Chapter 50 Rachel
RACHEL
It was a pleasant, run of the mill motel.
Nothing special, but nothing shady either.
Rex’s hog stood out amid the family sedans, which meant Bear’s would have too.
It was an odd choice for a biker.
“Why didn’t he just rent somewhere? Why buy this place?” Rex muttered as he flipped the card between his fingers and headed over to the room number listed on the back of it.
“Housekeeping’s included, I guess.”
His nose crinkled. “If there’s proof in that room, how likely is it that he let maids in, do you think?”
“True.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. Your father was a mystery to me most days. Did you know he’s the one who…” I cleared my throat then, under my breath, whispered, “…offed Luke Lancaster?”
His brows lifted. “Giulia—”
“She told me earlier this year. Said that Bear asked her to keep it quiet.”
“The fuck? Why?”
“I don’t know. He’d come into town to change his will.”
“What were the additions?”
“Storm’s bequests. He wrote his letter to you too. Added a couple of donations to some charities as well.”
“Which charities?”
“I don’t remember the names. They’re all in his will. As executor, you’ll need to make the transfers.”
He nodded his understanding, but I could tell he was as bewildered as me.
When we made it to the room, he opened the door, and both of us peered in.
I whistled under my breath.
Rex didn’t utter a word as he stepped into the wilderness in here.
“No way he used this as a base because there was housekeeping,” I mumbled, closing the door behind me as I tried to avoid the tangled network of string that filled the room.
It was like a spider’s web.
Those strands of string were everywhere, crossing through the center of the room, pieces of paper, photos, post-it notes, pegged here and there. On the back wall, there were pictures with names on them. Names I recognized.
Just looking around the room made me exhausted, and I headed over to the bed and plunked my ass down to stare at the space all while my gaze kept flicking over to Rex.
He was taking this better than I was, that much was evident.
As clear-headed as I knew Bear had been the last time I’d seen him before the blast, the Gordian knot that was this room had me wondering if he’d been losing it.
Rex was reading, scanning, studying, however.
He did that for over an hour, long enough for me to not just sit down on the bed, but to lie flat out and cover myself with a blanket because this room was frigid.
I didn’t lie down only because I was cold and tired, but because there were Venn diagrams above the bed. One in particular drew my attention more than anything else.
It didn’t consist of just two intersecting circles, but five so the end shape was almost like a star.
FBI, SCOTUS, NYPD, LAPD, Homeland Security.
Then, inside the interlocking circles, there were names. Some underlined, some, very few in the grand scheme of things, with question marks.
I sucked in a shuddery breath at the sight of DONAVAN LANCASTER which was underlined several times and surrounded by dollar signs. ‘Money man’ was jotted down too.
If he’d gotten that right, as well as the other names I recognized from the recent glut of exposés that had been in the news because of Savannah Daniels, I felt as if those that were unknown to me were guaranteed to be Sparrows too.
If I unpicked that piece of paper from the ceiling, I could hand that over to Lodestar, and she could make sure that every single man and woman detailed on there was sent to hell.
But the information overload didn’t stop there.
There was a simpler Venn diagram.
Three circles this time.
New World Sparrows, Old World Sparrows, Eastern Sparrows.
More names inside each interlocking circle.
Three in bold, where Bear had written over the names a couple times, in the main circles.
Then, other names, names I recognized. Some were royalty, there was a general or two that Bear had doodled a flag beside to denote their nationality, a couple prime ministers/presidents in East Europe and Asia, and several cardinals were listed as well.
‘ACTIVE GROUPS IN THE US WHO ARE ENEMIES OF THE NWS/OWS/ES’ was the next sheet I read.
This one consisted of just a list:
Five Points (Irish Mob. Watch out for that fucker O’Donnelly Sr.)
Camorra (West Coast/Sicilian ties. Camorra head has under-the-radar familial links to LVPD Chief.)
LVPD (Camorra ties. Las Vegas is unfriendly to Sparrow activity.)
Bratva (Moscow holds no interest in Sparrow activity. KGB under orders to kill any Sparrow who approaches them.)
New York Triads (Chairman is not a friend of any Sparrow body. Not even Eastern Sparrows which has a wide net over Asia.)
There were other lists, one of the groups Bear believed were enemies of the international bodies of Sparrows.
As I read that one, my heart pretty much froze in my chest. Because bold as brass, in Bear’s scrawl, was the name I’d been hunting info on.
ECD (Eamonn Keegan is the leader and he’s a twisted cunt.
That last bomb in London he got sent up for wasn’t even for the ECD cause but was because it was a meeting between NWS, OWS, and ES.
Killed sixty-five Sparrows. High-ranking ones too.
I’d like to shake that bastard’s hand. Sister was murdered by an underling.
ECD will only be strong once Keegan’s free and can take the reins again.)
“Lodestar and Maverick need to see this room.”
I blinked at Rex’s bland statement, my mind jerking from Bear’s notes on Eamonn Keegan. I didn’t disagree though. Just…
“You sure Maverick is well enough for this?”
“He’ll be pissed if he isn’t included.”
“He will,” I concurred, but that wasn’t exactly an answer to my question.
“This place is…” Rex exhaled. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was nuts.”
From the state of this room, it was easy to imagine that Bear was definitely off his rocker, and yet, the contents of the web each strand of string uncovered spoke of an intellect similar to that of his son’s.
Rex was beyond smart. Crazy smart. Seemed like I had proof it was in the blood.
When I didn’t speak, only sat up at the side of the bed and found some other info dump for me to tumble into, Rex picked up his cellphone and made the calls.
Within forty minutes, Lodestar and Maverick were sharing the space with us.
Things had been strained between Star and me since our last argument, but when she took a seat beside me, I had no choice other than to raise an arm and curve it around her shoulders.
Which was when she wept.
This brave headcase wept.
We had answers.
We had names.
We weren’t in the dark anymore.
This, I realized, was the first time Lodestar had felt the light in years, and it was granted to her by a man she’d never even met.
I blew out a breath as my own eyes burned. This wasn’t my cause, wasn’t my fight, yet Bear had died because of it.
Lodestar was subsisting for it.
Was this the end, though? I asked myself as I stared around the space. Or, I thought fearfully, merely the beginning?
I guessed only time would tell.