Chapter Twenty
IONA AND HER teammates worked together to prepare the evening meal. Good thing they’d planned. They spent much of the day chasing down fruitless clues. No matter how much they dug into anything remotely connected to Dutch King, they came up with nothing, as if he didn’t exist.
She froze. Wait a minute. What if Dutch wasn’t his real name? Was it possible that he was using an alias? Buying excellent papers was a cinch if you had the right connections and money. Dutch might have both things necessary to reinvent himself.
Elias walked into the kitchen and breathed deeply. He groaned. “What smells so good in here besides Iona?”
The rest of her team laughed while her cheeks burned.
“You can’t smell Iona above all the other scents in here.”
“That’s what you think, Rayne.” He wrapped his arms around Iona from behind and nuzzled the side of her neck. “I’d know Iona’s scent anywhere.”
“How’s the shoulder?” Iona murmured as the other women talked.
“Better. You were right. I needed to lie flat for a few minutes.”
She held up a hand. “Hold it. Let me get my calendar so I can write this down. I can just see it now. In bold print, I’ll write in large letters that I was right.”
Elias laughed. “Go ahead. This will become a regular occurrence. I’m a guy. It’s second nature for me to put my foot in my mouth.”
She grinned. “Guess I need to purchase a large calendar.”
“Ha ha. Seriously, is dinner almost ready? I’m starving.”
“You’re in luck, Mr. Knight. Dinner will be ready in ten minutes.”
“Thank goodness.” Seth walked into the kitchen and mooched a piece of lettuce from the salad bowl. Teagan scowled at him. “Hey, I need food. Adding more cameras is hard work.”
Teagan snorted. “Right. You added five more cameras. Between the five of you, that should have taken ten minutes, tops.”
“Maybe. I didn’t check my watch.”
The women laughed.
Teagan eyed her husband. “If you’re going to be underfoot, the least you can do is set the table.”
“That I can handle. Come on, Elias. You’re not exempt from kitchen duty simply because you have a bum shoulder.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, sir.”
Together, the two men made quick work of setting the table for the evening meal. When they finished, Iona removed two large pans of baked spaghetti from the oven.
The scent filled the kitchen, drawing Elias and Seth to the counter where the pans rested on hot pads. Soon, the operatives gathered around the dining table and dug into their meal.
Afterward, the operatives gathered in the living room.
“What’s the next step, Seth?” Noah wrapped his arm around Violet’s shoulders.
“As much as I want to do so, we can’t bolt in the middle of the night.
The police need us to stick around. If we disappear, our credibility is blown to smithereens.
Not only that, but Dutch still says he trusts us to help with security with the sale. ”
Seth tilted his head. “You don’t believe him?”
Noah thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Although he said the correct words, they didn’t ring true.”
“Yeah. Pretty much my feeling too. I want to get out of here as much as you do. But as a former law enforcement officer, I can’t leave the detectives in a lurch. They’d lose their case without so much as a whimper. I can’t live with that.”
Yeah, Iona got it. Didn’t mean she liked the streak of integrity Elias’ team leader had at this moment.
Grant grimaced. “I was afraid you would say that.”
“Have a better idea?”
“Nope. I was depending on your brilliant intellect for a creative solution.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, buddy. The only thing I know to do at the moment is to stay put and make a few discreet inquiries on our own to find the meeting place. If we learn anything useful, we can pass it along anonymously to the detectives and the feds.”
“We need to figure out who’s behind the cameras and listening devices planted in our cabin,” Andre said. “I don’t enjoy having a target on my back, especially when I don’t know who’s aiming a weapon at me.”
“Andre has a good point,” Iona said to Seth. She wanted to run her brainstorm by Elias to see if he thought her idea held water or not.
“What do you suggest?”
“Divide and conquer.” She couldn’t think of a better option at the moment.
Two teams were on site after all. Might as well use both teams. The faster they learned the information they needed, the better for all of them.
“Artemis will focus on the cameras and bugs in the cabin.” That should take pressure off the men.
What could be safer than to have their women at their home base?
“That leaves Echo to figure out the meeting place.”
“Are you open to a suggestion?”
“Sure. What do you have for me?”
