Chapter 21 Rock
ROCK
“Ready?” I asked as I walked around the side of the restaurant.
“Who the hell were you on your phone with?” Brewer asked.
“I called Piper real quick. Asked her if she had dinner plans for tonight.”
“Planning on a family dinner after this family tragedy?” he asked.
I hopped onto my bike and mounted my phone on my newly-minted handlebars.
“I’m hoping so,” I said. “Either way, we gotta get going. He’s already two miles ahead of us, so we’ve got a good lag behind him.”
“Let’s nail this son of a bitch,” he said.
We rode out of the restaurant parking lot, keeping side by side on the road.
Brewer followed my lead on every turn we made, and when Mick stopped we pulled off and charted where he had gone.
I’d tap my screen and pull up the address, then I’d take a snapshot of the map while Brewer wrote down the address.
We did that for every fucking stop that asshole made, and most of it was useless.
The bank. The post office. The grocery store.
Fucking hell, he stayed in that store for almost two hours.
We followed him around town while he made every fucking errand run in the damn world.
Just when I was about to tell Brewer we should give up, things got interesting.
“He’s taking some back roads,” I yelled over to Brewer. “Stay with me.”
I darted onto a side street and picked up the pace, worried that I might lose signal.
Some of the backroads in Redding didn’t have good cell service, and my location tracker was only as good as the service that asshole stayed in.
We came within a mile of him before his signal dropped off, and I cursed as I pulled off on the side of the road.
“Fucking hell. These back roads are thick with absolutely nothing. What the fuck’s back here?” Brewer asked.
“Nothing. There’s a whole lot of nothing. The only thing I can think is--”
“That Mick’s covering his damn tracks,” he said.
We struck up our bikes and headed back towards the main road.
Five miles was a good enough stretch for us to ride around town until we picked up his signal again.
Brewer and I rode the outskirts of town, dipping down small roads and making our way through the forest. We drove around until almost five fucking o’clock before I picked up his signal again.
He’d dropped off the map for almost three damn hours.
“I got him,” I said. “Follow me.”
“Where is he?” Brewer asked.
“If I’m reading this map right, he’s at a damn ice cream shop.”
The more I looked at my cell phone, the more I worried about the fact that I might not make dinner with Gavin and Piper. But the second we rode by the ice cream shop and peeked inside, we saw Mick sitting there with a very familiar face.
“Holy shit,” Brewer said. “That’s Axe!” Axe was one of the older members of The Black Saddles. Neither of them were wearing their cuts, but I knew Axe’s face.
“Keep driving,” I said.
“We have to do your listening thing. We have to do it now.”
“Not in broad daylight and not with a shit ton of people around. If those assholes get spooked and start shooting, innocent people are gonna get hurt.”
“He’s with a Black Saddle, Rock!”
“You think I don’t see that!?”
I pulled over into an alleyway two miles up from the ice cream shop.
“You think I don’t wanna ring that fucker’s neck until his eyes roll out into the street?
I saw him sitting there with Axe. It’s proof of what he’s fucking up to.
But we have to do this in an area where no one’s gonna get hurt if they start popping off fucking bullets. You have to keep it together, Brewer.”
“I want to kill him, Rock. I want to unload my gun into his fucking chest.”
“You and I both. But we have to do this right. We keep our asses out of it, we keep our families out of it, and we do this where no one’s gonna fucking get hurt. You hear me?” I asked.
I’d never seen my best friend so angry. But I’d never felt the kind of anger that was flowing through my veins.
It was an anger that ached. An anger that made me want to throw caution to the wind and rip his head off.
It was the kind of anger that made me rationalize torture in all of its various forms.
But mostly, it was an anger that saddened me to my core. A man I’d considered a brother for years was nothing but a sorry excuse for a rat. A betrayer of the worst kind. A man I’d trusted. A man we’d all trusted.
And he was playing for the other team.
“What do we do?” Brewer asked.
I looked down at my blinking map and saw that Mick was on the move.
“We keep on his tail until he heads to their lodge,” I said. “No matter how long it takes. We get him talking with them at their lodge, and there’s no denying what he’s doing. Think you can put that bloodlust on hold?”
I peeked over at Brewer as he drew in a deep breath.
“Let’s go,” he said. “I’m ready to nail this son of a bitch to a wall.”
We left the alleyway and stuck to side streets while Mick cruised up the main road.
But I could tell by the route he was taking that he was headed home.
I ducked down another alley that pulled us back to the main stretch through Redding, then I pulled over at a diner that only sat a mile and a half from Mick’s place.
“You hungry or something?” Brewer asked.
