Chapter 31 #2
“She’s a high risk OB,” Drifter answered, eyes still locked with Relay’s. He wasn’t about to be the first one to back down. “Camila doesn’t need a high risk OB.”
“Doesn’t mean your fancy doctor couldn’t have helped her,” Kilo muttered.
“She could have, and would have, if I asked, but it would’ve been overkill and probably stressed Camila out if you took her to see a specialist when she didn’t need it.”
Kilo considered that. “Fine. But next time give us the fancy doctor. I’ll handle any anxiety Camila has over it.”
Drifter shrugged, eyes locked on Relay. “Will do.”
“You two finish your fucking pissing contest later,” Ruck told Drifter and Relay, giving up on the hope that they’d give up any information.
They broke eye contact at the same time now that their president had allowed them to disengage without one of them losing.
“I’ll get Glitch started on researching Bowers,” he told me. “See what’s going on.”
Ruck heaved a sigh. “In the meantime, we need to do everything we can to keep him from connecting anything else to us.”
“How would he know we were involved in the factory fire?” I asked. “Or the apartment complex? We didn’t leave behind anything to make him suspicious of us.”
“Maybe he found proof somewhere else and is assuming it’s us,” Flir answered.
“Like what?” Strike asked.
“Could be anything,” Ruck replied. “Something from Kruzman or Carrick.”
“Or even from before. It’s not like we haven’t been doing this shit for a while,” Flir said in a dry tone. “Maybe we slipped up somewhere and he’s piecing it all together.”
I scrubbed a hand over the back of my neck. “Fuck. Like we don’t have enough going on? Now we have to deal with an overzealous cop. Perfect.”
“He doesn’t have anything yet,” Kilo pointed out.
“How do you know?” Drifter asked.
“Because he’d have arrested us already,” Strike answered first. “He wouldn’t need to follow Devyn around, trying to piece everything together. He’d be waving a warrant in our faces while his lackeys put us in handcuffs.”
I nodded in agreement.
“He’s still digging. We just need to make sure we move forward with caution. Anything else pop up that we weren’t expecting?” Ruck asked, arching a brow as his gaze swept over us.
Everyone remained silent. It was a relief. We didn’t need any more trouble at the moment. We were up to our fucking balls in it already.
“Good,” Ruck said. “The cops sniffing around is an inconvenience, but our focus has to be on these two factions of The Collective.”
“Is the rest of the organization mobilizing?” I asked.
“No, thankfully they’re hanging back to see what these two can do.”
“Probably still don’t realize our capabilities,” OD said with a smirk.
“They’ll figure it out once we start busting some heads,” Strike replied.
“It’s going to be better than that,” Ruck told him with a grin.
“What’s better than busting heads? Cracking them open?” Relay looked genuinely perplexed.
Flir sighed. “Simpletons. Yes, you get to crack open some skulls of the very easily replaceable dirtbags. But we’ve found something better than that.”
I laughed, because for this group not only was there nothing better than cracking heads, there simply wasn’t anything else. The confused group just stared at Flir in complete non-comprehension of what he was saying.
Ruck arched a brow at Flir. “We? I don’t remember you hammering at a damn keyboard while Glitch barked orders at you over the phone.”
“Glitch gets a bit…overbearing…when he’s working,” OD said with a grimace.
Ruck snorted. “That’s putting it mildly. He’s lucky he wasn’t sitting next to me. By the way, we’re going to have a vote and decide on one of you to work with him.”
“One of us?” Kilo asked with a grimace.
“Don’t worry,” Flir told him. “It won’t be you.”
Kilo scoffed at that. “Why not me? I could do that shit.” Then he paused as he realized he’d just worked against himself by declaring that.
“The fuck you could,” Relay said with a laugh. “We’ve seen you use a computer.” He mimed hunting and pecking at a keyboard.
Kilo flipped him off, but didn’t say anything else.
He didn’t actually want to get stuck as our tech guy.
And none of us wanted to learn from Glitch.
Overbearing was a nice way of describing Glitch while he worked.
Add in trying to teach someone without inherent computer skills to hack? It was going to be a nightmare.
Ruck nodded. “Yeah. One of you.”
“What about Ryan or Teddy?” Drifter asked.
We all stared at him.
“Well shit,” I muttered. “Why didn’t any of us think of that?”
“I did,” Ruck replied.
“Then why are you saying one of us?” Kilo asked.
