Chapter Twenty-Four
“It’s gonna take us about an hour to get to Summit, then we need to get in place.
Ink and Kansas are already there keeping an eye on the house.
Her car has been there all day, no one has come or gone and she’s inside as far as we can tell,” Dirt told us.
“We’ve got two drivers who’ll stay back with the vehicles, War and King, you and Casper,” Dirt told me.
“We’re trying to keep this small. It’s a compact neighborhood, the houses are huge but they’re close together, no sidewalks, no walls separating properties, plenty of tree coverage.
There are a lot of home security cameras in the area but Kansas has mapped them all and he can run interference when we are going in. ”
They’d thought of everything, but King wouldn’t want anything to go wrong.
This was his chance to take out the woman he’d been trying to find for twenty-two years.
I know he trusted the brothers but he was using his officers for this job.
Casper was a concern for obvious reasons, but I kept my mouth shut.
Ballistic had stayed behind to deal with Mace and the remaining Kingsmen and Banshee never really got involved in this kind of thing, so he was staying to keep an eye on things at the clubhouse.
“What happened today?” King looked over at us. “You get it done?”
War nodded his head but didn’t say anything. When we got back he went straight to the shed and finished Omen. I don’t know what he’d told him about what happened with Lily, if he’d even said anything at all, but it had been done just as quickly as it had with her.
She hadn’t seen it coming when she came into her apartment where we were waiting. He’d made the call to Hammer and we’d left. He’d disappeared for about an hour after he came out of the shed.
I wasn’t going to lie, I was fucking worried about War’s state of mind right now. A part of me was wary about him coming along tonight. How much death could one man be a part of before he snapped mentally.
He had enough on his plate, and I knew he was still dead set on finding the guy who killed his mom.
He was going down a dark path and I was powerless to stop him.
He needed Connor to ground him again. Or Waverley, they were the only two people who could do it.
I was way too ingrained in our way of life to be able to turn him around.
“Let’s move, it’ll take at least an hour to drive down there,” King looked at his watch.
Everyone started to leave the office. War was behind me, but I turned to face him before he could leave the room.
“Are you sure you’re up to this?”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“You know what it’s supposed to mean. We just got done leaving Hammer cleaning up another body," I shook my head at the insanity of this day.
I’d expected War to really take his shit out on Lily when we went after her today.
I’d never get used to calling her by her real name.
Not that it mattered anymore, she was no longer an issue.
I should have known he wouldn’t be able to do it any other way than quickly.
It was less than she deserved after what she did to Con.
As soon as this was over, I was driving down to Paterson to see Connor and ask him what the hell was going on.
Why was he pushing War away and what the hell could I do to make it better.
Wave told me she hadn’t been able to get him to tell her anything and pushing him too hard was only pissing him off and stressing him out.
I was at the point now where I really needed to see him because every time I’d tried, something got in the way.
I felt incredibly guilty about that and it was irritating as hell that when I did finally get to see him, it wasn’t going to be an easy discussion.
I didn’t know if I would be the one to make a difference, but I was damn well going to try.
This shit couldn’t continue. They’d been friends too long, been together as more than that for years, they cared enough about each other that this shit was pointless.
They should be supporting each other, not making each other miserable.
Connor was going to need all the help he could get, and War was the best person to give him that.
Shit. It finally hit me what was going on. I looked up at Warren as the idea took on a more solid form in my head. “Did Connor tell you not to go see him because he knew this was going to bring your relationship to light?”
War stopped dead and looked as if he’d been slapped. It was written all over his face. That was exactly what happened. Connor knew War would never be able to care for him the way he needed, because he would have to let everyone know they were together, and War was never going to do that.
“Is it? Is that what happened?”
“Leave it,” War said, heading for the door.
I grabbed his arm, stopping him and he tried to shrug me off, we both stumbled but I wasn’t letting him go, my grip only tightening. “Is that what he said to you?”
He glared at me. “We both agreed. Alright, you fucking happy now?”
“No, I’m not fucking happy. Jesus, Warren, you can’t just let him throw everything away like that.”
“What do you want me to do Hudson, come clean, tell everyone I’m fucking gay?
” he hissed at me. “How do you think that would go down huh? How long have we been hiding this because we know exactly what will happen. It’s fucking over.
Okay? It’s over. He gave me an ultimatum and I couldn’t give him what he wanted to hear.
So he told me to get the hell out and let him live his life, what’s fucking left of it.
That’s what he said to me. That’s…” He put his head in both of his hands and turned away from me.
“I can’t do this right now, I can’t. There is more important shit going down than this. ”
“It isn’t over,” I told him.
“Just because you’re all loved up and happy doesn’t mean everyone else gets to be.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. We can figure something out.”
“What?” He screamed at me. “Tell me right now, what can we do to fix this?”
“What’s going on?”
We both turned to see King standing in the doorway.
“Nothing,” War said, his flushed cheeks went white as he stared at his father.
I had no idea how much, if anything, King had heard of that.
“Park it, whatever it is. I don’t want anyone going into this with their head somewhere else, you understand me. Anything else can be dealt with afterwards.”
War gave him a sharp nod then walked out, barging past his dad. I looked at King, trying to gauge if he knew anything. He’d mastered the art of inscrutable facial expressions years ago and I couldn’t get a read on him.
“Keep a careful eye on him,” he told me.
“I will,” I said, unable to hide my surprise but King was perceptive and knew his son.
I followed him out to the cars. War wouldn’t look at me and he got in a different car to the one I climbed into the back of.
I wished I had chance to say goodbye to Wave, to let her know she didn’t have anything to worry about, but King was right.
Time was slipping away from us, it was almost nearing midnight.
There wasn’t much talk on the drive. We all knew what part we had to play.
I checked my gun as we neared the neighborhood.
Casper was in my car with Widow driving and had a backpack that made me nervous.
I’d seen one too many times what he was capable of, and that was the undeniable reverse of discrete.
A message came through the group chat from Ink that told us nothing had changed in the house, except for a few lights going out.
Kansas had snuck out to the house earlier and disabled her alarm so we didn’t need to worry about that. He’d also cut the wires to the neighbors security light, which would be triggered if we passed by the sensors.
Casper and I headed along the street a few blocks away, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible.
I checked off the numbers on the houses until I could see number seven.
There was some movement in the driveway at the side of the house.
There were no walls between this and the house next door, so we needed to stick to the shadows.
I glanced back at the street just before I rounded the corner and my heart lurched into my mouth as I saw someone striding towards us.
I pulled my gun, I couldn’t chase away whoever it was but I may have to subdue them.
I could hear the others working on the back door to get us inside before we were seen.
As the person drew closer, I recognized her.
“Waverley. What the fuck?” I whisper shouted. She didn’t look in the least bit concerned that my face was thunderous. I grabbed her arm and pulled her around the back of the house.
Casper looked over and did a double take.
He nudged Dirt, who also turned and his face went stony.
No one could say anything right now because things were already in motion.
Another figure appeared around the side of the house, causing everyone to freeze.
It was Widow. His face was furious. He glared at Waverley.
“She climbed out of the fucking trunk and ran, Hustle. I tried to stop her,” he explained to me.
“Yeah, don’t think there is any stopping her,” I muttered, putting my hands on my hips. There was going to be so much shit over this. I couldn’t fucking believe she’d actually done it, or that none of these fuckers saw her getting in the god damn trunk of the car.
“It freaked me the fuck out,” Widow went on. “What the hell?” he said to Waverley.
King had come around from the other side of the house and stopped dead when he saw her. Then he came over and crowded us all against the back of the house.