Chapter 18
Onyx
If we weren’t on such an important mission, I would enjoy the ride more.
As it stands, all I can think about is getting my hands on Charles Brennan.
I’m gonna make the beatdown I gave him last time seem like child’s play.
I can’t stand that fucker. If I’m being honest, I think his girlfriend ran off because she got tired of his entitled, controlling bullshit.
I know he’s rich, but no woman with her head screwed on straight would put up with him for long.
I hope that whoever she is, she’s living her best life somewhere safe where he’ll never find her.
It takes over two hours to get to Sliverwood.
It’s just miles and miles of wilderness with an occasional house.
At some point, the asphalt gives way to cracked tar and hardpack gravel.
The density of trees increases with every mile.
They’re thick-barked and crooked, with limbs that haven’t been trimmed back in decades.
We crest a narrow rise in the road and cut left onto a secondary road, following the map Striker sent us.
Since there are no cell towers, we can’t use our navigation apps.
I gesture with one hand towards the half-forgotten pullout that used to be a staging site for timber hauls.
It’s the place Striker picked for a meeting spot, and I can see why.
It’s flat enough to park. Mica and I pull off the road.
We’re on high ground here with good lines of sight in all directions.
I kill the engine, and Mica knocks his kickstand down with a crunch. “Jesus. This is denser than I thought. You sure this is where that asshole meant when he said Silverwood instead of Sliverwood?”
“Yeah,” I say. “There is no Silverwood, so this has gotta be it. Brennan was just too stupid to pronounce it right.”
Striker and Jasper join us. We all pull our bikes back to make room for the others.
Striker pulls out his laptop and searches for a signal for a few minutes before frowning.
“There’s no signal here of any kind, no cell or even a satellite signal.
We’re dark unless you want me to climb a tree and install a temporary booster. It might work, and it might not.”
“No, we can use the two-way radios,” Jasper answers as other brothers crowd into the clearing on their bikes. He raises his voice. “Pair up. Keep your radios on at all times. No one goes off alone, and no one wanders out of range.”
Forge is the first dog out. She plants her feet firmly on the ground.
Her ears are pointing straight up, and her eyes are sharp.
Her tail is twitching with anticipation.
My dog is lean, all muscle. Her coat is black with almost imperceptible streaks of rust at the muzzle and tail.
I crouch to check her harness and feel her body vibrating with excitement.
Sable steps out of her sidecar next. She’s slower but immediately dips her head down to sniff at the ground. Mica’s already whispering praise into her ear to get her motivated.
“This terrain’s going to suck for their pads,” Husk says, tossing us booties for the dogs.
He’s by far the best kennel master we’ve ever had.
This guy thinks of everything. “There is a lot of deadfall lying around and there is no telling what’s under that.
If they cut themselves on rusted wire or something, we’ll be carrying them back. ”
“Noted,” Mica says as he bends to put Sable’s booties on.
As I tie the thick leather booties on Forge, she growls her disapproval. When I’m finished, I run my hand over her side and say, “You’ll thank me for this later, girl.”
She just sniffs the air and looks away.
Mica and I start climbing the ridgeline with the dogs to walk our part of the grid. Striker broke the search into three large geographical areas. Rock is supervising one sector search, Slate another, and Jasper this one.
As we climb, I notice there is no sign of human activity—no boot tracks in the dust that aren’t ours and no scent of campfire. But the area is vast, meaning there are too many places for him to hide.
Mica steps up beside me. He looks around before commenting, “You know this could take days.”
“Yeah,” I respond. “No matter how long or hard I have to look, I’m gonna find that fucker and get a little payback for him burning down Emily’s cabin.”
“Well, you can count on me to stay the damn course,” Mica says. “Rich, entitled men like Brennan can be tenacious. I don’t think he’s gonna stop coming after your old lady until we make him.”
He’s an asshole of the highest caliber. I can’t believe that he was ballsy enough to circle back around and burn her cabin to the ground after the beating I gave him. He should know that I’m not gonna stop until he’s behind bars or six feet under.
We spend the next several hours walking our grid. The dogs prowl with their noses either in the air or sniffing the ground and surrounding foliage. We get zero barks, which means they don’t sense anything out of the ordinary. I trust their noses more than my own eyes.
