Chapter 19
Pyre
“Why doesn’t this surprise me?” I asked out loud, looking around.
“It surprises me,” Warrant snapped. “What the fuck are we doing at the cemetery? And the old one no one goes to anymore? Not the nicer, newer one at the other end of town?” He eyed the gnarled old trees that framed the fence line like they were the guardians of this somber place.
“Now you know why Skinny Pete doesn’t like the dark,” Jury told us with a grin.
Jury and Rotor seemed to know exactly where they were going, so Warrant and I just followed them in. My eyes narrowed as we got closer to a figure sitting by a grave.
“He come to pay respects?” Warrant asked.
Rotor let out a snort that was a mixture of disgust and amusement. “No. Definitely not.”
Squinting as we approached, I said, “Please tell me he’s not doing a line of coke off the top of that marble gravestone.”
“He comes here because the deputies rarely do. The newer cemetery is frequented more often. He’s learned the schedules of the people who come to visit their loved ones and avoids them. He’s surprisingly good at pattern recognition.”
“Seems wrong…” Warrant said.
“Fucking disrespectful is what it is,” I countered. “You don’t fuck with the dead.”
They all looked over at me with wry looks on their faces. “You don’t fuck with the dead who used to be good people,” I conceded. “Shit bags don’t count. I can do whatever I want to them.”
“We’re not judging,” Rotor said with a shrug. “We all had a great time taking those Iron Circle fucks apart piece by piece after we found Jared.”
“That was fun.” Jury motioned for us to stop. “Yo! Skinny Pete!”
The man was on his feet so fucking fast I was sure he was going to bolt for the line of trees off to our left.
Instead he attempted to run through the gravestone in front of him, toppled straight over it and face planted on the other side.
He popped like a weasel out of its hole, looked over at us, then squinted, rubbed his nose, and squinted harder. “Who wants to know?”
“I thought you said he was good at pattern recognition?” I muttered.
“Patterns yes, smart instincts or reaction times, not so much,” Jury sighed. “Paranoid fucking-” He huffed out a breath. “It’s Jury, man. Just wanted to ask you something.”
Skinny Pete picked up his shit he had scattered around the grave—poor fucking soul who was having to host him for the day—and walked toward us.
He was moving slowly and cautiously toward us.
As if we were going to spontaneously turn into cops.
When this was over I might have to convince Owen to pop out of the ground like a zombie cop.
That would be fun to watch. “What you want to know?”
“Sure is suspicious for a friend,” Warrant said, keeping his voice low. None of us wanted to startle the guy.
“Never said he was a friend,” Jury shot back. “And really he’s less paranoid than any of you fucks.”
“Fair,” Warrant agreed. “But that’s only because we know you.”
“He’s a coke head,” Rotor added as Skinny Pete slunk toward us. “Of course he’s paranoid. For all we know, we could look like giant rabbits to him right now.”
Warrant looked over at Rotor like he was a fucking moron. “He’s on cocaine, you idiot.”
“So?” Rotor said with a shrug.
“Cocaine is a stimulant,” I told him, watching Skinny Pete approach in case he got any bright ideas.
With four of us to his one it wasn’t likely but I wasn’t going to let my guard down.
“Psychedelics are what make you hallucinate. He’s more likely to run a marathon right now or randomly rip all the electric wiring out of his walls. ”
Rotor made a face, like we were the idiots, not him. “I know that. Goddamn. But he’s such a heavy user it’s very possible that he experiences cocaine psychosis.”
I considered that point. “You could be right.”
We all watched as Skinny Pete itched at his arm like there was something crawling beneath his skin. There were raw patches all over his exposed skin.
“Fine,” Warrant replied. “We might be six foot plus fucking rabbits for all he knows.”
“Huh. Interesting idea,” Rotor said.
“What is?” Warrant asked
“Would you rather fight a six-foot-tall rabbit, or…twenty geese the size of rabbits?”
“Jack rabbits or cotton tails?”
“Clearly the rabbit is the better option,” I told them. “No one wants to fuck with geese. Now shut up so I can hear.”
Rotor gave us a smug grin since he got us to concede to his point. “Hey, Pete.”
The man jerked his head and stared at Rotor. “I don’t like him,” Pete whispered, only a decibel below his normal speaking voice.
“It’s alright,” Jury told him. “Neither do we.”
“What the fuck?” Rotor huffed.
