Chapter 15
After closing the bar, Demon headed over to the clubhouse.
He’d thought about getting a place away from there, but decided why bother?
Since he spent most of his time off here anyway, doing whatever the brothers needed done, it seemed a waste of money to pay rent for a place when he would barely be there.
Plus, it was close to the bar, so he didn’t have to go all the way across town at two or three in the morning. Not that he would have minded, traffic was next to nothing then and he could enjoy the ride more than during the day.
After backing his bike into line with the others there, he headed inside. The place was pretty quiet, but Puck was behind the bar and there were a few brothers scattered around the room. The one that surprised him was Gizmo.
Demon detoured behind the bar to help himself to a beer, then joined Gizmo at his table.
The tech sergeant nodded his head to one of the chairs across from him, inviting Demon to sit.
"Is there a reason you're hanging out down here at three am instead of snuggled up with your old woman, sleeping?
" Demon said as he pulled out a chair and sat.
She's upstairs asleep. I went up with her but couldn't sleep with what's circling in my head. "
"What's going on?” Giz looked around the room, as if deciding if they could talk here or if they needed to take it where they wouldn't be overheard.
"I got some new information on your cousin and the girl looking for him. " Gizmo paused, his gaze flicking to something across the room and staying there for several seconds. Demon twisted to see what was going on, but all he saw was one of the TVs playing one of the 24 hour news stations. Demon turned back to Gizmo, wondering if something on the screen had caught his attention or if it was something else. "Your cousin is mixed up with the wrong people, but we already knew that. I ran the bounty hunter’s name and didn’t come up with much. At least nothing unexpected. A couple of speeding tickets, an assault charge that was dropped, apparently someone complained about her take down but decided to drop it rather than go to court and say a woman beat him up.” Giz rolled his eyes.
“But because of all the threads in this I decided to run everyone.” The tech sergeant tilted his head to one side, still watching Demon as if he was trying to figure something out.
“Tell me what kind of read you get on the bounty hunter.”
Demon scowled. “What do you mean?”
“Does she come across as someone trying to do a job? As someone who enjoys what she does? Or maybe someone who looks forward to picking up people who fight so she has an excuse to rough them up a bit? Maybe something different? You’re the only one of us who’s actually met her.
I can tell you about her history, not necessarily what she’s done but what she’s been caught at, I can tell you any number of weird details about her, there’s a ton of shit on the internet, but none of what I can find tells me about her personality or what she’s really like. ”
Demon stared at him a moment, wondering if perhaps Gizmo knew about Ronnie coming by Drifters earlier this evening? And if he knew, who else knew? Did they think he was hiding something from them?
He lifted his shoulders in an uncommitting shrug. “I’d never met her before the other day when she was following me.”
“I’m not looking for courtroom testimony, brother, I’m just looking for an idea of what she’s like. Other than a woman with enough balls to walk up to you and tell you she’s taking you in for missing your court date.” A grin spread across Gizmo’s face at the thought.
“Like I said, I hadn’t met her before that day, but she came into Drifter’s tonight.”
Gizmo didn’t say anything but lifted one brow in question.
“She came in to ask if I’d learned anything about where Jim Bob is.”
“And she just happened to come into the bar to find that out?”
“I thought about that, but if she’d thought I was Jim Bob, my place of employment would have come up when they ran me through the system.” He didn’t know that was how she’d found him, but it seemed plausible.
“What did you tell her?”
“That I’ve got some leads but nothing firm yet.
I told her I plan to make sure he’s there before I give her the info, so she can take him down.
” Demon had long ago learned to keep things as close to the truth as he could.
If he didn’t have to lie about something, he didn’t.
Typically, he tried to evade a question that he couldn’t be honest about the answer on and he’d done that with Ronnie.
He hadn’t given her Aunt Chastity’s name when they’d talked about who put up the bail.
He'd given her as little information as he could, while encouraging her to give him what he needed.
“Oh,” he said remembering that she’d texted him that name and address earlier.
“I’ve got someone else for you to look into.
While she was at the bar this evening, I talked her into giving me the name of whoever put up the money for Jim Bob’s bail.
My thought was if it was Aunt Chastity, it should have her address too. But that’s not what she sent me.”
