Chapter 2
GHOST
“CHUUUUUURCH!”
Whispers around the crew began as I gravitated toward the downstairs area where we held all of our meetings. My hands practically vibrated in my fingerless gloves with anticipation. Undercover work wasn’t something that I had done a great deal of back in the military.
Back when I had honor.
But with the crew?
I did it all the time, when they needed it.
Usually, it was little stuff. A shop stealing from us here.
A new person in town trying to swindle us there.
Moseying my way into people’s lives was sort of my schtick.
People were always intrigued by the mask, my voice wasn’t too deep so people weren’t naturally afraid of it, and unlike most of the men around me, my height didn’t tower.
I stood just shy of six-feet-tall, which made me a fuckton more approachable than some of my brothers in arms.
I perched in my corner and watched as the rest of the men filed in.
One by one, the guys shoved their way into the lower area of our clubhouse.
Some called it a basement, but it didn’t really feel like that.
It was a finished space with a table and chairs big enough to fit all of us if we needed to sit for a long meeting.
There was a roll-down screen and a projector that Ranger could easily hook up to if he needed to show us something.
The carpet gave beneath our feet, the walls were painted a crisp white.
I put a lot of work into this downstairs area.
It was hardly a fucking basement.
“All right,” Cap said as he raised his hand and gathered our attention spans, “we’re cutting to the chase. Theories as to why the law firm we just identified as part of this ring is over here chasing a woman in a modded car. Go.”
Ranger was the first to snarl. “I want first dibs on those assholes once we catch them.”
I chuckled beneath my mask, and it turned everyone’s attention to me.
Including the territorial Ranger. “Something funny, Lieutenant?”
My face fell beneath my mask. “I’m not your fucking lieutenant.”
“Enough, you two,” Cap said before his attention locked with Brutus. “I hear those rusty wheels squeaking in your head from over here, big guy. Whatcha thinking?”
Brutus and his dark little corner.
I understood being friends with the dark.
“At first glance, without any other context involved,” the man said, “it looks like she was being chased down by guys directly involved with the ring, not the law firm.”
I pointed at him. “I’d second that notion, if nothing else, because of where I ended up before they disappeared.”
Ranger slammed his laptop down onto the table and grumbled to himself as his fingers flew across the keyboard. The projector started its descent with a soft whir, and within the blink of an eye, Ranger had the last little bit of my recording pulled up.
“There,” he said as he paused the frame and pointed. “Those are distinct tire tracks carving their way into the state park on the northwest side.”
“Where is that in relation to the two places we’ve already found?” Cap asked.
Ranger tugged the video screen off to the left and brought up a map. I saw some coordinates drop, and a soft growl rumbled behind my mask. “That’s right in the fucking middle of them.”
Ranger thumbed over his shoulder at me. “It was the first thing I did after watching the footage. The smaller place where you and Ariel were sits about twenty miles into the woods from that point to the south, and their HQ sits about thirty or so miles away from that entry point, due north.”
Cap slowly nodded. “All right. Other theories.”
Ranger balked. “Other theories? You mean, we’re really entertaining the fact that the shit we’ve already been through and the shit that just rolled up onto our doorstep aren’t connected.”
Cap pinned him with a look that was equal parts commanding and quizzical. And I couldn’t blame him.
None of us had seen Ranger like this before.
“All we have is circumstantial. A few hunches and some time to think about things. We need hard concrete proof before we go charging in to do anything. So we start from the beginning, like we always do. You got an issue with that?”
Ranger grumbled something beneath his breath as he dragged my video back to the very beginning.
He pressed the spacebar on his laptop and played the video.
We all watched through the video, but about five minutes in, Doc piped up. “You can’t catch up to them.”
I shook my head. “Even with my mods, I couldn’t catch them.”
Doc wrinkled his nose as he peered over his shoulder at me. “The fuck? That doesn’t make any sense, even for a law firm.”
“Hence, the theories,” Cap said as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“What if the logo is a decoy?” Ranger asked. “Something to keep our focus and throw us off their scent? Let me dig a little more into the law firm real quick.”
“Anyone else?” Cap asked.
Scout raised his hand. “Uh, Cap?”
“Yep?” he asked with a nod of his head.