Ruck pointed over at a silently fuming OD. It only took a few extra seconds for the VP to lose his cool. “Are you implying that we put one of my kids in charge of a bunch of illegal shit?” he asked, scowling at Drifter.
“They’re young,” Strike pointed out. “Good with computers-”
“Way better than most of us,” I added, then closed my mouth when OD’s furious gaze landed on me.
“And they’re eager to learn,” Strike finished. “It’s a great idea, actually. I can’t believe you thought of it.”
Drifter rolled his eyes at Strike, but didn’t get the chance to respond to the dig.
“Oh sure. Great idea,” OD snapped. “Except that it puts under-aged kids in potentially dangerous situations.”
“They’re doing some hacking, OD,” Relay said. “We’re not arming them and bringing them along when we go to kill shit bags.”
“And yet if anyone finds out what they’re up to, they could target my boys.
Not to mention they’d be held liable if they were caught doing illegal shit.
And,” we all grimaced as his voice continued to get louder as he spoke, “no one has pointed out what would happen once Rue finds out we’ve roped two teenagers into our fucking messes. Her teenagers at that.”
“Messes?” Flir asked, looking horrified. “Our missions aren’t messes.” There wasn’t really a more offensive thing to say to Flir than to imply anything he was involved with was a mess.
“And that’s why I didn’t suggest we use the teenagers,” Ruck said. He shot OD a look, which had our VP shutting his mouth even though it looked like he wanted to rip us all new assholes. “Flir, run us down the latest intel on The Collective.”
Flir nodded, then tapped at his laptop. “From a legal standpoint these guys are good, but not creative. Part of their money laundering is real estate purchases. Rather than hide out in abandoned warehouses like vagrants, they buy properties under an LLC.”
“So they’re…setting up shop in the suburbs?” Strike asked.
“No, I told you they’re clever. They buy commercial properties, or in some cases, apartment buildings. All in the shady parts of town. Apartment buildings work well, for one, they can house their guys, kinda like we do with the apartments.”
“More apartment buildings, means more civilians,” Drifter said miserably. “That’s a lot of potential for collateral damage. Are we sure Glitch is right?”
Flir smirked. “He’s right. Like I said, they’re unimaginative. Corner Stone Collective. Collective Property Ventures. The Collective Family Investment Group. Every new property and account is listed under these names and more of the same.”
“Are you fucking serious?” I asked. “That’s…ridiculous. Did they really think no one would notice that?”
“If they have police involved in this shit, then they probably don’t care,” Ruck replied.
Flir nodded in agreement. “Nationwide there are hundreds of ‘Collective’ LLCs. And honestly, it works. Go to one real estate multi-level marketing website and you’ll see the absolutely ridiculous names people come up with. It’s like a competition between dorks for the worst LLC names.”
Ruck shook his head. “The assholes can’t help but advertise.
It’s like they’re bragging to anyone who dares to look into them.
I think most of what we’ve found is a complex tax evasion and money laundering scam.
Pay imaginary employees through a legit business, write off the payroll, vehicles, everything.
In essence, launder the drugs, counterfeit, and other money through all their LLCs multiple times to mask the trail.
Who cares if you lose thirty to fifty percent to taxes when you have a literal money printer.
By time they’re done selling the clean money to cartels, mafia, and other pieces of shit, they may only be keeping five to ten percent of what they printed, but it’s clean money. And at this volume, well worth it.”
“When the fuck did these guys get smart?” Relay asked.
“I think we’ve just scratched the surface,” Ruck muttered.
“We’re going to find more as we go. Remember this has only been three factions of the entire operation.
Carrick was involved in a little bit of everything, but he was bottom of the barrel.
I’m guessing as we go up the ladder we’re going to find that each faction has their own piece of the overall pie they deal with. ”
“Fuck,” I muttered. “This is going to end up being a shit show.”
Everyone nodded in agreement. “It’s taken some work to unravel it all,” Ruck said in a determined voice. “But now?” He grinned around the table at us all. “Now we know where they are.”
“We do?” I asked.
Ruck’s grin grew. “Yeah, we do. We start with these two factions. Take them out. And then we dismantle the whole fucking operation.”
Our families were the most important thing in all of this.
But The Collective was a dangerous entity to this entire city, and it was possible it was spreading outside of Phoenix, or even Arizona.
We were all eager to fuck them up. I glanced around the room and saw that everyone was wearing matching grins now.
We were finally ready to make a real move.