I nodded. “Yeah, okay.” I sighed and met his gaze. “Drew?”
“Yeah, Mace?”
“Thank you.” How I would ever repay him I had no fucking clue, but I was determined to try.
Chapter Eleven
Vandal
The clubhouse smelled like home and the walls in this place held more secrets than any fucking safe ever could. It was home, the only home, other than Macy, I’d ever had.
The moment I stepped inside the office, I saw Slate hunched over with his laptop open on the desk, his dark brows furrowed in deep concentration. “What’s all this?” I asked, motioning to the photos on the monitors on the wall. There were half a dozen photos, surveillance stills that were grainy but clear enough to see exactlywhoit was. “Halloran?”
He nodded. “The fucker is so brazen he’s not even hiding,” Slate replied and pointed to a few of the photos of him at different gas stations with nothing but a ballcap on his head. “Fucking badge fixed on his belt,” he muttered.
“That’s good,” Diesel said, his voice booming from the back of the room. “It means he’s not being careful and that makes it easier to track him.”
“He’s not heading straight west,” Slate interrupted. “He went north, crossing into Colorado early this morning.”
My jaw tightened. “That makes sense, Macy said she was looking at jobs in Colorado so he probably thinks she might go there. How sure are you?”
“Credit card hit outside Amarillo yesterday. Another this morning just south of Pueblo. Same card and it bought a hotelroom and a tank of gas.” He tapped the screen. “He ain’t exactly hiding.”
And that pissed me off more than if he was hiding or at least trying to be incognito.
“Means we’ve got time,” Diesel said from the back of the room, arms crossed over his chest. “Days maybe even a week or two before Nevada hits on his radar.”
Time. A word that meant something different depending on who you were protecting. “We can’t let him make it to Steel City,” I spat out, my palms flat on the table. “If he finds that Macy is here and gets word to Ruiz, we’re fucked. We’ll be crawling with cartel soldiers before we know what hit us. I can’t let that bastard get anywhere near her. I won’t.”
Rocky arched a brow. “You proposing what I think you are?”
I nodded. “I’m saying let me fly to Colorado and put a bullet in him before he gets close enough to see the Vegas skyline.” My jaw clenched tight and I waited to hear all the reasons that was a bad fucking idea.
The room fell silent, but it wasn’t shocked, nobody was shocked that I wanted to kill this son of a bitch. The silence was heavy. And so fucking quiet the room roared with it.
Diesel, the voice of reason, was the first to speak. “That might make you feel better, but it probably won’t stop Ruiz from looking.”
“True, but Halloran will be six feet under, and they’ll have to start from a cold as fuck trail.” I let out a slow breath. “And I’ll make it clean.”
“And if you miss,” Rocky countered, his tone a pure challenge. “Or if he’s got eyes on him? Or if taking him out tips Ruiz off faster than letting him move?”
I didn’t want to hear logic. Logic didn’t quiet the image in my head of Halloran’s eyes on Macy again. That cold smile. The way he’d shown up over and over like a fucking ghost she couldn’t shake. “I’m not losing her again,” I said. The words came out rough, scraped straight from my chest. “There is no fucking way.”
Slate held up a hand to stop the arguing before it escalated. “I’ve got eyes on him, man. He won’t disappear off our radar. If he heads south or west, or any other direction, I’ll know. And thenyouwill know.” He looked up from the screen and stared at me.
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, I got it.” I didn’t fucking like it, but I got it.
“Don’t go startin’ a war by yourself, not when shit is finally a little bit quiet.” Hawk leaned back in his chair, a shit-eating grin on his face.
My fists clenched until the nails bit into my palms. Every fucking instinct within me screamed at me to act, to dosomethingto ensure Macy’s safety. I needed, with every fiber of my being, to eliminate the threat before it could touch her life again.
“There’s more,” Slate announced, his gaze dark and too serious.
Shit. That got my attention. “What?”
“It’s Ruiz,” he said, his tone heavy. Still serious. The photos of Halloran disappeared from the screen and morephotos replaced them, but this face was younger and female with big dark eyes and a wide smile. “Shit’s not all sunshine and roses for him.”
“Good,” I grunted. “Why?”
