Chapter 28 – Ava Jade #3
“Oh, you think that shit’s funny, do you?” Pinkie challenged, fixing me with a mock glare.
I swiped a tear from my eye. “Fucking hilarious,” I corrected him. “I wish I’d thought of that.”
“Come on, you four,” Diesel said, interrupting before a red-faced Pinkie could take a swing at any of us. “Let’s talk, shall we? We’ll bring the others into the room once we’ve reached a decision. Pinkie, with me.”
“Yeah, boss.”
We followed Diesel and Pinkie through Sanctum toward the back room, the one where I’d taken the poison trial. Fuck, it felt like ages ago now.
The door swung closed behind us, muffling the loud conversation and music outside to a dull hum.
“First thing’s first,” Diesel said, passing Corvus something.
Whatever it was clinked familiarly as Corvus unwrapped it, coming to where I hovered at the edge of the long table.
The others sat down as he laid the cloth wrapped bundle on the table in front of me. “You might be needing these.”
He threw back the last bit of cloth to reveal my blades.
No, not just my blades. There were others, too.
The blue-eyed crow-handled blade Corvus gave me seemed to have spawned two more. One with a golden eye, and another with an onyx one. That crow had flames etched on wings. I loved them beyond words.
They made the fact that there were only two of my own blades remaining an easier pill to swallow.
“Here,” Corvus said, seeming to pull a fistful of black straps and holsters from out of nowhere. “There’s two for your belt. Two for your thighs. One for your ankle and a dual chest strap. I wasn’t sure what you’d prefer.”
“You should grovel more often,” I muttered for his ears only as I took the bits of leather and Velcro from him.
He snorted, saying nothing as I set to adjusting the straps, fixing the new holsters over my chest in a cross, where I put two of the three crow-handled blades, adding the other one to my inner thigh and the two others to my ankle and belt.
I sighed happily, the remaining tension I’d been holding on to sloughing off like dead skin.
“Just like that,” Rook said, snapping his fingers. “And my Ghost’s back.”
I smirked at him, sliding into the seat next to Corvus at the table.
“What do we have on this guy?” Diesel asked, not wasting any time, his stony gaze drifting over the four of us seated at the table with him and Pinkie before landing squarely on me. “The guys filled me in on some, but is there anything else?”
“We figured out a general area where the bunker could be in the national park, but we won’t be able to narrow it down until we can get some guys out there to search the area.”
Diesel nodded. “All right, but even if we find the bunker, your girl set it on fire, yeah? Likely there won’t be much evidence left there to use to our advantage.”
“But it’s possible,” I said before Diesel could continue. “Were there any fires in the area that emergency crews responded to?”
I posed the question to Grey, who shook his head. “Already checked. He must’ve gotten it under control before it could get out of hand.”
“ Fuck ,” I cursed under my breath, trying to think of another angle and coming up empty handed.
“All right, let’s forget the bunker for the minute,” Diesel suggested, leaning over the table. “This guy. Drake, Jericho, whatever his fuckin’ name is. If we can figure out who he is, we might be able to trace him. So what do we know? Let’s go over it.”
Corvus sat back in his chair, sighing, clearly frustrated to be going back over intel we already had. “We know he’s the true leader of the Kings.”
“And we know he thinks Thorn Valley should be his by right,” Grey added while Rook dragged a glass ashtray from the middle of the table over to where he sat and lit a cigarette.
“He was prying Becca for information on us and Ava Jade.”
Diesel nodded, trying to find connections from all the puzzle pieces.
Rook ashed his cigarette. “He was working Becca before Ghost even got here, though.”
“Wait. In those texts he said he wasn’t sure if it was you when he first saw you on the streets of Thorn Valley. The texts started, what, like a few days after you arrived?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“But you didn’t go anywhere near town during that first week, did you? You ran the trail off campus, through the woods.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, but I did have my aunt’s driver drop me downtown the night I arrived. Well, I practically jumped out of the moving car. I couldn’t stand another second with that bitch.”
The guys shared a look, and something uncomfortable slithered in my belly. “What?” I asked when none of them said a word.
“We saw you that night, too,” Corvus answered for them all. “Dragging your suitcase all the way up to Briar Hall.”
My lips parted, confused. “I’m not following.”
“That was the night we found Randy dead in the alley,” Rook explained. “With an A carved into his chest. We had to drag Randy’s body out of sight when Humphrey’s fancy car squealed to a stop right outside the mouth of the alleyway.”
Diesel held a hand up, a red tint to his cheeks. “Hold on a fucking second,” he hissed. “You’re saying this fucker was in Thorn Valley the night Randy was killed? In practically the same goddamned place?”
“Holy shit…” Grey breathed. “You don’t think he…?”
Diesel was already nodding. “I do.”
He stood suddenly, his chair scraping across the floor, his palms slapping against the table’s edge before going to his head, pushing his hair away from his face. “Jesus Christ. Lenny wasn’t lying when he said his men had nothing to do with Randy.”
He hit the table again, and it rattled all the way down to where I sat. “Fuck!”
I was still putting it all together in my head. The guys being there from the very first moment I arrived in this place. Randy. The war with the Aces. The alliance with the Kings.
Oh my god.
“It was him this whole time.”
“What?” Diesel asked, and when I looked up, all eyes were on me.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
Or maybe it wasn’t. If it weren’t for the sick churn in my belly, I might’ve felt proud to have caught on before the Diesel St. Crow.
“He’s been working you this whole time,” I began, my heart thudding loudly in my chest. “He said it himself, he thinks Thorn Valley should be his . If he killed Randy, it was to push you into starting a war with the Aces. Which is exactly what you did. He wanted to hit you hard. Weaken your defenses. And he did . They weakened enough that you considered an alliance with the Kings.”
“Which was also exactly what he wanted,” Corvus picked up where I left off, his voice dripping with malice. “To get close to you, so that when the time came he could finish off the rest of us.”
“He’d have no competition for hundreds of miles in any direction,” Rook said, a dark laugh on his lips like he half respected the guy.
I had to admit, it was a damn good plan.
“He had you do all the heavy lifting. Taking out the Aces. The Dead Men. Leaving only us, weakened. For the first time since you and the other Saints created this empire, we’re weak enough that someone could have the upper hand. ”
Diesel staggered back a step, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He slunk back into his seat, still pushed back from the table, and bent, rubbing his palms over his face. “Who is this guy?”
The question was meant rhetorically, but I realized I might have one last clue that could help.
“He had this lighter,” I said, and Diesel lifted his chin. “The one I used to set the chair on fire. It had initials in it.”
Rook flipped his own zippo lighter between his fingers, his brows drawn down. “I remember,” he said before I could finish. “He let me use it once. The initials were?—”
“L.R.B.”
Recognition flickered in Diesel’s eyes. His body stilled, going practically rigid.
“Boss?” Pinkie pressed, worry in the creases on his forehead. “You don’t think it’s actually…”
Diesel stood, holding himself up with palms pressed flat against the table. He let out a shuddering sigh. “I think that’s exactly who this is. God dammit, why didn’t I see this sooner?”
“Who?” Corvus demanded, his hand curling into a fist on top of the table. “Who is it?”
When Diesel lifted his gaze to us, I felt the guilt in his cold eyes like it was my own. Saw the rage behind it. “My son.”