Chapter 20
Overdrive
“What’re we looking at?” Ruck asked me.
All our officers were sitting around the table in our meeting room for church. It’d been twelve days of relative quiet. It had to be explained as relative because Bolo and Relay’s family was still here and the nature of their relatives meant it was inherently chaotic.
Glitch had just gotten back to me with what he’d found. It was a lot. He’d cc’d Ruck on everything, but he wanted me to tell the others. He sat back, arms crossed over his chest, watching me with an unwavering stare. I hated when he fucking did that. It was too much focus pinpointed on me.
I normally wasn’t the type to step up to leadership positions.
I was the fuck up in the back making commentary under my breath as the do-gooders ran things.
A lot had changed since those days and for some reason, unknown to me, Ruck had refused to allow me to join the MC unless I agreed to be his VP.
I’d held out for about a month, and then I’d finally given in and had been in the position since. I’d grown a lot and now was one of those same assholes who dedicated himself to the cause. Though I still usually cracked jokes at the same time. It was a dichotomy I’d embraced.
“Glitch has found pretty much everything we need,” I told our group. “This organization calls itself The Collective.” I didn’t need to look at the email to remember Glitch’s information. I’d read through it multiple times.
“Carrick is one of the low level bosses,” I continued. “There’s an impressive list of names he’s linked to this crew and though he doesn’t have the top name yet, it’s only a matter of time.”
“Anyone we know on it?” Kilo asked.
“Couple high level business men,” I replied. “No one to be concerned with by themselves.”
“But together it makes for a daunting task,” Ruck continued.
“Too much?” Relay asked with an arched brow.
“Fuck no,” Ruck said, scowling. “Doesn’t matter who pops up on that list, we’re not letting them continue this shit in our city.
Look, I won’t sugar coat. If we were to try to hit them all at once, yeah, that would be too much.
We’re going to have to be methodical. Take them out one, or two, at a time. ”
“What kind of shit we talking about?” Bolo asked.
“Everything from recruiting kids, killing, racketeering, to extortion,” I answered. “Only thing Glitch hasn’t found yet is trafficking.”
“Thank fuck for small favors,” Drifter muttered.
“No shit,” Strike added. “The rest is bad enough, but to add that?” He shook his head.
“Or it means they’re really good at it,” I added. “Hopefully that’s not the case.”
“Doesn’t mean what we’re dealing with is much better,” Kilo pointed out.
“It’s really not,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck as I launched into just a bit of what the various levels of this organization dealt in.
“Carrick, and a few others, do most of the recruiting for The Collective. That can be anything from luring young kids away from their families, usually teenage boys who’re looking for a place to belong-”
“Like Ryan,” Bolo said, a grim look crossing his face.
“Exactly,” I told him. “From that to basically kidnapping them. So it’s not considered trafficking because they aren’t reselling them, but they’re not exactly letting them leave either.
At their ‘kindest,’” I made air quotes around the word, “they manipulate and brainwash the kids to the point that they don’t want to leave.
But if they make a serious effort to go… ”
“They end up dead on the street where Rue and the others in the medical community are called to try to help them,” Relay concluded.
Ruck and I both nodded.
“How the fuck have the cops not noticed this?” Strike asked with a sour look on his face.
“Yeah, entire police forces can’t be bought out. Someone should’ve picked up on this,” Drifter added.
“For all we know, they have,” Ruck told him. “I bet if we searched we’ll find cops who’ve been transferred for looking too hard at the situation. Or the opposite, cops transferred in to mismanage the cases to keep anyone from looking into it, or both.”
“Or they got canned,” Kilo added.
“Most likely, if they were under probation,” Ruck said with a nod. “I’m betting a lot of lives have been changed because of this group. And not in a good way.”
“Do we have a plan?” Relay asked. “Because I have one I can offer up.”
“Kill everyone?” I asked with a grin.
He gave me a look of approval. “It’s like you know me.”
“Destroy everything,” Bolo added.
“Unmake everything they’ve built,” Kilo tacked on.
“Take all of their money,” Flir said, speaking for the first time since the meeting had started.
We all looked over at him in surprise.
He shrugged. “Paying for a rush on these apartments isn’t cheap.” His gaze slid over to Bolo and Relay. “Not to mention feeding their father and brother. I swear they eat almost as much as Bolo does. Each.”
“And that’s saying something,” Strike added. “Bro eats like a hippo.”
“Hippos are herbivores,” Bolo said with an offended look on his face. “I’m like a fucking lion.”
“Lions are carnivores,” Flir said with a roll of his eyes. “You’re an omnivore.”
“Am not,” Bolo muttered.
“Yeah, this fucker doesn’t eat anything green,” Relay said, jerking a thumb at his brother.
Flir rubbed a hand down his face. “I don’t know why I bother…”
“Neither do we,” Bolo told him before turning back to the rest of us. “Don’t let the geek fool you, he’s just getting a hard-on at the idea of inventorying their warehouses. Probably jerked off last night to dreams of their excel sheets.”
“That’s…not…true.” Flir stuttered awkwardly.
“Ho-ly shit!” Bolo slammed his hands on the table. “Fucker really did spackle his ceiling to excel sheets and inventories.”
“Can we get back to The Collective?” Ruck asked, with a tinge of amusement shining through the aggravation. This was how most conversations with our brothers went. Staying on track was damn near impossible, though Ruck did his best.
“Right. Plan?” Strike asked.
“I’m working on it,” Ruck told us. “But it’s going to start with Carrick.”
“And finding Ryan,” I added. “Once he’s back here, safe, with Rue, then we can finish dismantling Carrick’s operation.”
“Any chance we’ll be able to do that without the rest of The Collective coming after us?” Bolo asked.
