Chapter One #2
“They’ve been scarce, things are tense. I sent over a picture of Lily. Her real name is Kristy Styne. She doesn’t come around much but when she does, she disappears with Nytro.”
“Wait, who is Rowena?” War asked.
“A mole?” I raised my brows in surprise.
Ballistic looked at me in his patented silence.
No wonder King thought Tanya infiltrated us for the Kingsmen, he’d had a girl in their clubhouse.
For how long? Which begged the question why King would be suspicious enough to plant someone in their clubhouse.
We knew why Lily was here. There was something else going on with the Kingsmen that we weren’t aware of. I narrowed my eyes at King.
“The real problem is they’ve shipped out. Ro said all of the officers have been gone for three days. She can only ask so many times where they are, without raising suspicion.”
“She didn’t think to mention that?” Banshee asked.
“Why would she?” Ballistic answered. Banshee nodded, because he was right, that in itself wasn't suspicious.
“How many are there now?” King asked, rubbing his beard. He was looking even more troubled now than he was before Ballistic came in.
“Nine at her last count. She hasn’t seen Lily and no one has shown up, she’s been at the bar the whole time. But she said they’re on edge, she’s seen a lot of guns.”
So they hadn’t taken Waverley there. Fuck. And King was right, it would be more or less an ambush if we just showed up. At least knowing Waverley wasn’t there, meant we weren’t going to waste our time or risk any of our brothers.
“Tell her to be careful, only contact us if it’s really important or she thinks she’s in danger. I want to know everything about the officers, any properties they own, family information. We need to talk to the ones we’ve rounded up, find out what they know.”
“They have a lot of fronts around the counties, but there is a club in Phillipsburg, just outside of town,” Ink was pouring over his maps.
He was old school, not a fan of GPS, but he knew the roads around most of New Jersey like the back of his hand.
“It’s off the beaten track. It’s a front, they’ve used it for business before. ”
“Ok, go check it out,” King told him and he and Banshee got up and left.
Ballistic left to call the girl while Dirt went to the security room.
King looked between the two of us. “War, get your head on straight. Start thinking like a VP and not her brother.”
“How can you say that to me?” he shouted.
“Because its who we are,” King answered calmly. “We’re not normal people, War, we’re in a fight with a rival MC and we have to think smarter than they do.”
“I don’t know if I can do that, they could be hurting her,” his voice broke a little.
“You can’t bring emotion into this. I need to be able to rely on my VP.”
“How can you stand there like a fucking statue and not care what they could be doing to your daughter?”
King’s face darkened. I agreed with War, but I disagreed with him about King’s feelings.
I’d seen how he reacted to Tanya hurting Waverley, how he watched her once she was back at the compound.
He’d never let on about his feelings while she was away but Waverley was his daughter and he loved her, I didn’t doubt that.
“What the hell is this all about?” War began pacing again. “This thing with the Kingsmen. It’s come out of nowhere, why the fuck are they doing this, what do they want with her?”
King’s head moved in a slight shake, like he didn’t know. I exchanged a glance with War.
“Why do you have a girl there?”
“It’s good to keep an eye on your rivals.”
“Bullshit,” War snapped. “I’m your VP, I didn’t know about it, but Ballistic knew?”
“I don’t need to explain what I’m doing, War. The secrecy was for Rowena’s safety as much as anything else.”
“What exactly was she feeding back to you?” I asked. “How long has she been there?”
King sighed and went behind his desk. He peered at the maps Ink had left before sitting down. “When they went after Connor. I didn’t understand it, didn’t believe it was nothing more than a random ambush that got out of hand. So I sent her in.”
“And, was it worth it?” War asked.
“She’s given us some intel, but nothing about this. This has come out of left field. Something isn’t right about this whole thing.”
“Because Nytro is a fucking asshole,” War said, folding his arms. “And I want to put a bullet between his eyes.”
“You’ll get your chance, but not until we figure this out.”
“And in the meantime, we just leave Wave at their mercy?”
“Fuck no. It might not seem like it, but we aren’t sitting on our asses, War. We’re doing what we can to find her.”
“Was Connor the only reason you put her in there?” I asked.
King’s eyes went from his son to mine. He studied me for a long time while War huffed beside me. If he knew I was on the verge of tearing the room apart, he didn’t let on. I could tell he wasn’t going to answer me by the look on his face.