“Red Rock has one bar in town, and MC members are known for their drinking. You might learn a few things if you ply Dutch’s men with alcohol.”
“I might have agreed with you last night. Now, though, that tactic won’t work,” Seth said.
“Why not?” Teagan demanded. “It’s a good idea.”
“It is. The problem isn’t the idea. It’s the workout this morning. We didn’t do ourselves any favors by showing those boys up.”
“It was necessary. They were cocky jerks who thought they were better than all of us.”
“We made them look bad in front of their president,” Elias said. “That’s a cardinal crime.”
“They wouldn’t have looked bad in front of Dutch if they weren’t letting themselves go,” Rayne said.
Grant smiled. “She’s not wrong.”
“I’m not arguing with the ladies, just pointing out we didn’t make friends this morning. I doubt the MC members will talk to us even if we ply them with liquor.”
Rayne and Riley exchanged glances, then Riley spoke up. “What if Artemis plied them with liquor?”
The men stared. Seth’s forehead furrowed. “Are you out of your mind? You aren’t going anywhere near a bar, especially one frequented by an MC. No way are any of you putting yourselves at risk to hunt for this information. I’d rather go home empty-handed than risk any of you.”
Iona held up her hands. “Hear us out.”
Elias was already shaking his head no.
“We can do this safely,” she insisted. Why was he being so stubborn?
It wasn’t as though she and her team were newbies.
They’d been operatives longer than Echo unit.
Elias must get used to using Artemis on ops.
Otherwise, she and Elias would have a problem because black ops was her life, and she and her team had been trained a certain way that worked for them.
He said he could accept her job, but could he?
“How?”
“Echo can take Artemis out for a night on the town.”
He snorted. “To a dive bar?”
“Limited choices in a small town.”
“Limited intelligence is more like it.” He motioned for her to continue.
“You can take us out to dinner first, then end the night at the bar.”
Noah scowled. “I don’t like it.”
“None of us do,” Seth said. “What makes you think you can get the information better than we can, Iona?”
“Frankly, the members of Artemis are more attractive than Echo.”
“No.” Elias stepped in front of Iona and cupped her chin in her hand. “You’re planning to flirt with some Neanderthal to learn the location of the sale, aren’t you?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Yeah, either use good old-fashioned torture or inject them with thiopental.”
Iona smiled. She figured he would suggest those options sooner than later. She pressed her mouth to his for a moment, then broke the kiss. “You can hold those options in reserve.”
“I don’t like this plan, either,” Andre muttered.
“Same.” Grant glared at Rayne who merely smiled at her husband.
“This is a lousy idea,” Seth groused. “What if these MC members get the wrong idea?”
Teagan winked. “Well, then, you and the rest of Echo will be right there to persuade them otherwise.”
Andre folded his arms across his chest and glared at Riley. “Are you planning to shove us in the corner unless you give us a signal to step in and whisk you away?”
She batted her eyelashes at him. “Well, now that you mention it, that’s what I was thinking.”
“No.”
“Andre.”
He shook his head. “Forget it, babe. If you’re sweet-talking a bunch of bikers, I will be glued to your side to remind those clowns that you are off-limits to their hands and mouths. Violators will be persecuted.”
Her eyebrows soared. “Do you mean prosecuted?”
“I know exactly what I said, and I meant it, too.”
She sighed. “Look, I have several knives, Andre, and I know how to use them. If they touch me without permission, they will regret it.”
“Not good enough. I don’t want their hands or mouths on you or for them to think you’re offering an engraved invitation.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Let Echo make the initial contact, then Artemis can join us after we get the conversation rolling.”
Iona frowned. “What’s the difference?”
“We’ll make it clear we’re at the dive bar together and you’re off-limits to anyone but us. Your job is to convince those bozos that you’re impressed with them and with the way they support their president.”
Teagan wrinkled her nose. “Only as much as I have to. I’m not that impressed with him. I know what an actual leader is supposed to do, and Dutch King has only done one thing since we arrived in Red Rock that hints he’s the leader of an MC.”
Rayne nodded. “He refused to quit, even when he was past exhausted. He kept pushing forward until our session ended.”
