugged, but I knew him well enough to read between the lines. He’d never liked any of the ties we had to the Sambini organisation, legitimate or otherwise.
Neither had I, but some things were harder to unpick than they were to carry on, even shit as destructive and risky as this.
Besides, we needed the goddamn money. I knew it. Saint knew it. But his troubled frown was hard to bear.
I slugged his arm. “What is it?”
His scowl deepened.
I sighed and tried again. “I can’t fix something if I don’t know it’s broken.”
He turned his gaze on me and I watched as he tried to find the words to articulate what was bothering him. Waited. I was used to this. Most people thought Saint Malone was just rude, but I knew better. Dude was jammed up inside, but if you gave him space to think, he had plenty to say, and all of it mattered.
Shrewd not rude.
“There’s too much product here to be headed to that crew in Lambeth.”
Bingo.
I pulled my smokes from my pocket and lit two, offering one to Saint as he continued to frown. “I can’t see from over here. How much do you think there is?”
“Twice as much as usual. Maybe three times.”
“That’s a good haul for us, though, and still leaves the feds enough to let them think they’ve saved the world.”
Saint took a deep drag on the cigarette I’d jammed into his mouth. He blew smoke through his nose, fists clenched at his sides. To anyone else he probably looked as though he was about to lamp me one, but I knew better than that too. I saw the concealed panic—the crippling anxiety that paralysed him whenever his brain seized, trapping his words. If it had been Rubi or Nash, I might’ve clapped a hand on his shoulder or rubbed his arm or even taken the piss, but Saint wasn’t built that way unless it was a full fucking moon. Most days, I had to wait my wild boy out and let him puzzle through his shit on his own.
“Something’s changed in London,” Saint ground out eventually. “This ain’t the same boys buying this blow and it isn’t a good time to be squaring up to a new crew. We don’t have the boots on the ground.”
I let that sink in, rubbing my jaw, my own deep frown creasing my face in half. He was probably right, but what choice did we have? We needed a hard hit of funds to prop up the construction business currently under siege from whoever the hell we were fighting there, and we were stone cold out of options. “Okay.” I finished my smoke and crushed it beneath my boot. “Get the product moved and banked, then talk to Mateo about moving his grass early. Get all our shit done before there are too many eyes on us. That way we can hold off hitting another blow shipment until we run out of cash.”
Saint grunted. It was hard to tell if he concurred or not, but he didn’t argue, which was something.
I left him to observe the accident site and picked my way through the undergrowth back to my bike. It was a grey winter’s day, damp with the kind of cold that sank into your bones without the beauty and wonder of frost and snow. Most years, grey days depressed me, but I was too busy right now to pay attention to my state of mind. And... distracted. I’d left a Russian money man unsupervised at the compound and I was buzzing to get back to him. For business reasons, of course. Not because I found his company addictive as hell. Definitely not.
My hog was hidden in an enormous rhododendron. I dug it out and wheeled it back to the country road that had brought me here, a squirrel route only locals knew about. My mind was still mostly on Teddy—I couldn’t do anything about Saint’s suspicions until we had more intel—but as I hit the roadside, something stopped me in my tracks.
I froze and stared down at my bike. At first glance, nothing seemed out of place. Then my gaze fell on a splintered cable poking out where my brake lines should’ve been.Jesusfuck. I stopped rolling and crouched, pulling the cable out entirely to reveal it had been severed just enough to fail when I’d have needed it most. And worse, it had been cut with a blunt blade to make it look like wear and tear.
The cable was brand new. Nash had fitted it two weeks ago, and unless my VP—my goddamn brother—was trying to kill me, someone else was. Some cunt who’d followed me out here and sabotaged my bike while I’d been with Saint. Somecuntwho now knew we’d been watching the coke shipment close enough to know when it had crashed.
Fuck.I pulled out my phone and dialled Nash, instructing him to come and get me without telling him why. Then I retreated from my bike and slipped into the shadows, taking the hammer from my saddle bag with me. This was bloody Devon. We didn’t carry guns and blades. I couldn’t have told you the last time I evensawa fucking piece. But we carried hammers. Screwdrivers. Heavy spanners. Tools we could explain away in a utility belt if we got pulled by the feds. Wouldn’t do me much good if someone came at me with a shooter, but it was all I had.
I waited in the dark, hidden by the huge oak trees I’d used as cover in the first place, using the broad trunk of one to cover my back. In my pocket, my phone buzzed, but I ignored it, keeping every sense trained on the approach to my hiding place. Nash knew where I was. If he couldn’t find his way here without chewing my ear off, I needed a new VP.
Twenty minutes later, the rumble of bikes pierced the air. Nash’s Harley was as familiar to me as my own, Rubi’s too, and they were flanked by three outriders. Clearly, my VP had sensed the tone.