“Mick’s headed home,” I said. “And knowing him, he’s probably got shit to cook for dinner, judging by how fucking long that grocery run took. We sit, get a drink. Bide our time until he moves again. Because once night falls, I’m pretty sure he’ll head to where we want him.”
“What about dinner with Gavin and Piper? You going to let her know you won’t be there?” he asked.
I hopped off my bike and pulled out my phone, but something in the pit of my gut stopped me.
I knew technology. I fucking whispered to it like an oracle or some shit.
I knew how easy it was to track phone calls and clone phones and do all the shit we were doing in order to tail Mick.
When I called Piper before, that was reckless.
If there was any shred of a chance that our phones had been tapped--that somehow, someone had latched onto our plan--calling or texting Piper again would put both her and Gavin in danger.
And after seeing Mick fucking licking an ice cream cone with a Black Saddle? I sure as hell wasn’t taking chances.
“No,” I said.
“Wait, are you serious?” Brewer asked. “You're not going to text her or anything?”
“No. And you shouldn’t get in touch with Makenna either. Not until this is done.”
“What aren’t you telling me, Rock?”
I walked into the diner and headed straight for the back booth, keeping my eyes facing the windows of the establishment and Mick’s tracker pulled up on my phone.
“Rock, what’s going on?” Brewer asked.
“Everything we’ve done has been foiled up until this point,” I said.
“So, I can’t operate under the idea that we haven’t already been made somehow.
I know how this shit works. I know how easy it is to clone someone’s phone and see all the shit they’re doing.
So, if I contact Piper and Gavin after seeing that asshole with Axe--”
“They’re in trouble if someone’s watching us like we’re watching Mick,” he said.
“Yep.”
“Then I won’t contact Makenna until we know what the fuck’s up.”
“Good. Because right now? I’ve got more questions than answers and I’m not ready to break away without knowing what the hell Mick is doing, what he’s saying, and how he’s being compensated.”
“Good thing I’m not on that damn pain medication anymore,” Brewer said.
“What’ll it be, boys?”
I looked up at the waitress who donned a less-than-appetizing expression.
“A large strawberry milkshake and a plate of fries,” I said.
“I’ll take a double bacon burger with cheese, ketchup, mustard, and pickles. With a side of onion rings,” Brewer said.
“Drink?” the waitress asked.
“Coffee,” he said.
“Actually, that sounds good. Strike the milkshake and get me a coffee, too.”
“No milkshake, just coffee. Want anything besides the fries?” she asked.
“Nope. Thanks.”
“Coming right up,” she said.
“We might as well have ordered the damn pot,” Brewer said. “Because something tells me we’re going to be up late.”
“We’ll stay up however long it fucking takes,” I said. “Diesel’s counting on us for answers and the stabilization of our damn family depends on it.”
“Fuck, what if Everly and Monroe are in trouble and they don’t even fucking know it?”
“That’s why we stay alert and awake until this mission’s done. We’ve got too many children and too many women involved at this point to half-ass this job. It took us long enough to get Diesel on-fucking-board with all this. We do this now and we go back with answers we all fucking deserve.”
“It hurts, Rock.”
I watched grief wash over my best friend’s face as he sunk back into the booth.
“He’s our brother. Our number’s guy. Our trusted clean-up crew. He’s our fucking backbone when we mess up our shit, and he’s doing this to us? Who can we trust?”
“You got me, and you got Diesel And you know damn well that Knox and Grave aren’t pulling shit like this.
Mick’s always been a pussy. A brother, yes.
But that man can’t shoot a damn gun or deal with blood to save his fucking life.
He can clean it up, but he can’t draw it.
He can stay in the background, but he can’t fight.
He dwells in the corners. In the shadows.
He stays behind-the-scenes to cover shit up.
That’s how he got this under our fucking noses for so long. But no more. His game stops now.”
“Here you go, boys. Coffees, a double bacon burger with all that stuff, onion rings, and a plate of fries,” the waitress said.
“You might as well sit the pot of coffee down for us,” I said. “We’ll be needing it.”
“I’ll get you guys a carafe then,” she said.
I looked over at my location tracker and saw Mick still at his place. Probably whistling to himself and cooking some dumbass dinner, thinking he’s still got the wool over our damn eyes. But if he thought for one second, he was safe, he had another fucking thing coming.
We knew what he was doing. We knew what he was up to. And if Brewer and I could get solid proof of it, these actions would be the last of his life.
Because the second we showed Diesel, he would accept nothing less than his head on a fucking silver platter.
That was how Diesel worked. Diplomacy and calm conversations until you double-crossed him.
Then? He was the most ruthless of us all.