Chapter 17
Pyre
“Why the fuck does death chick have an air-gapped system?” Glitch mumbled, looking around in aggravation as Warrant picked the lock at Rae’s funeral home.
I looked at him in exasperation. She’d just left my house an hour ago and here I was breaking into her business with my dipshit brothers.
It needed to be done, but that didn’t mean I didn’t feel guilty as fuck.
She could never know or she’d be pissed.
And I had a feeling that her anger wasn’t something I wanted to face.
“I don’t even know what the fuck you just said. How am I supposed to answer you?”
He rolled his eyes. “It means her network is physically isolated from the internet and other networks. It’s commonly used in high-security environments. We have an air-gapped system for Sentry Securities, and the club.”
“Dude, he just said not to speak nerd. You sound like a dictionary with an asshole’s voice,” Jury told him as he brushed past Warrant and shoved open the door, wanting to be the first inside.
Glitch threw up his hands, fed up with all of us. “And that’s why I had to fucking come out tonight even though I had plans. Can’t trust the three of you to know shit about shit.”
“What plans?” I scoffed.
“Yeah, jerking off to porn doesn’t count,” Warrant told him, putting his lock pick set away, following the rest of us into the building.
“Don’t fucking touch that,” I snapped at Jury as he poked at some of Rae’s equipment.
He scowled at me. “I was just looking at it.”
“Then use your fucking eyes, not your damn hands, asshole.”
“What exactly are we looking for?” Warrant asked.
Glitch immediately went over to Rae’s office and got on her computer. He pulled out some kind of gadget, which he plugged in and it started flashing letters and numbers on the password box on the lock screen.
“Anything talking about a recent overdose autopsy she did,” I told him.
“You’re thinking Iron Circle?” Glitch asked, looking over his shoulder at me.
I nodded. “She thought it was interesting, and unique, enough to mention it before she remembered she shouldn’t be telling me.
And the fact that it’s an ongoing investigation probably means not a regular overdose.
Plus, if it were a local we’d have heard by now, the townsfolk would be talking about it. So…maybe.”
It was Warrant’s turn to scowl. “So why the hell couldn’t I just break into Owen’s office?”
“This is easier,” I told him. “You’d have to bypass a lot of deputies to get into his office and they know better than to let you in.”
“And she didn’t send him the report online. She must have hand delivered it,” Glitch added.
“So you’re here to do the computer shit,” Warrant told Glitch. “You’re here to read the medical shit on the report.” He motioned to me. “I’m here as the muscle in case you need back up.” He smirked at Jury. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Jury looked offended. “Hey, I’m here as muscle, too.”
Warrant scoffed. “You just had nothing better to do. Fucking muscle my ass…”
Jury flipped him off then shoved the sleeve of his t-shirt a bit higher and flexed. He grinned at his bulging bicep, then gave Warrant an eat-shit-and-die look.
“Impressive,” Warrant said in a dry tone.
“Shut the fuck up,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose.
Glitch’s little happy sound he made—which I was sure he didn’t realize he made—whenever his work on the computer gave him something alerted me that he found what he wanted. “Gotcha.”
I leaned over his shoulder, ignoring the glare he shot my way as he quickly scanned through the files on Rae’s computer.
That guilt was eating away at me again. But if I asked her if we could see her report, she’d probably say no.
She had no allegiance to us at this point and she was a trustworthy, honest woman.
She’d tell me no and probably alert Owen.
Then we’d have to work around him and his deputies from here on out.
This was the best way to do things. Less bad way?
“Here it is.”
“Good,” I said, shoving Glitch’s shoulder. “Out of the way so I can read through it.”
He grumbled as he got out of the chair and let me sit down. I scanned over the report. Rae was efficient and eloquent. It was clear she was damn good at her job, too.
“What’s it say?” Jury asked, tossing a little figurine of an opossum from hand to hand.
“Put it back,” I snarled at him.
He rolled his eyes and set it back down on the shelf he’d gotten it from. “You’re so damn cranky tonight.”
“Every night,” Warrant said, biting into a green apple.
“Where the hell did you pull that out of?” Glitch asked, eyeing him. He didn’t have a bag or anything on him other than his cut.
Warrant just grinned at him and munched on the apple. After a far too brief silence, they started asking again.
“Are you done yet?” Glitch asked.
“Is it the Iron Circle?” Jury stifled a yawn. “I hope it is so we can go home and go the fuck to bed. Stayed up way too late entertaining the ladies last night.” He winked at Warrant. “You missed out.”
“I didn’t miss shit,” Warrant told him. “You-”
“Okay,” I told Glitch, cutting him off. “Can you print this out? Erase the evidence we were here?”
He gave me a look of disbelief. “Seriously? Did you just ask me that?”
I sighed. “Will you?”
He sat back down, tapped on the keyboard and got back to work. It wouldn’t take him long.
Jury leaned back against a filing cabinet that had a stack of papers on it and it listed to one side. “Shit.”
I glared at him as I stuck a hand out to catch the papers. She’d know for sure we were here if these were all out of order. “Quit touching shit.”
“I didn’t touch it,” he complained. “Much.”
“Just go outside. Keep a lookout.”
“Come on,” Warrant said, nudging him with his elbow. “I’ll go too.”
I left Glitch working at the computer and went into the room where she kept the bodies she worked on.
The whole left side of the wall was taken up by morgue refrigerators.
I opened the body drawers one at a time, looking for the man who’d been in the picture on the report.
