Chapter Twenty-Two
Ghost
February 15, 2025, Diamond Creek, Nebraska.
King was on edge tonight. We all were. Someone had been drugging and raping women in the surrounding towns for months on end and no one had anything to go on.
Until now.
“Where are we on this prick?” King asked.
“All we have is a sketch and a first name. It’s not much to go on,” Gunner answered.
“It’s been six fucking months! I am at the point I might just have to call Luc and get Indigo out here.”
“Good God, that man is fucking scary as hell.” Jack shivered.
“Yea, well, he gets results,” Cash muttered.
“Dec said there hasn’t been a report in two weeks. Once we sent out that sketch to all the bars in the surrounding towns, there hasn’t been a single woman roofied,” Blade confirmed.
“No report doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Just means no one’s reported that shit,” Colt pointed out.
That was true. We knew as well as anyone that a lot of shit went down under the radar. Just because you never got caught, didn’t mean shit wasn’t being done.
“You’ve got one more month before I call Luc,” King reiterated. “What else?”
“Got some reports of a club moving into our backyard,” I shared.
“Where?”
“Hillsdale, Wyoming,”
“Who are they?” Nav asked.
“Death Dogs MC.”
“What kind of fucking name is that?” Blade asked.
Nav’s fingers got to work to see what he could find. The rest of us quietly waited while he did his thing. Right now, all I had to go on was what Megan at the motel had told me she’d seen. She lived just over the border in Wyoming.
“Fuck.”
“What is it?” King sat forward, anxious to hear what Nav had discovered.
“Death Dogs MC are out of Flagstaff, Arizona. President is Skinner, VP is Vulture, 1% club running drugs, guns, and skin.”
“What kind of fucking skin?” Gunner snarled.
“Looks like prostitution. From all accounts, it looks to be voluntary, but you know how that goes. Get ‘em hooked and they’ll consent to anything for a fucking fix.” Nav worked over the keyboard and soon pictures were up on the screen. “Bald fucker is Skinner. The skinny asshole is Vulture. I’ll need a few hours to get names of the entire club.”
“Any problems so far?” King asked, his eyes on the screen. “How long have they been there?”
“Just reports of them being in the area. Haven’t entered Nebraska as of yet, but they’re less than an hour away. Looks like they moved in two weeks ago,” I clarified.
“How many members?” Jingles asked.
With a heavy breath, Nav answered, “Seventy-five, maybe more.”
“Fuck,” Cash whispered.
“We don’t need this shit right now. The whole fucking underworld is on edge. We have enough fucking bikers fighting with each other.” King rubbed his hand over his face. “For now, we keep eyes and ears open. Nav, find out as much as you can. I wanna know why they left Flagstaff and how the fuck they ended up in our backyard.”
“What’s fucking next?”
“We need to talk about Freeway,” Gunner said.
“What the fuck has he done now?” King groaned.
“Nothing, that’s the problem.”
“Why is that a problem?” Colt asked.
“Because it’s fucking Freeway. A quiet Freeway is a scheming fucking Freeway,” Gunner explained.
“Anything more from Steele about why he sent him up here?” Jingles asked.
“No.” King stood up and paced at the front of the room. “Where is he working?”
“With Tank in the wrecker,” Gunner confirmed.
“You need to call Steele and get more information,” Cash urged.
“I don’t want to talk to that fucker,” King grumbled.
Gunner looked at Cash, his brows furrowed in confusion. Cash shrugged. I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on in Little Rock that pushed Steele to send Freeway here.
Steele and King had been tight in the club, King being the Road Captain in the Mother Chapter. King had looked up to Steele in a way similar to Declan. Both men had let him down. I didn’t blame him for wanting to put distance between them.
King hated secrets. He might be keeping a few things close to the vest from us, but he was honest about doing it and why. We trusted him completely.
As for Steele, well, I learned quickly that if you were outside his small fucking circle you didn’t get told shit. I guess King wasn’t part of that circle anymore.
“Trouble in paradise?” Cash snarked.
King froze in his pacing and turned on Cash. “You got something you wanna fucking say?”
“You already know what I think.” Cash and King glared at each other.
“What the fuck’s going on right now?” Jack asked.
Cash opened his mouth to answer Jack, and King snarled, “Shut the fuck up.”
“Jesus Christ, what is going on with you two?”
We all watched as the two men glared at each other. Cash had made it abundantly clear he disagreed with King keeping the secret he held about Amber to himself.
On the one hand, I understood King’s objective. He gave his word to Sypher. And he gave his word to us that he would tell us as soon as he could.
On the other hand, I agreed with Cash. Secrets had a way of tearing a club apart. It wasn’t just wanting to go legit that had King starting this chapter.
Finally, King answered, “Difference of opinion.”
Cash scoffed.
“Get on the same fucking page,” Gunner barked. “I’m assigning a fucking prospect to follow Freeway. What is the new one’s name?”
Everyone looked at Gunner. It was his job to run the prospects. This just added to what King said about him being distracted.
“Aren’t you in charge of the prospects?” Jack snickered.
“Fuck you, Jack. The kid is so fucking ordinary it hurts.”
“Like the fucking tundra.” Jingles snorted.
Pointing at Jingles, Gunner said, “That’s it. His name is fucking Tundra. I’ll put him on Freeway. Any time he leaves the fucking clubhouse, I want Tundra following him.”
“Fine,” King conceded. “Got a call from Zeus.”