Scout took his time formulating his response as he tucked his hands into his armpits. “What if the law firm is helping them?”
Cap pointed at the man. “Now, we’re talking with theories. Why would they help?”
Scout shrugged. “I don’t know. Don’t rings like this keep lawyers on retainer? Like cartels and shit?”
I looked over at the young man. “You think they’re in on this somehow.”
“It wouldn’t shock me, take a look at this,” Ranger said.
With a few clicks of his fingers, pictures of the law firm a couple of towns over as well as their website popped up.
And boy, did this place have money.
“Jesus,” Brutus muttered.
“That building,” Ranger said as he leaned back in his chair and pointed, “is right smack dab in the middle of downtown Bryersville. I mean, look at that damned thing. That place ain’t cheap to rent.”
“Huh,” I said as I studied the picture, “you got other angles of that building?”
“Sure thing,” Ranger said as he typed away.
I was already formulating how to get myself into that building while the guys talked around me.
I don’t know what they said. The truth of the matter was, I barely paid attention to these club meetings as it was. Not that I didn’t respect them, but the guys usually talked out things I already knew upfront.
Like the fact that this law firm knew about the sex trafficking ring.
The outside of the building told me everything that I needed to know.
There were a multitude of cameras around the outside of the building.
Even in the alleyways, which wasn’t like most businesses.
Alleyways weren’t usually something policed by cameras, simply because there were better ways to police side doors in the dark.
Most businesses pulled away from cameras and gone straight to alarm systems that triggered if someone forced their way in through the door.
Not to mention, the black facade of the building.
It towered over the rest of downtown. While most of the other buildings around it were probably no more than five or six stories, by my quick count, that damned building had twenty fucking stories on it.
“Are there apartments or anything around that building?” I asked.
I must have interrupted a conversation, because everyone turned to face me.
“Why?” Cap asked.
I shrugged. “That building is tall. Just wondering if they needed to secure air rights before building.”
Cap grinned while Ranger hunched over to get to work. “You got anything else going on in that head of yours?”
I just shrugged. “I can’t prove it, but I know they’re connected to this ring.”
“See?!” Ranger asked as he thumbed over his shoulder at me. “Even he believes so.”
Cap furrowed his brow. “What makes you believe that?”
I shrugged. “What makes you not?”
Cap’s face fell flat. “Humor me for once. What are you thinking about?”
I drew in a deep breath before my eyes gravitated back to the building pictures on the projector.
“By my count with the pictures Ranger has put up, they’ve got ten cameras just around the outside of that building, and four of them are in alleyways.
Since when do businesses with private security need cameras in alleyways?
Wouldn’t they just post men to keep an eye out? ”
Doc piped up. “How do you know—?”
I interrupted him and pointed. “Range, go back three pictures.”
He clicked away until we stared at a close up of the front entrance. “Cut the glare on the picture a bit.”
“Yep,” Range said as he keyed in a few strokes.
And when the picture got cleaned up a bit…
“Oh,” Doc said.
I pointed. “There’s a metal detector right inside of the entrance to that building. Since when do law firms need metal detectors?”
“Are you sure there aren’t any other businesses in that building, Range?” Cap asked.
“Double-checking now,” he said.
“If we’re going to go this far,” Scout said as he sat down at the table, “we might as well look into their financials a little bit. See what kind of stocks they trade in. You know, publicly available knowledge. See if we can’t find a trend of some sort.”
“Nope,” Ranger said as he turned his attention to Scout’s request, “no other businesses in that building. County and state taxes say that there’s only one business that resides in that building, and that’s the law firm.”
“Hell of a building for a law firm,” Cap grumbled.
“What the fuck?” Ranger asked.
All of us whipped our attention to him.
“What?” I asked.
He hunched closer to his laptop. “Hold on, I’m triple checking before I say anything.”
The man’s skin began to redden, so Cap piped up. “Ranger.”
“What?”
“Check your tone and look up.”
Ranger cleared his throat before he shook his head. “Sorry, Cap, I just—”
“Look at me, Range.”
The man obeyed the command from our president before Cap’s voice backed off a bit. “What have you found? Have you double checked it?”
“Yeah.”
“Then spit it out while you triple check it.”
