After that he’d been too busy dodging Warrant’s retaliation attempts to bother with me. And Warrant was too busy trying to exact his revenge.
Cypher frowned at me as he took his seat at the head of the table. “You’re in a good mood.”
The rest of that phrase hung silently in the air.For once.
I shrugged at him, but didn’t respond. Between getting Warrant off my back and finally making up my mind to give things with Rae a try, he was right, I was in a good mood. It’d taken me a week of considering every outcome, but I’d come tothe conclusion that having an old lady wouldn’t be a bad thing, when it came down to that. And if not, then I got to fuck a sexy woman and we’d likely be able to separate as friends. She seemed like the kind who wouldn’t hold a grudge.
Of course the move she pulled on that cowboy hinted that maybe she had a darker side. But I was willing to risk it. I got the feeling that she was going to be worth it.
“Alright,” Cypher said, pulling my attention to him. “Scythe, Glitch, what do the two of you have to report on Mark Dolan?”
Cypher had both Scythe and Glitch keeping an eye on the leader of the Iron Circle Crew. Scythe had been making weekly trips over to Cheyenne just to follow the fucker around. While Glitch kept a close eye on him from his computer.
“He’s mobilizing,” Scythe told us.
“I’m shocked it took him this long,” Demo replied.
“I’m not,” Cypher countered. “Took him a bit to even figure out that his brother was dead and hadn’t just skipped out on him.”
“That would’ve been a stupid move on Jack’s part. Taking off with all the drugs and cash would just ensure that his brother would follow him,” Warrant said.
“As the leader of the crew, there’s no way Mark would let his brother do that,” Jury said in agreement.
“Families in this line of work do stupid shit. Or get ideas above their station and think that they can branch out on their own,” Cypher countered. “I bet Dolan already had a contingency plan on how to deal with his brother in case he ever fucked him over.”
“Which is exactly why Mark kept digging,” Glitch agreed.
“Well, that and the fact that the entire crew disappeared with Jack. If he’d been able to find some of them, he might have believed his brother stole from him and took off,” I added.
“The fact that he didn’t land on our doorstep sooner means that Forge never ratted us out,” Warrant told Cypher.
There was some debate on whether or not he should’ve let the Iron Circle Crew member go when he had, twice. But Warrant was an excellent judge of character, and we’d backed him up when he made that decision. The fact that Forge had saved Riggs’s little girl had weighed heavily in his favor also.
Cypher gave him a flat stare. “Give it a rest. I already said I wouldn’t kill him on sight if we see him again. But the fucker will need to prove himself if we do. Three times is one too many for my comfort.”
“Fair enough,” Warrant said, leaning back in his chair, satisfied with Cypher’s word on the matter.
“What do you mean by Dolan’s mobilizing?” Rotor asked Scythe.
“Recruiting mostly,” Glitch answered instead.
“We took out a large chunk of his force,” Scythe continued. “He needed to replace them. Wyoming’s not exactly a big state, well, geographically it is, but not a lot of people here. He likely has to reach out to other contacts in bigger cities.”
“Is he back in Sentinel?” Cynic asked, speaking for the first time.
“Not sure. I haven’t seen him come here,” Scythe said.
Glitch shook his head. “If he has, he’s been keeping a low profile. It’s more likely that he has someone doing that for him. A new guy to take over his brother’s position.”
“Which means we need to be on the lookout for anything new,” Cypher said, looking over at Warrant. “New dealers, new suppliers, anything that might signal that Dolan is coming back.”
“Well, we know he’s coming back,” Jury said. “We killed his brother, his middleman, and the whole crew here in Sentinel. He’ll be back with a vengeance.”
Cypher nodded and conceded the point. “I meant back into the drug trade here. We already have enough trouble with some of the locals getting it into their heads to start up meth labs. We don’t need this fucker bringing his shit back here. Bad enough they had a small time grow operation in those barns, but Glitch figured out it’s bigger than that.”
“Bigger?” Demo asked. “What kind of bigger?”
“No place in Cheyenne to grow marijuana,” Glitch told us. “He’s been producing Ecstasy there and shipping it all over the fucking country.”
