Chapter 17
Country
As soon as Billy and his crew arrived, he put on his hazmat suit and went straight to work.
He didn’t really speak to anyone—just Viper, and even then, it was all business.
Cut and dry. He wouldn’t even look in Kiersten’s direction.
I wasn’t exactly surprised by his reaction.
The guy had to be pissed that his daughter had kept this part of her life a secret from him, but he’d done the same to her.
They’d both made a mess of things, but in the end, they loved each other and that trumps a few stupid secrets—or at least I hoped it did, for both of their sakes.
When Riggs showed up with Shadow and Blaze, Kiersten knew we had things to discuss with them, so she went to the kitchen to give Doc a hand with Braylon while we met with Fury in the old church.
We caught them all up to speed on what had gone down with Drake and all his bullshit and how we’d called Billy in to clean up the mess.
After hearing us out, Riggs shook his head and said, “I gotta say I’m surprised this Drake kid had the means to pull all this off.
When I looked into him, he just seemed like your average college kid. ”
“You looked into him?” Viper asked, sounding just as surprised as I was. “When?”
“He came out to the Manor a few weeks back and was snooping around. When Braylon caught him, Drake said he was there looking for Kiersten.” Riggs shrugged. “She thought him coming out to her place was just part of his fixation with her, and I found no reason to believe that wasn’t the case.”
“And you didn’t think to tell us about him coming here?”
“I know it looks bad, Viper, but I assure you that I thought the matter was resolved. Otherwise, I would’ve come to you with it, or the very least, I would’ve dug a little deeper and found out more about him.”
“Well, you best get to diggin’. You and Menace both need to find everything you can on this guy because I don’t want any of this coming back and biting us in the ass.”
“You got it.”
Menace turned to Riggs as he said, “I’ll get my laptop from the truck.”
With that, Menace stood and walked out of the church conference room.
Tensions were high as we sat there waiting for him to return.
Viper was still reeling from hearing about Drake being at the Manor.
I was too. I found it hard to believe Kiersten had never mentioned him to me.
She might’ve truly thought it wasn’t worth mentioning, or she simply didn’t think she could trust me with the information.
Either way, I intended to find out exactly what she was thinking.
Once Menace returned, he and Riggs set to work on finding out everything they could on Drake.
They were still going at it when Viper said, “We’re going to need to make some changes around here.
We can’t afford to let anything like this happen again. ”
“What kind of changes do you have in mind?” Blaze asked.
“Well, there’s already been one big change.
” Viper leaned back in his seat as he told them, “Kiersten’s girls won’t be selling on campus anymore.
All distribution will be through us. That should help eliminate unnecessary exposure, but we need more eyes on this place or possibly a few more hands.
We’ll have to replace Timms and possibly add another. ”
“If you’re interested, I’ve got a couple of ex-military guys who’d be interested in working for you,” Braylon announced from the doorway.
He was standing there with Doc, and he looked like hell.
He must’ve picked up on the fact that he wasn’t supposed to be there for the meet, so he said, “I don’t mean to interrupt whatever y’all got going in here.
I just wanted to apologize for my fuck up tonight.
I let myself get distracted, and it cost us. ”
“Distracted how?”
“Mia had come into the office.” His eyes dropped to the ground, and guilt marked his face as he admitted, “We got to talking, and one thing led to another. Next thing I knew, the fire alarm went off.”
“Damn, Bray,” Widow fussed. “You’re better than that shit.”
“I know. When I said this shit was on me, I meant it. I fucked up, and if you want me to call it quits, I will. I have that coming.” He cocked his head to the side and sighed, then looked Viper in the eye as he said, “But I want to me here. I owe it to Kiersten and myself to make amends for my mistake. So, if you’ll give me a chance and stick it out with me, I turn this thing around and do right by all of you. ”
“No one’s showing you to the door, brother. You’re in this with us, and together, we’ll find a way to make sure this sort of thing never happens again.”
Relief washed over Braylon as he said, “I sure appreciate that.”
“You go get some rest and tend to those wounds. We’ll get those names from you when you get back on your feet.”
“Sounds good.”
When he and Doc started to leave, I got up and rushed over to them. “Where’s Kiersten?”