It aroused my suspicions about the whole thing going on between the two clubs. I’d always trusted my President before, but the bits and pieces we knew of what was going on now and what happened years ago with the Kingsmen, weren’t adding up.
“Kansas can’t do everything by himself, War you are the only other person here who can do what he does. Go help him.”
“Sit behind a fucking computer?” War threw his hands up. “Seriously.”
“Omen is out there somewhere,” King got back up, his face an eerie mask. “You find him, you go after him, and figure out what the fuck he was doing with them.”
War’s lips turned down and he nodded, reluctantly accepting that.
“Don’t think for one fucking second I am sitting back and letting them do this,” King told us. “I will have Nytro’s head, as soon as I figure out what he is trying to do to my club. Now go find me some fucking answers.”
We were effectively dismissed so headed out of his office. War shut the door and glanced down the hallway. “What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know,” I ran a hand through my hair. “He’s right about one thing, we need to keep our heads.”
“How are you so calm about this?”
“You think I don’t want to walk into their clubhouse and choke the life out of everyone in there? That I am happy standing here feeling completely fucking helpless?”
He looked away from me. He sucked his lower lip into his mouth, biting down hard on it. “Yeah, man I’m sorry, I know,” he said genuinely. “I just can’t believe this is happening. They were on our compound all this time. They… fuck, they gutted him.”
I didn’t know who had told him that, but I couldn’t ignore the fact he hadn’t asked anyone how Connor was yet.
I would have thought the first thing he wanted to do was go to him, to make sure he was okay.
Connor can’t have got through everything he had with the last attack by the Kingsmen, to die like this.
“He’s alive, he’s in surgery,” I told him. War looked back at me, a sheen over his eyes which he hurriedly blinked away. This was the first time he’d heard Connor wasn’t dead. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”
“What for?” he shook his head. “To sit around going out of my mind? No, I don’t want to go to the fucking hospital.
Connor wouldn’t want us sat in a waiting room with our thumbs up our asses,” he pointed towards the front of the clubhouse.
“He’d want us out there getting Waverley back. I need to find Omen.”
I held my best friend’s gaze then indicated towards the security room where Kansas was working. “Then you go do it.”
“You know that isn’t where my skillset lies.”
“The Devils are more than just one man,” I pointed out. “We’re all in this.”
“You’re starting to sound like that old fuck,” he groaned.
War blew out a heavy breath and leaned back against the wall.
He stared at his father’s office in silence for a few moments, then his back straightened, and he looked over at me.
“Is it just me or is there more to this whole thing with the Kingsmen?”
“I’m not sure. But, yeah, I’m leaning that way.”
“King has had a spy over there, that isn’t normal. The bullshit about Con’s first attack making him do it,” he shook his head skeptically.
“You think it has something to do with what went on between the two clubs all those years ago?” I frowned.
“Yeah. I do.”
King always had information he wasn’t telling everyone. We’d both thought it after he’d filled Wave and War in on the shit with their mom, but we had been content to let him have his secrets. Now Waverley was in danger, he couldn’t keep that shit from us anymore.
“I don’t know what the fuck he’s hiding,” War said. “But I’ll get what I can out of him and I’ll do what I can with Kansas.”
“You find Omen, you call me.”
He clapped a hand on my shoulder then headed for the office behind us. I turned to see Ballistic standing at the end of the hallway. I don’t know if he heard any of that or not but he was looking at me with something a little more than his usual intensity.
I meant what I said before, I was starting to feel completely helpless.
Nothing mattered more to me than getting her back.
A sharp pain hit me in the chest threatening to take me to my knees.
I’d already let her down before and she got hurt.
I’m not walking away this time. No one is going to hurt her again.
“Hustle, you’re with me,” Ballistic walked away, checking the clip on his gun. He shoved it into a holster and pushed out of the clubhouse doors.
“Where are we going?”
“Warehouse.”
He pulled on his helmet, started his bike and took off for the gate.
My bike was parked a little further away so I jogged over and got on.
Three other guys pulled out behind us, we were not taking any chances, still travelling in groups.
It was a ten-minute ride out to the warehouse, through a lot of woodland and back roads with hardly any streetlights.
I tried to focus on the black top of the road ahead, not about Waverley and where she could be, or what might be happening to her. It was approaching three hours since they took her, depending on what they dosed her up with, she may still be out.
I really fucking hoped she was still under, because that meant she wasn’t hurting.