Chapter 16
EMMETT
“Hey, man,” Leo said after I answered his call. “Cass wants to know if you can come over for dinner tonight.”
“Sure.” I flipped on the light in my office. “What time?”
“Whenever. Might as well come early enough for a beer or two before we eat.”
“Will do. Need me to bring anything?” I unplugged my laptop and carried it downstairs, planning on watching a game or something while I worked.
“Cass,” Leo hollered, his mouth away from the phone. “What should Emmett bring?”
“Nothing,” she called back.
“Nothing,” he said.
I’d pick up some beers anyway. “’Kay. See you later.”
“Bye.”
I settled on the downstairs couch, putting my phone on the coffee table.
Then hit the power button on my Mac, scrubbing a hand over my face as it loaded up.
Staying up late at The Betsy wasn’t nearly as fun as staying up with Nova in bed.
I’d slept like shit after I’d come home from the bar, my bed too empty.
The house this morning had been too quiet.
Goddamn, I’d missed her. Enough that I feared I’d do something stupid, like drive to Missoula and haul my woman home.
The temptation to do just that had been constant yesterday, since the moment she’d pulled out of the driveway.
But I’d gone to work, pretended everything was fine, and immersed myself in a remodel project.
I’d barely checked my phone, and after I’d left the shop for the night, I’d gone straight to The Betsy.
I’d stayed until they’d closed at two, then come home and crashed, burying my face in a pillow that still smelled like Nova. I’d tossed and turned until finally drifting off as the sun had come up.
Two hours in my home gym had burned through the rest of my morning. After a shower and a late lunch, I was here, ready to clear out my inbox and do some checking on the Warriors.
There’d been no trouble for months. There’d been no sign of them and according to the latest update Luke had received from the FBI, the trials were progressing—slowly, but progress was progress.
Two more of the senior members had been sentenced. One of them had been a Tin King who’d joined the Warriors and moved to Ashton not a week after we’d voted to shut down our club. He’d worked his way up the ranks with the Warriors. His fifty-year sentence was indication of his status.
If he made it out of prison at all, he’d be released as an old man.
Poor bastard.
My laptop dinged as the emails loaded. I flipped on the TV and let ESPN run in the background as I scanned my inbox. I sent a reply to my accountant, then paid my internet bill.
With my emails cleared, it was time to filter through my alerts, checking through a list of logs for anything that might show Tucker Talbot’s known associates or estranged family members were coming to Clifton Forge. There was nothing to make me worry.
I was just about to shut down when a notification popped up on my screen.
“What the hell?” I muttered.
Last year, I’d added a program to all of my machines to monitor for abnormal battery usage. It was unlikely that anyone could get past my firewall, but if they did and managed to install malware, it would drain the battery faster than normal and throw up a red flag.
This red flag.
My heart raced as my fingers flew across the screen, checking my firewall and encryption. Nothing was out of place. And besides the programs I’d opened, there was no malware.
So why the flag?
I shut off the TV and took the laptop upstairs to the office, wanting more space to work. Was it the fan? This Mac wasn’t that old, but sometimes the fans were faulty and ran too much.
Closing the lid, I ran my hands around the edges, turning the machine upside down and examining the screws. They all seemed fine—except one that looked to have been stripped. Turned too hard and too fast.
My stomach dropped. Mechanics were careful not to strip screws because then you’d never get them loose again. Dad had taught me that years ago.
Taking out a small screwdriver from my desk, I opened the casing and spotted the foreign device immediately.
“Oh, fuck.” Someone had put a tap on my webcam.
Some motherfucker had messed with my machine.
No. No fucking way.
I’d spent years developing my security protocols. My firewall was impenetrable. The hard drive was encrypted. There was little to no chance of an online hack. How many years had I spent putting in those safeguards?
My protocols had been necessary because I couldn’t exactly carry my laptops around with me. For years and years, I’d kept one locked up at the clubhouse. We’d boarded up the windows from the inside. The doors had been padlocked and only a few of us had the keys.
Except part of how Draven had been framed for murder was because the police had found his hunting knife at the scene of the crime. The bastard who’d framed him had broken into the clubhouse and stolen that very knife with Draven’s fingerprints on it.
After that, we’d taken everything out of the clubhouse, anything that might be used against us, including my laptops.
