Chapter 30 Ranger
RANGER
He’s mine.
He’s mine.
He’s mine.
I heard those words, clear as day. Claiming words from the mouth of the babe I was entranced with since she ran up onto our doorstep.
They echoed off the caverns of my mind while we all ate as a family around the massive kitchen table.
Some of the guys stood around, hovering over the pot for quick access to seconds.
Some of them sat around the table with the girls. But me?
I was much too focused on the way Liz made Marla laugh.
I heard her giggle, sure. Maybe even a bit of a chuckle.
But Liz had the capability of making Marla full on belly laugh.
The sound had to be what heaven sounded like.
When someone died and ended up at the pearly gates, her laughter would be what greeted them.
It felt safe. Rounded, like her body would eventually become once again.
She did it with such fervor and passion that I couldn’t draw my eyes away from her.
Not until it was time to head downstairs anyway.
I hated leaving the girls alone. Marla opened up so much around everyone now that her best friend was with us, and it was a side of her I had yet to see. I wanted to hang around and study it. I just wanted to watch her.
Was that weird?
Too bad.
“All right,” Cap said as he slipped his hand into the air, “church is in session.”
His command tugged me out of my mind as I focused in on my laptop in front of me. I took to keeping a laptop downstairs in the meeting room so that I didn’t have to keep lugging one up and down the steps. Not that it was a chore or anything, just smoother transitions and all that.
I busted one too many laptops on those stairs.
“Range,” Cap said as my fingers began flying across the keyboard. “Sitrep on those videos.”
“Got them sent off successfully,” I said as I opened up my email and smiled. “Just checking for a response now.”
“Is there one?” Ghost asked.
I pointed. “Someone get the projector?”
Wrecker damn near scrambled to get the projector rolled down. He handed me the hookup that I plugged into the side of my laptop, and my email popped up on the massive screen.
“Get those lights off,” Cap said as he pointed to the wall.
Brutus walked over and turned the lights off.
“Hey, we’ve got an email back,” Ghost said.
I double-clicked the email to open it up, and all of us fell silent as we read it.
Didn’t take long to read it through, however, because the reply was short and sweet.
“Oh fuck yes,” Cap said.
“Told you it would work,” Ghost said.
I smiled as I cleared my throat. “Meeting with my boss in thirty. Stay within the boundaries of the law until you hear back from me.”
“Well fuck,” Scout said, “that shit’s not fun.”
“Timestamp?” Cap asked.
I backed out of the email. “Thirty-four minutes ago.”
“And no response?” Cap asked.
I refreshed my email and shook my head. “Not yet.”
“That could be a good thing,” Doc said, “especially if this boss our contact mentions wants more details of what’s going on. There’s more than thirty minutes of footage that we sent off.”
“He’s got a point,” I said as I pulled up an email to respond.
“What are you going to put?” Wrecker asked.
I typed it out and let the guys approve it. The message was short and to the point, just like our contact’s email. It said:
‘Waiting for our next set of orders. Staying within boundaries, but still gathering proof.’
“Send?” I asked.
“All in favor,” Cap said as he raised his hand into the air.
I’d never seen the men shoot their arms into the air as quickly as they did at that moment.
“All right,” I said as I clicked the button, “email sent.”
Cap clapped his hands together. “Good job, everyone. This is a job well done. Another woman is safe with us, things are going well with our contact at the DOJ, and we’re still in the game helping to gather information.”
“I’d like to make a proposal to the crew,” Brutus said.
Cap held out his hand. “By all means.”
Brutus stepped out of his dark corner. “I think we should reach out for King’s help.”
All eyes turned to him as Cap tilted his head. “You think?”
Brutus nodded. “We’ve already got some semblance of confirmation that these assholes are operating in King’s territory, yes?”
Cap nodded. “It’s not concrete, but evidence suggests that they’re scouring many of the smaller towns that surround us.”
Brutus folded his arms over his chest. “I think King has a right to know, especially since he has that sister of his. He should know if she’s in danger. He’d tell us if the tables were reversed.”
“Plus,” Doc said as he lifted his finger into the air, “it’ll help to have reinforcements if we have another moment like this that pops off.”
“What if the trafficking crew takes us buddying up with them as a threat?” Scout asked.
I shrugged. “We could double our patrol that way. Keep up twenty-four-seven surveillance with the girls, just in case. There’s a lot of benefit to reading another crew into this.”
“And it’s not like we don’t trust King,” Wrecker said.
“We need to tread carefully,” Ghost said as he came out of the shadows, fiddling with his mask. “Our contact said to stay within the confines of the law.”
Doc clicked his tongue. “Staying within the confines of the law doesn’t mean we can’t create a show of power.”