“That’s what I’m working on,” Ruck told him. “We need to work this in a way that separates him from the pack. Keeps things quiet until we’re ready for the rest to know he’s nothing but a fucking smear on the sidewalk.”
“I still like my plan,” Relay announced.
“Except your plan has as much finesse as a herd of buffalo stampeding,” Kilo pointed out.
“Yeah,” Bolo added, “we’ll end up fighting twenty different factions of this fucking organization at once.”
“The fuck does that mean?” Relay asked with a glower.
“It means,” I told him, “that we’re going to let Ruck war game this and find the best route that puts us up against the least amount of motherfuckers at one time as possible.”
“I could do that,” Relay muttered.
We all chuckled at that, because no, no he couldn’t.
He was a charge-in and fight-them-all-at-once kind of bastard.
It was a damn good thing he was such a good fighter.
Even in his team of PJs in the Air Force, Relay hadn’t been known as the mission planner.
He was the one they used when shit hit the fan and they needed a ‘get out of this shit sandwich as quickly as possible’ card.
And Relay was great at his role. Everyone knew it.
Except maybe Relay, because he thought he was terrific at everything.
The fact that he was still alive gave credence to this theory.
“Next stage is tailing Carrick’s guys,” Ruck told us.
“If we see any opportunities, we’ll take them, but mostly I just want a little more recon.
It’s not that I don’t trust Glitch. I do.
But I’m old school and I want to verify with our own fucking eyes that this information’s correct.
” He looked over at me, then Kilo. “You two split up our forces between protecting the compound, and two other groups so we can follow these assholes around for a few days.”
“You got it, Prez,” Kilo said with a nod.
“Do you think Carrick realizes what’s happening yet?” Drifter asked.
“Don’t know,” I replied. “According to Glitch they haven’t changed up their routine much. Other than hiring some new muscle to replace Rhino. That happened pretty quickly.”
“Probably just thinks he bailed,” Strike said. “I imagine that happens a lot when you’re tasked with keeping those kids in line or killing them.”
“Since they haven’t changed anything up we’ll operate under the assumption they aren’t aware that we’re closing in,” Ruck told us. “At least until we figure out otherwise. You have your assignments.”
I let out a breath, relieved to finally be doing something. The apartments were damn near done. Moving in would be happening soon. But I was glad we were getting started now. It was fucking torture to watch Rue have to wait to go look for Ryan.
She’d managed to find him the one time, not too long after he first left, and had been looking ever since he disappeared with Carrick’s crew.
Seeing the devastation on her face as she recounted that story to me had nearly broken me.
I’d been ready to scour the fucking streets until I found the kid and dragged him back, kicking and fucking screaming if I had to.
I fully understood Ryan’s need to feel as though he belonged somewhere.
To be around like-minded people, especially other men, and feel as though he’d found others who understood him.
Growing up without my father, without brothers, or uncles, had chased me straight into the military.
My mother was amazing, and I appreciated her on a level I wasn’t sure she’d ever fully know, but… I’d needed more.
I was still trying to find a way to explain to Rue why Ryan had most likely left her.
If he was anything like me, it had nothing to do with her and everything to do with something missing inside of him.
A hole that needed filling that a mother’s, or sister’s, love couldn’t quite patch up.
A sense of belonging, a higher purpose, a mission.
Once in the military I’d met Ruck and a few of the others, and now the motorcycle club fulfilled that need inside me.
None of that meant I didn’t go visit my mother over in Casa Grande at least once a month.
That I didn’t go full out for Mother’s, and Father’s, Day for her.
That I wouldn’t rip apart anyone who tried to hurt her with my bare fucking hands.
It just meant I needed something in addition to her love.
She seemed to understand and she welcomed my brothers into her home as though we were all her sons.
I swear she loved Code more than me half the time.
Damn little brown noser. He made her think he was some kind of sweet gentleman.
Fucking lies. But Mom wouldn’t hear anything bad about the little bastard.
I really needed to pull my shit together and figure out how to talk to Rue about this.
She could use the explanation, because I could read the guilt and worry and pain all over her face every time she thought about Ryan.
I just needed a way to explain to her that it wasn’t her fault.
It wasn’t a failure to provide on her end.
Even I knew that no woman was going to believe that, at least not at first. But I had to try, for her sake.
I did know that I was going to give that kid an ass kicking he wouldn’t soon forget once we got him home.
For worrying his sister. For abandoning her when she was closer to a mother than the one who’d birthed him.
You didn’t abandon family like that. Then I’d teach him what real family was all about.
Kid didn’t know it yet, but he had more uncles than he could ask for and we were going to straighten him out.
He was ours now. Him and Teddy. Both kids needed us.
But first we needed to take out more of Carrick’s numbers.
And make sure we could get the kids they’d recruited out without any casualties to their numbers.
Half of them were likely hooked on drugs by this point.
Or drinking. Or even sex. Money. Power. It could be fucking anything depending on what the individual kid needed.
That was what they’d use as the lure. And none of them who’d chosen to stay would be willing to leave so easily.
We needed to kick down the organization, slaughter the men running things, then we could rescue the kids.
Thankfully that was Carrick and his crew for now.
We’d deal with whatever we found as we worked our way up the ladder.
But for now, we were one step closer to getting Ryan back.
And Rue already had Teddy. She visited him as much as she was allowed by the psych unit.
Visiting times were severely restricted at first. And with Teddy being on suicide watch, she hadn’t been able to stop in and see him at all until they began medicating him.
The grief she carried around had eased a little after the first time she’d gotten to speak to him though. I was ready to see it gone completely but that wasn’t going to happen until her brother was home and proved he wasn’t a flight risk.
I was willing to do whatever was fucking necessary to make that happen for her.