They were currently in a waterproof container locked and sealed and buried five feet beneath a birch tree behind the clubhouse. With them were five guns, weapons that had killed men. Weapons that could be traced to unsolved murders and used to send Dash, Leo and me to prison for life.
Anything incriminating had gone in that box, buried and forgotten. There was no way those would have been found. But someone had definitely opened this laptop. A computer that never left my home.
I quickly spun and picked up my other machine, flipping it over to open its casing too. The same goddamn device was there too.
Both machines. Physically cracked. I bet somewhere in my house I’d find a radio receiver that went along with the webcam tap.
There was only one person who had been in my house alone. Only one person would have had access to these machines.
Nova.
“No.” My stomach pitched. My head was spinning and there was a very real chance my meal from earlier was going to come up.
Nova.
I’d trusted her. I’d . . . loved her?
No. It couldn’t be her. She wouldn’t do that to me. Someone else had to have come in.
Rationalizations aside, in my heart, I knew it was all bullshit. My security system was the best there was. If someone had broken into my house, I would have known, right?
Right.
“Fuck.” I pushed my chair away from the desk, dropping my elbows to my thighs as I tried to breathe. The pain in my chest was like a gunshot wound seeping blood and death.
Why? Why would she do this?
The Warriors.
I gulped, a fresh wash of pain coming again. It squeezed so tight I could barely breathe.
“Fuck!” My voice echoed through the house.
She’d betrayed me. She’d fucking betrayed me.
The pain turned to anger in an instant. The anger morphed into blinding fury. I swiped up my phone and marched from the office, my strides quickening until I was jogging toward the garage.
I pulled on a pair of boots, then grabbed my wallet and keys. Then I was out of the house, passing my bike for the truck. Tearing away from my place, I seethed. The moment my tires hit the highway, I dialed Leo.
“Hey,” he answered.
“Scratch dinner. I’m headed to Missoula.”
“Uh . . .”
“Call Dash. Call Isaiah. Call Luke. Call Shaw.”
“Why? What happened?”
“I’ve been seeing a woman.”
“You have? Since when?”
“This summer. It was just a casual thing.” Because that was how Nova had wanted it.
She hadn’t wanted names or commitment. And the stupid son of a bitch that I was, I’d let sex distract me.
I’d been blind to her motives and now I felt like a fucking fool.
“I don’t know how yet. I don’t know what is happening.
But both of my laptops were tampered with.
She’s the only one who’s been in my house.
Had to have happened in the last couple of days. ”
Probably on Thursday, when she’d asked to work from my house because hers had been too loud.
How many lies had she told me? How many had I believed?
“The Warriors?” Leo asked.
“Who else? She’s got to be connected to them somehow.” And I’d been so caught up in falling for her that I’d pushed all common sense away. I hadn’t insisted on getting her last name. I hadn’t pulled a background check. I hadn’t run her license plates.
What the fuck had I been thinking?
“What are you going to do?” Leo asked.
I hit the gas pedal, my hands tight on the steering wheel. “Start by driving to Missoula and getting some goddamn answers.” Maybe find out who the actual fuck she was.
“You know where she’s at?”
“Yeah.” I knew exactly where she was at.
Thursday night, when she’d told me she was leaving, I’d gotten worried. Because if someone from the Warriors was watching us, they would have seen Nova at my place. I hadn’t wanted to send her home to Missoula without a way to find her in an emergency.
Bryce and Genevieve had been kidnapped once and it had only been luck we’d tracked them to the mountains before it was too late.
Ever since, Dash had had a location tracker on Bryce’s phone. Isaiah had one for Genevieve. Shaw for Presley. Luke for Scarlett. And Leo for Cass.
I’d taken Nova’s phone while she’d slept and added it too. Simple enough. I’d seen her enter her passcode enough times to capture the numbers. Unless she’d discovered it already and deleted it, I’d be able to track her down. Just in case.
Turns out my just in case would come in handy today.
“What can I do?” Leo asked.
“Call everyone. Tell them to keep alert.”
“Want me to share specifics?”
“No.” Right now I was guessing. What we needed were answers. For those, I needed time.
“Keep me posted.”
“Will do.” I ended the call and picked up the phone, driving with one hand while I navigated to the location tracker.
Nova was in Missoula. The location showed her in a residential neighborhood, most likely her home.
I set my phone aside and kept on driving, the hot rage from earlier ebbing, becoming a simmering burn beneath my skin.