EIGHTEEN
The air was crisp and cold, the night pitch-black as Bran pulled into the big asphalt parking lot. The Red Rooster Bar and Grill on B Street out I-25 was a single-story flat-roofed structure at the back of the lot, a cross between a cowboy bar and a bikers’ roadhouse. Dirty pickup trucks, motorcycles, and paint-faded beaters were parked haphazardly out front.
As Bran pushed open the door and surveilled the dimly lit interior, he noted the array of vehicles exactly matched their owners. Frayed jeans, scuffed boots, and battered cowboy hats at one end of the bar, bikers in studded black leather at the other.
It was an uneasy mix that undoubtedly kept everyone entertained.
Bran urged Jessie toward a pair of empty wooden barstools. The decor was part Old West saloon with a long bar and a carved wooden backbar, but the neon signs, mostly Jack Daniel’s, Shiner Bock, and Coors, were pure twenty-first century.
A bartender with greasy black hair and a black T-shirt that said Come Back with a Warrant walked over to take their orders. “What’ll you have?”
Bran glanced over at Jessie, who looked a little too fetching in her skinny jeans and ankle boots and low-cut sexy pink sweater. He’d tried to talk her into something a little more modest, but she’d rightly pointed out she’d fit in better in what she had on. Since she was right, he’d sucked it up and escorted her out of the hotel room.
“I’ll have a Lone Star,” Jessie said.
“Same for me,” Bran said. The beers arrived, not as cold as he liked, but he wasn’t there to drink so it didn’t really matter. He tipped up the bottle as he scanned the room for Digger Graves. They’d arrived early so he’d have time to do a little recon before Graves showed up. No sign of a trap, but he hadn’t really expected one.
He figured Graves was in deep shit with Weaver. He needed their help to stay alive.
It was a little after ten o’clock when Graves walked in, brown hair slicked into a man bun, worn jeans, and a long-sleeve camouflage T-shirt under a khaki vest.
“That’s him,” Jessie said, tipping her head toward the door. She had pulled her hair up in a ponytail, which made her look younger and even more tempting. Half the bar had been staring since she’d walked in. Reading the lust on their horny faces, Bran clenched his jaw against an urge to start throwing punches.
It was a new sensation, this possessive feeling for a woman. He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t seem to get a handle on it.
Graves spotted them, made eye contact, and headed for a table at the back of the bar. He ordered a drink from a big-haired, buxom blond server and leaned back to survey the room.
“Let’s go.” Bran tossed money on the bar for their beers and set a hand at Jessie’s waist, making it clear she was with him as they began weaving their way through the battered wooden tables scattered around the room.
When they reached Graves’s table, Bran pulled out a chair for Jessie and one for himself. Graves’s order arrived, a boilermaker. He tossed back the shot of whiskey and chased it with a swallow of beer. Bran ordered two more Lone Stars just to fit in.
He waited till the server walked away, then turned to Graves. “So I guess you know your buddy Petrov is dead.”
Graves tipped up his beer and took a long swallow. The shamrock on the side of his neck seemed to glow in the red neon lights as his throat moved up and down.
“Weaver had him killed,” Digger said, setting the bottle back on the table.
“He didn’t do the job himself?”
“Can’t. He’s in prison.”
Probably should have seen that one coming, but he hadn’t. “Which one?”
“Federal Correctional Institution, Florence. It’s about forty miles southwest of here.”
“Why does that name ring a bell?” Bran asked.
“ADX Florence,” Jessie said, her voice so soft his gaze shot to her face, which looked paler than it had before.
“ADMAX,” she continued. “They call it the Alcatraz of the Rockies. I wrote a series of articles about it. The most hardened criminals in the country are locked up in there, or people who pose a threat to national security. Remember Zacarias Moussaoui? He helped plot the September 11 attacks. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Bomber, is also an inmate at ADMAX.”
Her gaze swung to Graves. “Leaders of violent gangs are sent there—men who continue to issue orders to their members even after they’re put in prison.”
Bran looked at Graves. “That what’s going on here? Weaver is issuing orders from inside?”
Digger shifted uneasily in his chair. “Pretty much.” He made a visual sweep of the room, on the lookout for any threat. “Weaver murdered three black cops in Georgia, got sentenced to life without parole. Slowed him down a little but didn’t stop him. He just kept running the Brotherhood from his cell. When they found out he’d ordered hits on two more men, they moved him to ADMAX.”
“So he’s there now?” Bran asked.
