Chapter 26 Ghost
GHOST
I watched her sleep against me for a while. I didn’t sleep, of course. But that didn’t matter.
She slept like a beauty.
I never wanted to stop watching her.
Her lips parted and those soft snores of hers fell. That was when I knew I could make my getaway. Not because I wanted to leave her, but because I still had a job to do. So with small movements, I unraveled my arms for her.
I stormed off in search of Cap.
“Hey! Prez!” I barked out when I got to the other side of the clubhouse.
Cap poked his head out of his room. “How is she?”
I pointed at him. “Find Scout. Him and I are heading back to Bryersville.”
He furrowed his brow. “Doc and Brutus offered to—”
“No,” I said as I stormed the other direction down the hallway. “Range!”
He stuck his head out of his room as well. “Do any of you assholes know how to be quiet?”
“No,” I said as I strode up to him. “Did you successfully clone Jaz’s laptop?”
He nodded. “Yep. Got finished up about half an hour ago. Why?”
I held out my hand. “Wipe her original laptop and give it to me.”
Ranger looked at me with a quizzical expression.
A little whimper sounded from inside his room, and he ducked back before I heard the soft murmurs of his voice.
To be honest, I wasn’t aware that Ranger was capable of talking softly like that.
Not the brute force, bearded, long-haired man I’d come to know as one of my brothers-in-arms.
But he came back five minutes later and plopped the laptop into my hands.
“There,” he said, “let me know if you need anything else.”
He closed the door right in my face.
I just grinned as I tucked the laptop beneath my arm and turned toward the rest of the hallway.
I needed to find Scout.
“So what’s the plan?” Scout asked as his voice came alive in my helmet.
We came to a stop at the light just before entering the city limits of Bryersville. “We’re taking this laptop back to Jasmine’s apartment and planting it.”
“You’re hoping to stop them from raiding her place again.”
I nodded. “I also want to try and grab a few more things they haven’t fucked up yet.”
“Should we make another run on her father? He’s sure to be back in town now.”
I paused. “Not a bad idea, Scout. We’ll do that after we’re done planting the laptop.”
It didn’t take us long to roll up on her apartment. And it looked fucking rough. I wanted to do this while Jasmine slept so that I knew she wouldn’t watch.
She didn’t need to see her place like this any longer.
“Jesus,” Scout muttered as he looked around with his helmet on, “they’ve done a fucking number on this place.”
“Keep your helmet on,” I said as I marched right over to the fridge and slid the laptop back under. Only when I positioned it, I made sure one of the small, black corners of the laptop could be seen. “Fuck only knows who’s watching this place now.”
“Didn’t plan on taking it off.”
I just nodded as I positioned the laptop and then stood. “I’m gonna go through her room one last time. You keep an eye out.”
He just nodded before he went over to the windows, peering out every so often. “So I got the minutes deciphered.”
That made me freeze and I turned to face him. “What?”
He just pointed toward her bedroom. “Go pack. We can talk while you pack.”
I grumbled beneath my breath as I stormed into Jasmine’s room. “Have you told Cap?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s literally what I just finished before we headed out.”
I took one of the few blankets they didn’t already destroy, and I laid it out on her bed. I tossed the last few things I could find that weren't ruined onto it. I’d tie it into a damn shoulder mount if I had to.
“What did you find?” I asked as I grabbed a couple more books and tossed them onto the blanket.
“Long story short? Or the whole nine?”
“You know me.”
“Long story short, got it. Punchline? They’re supplying not only funds to the trafficking ring, but they’re specifically buying up the stores inside of and around Redd Valley.”
I froze. “They’re cleaning their money in chunks.”
“Ghost, I’m pretty fucking sure the law firm is a working part of the trafficking ring. Not just some weird-ass entity that has tripped and stumbled into something. I’d put money on the fact that the law firm is providing legal defense for these assholes in case they get caught.”
“Fuck,” I grumbled as I tossed her things onto the blanket faster, “we gotta get our asses out of here.”
“I could get into the specifics of the—”
“Don’t.”
“Right,” Scout said as he cleared his throat. “Well, anyway. The code wasn’t terrible to decipher. It’s more of a language cover-up than anything. Nothing too fancy or too specific. But there were some other interesting things in those minutes meetings.”
“Like?” I asked as I tied up the blanket.
“Like the fact that those cars that have the logos on them? Their customers that pay into that shit work solely for the ring.”
I hoisted the tied blanket over my shoulder. “And you’re certain about that?”
I looked up at the camera I had positioned in her bedroom. Did we really need those any longer?
I reached up for it when Scout responded. “In one of the meetings a few months back, they had a really long talk about their highest paying customers. The things their clients needed. What they requested. They said—”
“Scout.”
He sighed heavily. “It’s much more fun talking to Cap. He likes the details.”
“I like the point.”
He snickered as I went to every room, plucking the cameras out of the hiding places where I put them.
After I was done stuffing those little cameras into my pockets, we made our way out of Jaz’s apartment, hopefully for the last time.
I got tired of going back and forth to the town, leaving Jaz behind in that clubhouse.
But then, a thought occurred to me.
“We should look into the superintendent of this place,” I said.
“Why?” Scout asked as he walked behind me down the stairs.
“This door has been unlocked every single time we’ve come and gone. Her place has been raided three fucking times now. You’d think someone would have reported something, or the owner would have come by. Something, you know?”
“I’ll let Ranger know when we get back.”
