Scorched King (Outlaw Justice #5)

Chapter 21

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

JD

I entered Tel’s technological fortress forty-five minutes early in the hopes that he would have some news that would make me feel better about tonight’s mission.

“Tell me you’ve found something.”

He shook his head silently.

“Fuck! How is this asshole hiding so well from us?”

Tel glanced over at me. “I honestly don’t know. You’d have to be a goddamned genius to evade me at this point. I’ve turned over every rock and kicked everything else.”

“And yet he has. We aren’t one damn step closer into figuring out who our fucking traitor is.”

“I wouldn’t go quite that far.” Tel grinned. “I’ve narrowed it down to three. Well, technically it was four, but I feel comfortable eliminating Bear from the pool, if that’s okay with you.”

“Agreed,” I said, pulling up a chair to take a seat next to the man who was an actual genius and who I trusted implicitly with every bit of information this club had to hide. At least from this era. There were things Pop and I did back in the early days that not only had no records, but no one else knew and that’s where that shit would stay. Some things should never be mentioned again. My point being, if I couldn’t trust Tel then it was time to get out of the illegal anything business.

I had to admit I still didn’t hate that idea. We were more than halfway there. But some activities were both lucrative and immensely satisfying. Those would be the hardest to give up. All of the club loved the big paydays, and then there were some of us who needed those other missions in an attempt to scrub our souls clean.

A futile exercise maybe, but I kept trying anyway.

Tonight’s mission, however, it could be our last of this kind and I’d be more than happy to never do another. Since getting our hooks into legal weed after Washington state legalized it, I preferred keeping us away from the harder shit. The competition for the supply of heroin into Seattle remained stiff and it brought out the worst of the worst, making it dangerous as fuck.

It would take a goddamned miracle to get through tonight without at least one gangbanger trying to double cross us. But it was also our best bet on smoking out a fucking rat.

The Mazzeo mafia group based in Seattle preferred to keep control of anything illegal in their city, and since we’d gotten shot of them, we did our best to stay out of their business.

Killing the last male heir of that family seemed to have worked in our favor. We’d come to an agreement and all gotten what we wanted. We’d leave the guns and drugs to them, and the new club they had under their thumbs, and we got the satisfaction of destroying the psycho fucking killer who’d targeted people under our protection.

My stomach roiled at the image of Sasha the night she’d gotten caught up in the explosion. He’d nearly killed her. My muscles tightened at the thought. It seemed that killing him had not fully satisfied the thirst I harbored for revenge. In all honesty, I’d say he’d gotten off too easy. I’d just as soon dig his ass up, torture him for a week, and then bury him in the ground all over again.

When my time to die arrived, and I found out Purgatory didn’t have a special level for men like him, I was gonna be fucking livid.

“So give me the word. I want to hear all the details no matter how trivial.”

“That would take all night. The whole point of computers is to deal with all of the minutiae so you don’t have to.”

“You ever heard the saying that the devil is in the details?” I smirked.

Tel laughed and turned back to his computer. “You might have mentioned that a time or two.” He tapped at a series of keys and three faces popped up on the screen. “We don’t have time to go over all the details before the meeting as to why these three, but each one of them has something in their background that could fit the profile. It’s not new information, or even hard evidence, but it’s all we’ve got for now.”

I stared at the images of Cash, Cain and Zook. Just seeing them like this burned through my blood. If it was one of them then it was my responsibility to figure out which one and take them down. Hopefully, without tearing down the rest of the club. That was just one of the problems at the moment.

Casting suspicion on an innocent man didn’t sit well with me either. These were all brothers that were hand picked by me. I vouched for each of them and swore they were perfect for our club. If this was true, then I’d have more to answer to than I already did.

“Why these three?”

“Like I said. They’re long shots. On the surface there are no major problems.”

“And below the surface?”

“Each one has some sort of connection that could lead in a negative direction.”

“We all have that. What the fuck?”

“Oh I know. Your propensity to take in strays and fixer uppers is well documented.”

I shot him a glare that told him I’d happily kick his ass if he wasn’t careful.

“No offense, boss. But you definitely have a type,” Tel said, a shit eating grin crossing his face when he did.

“This isn’t some kind of game or bad reality show and I sure as hell ain’t dating any of them. Get to the point, Tel, before you piss me off.”

“Since we don’t have a lot of time, how about we just skip to the good parts then.”

I glanced down at my cell phone and saw that we had about twenty minutes before the meeting started and he was right, I wanted to be in the meeting room ahead of everyone else.

“Do it,” I ordered.

“Cash, as you know, has a greedy bitch of an ex who’s constantly hounding him for money.”

“Yeah, Chel is a real bitch and I’m glad he got shot of her. Too bad about the kid though. Still think he’d be better off with his dad.”

