Chapter Fourteen
The next day
Ice nodded at Scars, and closed the door behind King. He stood with his back against the wall, watching the other two men warily eye each other. Ice wondered at the very unusual awkwardness, resolved to keep this mouth shut until Scars told him to do otherwise. After all, King had just shown up at Satan’s two minutes before without any warning at all, and had insisted that the three of them talk. King never lost his cool, but there was something in his expression today that was unlike him: he looked shaken. None of this boded well, but Ice wasn’t sure what he needed to be worried about. Not yet.
“So,” Scars said as they sat. “What’s up, King?”
“Denton’s dead.”
“He – what ?”
“Dead. Murdered.”
Scars paused, and in a matter of seconds, he had adjusted to this new reality. “How?”
“He was dragged to death.”
“Like – dragged behind a car ?”
“A motorcycle, Bale told me.”
The mood in the room sharpened immediately, went up several notches and gear levels.
“How does he know that for sure?” Scars asked. “That it was a bike?”
“Because Denton was still chained up to it when they found the body.” King sighed. “Well… pieces of the body. He was scattered over about two miles, and had no skin or muscle on his front at all. He had to be identified by a tattoo on his shoulder, since there was no face left to speak of.”
“He was dragged on his front ?”
“Yeah. Chained by his wrists to the back of the bike, it looks like. His insides are on the outside, torn out of his body and left all over the road.”
“Jesus Christ,” Scars breathed; this was far too vivid imagery. Scars had seen exactly one dragging injury in his life, and it was one of the most gruesome things he’d ever laid eyes on, with the skin and muscle gone, ripped off right down to ribcage and intestines… and that had been a legitimate accident and the guy had been dragged under the car all of maybe fifty feet. “I’m sorry, man. I know that you two went way back.”
“So help me get who did this.” King’s gray eyes were absolute steel, but still watchful. “Help me get fucking Viper Grant.”
“He’s been pretty busy, huh?” Scars commented casually, as if he was talking about the weather. “Between kidnapping two kids in Pennsylvania, and trying to kill two people in Colorado, and somehow getting the jump on a seasoned cop in Utah – he’s clearly a man who has too much fucking time on his hands. He seems to be way more informed about us than we presumed, too.”
King was silent, and Ice and Scars exchanged quick glances. The silence was unsettling in a weird way, like King was actually considering whether to tell them what was on his mind… like he wasn’t sure that he fully trusted them with what he was thinking.
“King,” Scars said quietly, deciding to broach the touchy subject. “How sure are you that this was The Hellions? And if it was, how sure are you that they’re doing all of this on their own?”
King shot him a look. “How sure are you ?”
“I’m not.” Scars held out his hands, palms-up. “That’s why I’m asking.”
“I’m also not so fucking sure. Not anymore.”
Silence fell again, but this felt different: it was the quiet of smart, suspicious men privately rearranging and reorganizing their thoughts. Like something was coming into focus that they hadn’t quite pinned down yet – something that was going to change the whole picture, and not for the better.
“Bale,” Ice finally said, uttering the only word that was echoing over and over in his head. “Is it possible?”
King exhaled, hard. “I wouldn’t have thought so, man. I mean, Denton vouched for him without reservation or hesitation, and in my experience, the man has never been wrong about a colleague, not once in more than ten years of us working together. The man’s instincts were world-class. Better than mine, in a few cases.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” Scars said carefully. “Was this Denton’s first at being wrong?”
“Maybe.” King stared at the other men, and he was totally focused again. “Maybe.”
“So, maybe we walk through that possibility,” Scars said. “We go back to the very beginning, and we say that Bale is dirty, and we treat it as fact. If it’s true – and we’re saying that it is – what happens first?”
“He convinces Denton to bring him on board because of his experience in the gang unit,” King said. “He uses our trust in Denton to give him credibility, and then he’s in the door here with all of us.”
“Uh-huh,” Scars agreed. “Then he tells us that he has a CI inside The Hellions, but we can’t know anything about him, because he’s high-up in the club, and he’d be at risk if word got out. For all we know, he does actually have a man inside, but I doubt that he’d use any intel gained from him to help us.”
“Right.” King sighed. “So then Bale’s our only point of contact to the club, and he moves back and forth between us and his mystery man freely – assuming said man exists – reporting what he says his CI has told him . Which he can tell us is anything at all, right?”
“And maybe Denton gets suspicious about something,” Scars added. “I mean, he had his own contacts in the Utah MC world – maybe he caught wind of something that made him question Bale.”
“And Bale gets rid of him,” King said heavily. “Makes it look like The Hellions are involved by killing him using a motorcycle.”
“Maybe they are involved,” Scars pointed out. “They could have been tipped off by Bale, and then Viper and his boys did the actual dirty work, provided Bale with an alibi. Hell, if he plays his cards right, he might even be put in charge of the investigation into Denton’s death, and wouldn’t that be convenient?”
“Unless –”
King and Scars both looked at Ice standing against the wall with his massive arms crossed, but he seemed hesitant to finish his sentence.
“Unless what?” Scars asked him.
“Unless Denton was in on it too, right from the jump,” Ice said slowly, hating to be the one to say any of this , but come on … it had to be aired, at least. “He and Bale were working with The Hellions, though fuck knows why. Maybe Viper and his boys have something on the cops, or maybe it’s as simple as Denton and Bale needing money, so they got on the MC payroll and tipped them off about police activity. Then for whatever reason, Denton became a liability. Maybe he wanted to tell us the truth, or maybe he wanted out. Maybe kidnapping and killing kids was a bridge too far for him, and Bale knew it, so Denton had to go.” He paused, looked at King’s grim expression. “I’m sorry, man. I mean –”
“No, I know.” King ran his hand through his dark hair. “You’re not the only one who thought about that. I admit that I considered it on my way over here.”
“And?” Scars prompted.
“And Denton had nothing to do with it, and I’d lay my life on that. He rumbled Bale somehow, and he was killed for it.”
Scars shrugged. “OK. Then we go with that.”
Ice didn’t look as sure-fire convinced, but he nodded at his President’s decision. After all, he had never met Denton in person, never spoken to Bale at all, and once again, he cursed himself for not being part of the planning process to safeguard Wolf. Maybe he’d have picked up on something that the other guys missed, or maybe not, but at least he’d know for sure either way.
And that brought up a whole new problem, and from the look on King and Scars’ hard faces, they’d twigged to it as well. The three men stared at each other, a whole new horror looming over them, all around them.
“So if Bale is working with Viper,” Scars said hollowly. “And we can’t trust Bale, then that means that we can’t believe anything that he’s told us about –”
“Wolf,” Ice finished. “We can’t believe a single fucking thing that Bale says the CI has told him about Wolf. Not about him being safe, and him witnessing Wolf working with Viper. Nothing.”
The men looked down at the cut draped across the chair that their President had left in their care, then fell silent yet again, all thinking the exact same thing:
Wolf might be dead, he might have been dead the minute he crossed into Utah .
This time, though, none of them spoke their fears aloud. They didn’t dare. It felt too much like pushing whatever luck they might have left, or tempting a fate that hadn’t been realized quite yet.
Maybe they still had time.
Maybe .