Chapter 21 #2
Striker leans in closer. “Scan forward. See what else they were tracking.”
Mitch scrolls through the footage. The screen glitches once, skips, then lands on a new location.
Not the driveway. Not even near it.
The view is higher. “It’s clearly been zoomed in from high altitude. There are fewer trees.”
“It looks like this is somewhere near the edge of town.” I lean in, squinting my eyes.
A building comes into view. It’s pale gray stucco with a gated perimeter.
I see a silver SUV parked in the driveway.
A man and a woman walk out of the house, followed by two really young children—boys.
One of them turns towards the camera just enough for the angle to catch his face.
It takes half a second to place him. Mayor Charles Redman.
Striker glances over at me. “That who I think it is?”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “That’s the mayor of Cedar Falls.”
The woman is carrying her purse and smiling as she wrangles the two kids into the SUV.
They kiss before getting into the vehicle.
The footage holds there for a few more seconds, as they get into the SUV and shut the doors.
The vehicle pulls away, and then the drone pulls back, rising slowly as it follows them.
My old man speaks up, “Only that ain’t his wife.”
“Can you get a geolocation on the house?”
Mitch’s hands fly across the keyboard, and he gasps. “It’s two counties over. What in hell is he doing?”
Again, my old man provides the answer none of us want to come right out and say. “It looks like he might be either cheatin’ or keepin’ a whole ‘nother family.”
A short silence spins out between us as we think about what all this could mean.
Finally, I ask, “What’s the date on that?”
Mitch checks the metadata. “Two days before they set fire to your bike.”
I stare at the screen, while that bad gut feeling multiplies in my stomach. My jaw clenches, but I don’t say anything for a long minute. The Hyenas weren’t just watching me. They were watching the mayor.
Striker scratches his jaw. “That ain’t surveillance for fun. That’s leverage. You don’t film a public official cheating on his wife unless you’re planning to blackmail him.”
“I agree,” I say. “If they’re trying to set themselves up to get away with large-scale criminal activity, the mayor is the perfect target. He’s well connected and can call in a lot of favors.”
“What kind of crime—trafficking, drugs, or guns? What are they trying to do here?” Mitch asks.
“Probably all three,” I reply.
Striker goes off on a tangent. “It could also include zoning. If they can squeeze him, they get a shortcut into permits, land deals, supply routes. Maybe more.”
I shake my head. “I doubt any of them are smart enough to know what to do if they had a mayor in their pocket. It could be they just want to own him. Make him their ace in the hole in case they get in over their heads.”
I don’t like where my mind goes with this. If they were willing to burn my bike in the open, then they’re not done pushing when it comes to our club. This kind of surveillance doesn’t stop with footage. It ends with pressure for the mayor. Or blood for the Sons of Rage.
“Cue up everything else in video format and let’s run through it,” I say.
Mitch filters by location tag. “There are two more clips, both low altitude. It doesn’t manage to capture any faces, just cars. Might be plate numbers if we clean the frame.”
“Save it. I want it backed up twice and scrubbed from this machine after.”
“You got it.”
They keep working, voices low, tapping keys and dragging files into folders.
I stand over the drone casing, still cracked wide on the table, and run a hand across the exposed wiring.
Whoever sent it didn’t expect me to shoot it out of the sky and hack the damn thing.
They sure as hell didn’t expect it to give us a glimpse into their operation, to find out that they weren’t just looking at us.
They’re much more ambitious than we thought.
And I’ll be damned if I let them get away with it.
By the time Mitch finishes the second backup and Eli shuts the laptop, I’ve already made the call. “Let’s call Church, club officers only.” Glancing at Mitch and Donnie, I say, “Remember, the two of you have a NDA attached to your contract. So, mum’s the word.”
Mitch responds, “We know what we signed and would never talk about confidential club business with anyone. It’s not our place.”
“Thank you. You did good work today. Leave your invoice with the garage, and I’ll pay it by the end of business day today.”
Mitch zips up the case and stands. “Keep me in the loop if it escalates.”
“It already has escalated, but I’ll let you know if we find any more tech to hack.”
I stay back long enough to double-check that the drone footage’s been wiped from the working laptop and stored on two separate drives. One goes in our club’s safe in the club president’s office, the other straight into my cut pocket. That way there is no cloud storage and no trace of what we found.
