Chapter Nineteen
He had one stipulation, Ranger needed protection.
Mace didn’t know for sure if Nytro was aware they’d kept in touch, and even though Ranger thought he had enough people around him to keep him safe, Mace was worried.
Ballistic pointed out Ranger would never accept help from the Devil’s, but Mace told him to go to Marla.
It would piss Ranger off, but he’d never been able to say no to his Old Lady, and definitely not on stuff like this.
Even though Mace didn’t say it, it had been clear to me and Ballistic when we visited him, the guy wasn’t actually living, he was just existing. I thought he’d welcome death, and one that wasn’t by his own hand.
Marla had come across as an asshole, but she was his Old Lady and she’d want to protect him, to save him. War said it would stand us in good stead with the other Kingsmen who hated Nytro. Not that I cared about shit like that, but the Prez and VP needed to think into the future.
King saw it as a way to control the narrative going forward. The Kingsmen would never want to feel indebted to us but it would make for an easier life if they at least didn’t want to retaliate for us taking out their President. Which King fully intended to do.
Mace hadn’t given us much more to go on than what he told Waverley, just that he could give us a number to contact Nytro on if we were to come up with a plan that involved using him.
King and the other officers had disappeared when we gave them the information.
Ballistic pulled me to one side and told me to go check out the warehouse and make sure his directive wasn’t being ignored or worked around.
I didn’t like leaving Waverley, but she was with Rosa.
They’d actually gone off compound to her house again.
They had six guys with them but I could see how grateful Wave was to no longer feel held captive on the compound.
She’d kissed me with so much heat, a few of the guys whooped and hollered, making me curse their asses and Waverley laugh as she got into Rosa’s car.
I could forgive them their bullshit just hearing that laugh.
Handlebar and Goldie were watching Mace again, still up in King’s cabin.
I wasn’t sure if people were looking at him with more respect or more disdain knowing he’d given us information to take down Nytro.
That he was offering to use himself as bait went some way to allowing my brothers to question their outright hatred, but some were skeptical it was a trap or a way of escaping.
Banshee led the charge on those assumptions, but it was his go-to default, always paranoid.
It went far beyond caution, and everyone took it with a pinch of salt, King giving little lip service to his concerns.
I tended to agree with King and the others this time though.
Mace knew he was fucked, and we were his only choice now.
We’d gone and picked up his bike. It was where we’d left it behind the motel near Parsippany.
Handlebar had practically drooled over it when we hid it away in the garage, running his hand over it.
I’d cracked a joke at him about feeling up another man’s bike and he stared at me in horror at the thought.
The guy was so far gone for machines. I’d never actually seen him with a woman, he was discrete about shit like that. He had to be getting some, he was a good-looking fucker, I’d seen women drooling over him for years, including Waverley. That had soured my mood and made me leave the garage.
Either way, we didn’t want Mace knowing we had his bike, let him worry about what had become of it, that was punishment enough for any biker.
I rode to the warehouse with Casper and Raptor.
I’m sure he hadn’t intended it to be a makeshift prison, but it was definitely set up to lend itself that way.
There were at least six guys to most of the rooms and it was starting to smell a bit ripe in there.
I didn’t recognize any of them, but I’d never taken any time to get to know these assholes.
Kansas had set up some cameras in the rooms and I sat near one of my brothers to check them out.
Cueball was drinking a large take-out cup of coffee, his feet up on the table where there were a couple of laptops for the cameras.
I stared at them all, thinking over what Mace said about the majority of the brothers in the Kingsmen not wanting to follow Nytro’s lead.
He’d reiterated these guys had families, kids and women who were scared shitless over what happened to them. We couldn’t let them go, not yet.
Checking in with my brothers and watching them for an hour or so, it was easy to see they were following orders. No one was being hurt, none of them looked hurt on the cameras either, they just looked resigned. They’d been here for days.
“How long you been here?” I asked Cueball, the fluorescent lights above bouncing off the shiny dome of his bald skull and the reason for his road name.