Gizmo’s questioning look turned to a confused scowl. “What do you mean?”
“She sent me a name I don’t recognize.”
“Is it maybe his girlfriend? You haven’t seen your cousin in years, who knows who he’s seeing now.”
“It’s a woman named Jennings. You said you could find no record of him being married, but I don’t know who this is.
” Demon pulled out his phone, went to the messages and forwarded the message from Ronnie with the name and address.
“The address feels off too, I’m not sure why, but can you run those and tell me what you find? ”
“I can. But tell me something before I tell you the rest of what I found when I ran everyone.”
“What do you want to know?” Demon leaned back in his seat, trying to keep from folding his arms across his chest and making it look like he resented being here.
“Was it the bounty hunter Puck caught you in a lip lock with this evening?”
Demon stiffened. Puck had talked. Not that there was any reason to keep it a secret and if it had been anyone else, Demon wouldn’t give a shit. But knowing he had been talking about Ronnie, that made him want to rearrange Puck’s teeth.
“It was. Is there a problem with that?” Demon didn’t want to start trouble, but he wasn’t going to let anyone bad mouth Ronnie.
“In itself, no. But with some of the shit I found, I suspect it will be.”
“What do you mean?” Demon leaned forward. He needed to know what was going on. What had Gizmo found?
Gizmo glanced around the room again. He must have caught Puck’s eye, because he pointed to the table, then made a circular motion with one finger that Demon knew from his own days behind that same bar, meant to bring another round for everyone at the table. Gizmo’s gaze returned to Demon.
“I’m not sure if you know how I do things. Typically, I run whoever I’m asked to, then I’ll also run anyone I come up with that is a frequent associate.”
Demon opened his mouth to ask how Gizmo determined who was a frequent associate, but the tech sergeant waved one hand and kept talking.
“I’m not going to go into the how-to’s or the technical details.
Let’s just say I’ve picked up a few things and I’ve developed a bit of a sixth sense as I’ve been doing this for a while.
” He glanced toward the bar, then around the room again, as if keeping track of who was there and what they were doing.
“I ran your cousin, you know what I found there. After you gave me her info, I ran the bounty hunter. That’s where things get twisted. ”
“What do you mean?” Was there something off about Ronnie? Had he misjudged his firecracker? How had his instincts been so far off?
“Don’t worry, the issue isn’t with your girl.” Gizmo smirked at that one, but continued before Demon could argue. “So Ms. Darq told you she was with The Darq Side Bail Bonds. The Darq Side is owned by one Randall aka ‘Randy’ Darq, also known as Ms. Veronica Darq’s father.”
Demon hadn’t thought about it that much, but that made sense. With both her name and the business name sharing the same spelling of Darq, it made sense that someone in the family owned it. Demon hadn’t even considered that it could be anyone other than Ronnie.
“Okay.” He didn’t want to say too much and stop whatever Gizmo was leading up to, but he seemed to be waiting for something.
A moment later Puck appeared, setting fresh drinks in front of each of them.
“Can I get you anything else?” Puck asked.
“Is there anything easy to heat up in the kitchen?” Demon asked.
His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten in hours, not since before his shift started at six this evening, that was more than eight hours ago.
If there was something simple, he’d heat it up and eat after he finished talking to Gizmo.
“Yeah, one of the girls brought in a huge pan of mac and cheese, and someone left a huge bucket of fried chicken in the fridge. Want me to heat some up for you?”
“No need, I’ll do it myself when I get done here.”
“Not a problem. You’re busy and I’m just standing around waiting for something to do. Light meat or dark?”
Demon stared at Puck for a moment, wondering if he was up to something, or maybe feeling guilty about telling everyone about what he’d seen. Especially now that it looked like he was being called to task for something.
“Dark meat, please.”
“No problem. I’ll be back.” Puck spun and headed for the kitchen. Demon watched as he took the first few steps then turned back to Gizmo.
“You were telling me what you found about Ronnie?” He got the sense, from the way Gizmo was acting, that whatever it was, was big.
“I was. I ran Randy Darq, because that’s part of what I do, and that’s where I hit some red flags. Randy Darq is in debt to the Devils.”