Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
THEA
Whoever wrote these journals was clever, but not as clever as they thought.
“You made him do that,” Sage accuses Syn as she gingerly sits down on a bag of frozen peas.
Syn sits next to her, looking both amused and concerned. “I swear I didn’t. The padding in the suit must have collapsed or broken when he bit down. I really am sorry, Sage. Did he break skin?”
“No,” Sage grumbles, shifting and wincing. “But damn, I’m going to be bruised enough that King’s not going to be able to smack my ass for a bit.” Then she chuckles. “Or he’s going to spend a whole lot of time making it feel an awful lot better, so I guess I can’t complain.”
Syn rolls her eyes. “Only you would turn something like this into a good thing.” She sighs.
This group is more and more interesting the longer I spend time with them. Watching them cheer on Syn and her dogs while she had them chase Sage in the bite suit was entertaining, but more because Macy decided that she wanted to sit on my shoulders so she could get a better view. She came out of her funk long enough for that, and then Quinn took her inside for a snack. Archer, who is a very smart and entertaining kid, went back inside to play the video games he brought with him.
Though I notice Eden has been looking over at him a lot, so maybe he’s not as comfortable being here as I thought. But what do I know?
As for the rest of them, I notice that for the most part Izzy and Quinn are the quieter ones, though Izzy has her moments of being loud and in charge. But there isn’t one thing I don’t like about any of them. They seem like a great group of women and they’ve welcomed me without a blink. I haven’t had many female friends in my life, so this is definitely a nice change.
“Alright, since the kids are all distracted, we need to take advantage of the time we have,” Rose announces excitedly, then she looks at me expectantly. The other women go quiet and look at me as well.
My gaze moves around the table to each of them. “What?” I ask, confused.
“What’s the deal with you and Sniper?” Izzy asks, a wide grin on her face.
“Other than you two having wild and crazy sex, of course.” Sage giggles. “That’s a given with this crew. Even the old ones,” she adds with a wink at Rose.
“With age comes experience,” Sadie interjects helpfully. “I was with a guy once that was fifty-four, and the things that man could do.” She makes a humming sound of appreciation. “Few have topped it since.”
“When the hell did you do that?” Eden demands, shocked. “I thought I knew all about your escapades, but I think you left out that one.”
Sadie waves that off. “It was only a one-night thing, and more just because we were both curious about what would happen. And he was a young-looking fifty-four. But enough about me, I want to know what’s going on with Sniper and Thea.”
“We are not done talking about this,” Eden warns her.
“Yes, Mother, now hush,” Sadie drawls sarcastically.
All eyes are back on me. “Well, we’re going to give a relationship a try,” I say uncertainly, shrugging my shoulders.
“So you finally managed to convince him, huh?” Izzy asks.
I shake my head. “More like the other way around. I am not all that certain we will work.”
“How could you not?” Rose asks. “You come from similar working backgrounds, and you know each other already. I mean, sure, you had your rough start at the beginning, but that happens. Now you know what buttons to push when he really pisses you off.”
I chuckle. “Calling him old certainly seems to do that.”
“Age is just a number like they say,” Eden reminds me. She ignores Sadie when she gives her a pointed look. “Honestly, Sniper keeps himself in really good shape, so I don’t think you have to worry about him croaking on you. I mean, if Bullet hasn’t croaked with all the stuff Rose does to him and the shit around here, Sniper certainly won’t.”
There’s a round of laughter, including from Rose, and I can’t help but grin. “He’s definitely in shape,” I agree. “But I like to needle him because I know it irritates him, but I also secretly think he likes it.”
“You mean like he enjoys proving you wrong?” Syn asks. I nod.
“Oh, that’s no surprise.” Rose scoffs. “I love to tell Bullet he can’t do things just so he tries to prove me wrong. Thea, you’ll figure out pretty quick that the men around here, their egos are too big for their britches. At least when it comes to being right and with the women they love.”
“So what about Sniper makes you hesitant?” Sadie suddenly asks bluntly, making me look at her sharply. I give her a questioning look. “You said that Sniper had to persuade you to give him a shot, and you seem like someone that makes up her mind pretty quickly, so you must have had a good reason not to give in. And as much as I get the whole poking at his ego, or him being good in bed, there’s more to it, isn’t there?”
