CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
Lana looked up at Hollywood in confusion. When she handed Lana a photo from the file she’d been looking at, she pointed out what had caught her eye.
“Fuck! Could that be a mistake by the person who made the brand?” Jayson asked, feeling deflated like she did.
“It’s not an actual brand like the ones used on cattle.
It’s a tattoo given to the girls within the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours of them being taken.
The leader of the Soriano’s Army is very particular about their tattoo artist and the brand,” Lana answered in a heavy sigh.
“I missed that. Son-of-a-bitch! This doesn’t make any sense. ”
Lana leaned her head back and closed her eyes, taking herself back to the crime scene. She had to admit she hadn’t really been paying attention to what she was looking at, but she remembered there was something that had kept nagging about the scene in the back of her mind.
Hollywood pointed to the ‘S’ and then toward the ‘A’ having a light space between the two where they would have normally touched. Picking up all the photos to check to see if the brand was mentioned in all the files, she studied it on each photo a little more now.
“The tail isn’t going around like the original brand does.
They are making the circle itself. The tail of the A is off, not like a devil’s tail with the spike at the end.
They made the spike as an afterthought with the points shaped a little weird.
Now that I’m really looking at it, it’s off all the way around,” Lana announced to the room.
“The horns on the ‘A’ are also off. More like an apostrophe than horns.” Hollywood showed Lana what she was looking at.
“Like it was also an afterthought. Kind of like they knew it was an ‘SA’ deal but hadn’t paid attention to the rest and wanted to do a quick dab,” Lana murmured as she studied the photo. “The letters aren’t even touching either. It’s barely there, but there’s a space between the S and the A.”
“So, we could be dealing with a copycat artist? But why would they have chosen the Soriano’s Army?”
Lana thought out loud, murmuring her thoughts after Sunny’s question about the copycat tattoo artist. While there were obvious answers, there was one that niggled at the back of her mind that sent chills down her spine.
“The others are here and could cause immediate retaliation. Major MCs like Hell’s Angels, The Outlaws, and The Pagans have their names and symbols trademarked.
Anyone not patched into one of these clubs is asking for serious issues.
Each of these MCs has chapters all over the U.S.
Soriano’s Army is still relatively unknown and not currently on the east coast,” Lana spoke out loud.
“Someone knows about them. May have come across them in travel. But they know about them. My question is why do they want to start shit with this group? The SA is, I want to say, worse than the others that could cause them problems.” Hollywood shivered as she looked around at her teammates.
“Without knowing about the Enforcers, the Hellraisers, and the other clubs Kenwood mentioned, the others, even with the trademarks, those guys are deadly. So, why go after an MC that will literally massacre your entire bloodline for crossing them?” Cullen spoke out, making every head turn her way.
Lana studied the photos of every girl still missing and studied them individually. Something kept bugging her about each girl missing.
“How deadly is this Soriano’s Army?” Ryan asked as he looked around at the women.
“Very. Several agencies on the west coast have been trying to get them labeled as a terrorist group for a few years. But not much is really known about their leadership to do so,” Rocky advised Ryan as she looked at Lana.
Lana could feel each of her teammates’ eyes slowly move toward her after Rocky’s statement. She knew once Jayson and Ryan caught on, there would be questions that Jayson would lose his shit over once he got the answers.
Her team knew Lana’s background in human intelligence and cyber security. While Jayson knew to an extent what she was capable of, he didn’t know the full scope of it all.
There was so much he was unaware of with her and her military career. Well, her assumed short-lived military career.
“Are we missing something?” Ryan asked as he continued to look around the room.
Of course, Ryan would be the first to pick up on the vibe in the room. He was just like his brother, attentive and aware of his surroundings all the time.
“The C.I.A already has a dossier on them. We connected them to the Soriano Cartel. They also don’t have the usual leadership pattern that we see with most cartels and motorcycle clubs.”
“How do you know this?” Jayson asked, making Lana squirm.
“I assisted a Delta Force squad take out the original SA leader four years ago, along with a couple of cartel members they were protecting,” Lana admitted hesitantly.
“Wait, four years ago?” Jayson asked Lana, shock in his eyes.
“Yes, why?” Lana looked at Jayson in confusion.
“My team had originally been assigned to work a detail with an analyst out of Texas four years ago. We’d been chasing after Diego Ortega for a while,” Jayson announced, staring at Lana skeptically.
“Why weren’t you on that mission?” Lana asked softly.
“Since we were still waiting on specific intel and confirmation, they sent us on a different op. Bad intel on that one caused one of our guys to be injured and booted out of the military.”
“Who?” Lana asked, her breath coming and going quickly.
“Angelo Guzman. Was our demolitions expert,” Jayson said in confusion.
“Jayson, Guzman wasn’t injured on that op.
He faked it to get an honorable medical discharge.
He went to work for the C.I.A. He’s the inside man we have for the SA.
He was assigned to shadow Hector Gutierrez of the Soriano Cartel.
Our op not only cemented Guzman’s position with the cartel, but we took out Hector himself.
” Lana sighed heavily as she nibbled her lower lip at the corner.
Lana waited as Jayson let the news she’d just given him sink in. It wasn’t common knowledge except for her team, about her still being in the Army Reserves.
“I thought you said you got out?” Jayson slowly commented, trying to put the pieces together.
“Active duty.” That was all she was going to say.
“So, you are in the reserves?” Ryan asked, looking back at the pictures in his head.
“Yes,” Lana admitted softly.
“Were you on that op? Physically seen by any possible survivors that are still operating within the cartel?” Jayson flat out asked this time.
“I was there to physically identify Hector Guiteriez for the C.I.A. I’m also the one who took out his wife while Delta took out Hector once he was confirmed on site. And no, they didn’t see my face.”