Ranger sighed heavily as he got back to work. “Was anyone aware that Bonnie sold off the thrift shop in town?”
“What?” I asked. “You mean ‘Lock ‘N Key?’”
“Yeah,” Ranger said as he pulled up a fucking purchase agreement. “Three months ago.”
“What the fuck?” Cap asked.
Brutus stepped out of his dark corner. “But she still works there.”
Doc shrugged. “Maybe she was just tired of ownership.”
“Who bought it?” Cap asked.
“Why wouldn’t she come to us for something like that?” Brutus asked.
But when Ranger pulled up the name associated with the sale of the business right here in Redd Valley, the name stuck out.
Robert Dahl.
“Sorry, what?” Scout asked.
Ranger snarled as he hunched over his laptop and pulled up rental and purchase agreements for all of the businesses in our downtown area.
Only to find that a man by the name of Joshua Langley had bought up an old bar that closed down next to Ghost’s and a man by the name of Adam Pierceson had bought out three of the five food trucks that serviced downtown Redd Valley during its celebratory weekends.
Which was basically every weekend.
This town loved to celebrate over something.
All of us just stood there for a second, staring at the names. Staring at the formal paperwork. The signatures.
It took us all by such surprise.
“How the fuck did we not know this was happening?” Cap glowered as he turned to face us. “How the fuck did we not know!?”
I just shook my head. “They didn’t come to us, that’s why we didn’t know. Our status in this community relies on them feeling comfortable enough to come to us with shit.”
Cap tossed his hands into the air. “Then why wouldn’t they come to us with this!? I mean, look at those fucking terms on Bonnie’s business sale. She’s taking a damn pay cut, her staff was slashed in half, and she’s still on the fucking hook for the property taxes. She was fucking scammed!”
“By the men who run this law firm,” Ranger said as he pulled up the page of the website that had the law firm’s partners and pictures on there.
And the top three motherfuckers were Robert Dahl, Adam Pierceson, and Joshua Langley.
“There,” Ranger said as he pointed at the screen, “as far as I’m concerned, that’s our proof. The fuck does a law firm want some food trucks and a couple of businesses for?”
“Those were personal transactions,” Scout said as he stood and walked over to the projector screens. “They didn’t do this with the law firm. They did this with their own money.”
“And left a paper trail to boot,” Ranger said as he flopped back into his chair.
My eyes gravitated to Cap, who was already looking at me.
I smirked beneath my mask.
“All right,” Cap said as he pinched the bridge of his nose, “here’s what we’ve got.
We’ve got three assholes purchasing up properties and businesses in our town that we swore we’d protect, even if they didn’t pay us the monthly allotment for protection.
That already puts us on the backfoot with them.
Coupled with the fact that the car chasing that woman had the firm’s logo attached to the side of it and what that woman screamed when she rolled up on us?
We’ve got enough to do some more digging. ”
“Thank fuck,” Ranger muttered.
I piped up. “What do you want me to do?”
Cap turned and faced me, dropping all pretense. “I want you to do what you do, if the club agrees with it.”
“Yes,” they all said in unison.
I chuckled. “So you want me to—”
Cap interrupted me. “I want you to infiltrate as much of that place as possible. We’ve got pieces to a puzzle, but not the full picture.”
“Do you want me to find a way to get hired at that place?” I asked. “Or are you looking for a connection on the inside?”
“Connection,” Cap said without batting an eye, “your best bet is to pretend to be someone who needs their services, but we need a connection with someone inside of that business that we can schmooze to get information. We need to get closer to their servers for more information, if we can swing it.”
“Or, at the very least,” I said as I stepped out of my corner, “someone who’s willing to talk about what’s on those servers.”
Cap nodded. “Exactly.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and shrugged. “Easy as pie.”
A face flashed in my mind. The assistant from the footage. The one I’d already clocked as wrong for that place.
I kept my mouth shut. If she was the weak link, I’d confirm it myself.
Cap grinned as he raised his hand. “All in favor of sending Ghost in to see what he can accomplish without raising any flags on our end, raise your hands.”
And one by one, each hand of the inner circle of the crew shot their hands into the air.
In my favor.
About time we had some excitement around here.
It’s showtime, motherfuckers.