It’s such an abrupt change in topic that at first I don’t reply as I try to gather my thoughts. How do I tell them I didn’t want to until he told me what was going on around here? I told Sniper I wouldn’t stick my nose in, and I have no idea how much these ladies know, so I probably shouldn’t be blabbing either. So I stick with, “I wasn’t sure about the MC life. I don’t know anything about it. What I knew was because of Sons of Anarchy, though I know it’s probably wildly inaccurate, and because Theo wanted to Prospect and work for the club. And that also means things could get messy if we don’t work out, because now that I have a job with the security business, my job could be on the line.”
“That wouldn’t happen,” Rose assures me gently, patting my arm in comfort. “Not only because they’re good and fair men, but because they don’t do messy. Shadow and Viper hired you, and if you’re good at your job, and I know you are, they will keep things separate. They might have to figure out the jobs you go on so that you don’t cross paths with Sniper. But, at the same time, I know they would help you find a new job if you didn’t want to stay. Not because they want you out, but because it’s what you want. I’ve seen them do it for other people that worked for them in the past that didn’t want to be associated with the MC, so it’s not just a you thing.”
That eases some of the worry inside me, more than what Sniper promised me. Men like to say a lot of things, but even now I can’t trust it one hundred percent. Maybe in time I’ll get there, but hearing it from Rose does make me feel a little better.
“And being in an MC environment is going to be an adjustment,” Syn points out. “There are rules and things that don’t really align themselves with the way of modern thinking, and for a lot of us that’s hard. Namely, that they still think we’re in the fifties and they don’t want us to worry our pretty little heads. Let them run the show, earn the money, and be happy to be barefoot and pregnant at home.”
Sage scoffs. “No, that’s what Stone wants for you. And that’s mostly because you are pregnant and he doesn’t want the dogs to chomp on him when you eventually get all moody and yell at him.”
That earns a few more chuckles.
“I think the biggest thing is, does Sniper make you happy?” Rose asks.
“I mean, for the most part, but again, we don’t know much about each other. It’s not like we’ve been dating and decided to go steady. A few weeks ago, we couldn’t even be around each other without fighting. But I suppose even when he was my superior officer, we had chemistry. We just didn’t dare act on it. Well, that and he felt I was too young for him.”
“You’re what, again, ten years younger?” Sage asks. I nod. “That’s nothing. Now, if you were eighteen and he was twenty-eight, then sure, I’d get that. But you’re thirty-two. It’s a far cry from robbing the cradle.”
“When we first met, I was twenty-two and he was thirty-two. And that is a larger difference when you’re that young. I really was just a kid and not done growing up, and he was a man that had already been through and seen things I didn’t know were out there. Still didn’t stop me or any of the other women in the squads from drooling over him though,” I grin, reminiscing.
“I’ve seen some pictures of him back then.” Rose grins wickedly. “I’d be slipping and sliding from all the drool coming out of my mouth, that’s for sure.”
“There was a time that one of the other women in my training group happened to see him up ahead where he and some of his team were working out shirtless. She tripped over her own two feet, smashed her face onto the ground, and busted her nose pretty good. We all covered for her that someone left something in the pathway, and everyone seemed to believe it, but she didn’t ever live that down. Especially not when she had to be around him and the other superiors and they liked to ask her about her face and how she was feeling.”
“Poor girl,” Izzy says sympathetically. “Nothing worse when you embarrass yourself in front of your crush. What did Sniper do?”
“He helped her up and had one of the other guys send her to the medic bay. Then he ordered the rest of us to get back to our laps. He was always the hard-ass. Even to the point that I got myself in trouble with him. I was scrubbing toilets for weeks with a toothbrush. He somehow figured out that I hated cleaning the bathrooms. Probably because we had to share a communal one.”
They all laugh. “Yeah, that sounds like Sniper. He once had a Prospect doing the exact same thing to every bathroom in this place,” Rose recalls fondly. “The Prospect was an ass anyway so as far as I’m concerned maybe it taught him some respect. Though he left not long after so maybe not. But now you have to tell us what you did to make him do that to you.” They all lean in excitedly.
Somehow, my grin widens even further as I recall that day. “I was already in a pissy mood because one of the other women that bunked with me had used up the last of my favorite lotion, and that shit was expensive. So I had to use another kind, it irritated my skin something fierce within a couple of hours. So I wasn’t in the most chipper of moods, and someone in our squad pissed off the CO because they weren’t putting any effort into the task we were doing. So the CO made us run laps, despite the fact that we had done a five mile run that morning. Add in the skin issues and I was not a happy camper.