“Exactly. Well, I went digging through Cash’s background so many times and nothing new stood out. I even scratched at the surface of Chel and didn’t get much more than a string of bad dude boyfriends and some minor drug use infractions. What I didn’t think to do was run a check on the kid’s name. He’s only eight years old so what could there be right?” I nodded. “Wrong.”

“There’s a string of shit hole laundromats from here to Leavenworth listed under a shell corporation that are all registered to one Skyler Grayson. There’s some kind of trust attached, layered behind some private security, and I haven’t gotten to the details yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because they filed with some attorney in a shit hole town in the mountains that doesn’t even have fucking internet.”

“Such a place exists?” That was impossible to believe in this day and age.

“Yeah. Some of these mountain towns are too far out and too disconnected. Everything there is done the old-fashioned way. Via paper with no electronic copies.”

“Well, that’s fucking smart. Why aren’t we using that to hide shit?”

Tel looked at me and rolled his eyes. “Because you don’t need it. You’ve got me. Ain’t no one getting ahold of your business records no matter how hard they try.”

Yeah, we’d thought that about our security systems too and look where that got us. I wasn’t going to bring that up again because I’d already made my feelings crystal with Tel about all of that. And he’d responded appropriately by redoing every bit of our security himself. We were now locked down so tight, there were days I wasn’t even sure I could get out of this fucking fortress.

“Anyways. You think it’s a front for something illegal, right?”

“Of course it is. Laundromats are still a go-to business for all kinds of things. Cops don’t generally give a shit about places like that because the payoff would be too small. So it’s easy to run at least a small business through.”

“Drugs?”

“Likely. But there’s also money laundering and gambling. Hell, there’s an endless use for them. Including just making a little money.”

“So, he could just be setting up some kind of college fund for his kid.”

“Possible. But his mother is the wild card. There’s a rumor she’s got a new man in her life and he happens to be the VP of the Vipers.

“You have got to be shitting me? Chel is spreading her legs for those snakes now? What the fuck is wrong with that woman? No matter which way this lands, Cash is going to lose his shit.”

“It could be a coincidence. He might also already know.”

I grumbled under my breath. I fucking hated coincidences. Manufactured bullshit if you asked me. “What about the others?”

“Cain wasn’t on the radar at all until I found this.” Another few clicks and what looked like a county recording showed up on screen.

“What’s that?”

“A deed recording for some apartment property in Seattle. However, I couldn’t find any kind of record of sale or financing registered for that particular piece of land.”

“I’m not particularly interested in my guys using their money to invest in real estate. I’m a little surprised, however, considering Caleb seems more interested in pussy and weed than becoming some slum lord. But whatever. I’m not going to judge him as long as he shows up when the club needs him and gets the job done.”

“Uhm. You should look a little closer. In particular at the address.”

I read it off and while it sounded familiar, I couldn’t quite place it. “Why does that seem so familiar?”

“Because we were just there a few months ago killing a psychopath.”

“What?” My body went rigid and on full alert. “What the mother fucking shit? You’re telling me that Caleb owns that luxury condo building on the water? Not only is that way too coincidental, but we both know he doesn’t have the scratch for that. That job we did in Vegas didn’t even pull in enough for something like that.”

I clenched my hands into fists as I pictured Caleb planning our club’s demise. I could feel the pressure in my head rising as I clenched my teeth. “Where is he?”

“Probably chilling in the clubroom waiting on the meeting.”

“I’m going to kill him.” I slammed the chair I’d been sitting in against the wall and stalked to the door. I wrenched it open.

“Boss, wait. There’s more you need to see before you make any decisions,” Tel said, clicking through screens. “Zook made three calls to Seattle just before the explosion.”

I frowned. “The Serpents?”

“Can’t confirm. Numbers were burners, but the timing lines up with when Mazzeo would have been planning the hit.”

I rubbed my temple. “Zook’s been with us a long time.”

“Yeah, and he’s also been making regular cash deposits. Ten grand each time.”

My gut twisted. Zook had helped me rebuild this club. But then, so had most of the others.

I was so frustrated by all of this I could barely think straight and I had a fucking mission to coordinate. “Send it all to my phone and I’ll read through it as soon as I have a chance. I need to see it all in black and white. In the meantime, this stays between us and keep digging. We need a definitive answer. Oh and make sure Axel has all three of them with us tonight. Not taking any fucking chances.”

“Of course.” Tel turned back to his computer and I slammed the door behind me hard enough to shake the fucking walls. It was a goddamned miracle my anger hadn’t taken down the whole building by now. I needed to get this under control.

Not looking where I went I nearly crashed into Axel outside Tel’s door. I glowered at him and he took a step back, holding his hands out in front of him.

“Forget the meeting. Brief everyone with the plan we talked about and meet me out front in ten. We’re going now. If we don’t finish this tonight, preferably right now, I’m going to kill someone.”