I walk out to the farthest point of the ridgeline and double back. Beside me, Mica keeps looking as well. He’s got the eagle eye in our family. Since neither Mica nor the dogs are finding anything, that probably means there is nothing to find.
We hear brothers checking in with home base over the two-way radio. Jinx, Husk, and the others are all reporting they are coming up empty-handed. It’s fuckin’ disappointing.
Striker immediately assigns everyone new coordinates to search.
Mica and I get right on it, relieved to be back on our bikes.
We quickly discover this sector has several homes.
They’re scattered a few miles apart. I count five, and most appear to be uninhabited.
They’re tucked behind trees and brush thick enough to keep anyone from seeing more than the front porches.
The driveways aren’t even marked. It feels like the folks that live out this way all know each other, so there’s no need for addresses or house numbers.
Our first stop is a rundown double-wide with a rusted four-wheeler in the front yard. I pull into the gravel driveway, kill the engine, and give Forge a fond pat on the head as I walk by the sidecar. As we approach the front door, we see movement behind the curtain.
When I knock, the door creaks open a few inches and an older woman peers out, squinting against the sunlight to catch a glimpse of my face. Looking none too thrilled with what she sees, her eyes drop down to my cut. “What do you want, rager?”
I stifle a laugh because no one’s called me that since I was a kid. It was common knowledge that my parents founded the Sons of Rage MC. So, every time my brothers or I lost our temper, someone called us a rager.
“Sorry to bother you, ma’am.” Taking out my phone, I show her Brennan’s mugshot. “Do you know this man?”
She shoots me a rueful look. “It’s little Charlie Brennan all grown up.”
“Yeah, he’s a fugitive from justice, and my club is trying to flush him out for the police,” I explain. “Have you seen him?”
Her eyes shift to the image of him in an orange jumpsuit, then back to me. “Not lately.”
“Have you seen him at all in the last six months?”
She shrugs. “No. I’ve got better things to do with my day than pay attention to what’s going on with that little peckerhead.”
I smother back a smile. “You don’t like him much, do ya?”
“Spoilt rich kid whose parents should have whooped his ass. Nothin’ but a troublemaker,” she says grumpily.
“Well, ma’am, you can sure carry a grudge. I’ll give you that much.”
“When he was a teen, he and his friends used to get drunk and play mailbox baseball. You know what that is, right?”
“Yeah, it’s when one person drives and the other hangs out the window with a baseball bat knocking mailboxes off their posts.”
“You got that right. We replaced our mailbox three times before they got tired of playing that game once my husband filled their backsides full of buckshot. That put a stop to their pranks.”
I raise my eyebrows, deciding it’s best not to get on the wrong side of this old biddy, and her husband. I slide my phone back into my pocket. “I’m really sorry Brennan harassed you. He got himself into some legal trouble, crossed paths with my old lady, and ended up burning down her house.”
The older woman gasps. “I always told my husband that Charlie Brennan was a bad egg.”
Mica speaks up, “We heard his family has property up this way. We searched it first and didn’t find him or any evidence they ever built on the property. Do you know where he might take shelter if not on his family’s land?”
Her face lights up. “No, but I can tell you who might know something. Carl Durgen. He owns the convenience store down the road. Carl talks to everyone and knows pretty much everything that goes on around here.”
“Would that be Hair Trigger Slots and Gas? We drove by it earlier.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t have slot machines anymore because the Bureau for Gambling Control threatened to shut him down if he didn’t remove them a few years ago.”
“Yeah, the BGC can be strict about illegal slot machines. They’ve got a real stick up their asses about that.”
“I know. Go to Carl and ask him all the questions you want. Tell him Dolly sent you.”
From the amused look on her face, I assume Carl doesn’t like strangers pestering him with questions. Instead of asking about that, I cut the conversation short. “Thanks, Miss Dolly. We appreciate you taking time outta your day to talk to us.”
Mica adds, “Have a nice day, ma’am.”
She steps back, chuckling to herself, and closes the door with a firm snap. I can hear a lock click into place as we turn to leave.
Mica and I get on our bikes and head for the gas station she mentioned.