CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
When Hammer told them to get rid of Vera, everybody was alarmed. Especially Vera. “What you mean get rid of her?” Reno asked. “What she did to deserve death? She’s just telling us what she knows. Unless you know more than she’s telling us.”
“Put her in another guest house, Reno, for crying out loud. That’s what I meant. We need to talk in this one.”
“Oh!” said Reno. “What you thought we were gonna think? Getting rid of somebody in our world means something different than in your world.”
“You mean in the normal world?” Hammer asked.
“Like your ass normal,” said Reno. “Yeah right.”
Mick looked at Nikki. “Put her in the guest house on the other side of the pool and stay with her,” he ordered her. “Don’t take her lightly, Nikki. She knows what she’s doing.”
“Yes sir,” said Nikki as she took Vera by the arm and escorted her out of the guest house.
That left Tommy and Grace, Reno and Sal, and Mick, Amelia, and Big Daddy in the room. All familiar faces. But it was Reno, as usual, who spoke up. “I knew that shit was too convenient,” he said.
“What are you yammering about now, Reno?” asked Sal.
“The fact that Hammer just so happen to be one of three people in this whole country with the ability to deactivate that implantation device they put in TJ was suspicious on its face. And before he even knew TJ was implanted he just so happen to be willing to hop a plane to come all this way to Seattle rather than handling it from DC like he usually does.”
“Which could only mean,” said Mick, “that he already knew about that implantation.”
They all looked at Hammer. Stunned. “You knew?” asked Amelia.
“Did I know that TJ had been implanted? No,” said Hammer. “Did I have intelligence that the front end of the technology, the implantation device itself, had been compromised and that something like this could happen? Yes. Did I think in a million years it would happen to this family? No.”
“How was it compromised?” asked Mick.
“A rogue player from our government sold it to a party not affiliated with our government. A hostile party. We don’t which government has it yet, but that’s what we’re working on.
They also have limited use. They can implant, which is a problem in and of itself, but they can’t deactivate.
That technology isn’t stealable. But when that government, which shall remain nameless, sold the implantation device to an individual, we knew all bets were off. ”
“Vera talked as if she knew who they sold it to,” said Tommy. “Does she?”
“She only knows what her boyfriend Ludwick Jelinski tells her. And all Luddie knows is that it was a government that sold that technology. But he don’t know which government. I don’t even know that yet. But he knew who they sold it to.”
“Who?” asked Amelia.
They all braced themselves for the answer. “Does The Hawk ring a bell?” asked Hammer.
Tommy and Reno were astounded. “The Hawk?” asked Reno. “Are you talking about Ingrid Hawken, the heiress?”
Hammer nodded. “That’s the one.”
Now Grace was astounded. “Isn’t she the woman you and Reno had a meeting with in Alberta, British Columbia when that school shooting took place?”
“That’s her,” said Tommy, nodding his head.
“Mind you, I just learned this stuff myself,” said Hammer. “My agencies are just piecing it together as we speak. But it looks as though it was all orchestrated.”
“But why?” asked Tommy.
“She’s being flown here to Seattle as we speak.
You’ll may get answers after we place her in our undisclosed location and I interrogate her.
Then we’ll see if you need to have at her too.
But first you need to talk to Luddie. He’s her muscle on the ground.
There would have been no implantation of TJ, or kidnapping of Destiny and the baby, without him. ”
“Then why aren’t your guys interrogating him?”
“Because he doesn’t know shit about the sale.
He just knows who it was ultimately sold to: Ingrid Hawken.
Only Ingrid knows who sold it to her. She knows what government has it.
And that’s the intel we’re after. I don’t mean to sound heartless, but nothing else concerns us.
We have to know what government. We’ll give her total immunity if she gives up that name. ”
“Total immunity?” asked Tommy. “Like hell you’ll immune her from prosecution if she’s responsible for what our children went through.”
“Where’s Luddie?” asked Big Daddy as Hammer’s phone buzzed.
“He’s at that nightclub on Beyan,” Hammer replied as he checked his text message.
“We’ve got a tail on him, but we aren’t approaching him,” he continued talking.
“We’ll leaving him up to you. And once your guys arrive, my guys are leaving.
Chasing down some mobster isn’t what we do.