“I checked her out and sent her back to her place,” Doc answered.
“Okay. I’ll go see about her when we get done here.”
“Good deal. Hopefully, she’ll be asleep by then. Poor kid was pretty shaken up, so I gave her something to help her sleep.”
“Thanks, brother. I appreciate you looking after her.”
“No problem at all.”
Without saying anything more, Doc took hold of Braylon’s arm and helped him back over to his place.
I made my way back over to the table and was just sitting down when Menace turned to Viper and said, “There isn’t a lot about this guy.
Looks like his folks died and left him some property just east of Murfreesboro.
Not a big place, but if there’s any truth to all the bullshit he was feeding Kiersten, it could be where he’s growing his product. ”
“What are you waiting for? Load up and go check the fucking place out.”
“And if we find anything?”
“Take care of it.”
Menace didn’t have to ask any further questions.
He knew Viper’s expectations, and Viper trusted us to carry them out.
I got up, and with Lynch and Widow following close behind, I followed Menace and the Fury boys out to the parking lot.
Since our SUV was still parked out behind the property, we had to track down Duggar and get him to drive us over to it.
Once we got to the SUV, he headed back to the Manor, and we loaded up and followed Riggs and Blaze over to Drake’s place.
Thankfully, it didn’t take long to get there.
Daylight was quickly approaching, so we didn’t have much time to fuck around.
As soon as we were parked, we started up to the front steps.
There wasn’t much to the place. Just a two-bedroom farmhouse that hadn’t been updated in at least twenty years.
The yard was overgrown, and there were old tires and tools scattered around the dilapidated garage.
The front door was wide open, so we had no trouble getting inside.
It had an old, musty smell, and like the outside, the place hadn’t been taken care of.
There was trash scattered about, and the furniture looked like it had been thoroughly abused.
We searched the entire house and didn’t find a damn thing which led me to ask Menace, “Are you sure this is the right place?”
“Yeah, this is it. No doubt about it.” He glanced around the rundown kitchen as he said, “There’s gotta be something we’re missing.”
We were all gathered in the kitchen when Blaze asked, “Is there a basement?”
“No idea.”
We all started looking around, and it wasn’t long before Menace discovered a secret hatch door in the bottom of the pantry.
As soon as he opened it, the familiar scent of marijuana filled the room, and I knew we’d found what we were looking for.
After he turned on the lights, we followed him down the wooden steps and into the small cellar.
When we reached the bottom step, I saw that there was a makeshift table in the center of the room that held about twenty small, pitiful marijuana plants—not even a fraction of what Kiersten had out at the Manor.
Lynch’s brows were furrowed with confusion as he asked, “Is this really it?”
“Certainly looks that way.”
“But that can’t be right,” Hawk argued. “The guy had seven or eight men with him. How the fuck did he manage that when he’s only got this
I shook my head with disgust. “Yeah, there’s not enough here to wipe my ass. No way this Drake asshole is making any real money off this shit.”
“You’re right,” Hawk agreed. “That’s got to be more somewhere.”
“I’ll go out and see if there’s anything in the barn,” Riggs volunteered.
He rushed back up the steps, and we all could hear him stomping through the kitchen as he made his way out of the house. I was looking around to make sure we hadn’t missed something when Hawk asked, “What do you guys think we should do with this shit?”
“I figure we got two choices.” I looked over to Hawk as I continued, “We can take it back to the Manor or torch the whole place and be done with this shit.”
Drake’s place was at least ten miles from town without another house anywhere in sight, so burning the place to the ground seemed like the best option until Riggs came back into the house and shouted, “You guys need to come and see this shit.”
We all rushed upstairs and out to the barn where we found a dozen or so crates filled with heavy artillery.
Each was filled with a variety of handguns, shotguns, and even a couple of semi-automatic rifles and plenty of ammo.
Lynch was the first to voice his concern.
“Holy hell. This guy was in deeper than I thought.”
“You think he’s moving all this on his own or is he working with someone?”
“Figure the guy’s on his own,” Riggs answered. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t be so fired up to partner with Kiersten.”
“Sure hope you’re right about that.” Hawk went over and picked up one of the crates as he said, “It’ll be daylight soon. Let’s get this shit loaded up in the truck.”
“And then what?”