Mitch walks out without another word with Donnie in tow.
“You need me to stick around? I wouldn’t mind taking a look through the footage we pulled.” Striker asks.
While our club IT guy is an officer, he tends to stay in the background. That’s where he feels most comfortable. “I can report what you found, so if you’ve got work to do then I’ll not keep you. If we need you, I’ll shoot you a text.”
After he leaves, I close the door, then turn towards the war room. My old man has already made his way there. I realize that he’s left a lot of the decisions to me this morning, which is another sign that he’s handing over the reins.
I text our club officers’ group chat and call them in. That tiny conference room tucked into the back of the building gives us complete privacy. Slate, Onyx, and Mica all respond.
We’re all family here because this is the family business.
My old man is the club president, but he’s lookin’ to step down which is exactly why I’m stepping up.
Today, he’s sitting to my right, more silent than usual.
Slate’s drinking straight from a thermos of coffee.
Onyx is sitting with his arms crossed, waiting for the bad news.
Mica leans forward on his elbows, his eyes sharp and alert as ever.
I look to our Prez to start the meeting, but he gestures for me to continue.
I place the external drive in the center of the table for everyone to see.
“The damn drone gave us more than we expected,” I say. “Surveillance footage of the fire and us evacuatin’ Tessa’s place was the tip of the iceberg.”
No one flinches. Slate mutters, “Figures. Nothing in our lives is ever fucking easy.”
He ain’t wrong about that, so I press on.
“We discovered our club isn’t the only thing they’re interested in spying on.
We pulled footage of Mayor Redman. Two nights before they hit me.
They discovered he’s been cheating on his wife and might have a whole other family hidden away a couple of counties over. ”
Mica snorts a laugh. “Stupid fucker. He can kiss his political career bye-bye.”
Slate frowns. “The fuck would the Hyenas want with the mayor?”
“Who the fuck knows,” I say. “They don’t seem to be the sharpest tools in the shed. Their Prez has a rap sheet a fuckin’ mile long. Maybe they want to blackmail him for favors. The mayor is extremely well connected.”
Onyx shifts. “They could be trying to push drugs in Cedar Falls. Or launder money, like we talked about before.”
“Or simply to leverage the cops into turning a blind eye to their operation,” our old man adds. “Never attribute the motivations of simple men to what can be explained by eagerness to commit low-level, simple crimes. That’s what they’re most familiar with, after all.”
Mica asks, “How long they been watching him?”
“Footage we pulled goes back two days before the fire. It might be longer. For all we know, they could have more drones in play. Then again, it could be this was the first one and we were lucky enough to take it out.”
Our old man picks up the drive, turns it in his fingers. “You think whatever they’re into is already in motion?”
“They’re not scoutin’ possibilities anymore,” I say. “They’ve set up shop in Cedar Falls.”
Mica leans in, voice low. “We warn the mayor?”
My old man eyes me, waiting for my answer.
I take a second.
“Yes. I see where you’re goin’ with this. If we warn him, he may start thinking of us as an ally, which could only work to our advantage. But I say we hold off for a bit.”
Mica raises an eyebrow. “Why hold off?”
“If we go to him now, he’ll panic. Maybe run his mouth. Maybe go to the cops. We can’t trust he’ll stay quiet. And if the Hyenas catch wind that we tipped him, they might decide to declare war against us before we can figure out who their backers are.”
Slate taps a finger against his thermos. “So what? We watch?”
“We gather more intel,” I say. “We confirm how long they’ve been watching him, and if they’ve made contact.
We see who else the Hyenas have in their sights.
Maybe they’re targeting a senator too, or the prosecuting attorney.
If so, we can gather intel and sic the feds on them. You know they love a good RICO case.”
Our old man nods, slow and deliberate. “It’s smart to get the feds to take them if we can. They’ll be eager to get to the bottom of who their financial backers are, and we won’t have a slew of dead bodies to hide.”
There’s a long pause as everyone turns this over in their minds.
Our old man sets the drive down and looks around the table. “Anyone got something better?”
Onyx speaks up. “I’m with Jasper on this one. The feds get paid to deal with shit like this. Let ‘em do their fuckin’ job for once.”