“Since the night at their warehouse.”
I couldn’t even figure out how long ago that had been. It was time to switch people up here. There were rooms with beds where the guys were staying, a decent kitchen and obviously plenty of take-out containers, so they weren’t suffering here.
I happened to glance at the laptop in front of me, as I was about to suggest I’d speak to Ballistic about rotating them, when I saw a face in the group of men.
He was sitting to the rear of the room, the others were chatting amongst themselves, some of them laying down with their eyes closed but this guy.
He was familiar. I pulled the laptop closer to me and asked if we could zoom in but the cameras weren’t that sophisticated.
I didn’t need the zoom to remember who he was.
“This guy, he said anything?” I pointed. Cueball leaned forward and shook his head. “Get him out of the room for me.”
I pushed back from the chair and headed over to one of the rooms that was currently unoccupied.
I nodded my head for Raptor to come with me and he left the conversation he was a part of without question.
He was a good guy, solid and dependable, he never asked questions when he was called on.
He was close with Felix, another good brother.
I’d been looking at putting together a crew of my own for a couple of years, had even talked to Ballistic about it.
One night we’d sat up to discuss my taking over his role at some point in the future. It wasn’t a given but everyone knew Ballistic had been priming me for the role for years.
I wasn’t someone who wanted to just sit back and wait for him to hand over the reins.
So he’d come up with the idea of giving me something of my own, he’d liked the idea of having a Captain beneath him, someone who had autonomy to run jobs but reported into him.
It wasn’t an ego thing, it was a good solid hierarchy that would only help the club.
I hadn’t thought about it much since Waverley turned back up but now, it might be a good idea to start putting that crew together. Raptor would be a solid choice.
Cueball came into the room dragging the reluctant guy behind him, he’d zip tied his wrists behind his back so he couldn’t cause any shit. He pushed him forward and lifted his brows.
“Thanks,” I told him, and he took that as his cue to head out. He closed the door behind him.
I gave Raptor a nod and he walked behind the guy then stamped his boot into the back of his knee, making his legs give out and he dropped like a sack of shit.
The guy hissed as he dropped down, but Raptor wasn’t a complete asshole, more the pity, I’d knock that shit out of him soon enough.
He held the guys shoulder, so he didn’t fall forward and smash his face into the concrete floor.
“What do you want with me?” he snarled. “You guys are supposed to be leaving us alone.”
That said a lot to me about this asshole, he was fully aware of what was going on around him, paying attention to his surroundings. It didn’t matter to me what he had to say. We’d been looking for him for a long time and I was lucky enough to have discovered him hiding himself away in here.
This was the fourth man involved in beating up Connor and putting him in the hospital all those months ago.
The one Kansas hadn’t been able to track down.
I gave him a feral smile. I should call War here to deal with him, but my best friend had enough on his plate.
Plus, this would be the first time I actually had a chance to take my own retribution against one of these pricks.
“Well, unlucky for you, we decided to go in a different direction.”
“You’re fucking scum, all of you Devil’s Chaos fuckers.”
I tilted my head and let him rant and rave about how we were gonna get ours, how the Kingsmen were gonna take us over and we were nothing. He was clearly in Nytro’s camp, not one of the guys Mace seemed to be so worried about.
Raptor was slowly shaking his head behind him, like he couldn’t believe what a dumb ass this guy was. War’s words came back to me about not wasting any time on the guy who killed his mom. We knew his crime, what was the point in giving him the satisfaction of living any longer than necessary.
I shocked the shit out of Raptor when I pulled my gun out and shot the guy in the forehead.
I’d waited until he’d moved and angled myself, so he wasn’t in the line of fire.
He jumped, but he didn’t say anything. He just watched, his eyes wide as the Kingsmen did actually fall face first, the sound of his whiny pissant voice cutting off instantly.
I put my gun back in the holster under my cut and looked up at Raptor. “Call Hammer. The asshole will be glad he’s got someone to play with.”