“Why?” My voice rose just enough to give me caution. There was no reason Nick wanted to get involved with this. If he wanted to manipulate or control me with the promise of finding Jareth, he was dead wrong. “We can’t prove the cards are from him, and even so, that barely rises to harassment.”
“Maybe not,” Nick said. “But the cards prove he hasn’t forgotten about you.”
I thought about the well-kept Lady Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter handgun secured in my glovebox, even now. “That’s good. I haven’t forgotten about him, either.” Then I forced a smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow at work.” With a polite nod, I turned to head back to my family, my heart beating way too fast for me to keep the smile on my face.
Chapter 13
Iwent for a black skirt with a taupe silk shirt for Monday morning. Red kitten-heeled pumps and garnet jewelry added some color, and by the time I’d sucked down a double latte and entered my building, I was ready for the day. The office had been put to rights, but a cloud still hung over the premises. The entire floor seemed muted and subdued.
“You’re here.” Nick came out of his office and straight for me, dressed today in a dark blue suit with red power tie. Was he already running for office, or what?
“Yeah.” I dropped my purse inside my door.
“Good.” He grasped my arm and escorted me past the receptionist and back into the entryway for the building, his hold firm and his stride long.
I pulled free. “What are you doing?”
He paused near the stairwell and looked down at me. Finally seeing me. “Oh. Sorry.” He shook his head, but each hair remained perfectly in place. Why that was sexy to me, I’d never know. “I get on a roll and forget to take a moment.” His brows drew down, giving him a slightly clueless look.
“I bet juries love that expression,” I murmured.
His eyes sharpened, and a slow smile crossed his face. “Yeah. They do.”
I shook my left arm out so my bracelets fell where they should be. “How about you stop trying to manipulate me and just play it straight?” This guy had more angles than a geometry textbook, and I was getting tired of it.
His chin lifted. His nicely sculpted, cleanly shaven, dent in the middle chin. “That’s fair.”
I waited, forcing my feet to remain still and not tap. “Why are we outside the offices?”
“I set up the war room downstairs.” Gesturing me toward the marble stairway, now he waited.
Clipping carefully in the heels, I started down the stairs, acutely aware of him at my back. The lawyer let off some heat. “Why downstairs and not in our conference room?” My brain rushed to catch up. “Wait a minute. You don’t trust anybody there.” I turned on the bottom landing to face him.
He nodded. “They’re all still being investigated. We have no idea if anybody was working with Scot or not.” He moved past me and shoved open a thick oak door. “Except you, of course.”
Of course. Because I was so new. I followed him down a dingy hallway rarely used. A doorway to the left showed some mats, a couple of punching bags, and mismatched heavy looking free weights. A few of the lawyers in the building still worked out there, but I liked the nice and well-lit gym across town. Finally, we reached the third locked wooden door to the right, and Nick opened it with a key. “Here we go.” He flipped on a light that flickered a few times before strengthening.
I followed him into a windowless square shaped conference room with wooden table and seventies-style metal chairs. The floor was cracked tile that might’ve been white at one point, the walls were a dingy yellow, and the light cover a beautiful stained glass of green and blue. I studied it.
“Pretty, right?” Nick asked. “I bet there’s a history with it.” He moved for a stack of manila files and a couple of notebooks already sitting on the table next to several yellow legal pads, pens, and markers. He’d already attached a whiteboard to cover the entire far wall, and right in the center was Aiden Devlin’s picture, with Scot’s over to the right. Then Nick kicked out a chair. “Have a seat.”
The seat wasn’t too dusty, so I smoothed my skirt and sat, reaching for a legal pad. “What have you learned?”
He drew out the chair at the head of the table and dug through the stack next to him for a legal pad to read a thick stack of notes. “All right. Aiden Devlin became a Defender, AKA an Enforcer, in the Lorde’s Motorcycle Club about two years ago.”
I started taking notes. “Just two years?” While what I knew about clubs came from television, I still knew something. “That’s enough time to be a Defender?” We’d get to what he enforced and defended later.
“Good question.” Nick flipped over the top page. “The Lordes patched over a motorcycle club in Portland called the Diablo Riders two years ago, and it looks like Devlin was with the Riders for a decade. It was a small club, and apparently he rose quickly with this new Lordes group to a position of Defender.” Nick looked up; his gaze somber. “With a group like this, he had to deal some tough shit to rise so quickly. You get that, right?”
No. None of this made a bit of sense to me. “Why does one club patch over another?”
Nick exhaled. “The Diablo Riders got caught trafficking drugs and guns, and the DEA put away who they could. There was no evidence on at least five of the members, and the Lordes patched them over quick, meaning they assimilated the remaining Riders into the Lordes.”
I rubbed my chin. “So the DEA followed the former Riders to the Lordes?”
“No. The DEA was already watching the Lordes as well as the Riders. The two clubs worked in tandem, which explains the bloodless patch over.”
Heat spiraled down my throat. “You’re saying that Aiden has been trafficking drugs and maybe guns for more than ten years.”