Chasing down a woman who bought government secrets from another government hostile to the United States, and that has no business with those secrets, is what we do.
I’ve got to go.” He began responding to the text and heading for the exit.
“Did they just tell you that Ingrid Hawken’s in town?” asked Tommy.
“I’m not answering that question,” said Hammer. “I’m already doing way too much for your asses as it is.”
“You gotta give us a piece of that lying bitch though, Hammer,” said Reno. “Pretending she wanted to make a deal. Wasting our time like that. And she was the one masterminding this shit the whole time? You gotta let us at least choke that bitch.”
“Only if we have no further use for her,” Hammer said as he opened the door. “Which I doubt very seriously.”
“What if she clams up and claim she knows nothing?” asked Big Daddy.
Hammer stopped and looked at the man he respected more than anybody else in that guest house.
He closed the door back. “She can’t claim that.
We have too much evidence. And if she won’t talk, then she’ll be tortured.
She’ll be either dead or on the verge of death if she doesn’t give up the intel we need.
But either way, she’ll be of no use to you when we finish with her.
” Then Hammer pointed at Amelia. “Behave your ass or else,” he said to her as he opened the door again.
“Ah fuck you, Hammer,” she said to him.
Hammer looked her up and down as if he wanted her to do just that. But he had bigger fish to fry: namely Ingrid Hawken. He left.
“We all wanna go find that prick Luddie, but we all can’t go,” said Reno. “Who’s going? I know I am.”
“I know I am too,” said Grace. “Those are my children they did this to. I wanna know why and I wanna know straight from the people involved.”
Reno and Sal were dead-set against it. Mick and Big Daddy too. But Tommy had the final say on what his wife could or couldn’t do. And he was staring at Grace.
But he always said no. Unlike the other wives, who got to be a part of the action when it was personal like that, Tommy always sheltered Grace. “Tommy please,” she pleaded.
But he couldn’t do it. Not his wife. He couldn’t risk his children losing both of their parents. No way. “You’re staying,” he said.
Grace had tears in her eyes. “Please Tommy. Everybody else in the family trusts their wives to handle it when it involves them. I can handle it too.”
“I know you can handle it, Grace,” Tommy said, grabbing both of her slender hands and looking into her beautiful, earnest eyes. “But I can’t,” he admitted with his heart in his voice. “I can’t. You stay here with the children. You take care of them. And I’ll be back before you know it.”
Grace stared at Tommy. She knew he was doing the right thing for the family. And she knew she wanted to go mainly to protect him. But he was right. The children came first.
She pulled him into her arms. “If he gets away, he gets away,” she whispered to him. “We rather have you back home with us, you hear me, Tommy? Come back home to us no matter what.”
Tommy squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t deserve this wonderful woman. He didn’t! “I will, Grace,” he said to her. Then he leaned back and looked her in her eyes. “I will.”
Then Grace gave a smile, not of joy, but of acceptance. And then Mick, Reno, Sal and Tommy, with Grace going to see them off, left the guest house.
Amelia took Big Daddy by the arm and they began leaving too. “Don’t you ever want to go where the action is too, Charles?” she asked him as they walked.
“Never,” said Big Daddy. He was the only family member that was never actively in the mob, and refused to let his four sons and three daughters be involved as well.
Although one of his daughters, Ashley, married mob boss Monk Paletti, and his other daughter, Carly, married Hammer’s brother and government assassin Trevor Reese.
But they were the outliers. “But I know you wanted to go,” he said. “Why didn’t you?”
Amelia shook her head. “I couldn’t bear to hear Hammer’s mouth again.
Before we came to town, he stormed into my office like he was gonna beat my ass.
He threatened to shut my entire business down just because some of my clients have mob affiliations.
I’m have a private eye agency, Charlie. Most of my clients are lowlifes.
I don’t have the luxury to pick and choose who my clients can be.
” Then she shook her head. “I have to pick my battles with that man these days.”
“I told you that a long time ago,” said Big Daddy. “But do you listen? Never. But I love your stubborn ass anyway,” he added with a smile as his younger half-sister leaned against him, smiling too, and they made their way back to the main house.
But their smiles dissipated when they thought about their brother Mick and Amelia’s husband Hammer and all the others going into the fire once again.