It took me opening five different drawers before I found him. I slid him all the way out.
Looking around, I grabbed a set of gloves from the box hanging on the wall nearby.
I cursed as I tried to get the medium sized gloves on my massive hands.
Extra larges were typically what I used.
I managed to get them over my fingers and onto the top half of my hand and then just called it good.
I poked around on the body, checking for any tattoos or distinguishing marks that Rae might have missed while she did her examination.
Just like she’d put in the report, there was nothing.
It was worth a shot, and gave me something to do while I waited.
I wasn’t sure what all Glitch was doing, probably going through more files to see if there were any other related reports, but by the time I went back to Rae’s office he was done. I looked around, trying to see if anything was out of place before we left the building, locking it up as we went.
I’d shot Cypher a text and by the time we got back to the clubhouse he’d called church and our brothers had dragged their asses from their homes and back here.
“It’s late,” Rotor said, yawning as he sat down at the table.
“Messing up your beauty sleep?” Demo joked.
“Some of us need a solid ten hours,” Rotor replied with a shrug. “It’s better for everyone that way.”
“I swear, I don’t think you actually sleep, Demo,” Jury said, sitting down next to Rotor.
Demo shrugged. “I drink. It’s basically the same thing.”
I gave him a look of disbelief. “No the fuck it isn’t.”
He just shrugged again.
Cypher was scanning over Rae’s report, then handed it off to Scythe. “Walk us through it, Pyre.”
“Iron Circle is here,” I told him, shaking my head at Demo, then focusing on my president.
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. That report says the guy OD’d by swallowing a bag of Ecstasy. Small circular pills with a copper-tinged circle stamped on them.”
“Iron Circle,” Cynic said with a roll of his eyes. “Not exactly trying to hide shit are they?”
“No, they aren’t,” Warrant said. “Because they don’t know yet that we know they’re here.”
“That works to our advantage,” Cypher told us.
“Yeah, except it’ll take us months to search all the fucking places they could be cooking this shit up.
And we’ll have to get lucky to see one of them dealing on the streets.
Apparently this asshole,” Scythe held up the papers, “was too stupid to deserve to live. Swallowing that shit in a sandwich bag is asking to die.”
I nodded in agreement with Scythe’s assessment of the man’s lack of intelligence.
“Not so sure we’ll get that lucky a second time,” Cypher said in a voice that said he was considering all options.
“We should go see Skinny Pete,” Jury said. He was focused on using his knife to clean underneath one of his fingernails. He looked up when he felt everyone staring at him. “What?”
“Who the fuck is Skinny Pete?” Cypher asked.
“Petty criminal,” Jury said with a grin. “Mostly mugs old people when he can get away with it.” He chuckled “He rarely gets away with it because the old people are stronger than him. Big time coke head, though. He’ll know if there’s someone new in the game.”
“The fact that you know about him and Cypher doesn’t says something…” Warrant told him. “I don’t know what exactly. Just…something.”
“Skinny Pete tries to keep his nose clean,” Rotor started, then he and Jury snickered together at the unintentional pun of a coke head having a clean nose. Cypher sighed. Rotor coughed back the rest of the laughter and continued. “He can usually stay off law enforcement’s radar.”
“Other than when he’s beating little old ladies for their purses?” Demo asked in disgust.
“Well, yeah,” Jury said. “Other than that. Though last time he tried the lady must have had a purse full of nickels. Took out one of his teeth the way she swung that thing at him. Another beating like that he’ll probably move on to taking lunch money from kids.”
“Is that better?” Demo asked, genuinely confused about how off the rails this conversation was getting.
“I mean, it is funny. Sort of. Imagine a bunch of angry first graders kicking the snot out of a crackhead. Just piling on like feral little jackals.”
“Do we want to know how you even know about this guy?” I asked him.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. I owed some piece of shit money from a poker game. He tends to hang around Skinny Pete. Met him when I was repaying my debt,” Jury explained.
“How is that not as bad as it sounds?” Cynic asked.
Jury opened his mouth to answer, but shut it when Cypher started talking.
“Warrant, Pyre, take those two,” he pointed at Jury and Rotor—who glanced at each other as they were singled out—and go talk to the rat.”
“Mmmm,” Jury said, “he really doesn’t like being called a rat.”
“What the fuck are we supposed to call him?” Scythe asked. “And why do we care what he likes?”
“Just go talk to him,” Cypher told us.
“Sure thing, Prez,” Warrant told him. “Where can we find Skinny Pete?” He looked over at Jury.
Jury glanced at his watch. “At this hour? Home asleep.”
“A coke addict…asleep?” I asked with raised brows.
“Fine, home fucking a prostitute. Hell I don’t know. I just know we’ll do better going to find him sometime tomorrow.”
“Why’s that?” Demo asked.
Jury and Rotor exchanged glances again. Rotor spoke up this time. “Skinny Pete has…an aversion to the dark.”
“An aversion…” Cypher said. It wasn’t a question. He was just repeating that and probably wondering what he’d done wrong in a previous life to have to be dealing with this shit in this one. “Fine. Tomorrow then,” he said. “Let me know what you find out.”
With that we all parted ways. I got on my bike.
The whole ride home, I thought of Rae and those kisses we shared on the couch.
Even with the likelihood that the Iron Circle was here and we’d be making moves soon, I wasn’t going to put the brakes on pursuing her.
I’d done that for long enough. It was time to move forward with her.
I could handle killing shit heads and seducing my woman at the same time. No problem.