I just nodded. “What else did you find from those minutes?”
Scout sighed heavily. “I still need to go back through them now that I have the cipher decoded so that I can take notes. But those are the three main takeaways.”
“That they’re using the businesses they’re buying to clean money and that they’re providing in-house counsel to a goddamn sex trafficking ring, which would explain the whole ‘highest paying customer’ bullshit?”
“Yep.”
“You know that the logo shit with the cars is probably part of their alibi, if they were to ever get caught.”
“That was my thought, too. Weird-ass alibi, but big business can get away with weird shit like that.”
I sighed. “That’s still only two things, Scout. What’s the third thing you found out?”
I harnessed the knotted-up blanket to my bike, but he didn’t answer.
“Scout?” I asked as I cranked up the engine to my bike.
“Yeah.”
“You gonna fill me in on that third thing, my guy?”
“I just don’t know it for certain. It’s more of a feeling I got when I was reading through everything. I won’t have confirmation until I go back through those meetings, and there’s still some I haven’t gotten to yet, and—”
“What kind of feeling?”
Scout struck up his bike as well. “I keep coming back around to that logo shit. I mean, it’s a little weird, isn’t it? Using cars with your logo on it to do nefarious things. It’s like a beacon to every court system in this goddamn country.”
I pushed off and drove out of the apartment complex. “So…what are you thinking?”
Scout followed right behind. “It was a hell of a risk, chasing a woman to us in a modded car with a massive logo of the law firm plastered onto the side of it.”
“Figured it was ego-driven."
“Me, too. But still. Not very criminally smart of them. Unless they’re doing something else with those vehicles.”
“Like what?” I asked as I took the left toward Jasmine’s father’s in-home care facility.
“Like taking forensic countermeasures with them.”
“I’m not following.”
“Think about it,” Scout said as he rode up beside me on the road.
“Your woman thought it was an advertising thing. But right there in the minutes, it says that those vehicles are destroyed if someone can no longer pay up to the tier the firm requires in order to ensure themselves one of those gaudy vehicles. That’s weird as fuck and makes no sense to me. ”
“Sure. What’s your point?”
“My point is,” he said as we both came to a stop at a light, “it makes more sense that it’s a forensic countermeasure. Same car, different look every time they have to roll it into a shop.”
Oh, I saw what he was saying. “You’re saying that the cars are the same, but they’re painted and stripped and redone every time they fuck up.”
“It would explain why you couldn’t keep up with the car, despite your mods,” Scout said as he took off at the green light.
“I did some searching around, placed a few phone calls, but there’s no one shop in Bryersville that deals in mods of that sort of nature.
Not upfront anyway. So someone is most likely doing those mods themselves.
My current running theory is that the car shit Jasmine was talking about is code in and of itself, and I think every time the ring comes to the law firm and tells them that they fucked up, the law firm provides the funds for whoever works with the ring to strip and redo those cars. ”
“So you think the law firm is plastering their logos on those cars in order to provide more of an alibi in case the cars are pulled over or caught in any fashion?”
“Would you think a law firm like that was part of a sex trafficking ring when you’re being pulled over for speeding?”
We pulled into the parking lot of the in-home care facility before Scout got off his bike.
“Thanks for doing this,” I said.
Scout took off his helmet and looked at me. “What?”
“I’m not saying it again.”
He grinned. “What did you say, Ghost?”
“Shut up.”
“Was that… a manner? Did you… did you use your manners on me?”
“I will slit your throat.”
He pointed at me and smiled. “You used your manners. She’s wearing off on you. Hard.”
I flicked him off before a random thought occurred to me. “Hold on a second.”
Scout whirled around with that cheeky smirk on his face. “What? Ready to argue some more? You know you’re terrible at it with me.”
I stuck my hand into my pocket and tossed him a couple of the small cameras. “Place one facing the window in his room, and the other one facing his bed.”
He looked down at the cameras and then back at me. “Do I need to do anything once I place them?”
I shook my head. “Just press the little black button on the side of it and suction them anywhere. Just need a view of his bed and the window in his room.”
He curled his hand around the cameras and wiggled his eyebrows at me.
I took out another one of the cameras and pinged it right off his fucking head, but all he did was he laugh his way into the care facility.
And while I sat on my bike, I thought about everything the man told me.
Scout had a point, you know. His theory about the logo-vehicle shit made a fuckton more sense than that advertising bullshit that Jaz thought they were talking about.
Hell, the advertisement shit was just their code in those meetings. My heart went out to…my woman.
Scout called her my woman.
A grin spread across my face at that.
Scout took a little while longer, but when he emerged, he gave me two thumbs up.
I watched him jam his helmet onto his head.
I watched as he practically leapt back onto his bike.
I was about to tell him that his deciphering was a job well done and that he was most likely right about those cars being nothing more than chassis that got stripped down and redone every time the trafficking ring did something dumb as fuck.
Like chasing that woman to our doorstep.
But Scout’s voice invaded my thoughts. “So I found out something interesting while there.”
“What?” I asked. “What did you find? Is her father all right?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah. He’s fine.” Scout paused before he continued. “He’s also dying of cirrhosis of the liver.”
Oh. Holy. Fuck.
Jasmine’s father was an alcoholic.
I’m never gonna get out of debt…
Her words echoed through my mind as we soared away from the in-home care facility.
And if Scout wasn’t with me, I would’ve used my mods just to kick it up a notch.
Just to get back to her all that much sooner.