We all groaned at once.
Zeus was the President of the Gods of Mayhem out of Athens, Texas. They were an ally to our Mother Chapter in Arkansas and by extension, us. However, there was no love lost between the clubs.
Years ago, Kronos, Zeus’ father and the president at the time, tried to marry off his daughter to Banshee. Kronos wanted to cement the two clubs, but his daughter was too fucking young.
Banshee told him to fuck off.
Kronos wasn’t thrilled with that.
None of us had ever met her, and we didn’t know why he had chosen Banshee. But given Banshee was thirty-eight, and the girl was only twenty-three, Banshee had said no.
There had been a rift between the allies ever since.
“What does he want?” I asked.
“His sister’s missing,” King answered.
“How long?”
“Almost a year now.”
“And he’s just fucking calling us?” Nav asked.
How the fuck did you let a loved one go missing for a year before you reached out to other clubs?
“What’s her name?” Nav sighed.
Nav looked like he might be hitting his limit. He hadn’t been sleeping much. When I slipped downstairs at night to raid the fridge, his light was always on. Even at three a.m.
“Irene Cooper.”
“Who names a baby Irene and thinks that’s a good choice?” I scoffed.
“Irene is the Greek God of peace,” Gunner explained. “I’d be surprised if Zeus’ name isn’t actually Zeus.”
“This is all I’ve been able to find,” Nav said, gesturing to a picture of a girl who looked to be around sixteen years old.
“How old is Irene?”
“Thirty,” King answered.
“And this is the only fucking picture they have?”
“No, this is the only one I’ve been able to find.” Nav continued clicking away. “It seems Kronos found someone to marry her. Irene Cooper became Irene Davids five years ago.”
“Who’d he marry her off to?” Gunner asked.
“Trent Davids.” Another minute of clacking on the keyboard and Nav stopped abruptly. “Oh shit.”
“What?” Gunner turned to Nav, waiting for an answer.
“Trent Davids is a patched brother in the Death Dogs MC. Goes by Pepper.”
“You have to be fucking with us,” Blade whined.
“I assure you I am not fucking with you. I found a more recent picture. This was from two years ago,” Nav insisted.
Another picture popped up on the screen and my hands fisted. It was obvious it had been taken in a hospital. The woman had blonde hair, clearly beaten to the point she was unrecognizable.
“What do we think the chances are that she’s in the area?” King asked no one in particular.
“Pepper is a patched brother. If he doesn’t hold an office, I can’t see a president moving the entire fucking club for an old lady of a patched member,” Cash countered.
“Not even the daughter of a former president and sister of a current one?” Jingles asked.
“FUCKING HELL,” King shouted, slamming his hands on the table. “We need to find this fucking girl. I’ll call Zeus and see if there are any up-to-date pictures he can send us. We need some fucking answers.”
King’s stress level had reached its max. He was barking at everyone. Grace hadn’t been seen at the clubhouse in weeks, and we all wondered if that contributed to his sour fucking mood. He thought he had us fooled but we knew they were screwin’ around. I would be pissed too if my woman cut me off.
Oh that’s right, she fucking did when she pulled a runner.
Gunner pulled his phone from his pocket, answering the call.
“Baby, what’s up?”
He stood from his chair and it slammed back against the wall.
“Haizley, what’s wrong?”
Hitting the speaker button so we could all hear, he asked, “Where is Greg, baby?”
“Dead on my living room floor.”
Oh shit!
“Zero! You’re with me. Let’s go,” Gunner yelled as he ran out the front door. Cash, Jingles, King and I all followed.
We sped through town, eating up the distance to Haizley’s house quickly. I liked Haizley. She would be good for my brother. She called him out on his shit.
We all needed someone like her.
Not someone who ran for no fucking reason.
Pulling myself back to the issue at hand, I watched as Gunner jumped off his bike, and without taking the time to put the kickstand down, his bike landed on its side. Jingles stopped to lift the bike while Gunner ran up the stairs. When the door didn’t open, he lifted his foot and slammed it right under the doorknob, kicking it open and seconds later, disappearing inside.
Zero would be pissed about that. Gunner just made his job harder.
“Ghost, call Nav. At least a half dozen of these houses have ring cameras,” Zero called out, and I looked down the road as I pulled out my phone.
King joined me outside, followed by Jingles.
“This is a goddamn clusterfuck. It’s fucking self-defense.”
“Gunner’s right. We don’t need to compromise Dec with this shit.”
“He’s dead?” I asked.
I hadn’t gone inside, instead staying out on the street, making sure no one was aware of what we were here for.
“Yea, he attacked Haizley, and she stabbed him in the fucking neck,” King clarified.
Shotgun arrived with the van, and he and Zero got to work.
Shotgun and Patch hauled a tote outside, returning it to the van, and we all knew what was inside. Greg’s dead body would sit in the van, stuffed inside the tote, until Shotgun and Zero returned to the club. Then they would load him and any other evidence into the kiln King had built at the back of the property.
King, Cash and Jingles left with Patch, who had come to check Haizley’s injuries. I stayed outside through the night while Shotgun and Zero removed any and all trace of Greg and what happened to him inside that house.
Haizley was a fucking marvel. Her calm tone on the phone was probably due to shock, but the woman had defended herself against a violent rapist.
Gunner had found himself a badass old lady who had already proven her loyalty.
Now, if I could just find mine.