PROLOGUE
DOC
One Week Ago
“King! I was wondering when the hell you and your guys were gonna show up. Thought we got stood up for a second.”
“Cap, you ol’ son of a bitch. Quit lettin’ the wind blow your dress up and get the fuck over here.”
I watched from my seat in the corner as the two men embraced. The pats on the back could’ve been heard for miles, and it ticked my cheek with a grin. Cap was big until King entered the room. The man was damn near seven feet tall, and despite the friendly demeanor between the Devil’s Legion and us, the air in the room was tense.
It shifted between ‘let’s get this the fuck over with’ and ‘hand me a gun.’
The core group from The Devil’s Legion slinked into our meeting room with handshakes and hugs. Some of the guys stood in corners, catching up from the last time we saw them.
I shook hands as necessary, but I turned down the hugs.
I hated hugs.
“All right, all right,” Cap said as he lifted his hand into the air to gain everyone’s attention.
King let out a bombastic whistle through his sniper’s mask, and all of his men in their crimson red leather jackets practically stood at attention.
“All right, Devils, listen up,” King said as he stood beside Cap, “you’re gonna listen, you’re gonna absorb, and only when Cap’s done will you ask questions.”
The mass of red leather jackets nodded their heads, answering him with varying degrees of ‘yes, sir’ and ‘sure thing, King.’ The towering man turned his masked face back to our president, nodding his head as if to say, ‘got their attention, you’re good.’
Cap patted King on the arm before clearing his throat. “All right, Legion, listen up, because our crew has been through a fuckton lately, and I have to get through all of it to catch you up.”
He wasn’t joking, either.
It took Cap almost half an hour to fill the crew in on what happened. How he and Ariel spent time together in one of these trafficking houses in the state park, as well as Wrecker and Amanda. We told them everything. We told them about the law firm. We told them about how Marla was chased to our doorstep, screaming and begging for her life. We told them about the logos on the cars that did all of this dirty work, and the theories as to why we think the law firm is involved in all of this. Hell, we even told them about our contact in the DOJ, and how we were supposed to gather evidence for them.
We even told them about how we were attacked right here on our own fucking compound.
That got King’s attention.
Not that we didn’t have it or anything.
“You heard back from your contact?” King asked. “After you guys got bombarded here?”
Cap shook his head. “Only directive we’ve got is to keep our heads above board and to not get into any trouble while our contact talks to their boss.”
King slowly nodded his head as he turned toward his crew. “You guys see anything while on patrols?”
The small sea of red leather jacketed heads shook.
“Nothing at all?” King inquired again.
And yet again, all they did was give wordless shakes of their heads.
“We have no reason to believe that they’ve crossed into anyone else’s territory yet,” I said, speaking up from the chair in the corner where I sat. “We’ve done a pretty good job of keeping their attention on us so they don’t focus on other areas.”
King’s masked face panned toward me. “And yet, we’ve still been called.”
Silence fell over all of us until Brutus, of all people, cleared his throat. “King.”
The two massive men stared off with one another. “Yep?”