Warrant hooted with laughter.
“What did you do to make a cocaine addict dislike you?” I asked with a grin.
“Fuck if I know.”
“He’s too purple.”
We all stared at Skinny Pete, processing that. Conversation with Skinny Pete was going to require updating my mental hard drive on a minute by minute basis to keep up.
“We sure we can trust what this guy says?” Warrant muttered. “Druggies aren’t exactly the most reliable as far as intel goes.”
“Maybe not,” I said as Jury moved closer to speak with Pete, “but he’s the only lead we have for now. What does it hurt to check with him?”
“We end up fighting purple people all over town?” Rotor offered, scrubbing one hand through the long hair on the very top of his head and making it spike upward like a cracked out porcupine. “But despite all that, he knows his shit about the dealers here.”
Warrant made a face that said he wasn’t so sure about that.
“He has a vested interest,” Rotor told us. “The important thing to remember when dealing with these guys is to never get hustled by a coke head.”
It was his turn to get stared at by the two of us. “What the fuck does that even mean?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Warrant added, “who would ever let a coked out fuck up hustle them?”
“You’d be surprised how lucid these bastards can be when it suits them. They can even stay clean for a bit, blend in with normal society. Or they just do their coke at night, in the privacy of their own homes, and somehow manage to function through their high all day long.”
Rotor had done a stint with the Drug Enforcement Administration after his time in the military was over. He’d seen first-hand what some of these people were capable of, so we just shrugged and turned back to Jury and Pete.
Jury handed over a wad of cash, nodded at Pete, then turned back to us. Skinny Pete headed back over to the gravestone.
“You know he’s just going to stick that right up his nose,” Warrant pointed out. “Like, he may not take the time to even turn it into coke. Just snort dollar bills.”
Jury shrugged. “We got the intel we need and no matter what we do an addict is going to find a way to get their drugs. He gave me what I needed so I gave him the same. What the fuck do I care what he does with it? At least this way purses and copper wire are safe for the next few days.”
He had a point. “Where are we headed?”
“Mountain View Storage. Want to check back in with Cypher first?” Jury asked Warrant. “Or check it out to see if it’s a solid lead?”
Warrant was the ranking officer amongst us as the Sergeant at Arms. Jury and Rotor were enforcers. I was used as the medic and enforcer as needed. Which meant this call was Warrant’s.
“Let’s go check it out first. See what we see,” he replied.
Mountain View wasn’t too far of a ride from the cemetery as it was on the edge of town.
It made sense. It wasn’t in the middle of town, had electricity in the units, and there was enough traffic happening as people moved their shit in and out you might not notice a couple guys hanging around there often.
Plus, it wasn’t uncommon for some random guy to be using a storage unit as an apartment every now and then.
At least until the owners noticed and ran them off.
We parked out on the road and strolled over to the gates.
They were open and sure enough, people were bustling in and out.
Storage facilities in this area did a lot of business because people were constantly moving to, or away, from town.
Some didn’t realize until they lived here how far it was from Cheyenne.
Others thought they could handle the cold winters.
Whatever their reasoning, they’d dump their crap here until they moved it into a house, or back to wherever they came from.
“We have a unit number?” Rotor asked.
“He didn’t know. Just said to check near the back.”
Whatever the fuck that meant. Did that mean the back of the property?
Or the side which was the furthest from the front office?
Cokehead navigation was not a class I ever took.
Guess we’d find out what he meant soon enough.
Hooking my thumbs in my belt to keep my hands near my waistband, and weapon, without having them stuck in my pockets I walked with my brothers around the place.
We had no idea if Dolan—or his crew—knew what we looked like, or if they were even here right now.
“Two o’clock,” Warrant muttered.
Without making it obvious we looked over and I narrowed my eyes. There were two men standing outside a unit. The door was shut and one was leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette while talking to his buddy.
Brown eyes met mine and widened in recognition. “Shit.”
“What?” Jury asked, then swore as one of the guys pointed a handgun at us.
The one smoking put a hand on the man’s wrist, forcing him to lower the gun. They didn’t want to burn their spot. There was no doubt they were either making or storing their Ecstasy in that storage unit. He straightened up off the unit and called out something.
There was also no doubt they knew who the fuck we were. I turned to face them, my brothers on either side of me, waiting to see what their next move would be. They advanced forward a few paces.
“Fucking idiots,” Jury scoffed. “We outnumber them.”