“Our CO had to leave on another assignment, and Sniper was tasked with overseeing us to finish our day. And of course, the moment he found out I was in the squad, he decided to push me to see how far I would go. We were just about finished and he ordered me and two of the tallest men in our group to pick up a long heavy item and carry it to the equipment room in another building a good hundred feet away, knowing full well that the moment they lifted it on their shoulders I wouldn’t be able to reach it or help. And I lost my temper and told him he was a horse’s ass, obviously blind, and clearly needed an anatomy lesson as well as a math lesson on how height and body types worked. He tried to warn me to stop while I was ahead, but I knew I was already in deep shit, so why bother stopping? So I let him have it. By the time I was done, everyone was silent and shocked, and I was on toilet duty, along with having to run another three miles. But I got back at him for that though.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask how.” Rose giggles, but then waves at me to continue.
“See, he also ordered me to clean his and the other COs’ bathrooms as well. And at one point, he had to leave because he was called away when he was supervising me. So I got up, dunked his toothbrush in the dirty toilet water, and used it to clean the bathroom. Then, when I was finished, I put it back, and went back out to his room. Since he wasn’t back yet, and sure he was going to be a little while, I hurried down to the mess hall, where they were serving shrimp and salmon for dinner. And then I took small pieces of both, rushed back to his room, and hid them in his curtain rods.”
“Oh my God,” Sadie gasped, shocked, but then starts laughing like a lunatic. “That is brilliant!” The other women are laughing and nodding their head in agreement.
I grin. “By the time he came back, I was already on to the final CO’s bathroom, who just let me in and left, uncaring. Sniper came in to check on me and said he hoped I learned my lesson. I told him I had. I went back to his bathroom to clean for a couple more days, until finally the stench was so bad in there, I refused. No one could figure it out, and Sniper was pissed and he couldn’t blame me so he just let it go. They tore it all apart, cleaned it, cleaned the vents, you name it. Everything he owned stank, and that room had to be quarantined off for like a week until they decided that something must have died in the walls and they had an exterminator come in and tear it all apart. Lucky for me, there actually was a dead something in the wall, and they basically threw everything out in the room. Including the curtain rod and the curtains. He was in the worst mood for weeks and miserable because he had to be moved to another room in another building. It wasn’t long after that he got called up to serve on the Forces team, but it was worth it. He never figured out it was me.”
“My girl.” Rose beams, high-fiving me. “That is deliciously petty, wicked, and utterly brilliant. I would never have thought of doing something like that. And you’re sure he never figured out it was you?”
“He tried to accuse me once, but I happily reminded him that he stood and watched me the entire time like a creepy old man so it was impossible. It wasn’t my fault he didn’t know how to keep his shit clean.” I sigh happily at the memory. “He was so intent on finding the source of the smell he didn’t even bother to yell at me for the creepy old man comment.”
“And no one else knew or figured it out?” Sage asks, wide-eyed and looking thoughtful.
“Nope. The other women were pissed it meant the hot CO wasn’t around anymore for them to gawk over, and the other COs and the men on our teams were just glad not to have to deal with the stench anymore. Especially because the men on our team were the ones who had to haul everything out for him. Pretty sure most of them vomited at least once.”
“Remind me to never get on your bad side.” Izzy snickers. “That’s some next level petty and I am here for it.” She lifts her hand up for me to high-five across the table.
“That was probably the meanest thing I’ve done,” I say, thinking back. “Though when we were kids and Theo used to piss me off, I would bury his toys in the backyard and act like I never saw them or touched them. Does that count?”
“Did he ever find them?” Syn asks.
“The dog would sniff them out and dig them up. But he assumed it was the dog in the first place.” I shrug.
“I should have known you were the one who did that,” Theo’s voice says behind me, sounding aggravated. The women’s eyes widen as they turn to look at him. Me, I just turn my head and grin. “I even told Mom I was sure it was you, but she didn’t want to believe her little angel could do something so mean and evil.”