“That show of power might invite more shows of power from them,” Scout argued.
“We’ve got a lot we could use to our advantage if we had another crew at our disposal,” Brutus said.
“Those fuckers chased Range and Ghost all the way back to the clubhouse. It’s no secret where they are now.
We know, in part, that they’re operating out of that fucking law firm.
We have that confirmation now. I think we’ve got them on the backfoot, especially after taking Lizzie from them, and we’d be idiots not to use that to our advantage. At least until the DOJ gets into town.”
Cap nodded as he stood there, silent and stoic, taking in everyone’s opinions. Then he finally spoke.
“Any ideas on how we’ll keep the girls safe through all of this?”
Wrecker shrugged. “I figure, all things considered, that they’re pretty safe with us.”
“Plus,” Brutus spoke up, which was the most he’d spoken in any church meeting, ever,, “having another crew with us means more hiding places if shit pops off. You know King loves his hiding places. I’m sure he’s got plenty of properties stashed about in his territory where we could hide the girls if we needed to get them out of ours. ”
Cap narrowed his eyes at the massive man. “You’ve really given this some thought.”
Brutus just shrugged. “You haven’t?”
That made Cap grin. “Fair.”
“A show of power would most likely draw them out,” Scout said as he stepped up to the table.
“I mean, I get that I don’t have a dog in this fight when it comes to the girls, but I was raised with four sisters.
If there was a show of power anywhere, I’d want them as far away from it as possible.
Shows of power are almost always targets.
If we’re going to do that here, at the clubhouse, I think the girls should be in a secondary location while that happens. ”
I nodded slowly. “We could even use it as a decoy. Make it look like the girls are still here, when in reality, they’re elsewhere.”
“We’d have to split the crew if we did that,” Cap said. “Part of us wherever the girls are, and part of us back at the clubhouse.”
Wrecker nodded his head side to side. “That’s the benefit of the other crew, though. They’d help fill in those gaps, wherever they were needed. And let’s face it, when it comes to our girls? King’s crew is about the only crew we’d trust around them, anyway.”
“I could stay permanently wherever the girls are,” Doc piped up, “since they still need a doctor checking on them anyway. I could be the permanent assignment with the girls while everyone else switches out around us. That way one person knows the whole of what’s going on in the secondary location at any given point in time and can brief as necessary. ”
“Well, if we do that,” Cap said before he drew in a deep breath, “we’d need to figure out where that secondary location is going to be. And for that, we have to contact King.”
“Or,” Doc said.
All eyes slowly turned in his direction. I practically craned my head over my shoulder just to look up at him.
“Or… what?” I asked. “Spit it out.”
Doc puffed his cheeks out with a heavy sigh. “Would this be a good time to tell everyone that I have a sort of… estate?”
I blinked. “What?”
Doc thumbed over his shoulder. “An estate. A town and a half over. We could take the girls there. I’ve got plenty of room in that place.”
The entire room fell silent.
“What?” Doc asked.
“An estate?” Cap asked.
“How big of an estate are we talking?” Wrecker asked.
I wrinkled my nose. “I thought you were military.”
Doc just shrugged. “Doesn’t mean my family was. I ended up a medic for a reason.”
“And this estate is yours?” Cap asked.
Doc smiled softly.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him smile like that before.
“Childhood home,” he said with warmth in his voice. “I upkeep it, but it’s much too big for just me.”
Cap looked around the room at everyone before his eyes crawled back to Doc. “Just out of curiosity, how secure can you make your estate?”
Pride crossed Doc’s face, which wasn’t something we saw often. “I can make it Fort Knox if you need me to.”
Cap’s eyes fell to me. “Range, it’ll be your job to lock down all communications going in and out of that estate.”
“Yes,” Doc hissed as he clapped his hands together.
Cap pointed to Brutus. “It was your idea to fill in King. You call him.”
Brutus nodded as he shoved his hand into his pocket. “On it.”
“Wrecker,” Cap said as he turned to his second-in-command, “you’re going to fill the girls in on what we’re doing.”
“Will do,” he said.
“Everyone else,” Cap said as he raised his hand into the air, “should I even take a vote on whether or not we’re down with this plan?”
All of us just shoved our hands into the air, if for nothing more than formalities. It made Cap chuckle, and he nodded as he lowered his hand.
“If I haven’t given you a direct order, that means you’re on packing duty. Work on getting the girls packed up, and when night falls and we’ve all had some sleep, we’ll head to Doc’s estate. Any questions?”
The air around all of us was charged with silent energy.
“All right,” Cap said, “church dismissed.”
Before three resounding, unanimous claps sounded out from all of us.