Iona smiled. “Dutch got a huge second wind when he realized he’d kept up with us while his own people had given up and were lying flat on their backs.”
Elias narrowed his eyes as he studied Echo’s leader. “Wait a minute. Did you guys notice the pace was slower than normal?” he asked his teammates.
Noah gave a curt nod. “Now that you mention it, I didn’t sweat nearly as much as I usually do.”
“Why is that?” Andre asked. “Did you take it easy on the MC leader?”
Seth’s cheeks burned. “Maybe.”
The operatives laughed.
“I didn’t want him to look bad in front of his men.”
“Understandable.” Noah clapped him on the back.
“Does anyone have anything to add or ask before we move on to more research?”
This was her chance to brainstorm with everyone in one room.
“I do.” When Seth stepped back and motioned for Iona to take center stage in the living room, she stepped into the circle of operatives.
“We’ve been digging for hours into Dutch King’s background, or more accurately, trying to dig into his background.
We’ve come up with zip. After all this work and effort, I’m wondering if we’ll ever find anything for an MC leader named Dutch King. ”
“What do you mean?” Elias asked.
“What if Dutch King is an alias?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Think about it. An alias is the only thing that makes sense. We’re pretty good at research, but Riley rocks at it, and even she can’t find anything. We sent Zane after him, and he got nowhere. Nobody can hide from Z. The only answer that makes sense is he doesn’t exist.”
More silence, then Elias rubbed his jaw. “She’s right. How did we miss that?”
Seth squeezed Elias’ uninjured shoulder. “You’ve got a smart one there, buddy. Hang on to her.”
Elias’ gaze locked with hers. “That’s the plan.”
“Elias can congratulate himself later,” Andre said.
“If this guy is working under an alias, how will we break it without resorting to a little clubhouse B & E in the middle of the night? I don’t fancy spending time in the hospital because I was stupid enough to encroach on another MC’s clubhouse which also houses their president.
You know they’ll have their best guards on him and his Old Lady. ”
“When you put it that way, we’d be idiots to attempt such a maneuver,” Grant said.
“I have an idea,” Riley said. “Might be nothing, but I’ll have to chase it a while before I can rule it out.”
“Do it,” Iona said. Riley’s hunches usually panned out. At the moment, they had nothing. The only thing they’d waste by chasing her hunch was a little time. They could afford that. With Riley’s track record, Iona would bet on her ideas any day of the week and come out the winner.
Riley hurried upstairs with Andre two steps behind as Seth turned to Iona. “That idea was brilliant.”
Her cheeks burned. “Thanks.” Took her long enough to come up with that bit of brilliance. She was glad Echo’s leader hadn’t paid attention to that part of the equation.
Seth shifted his attention to the remaining operatives.
“Listen up, people. I don’t know how long it will take Riley to work her magic.
While we wait, let’s see if we can find a location connected to King that could be used as a place to hold a sale of this magnitude.
Run the same searches for Merriweather. Let’s see what we come up with before Riley is finished. ”
They scattered in couples, with Iona and Elias working on their laptops at the breakfast bar. Thirty minutes into the search, Elias growled and pushed back from the counter.
“Problem?”
“This is pointless. I’m getting nowhere. King, or whatever his name used to be, doesn’t have any property to his name that I can find. The only thing Merriweather owned was his farm.”
“I’m getting nothing, too. Perhaps the others will stumble upon something that will help.”
“Yeah? Well, don’t hold your breath. I don’t believe any of us will uncover useful information except Riley.”
A loud whistle called everyone back to the living room. When the operatives gathered in the room, Iona signaled Riley to take center stage and tell everyone what she had learned.
She looked at Andre for a moment, then squared her shoulders and faced the others.
“I ran searches on Dutch that we usually run when we want information on suspects. Like you, I found nothing. It’s as though the man is a ghost. Since we don’t have a starting point for him, I tracked him through his wife. ”
Seth straightened. “Did you have any luck?”
Riley smiled. “I did.”
“Great work. So, who is this guy?”
“Well, that’s the funny thing. His name is Doug Knight.” She glanced at Elias. “Doug is Elias’ cousin.”