“I was an angel,” I counter smugly. “You were the one who didn’t know how to keep himself out of trouble. And you also wouldn’t stop taking my dolls and using them as target practice when you and your friends were trying out Dad’s guns. Or don’t you remember getting grounded for like two years when I ratted you out.” I look at my nails and then him pointedly. “Or should I be the one to tell Dad now about the fact that you used to sneak in beer and Sherry Tracker into his old camper behind the shed so you could get busy and drink until you both passed out? And that you were the one to leave the door open after because you were so intent on getting out of there before he caught you that the raccoons got in that night and destroyed the place. And Dad had to junk it and cost him thousands of dollars?”
Theo glares at me. “You wouldn’t dare, because then I would have to tell him about the time that you hooked up with Danny Prescott in the back of Dad’s old truck, and then you two took it on a joyride and got it stuck. Of course, Dad could never imagine his little girl doing something like that so you lied and said someone must have stolen it. You know, since you couldn’t blame it on me,” he adds with a narrow-eyed glare.
“You guys seem like you get along so well now,” Rose remarks, looking between the two of us. “Or is that all a show.”
We both grin at her. “Not all show. When we were teenagers, we had our moments. The rest of the time we were thick as thieves and we stuck up for each other or covered for each other,” Theo explains. “Like the time we were horsing around in the house and accidentally broke our mother’s absolute favorite lamp. It was some ugly thing she picked up second hand but for some reason she loved it more than any other piece of furniture in the house. Thea accidentally kicked it and sent it flying. We spent an hour coming up with this elaborate explanation of what happened to it and how we fixed it if they noticed. And when they did, we immediately started spewing it.”
“And long story short, they figured out it was me.” I sigh. “But because he stuck up for me and didn’t admit to the lie, Theo got punished too. Wasn’t it that we couldn’t go to the dance at the end of the school year or something?”
Theo pouts at the reminder. “Considering that the hottest chick in school asked me and I had to tell her I couldn’t go, effectively making it so that I never got a chance to have any kind of anything with the head cheerleader, I’m still pissed about that.”
I roll my eyes while the other women giggle. “Considering how many women you’ve been with since then, I think you’re fine.”
“We’ll never know now, will we.” He sniffs. “But I came in here to take my break and also let you know that Cryos wants to talk to you. Something about security the next time you’re in the office.”
“Oh, okay.” I’m instantly distracted. “I guess I should probably go and look into that.” I get to my feet. “I’ll be back,” I tell the women with a smile. “And remind me to tell you about the time I made a CO cry.”
“Thea, you are going to be a lot of fun around here, I can already tell.” Rose beams. “And I’ll be taking notes.”
I swear I hear someone that I can’t see groan at that, but I just grin and step away from Theo. “Are you on duty to watch over them?” I ask him in a low voice.
He nods. “I’m going to get myself something quick to eat in the kitchen and then come out to sit with them and eat. Make it really casual. Viper told me they don’t want the women knowing they’re being guarded in case they worry.”
I nod. “Alright. Point me toward Cryos’s office and once I hear what’s up with him I’ll come back so you can go get some sleep.”
“Thanks, sis,” he says before he heads for the kitchen once he directs me on where to find Cryos.
When I get to Cryos’s office door, I knock briskly and wait until he calls me in. Walking inside, he looks over at me absently for a moment while typing away furiously before going back to staring intently at the screen directly in front of him. “I gotta finish this, and then we’ll talk,” he tells me. “Don’t touch anything, and just hang out.”
I move to lean against the wall on the left side of the room since it’s the only uncluttered spot. Personally, I couldn’t work in this kind of chaos, but to each their own. I look around the room, remembering what it was like to sit in front of screens like this day in and day out trying to decode things, or get information to my team. Usually, we were in the middle of nowhere having to set something up for me, but it was the same no matter where. I was in charge of telling them where to go, how to get there, and of any dangers that may lie ahead. I wonder if Cryos does that here at all?
I don’t see any equipment that would suggest it, but then again, he probably wouldn’t want to leave that out for someone to walk in and see it. I glance at his desk, which is piled full of papers and smirk softly. Yeah, I remember that too. There were times that it would be piled so high on my desk because of the constant communications coming in. I always sorted and filed it once the craziness died down, but considering how high that pile is, I have a feeling Cryos does not do that.
I start to move my eyes away, but stop when something on the top sheet catches my attention. I don’t move, but I zero in on the sheet again. From this distance I see a bunch of words, with other words scribbled underneath them, and then a mirrored copy scanned to the other side of the long sheet, with the exact same words written out again.
It’s obviously a code of some kind, but why is there a mirror copy? People don’t make mirrors that match the exact same. They want someone to think they have an exact replica, but in reality, they simply are given one with actual data and one with false. Unless of course, these are both fakes.
I glance over at Cryos, who is still so engrossed in his screens that he’s not paying me the least bit of attention. I subtly shift closer to look at the sheet more closely. I narrow my eyes at the code, vaguely recalling seeing something kind of like it before, but almost different. It’s almost like someone took a bastardized version of an old code used in WWI or WWII, maybe even Vietnam, and switched things around making it a whole new code. Though I can’t be sure.
The one thing I can be sure of is that the person that deciphered it, missed a lot. They missed the fact that on the second sheet, the letters are tilted and even skewed, and some of them have extra lines through them; and to the untrained eye it might look like they made a mistake and were fixing it, but in reality, they’re actually clues to a new code.
But which one is the correct one and which one is the fake? And why did Cryos leave it sitting out like this? Seems a little odd that he wouldn’t worry someone like me or one of the women might see it.
I glance up at Cryos and see him watching me, brow raised, but more out of curiosity than anger. “Did you want me to see this?” I finally ask him after a moment.
“Why would you think that?” he counters.
“Because from what I can see, you’ve hidden everything else that could possibly be seen as club business, but you left this out, on top, scanned and facing my way. And you also called me in here when you could have come out to find me and spoke to me out there.” I narrow my eyes slightly, daring him to lie to me.
“I keep saying you’re smart,” he answers as he gets to his feet. “And so we’re clear, I’ll never admit to leaving it to you to find or that I wanted you to look at it. As far as the brothers are concerned, it fell off my desk when you stumbled into it, and you picked it up and read it. Right?” The look he gives me is hard and pointed.
Ah, so that’s how it is. He needs to save face so he doesn’t get in shit for involving me. “And if someone finds out that isn’t true? How much trouble will you get in? And me by extension?”
“No one except Sniper is going to find out, so it doesn’t matter,” he replies. “And he won’t want to get you in shit, so the only one who might get in shit is me, but he won’t be all too pissed. Especially if you can figure it out quickly and tell me where Silver made his mistakes.”
I glance down at papers again, and then pick them up to look at them closely. And just as I thought, one of them is slightly different from the others. One page has a blob of ink in the top right that looks like pen splatter, but to me looks more like it was intentionally put there. “Since these are scans, I don’t know if I can tell you that,” I explain carefully to Cryos, lifting my gaze to his. “Do you have the originals?”
“Not here. Bullet and Sniper put them in the safe and I can’t risk getting them,” Cryos answers. “But I can tell you the one on the right is from a journal that belonged to the guy who betrayed us. We found it in his room. The one on the left is from a journal we found inside a wall at the bar before it blew up.”
“And did both show the same wear and tear? Did one look slightly newer, or did one have some kind of distinct marking that was different from the other one?”
“Couldn’t tell you. I didn’t pay that close of attention. We only care about the information inside.”
“Well, Silver managed to get some of it right, though from the look of the scribbles on the sheet it took a bit for him to get it. But he missed some things. He has location coordinates, and while they both are, some of the numbers should be different.” I reach out my hand absently and say, “I need a pen.” Cryos stuffs one into my outstretched hand and I quickly start to work through the code.
I lose track of time as I start to write, so engrossed in the words turning into numbers and letters on paper. Whoever came up with this, they were trying to make sure they wouldn’t be caught, but wanted to send someone on a merry chase if they tried to decipher it. When I get the first page done, I look up at Cryos. “You have multiple locations in the same places,” I explain. “Whoever wrote the journals wanted you to go there, not find anything, and leave if you have the wrong one. Or, what he wants you to find isn’t the exact location of whatever he’s hiding.”
“It’s a decoy,” Cryos replies, voice clipped and his body straightening.
I nod. “Like this one.” I turn the sheet around and point to the first line. “This here, if you put in one set, and then put in the one I did, with the slight difference, you see that they are close together, but just far enough apart you might walk right by it and never think to look there.”
“That’s the one Sniper and Bullet are at now,” Cryos says as he moves away toward the computer. “I need to let them know before they leave, because this is what we’ve been missing. Don’t go anywhere, because I might need you to answer some more questions.”