Chapter 18
CIPHER
Wraith stood beneath the porch light when I stepped outside, his arms crossed over his cut while Smoke moved somewhere along the dark tree line behind him.
Bex remained on the other side of the locked door, protected by hardened glass, internal steel, and enough surveillance to identify a field mouse before it crossed the lower retaining wall, but none of that made leaving her easier.
Her taste still clung to my mouth from the kiss I’d given her after refusing to let her come with me, and my cock remained hard beneath my jeans from the way she’d pressed against me while promising to wait where I came home to her.
“If she gets one foot onto that porch and the alarm tells me before you do, even Reaper won’t be able to put you back together,” I warned.
Wraith’s expression remained flat, but the slightest line appeared beside his mouth. “Good to know you’re handling the separation well.”
“I’m handling it better than you will if she gets outside.”
“Understood.” He tipped his chin toward the door, his humor disappearing beneath the job. “Nothing reaches her.”
I took the private road toward the compound with the Harley’s engine ripping through the canyon.
The night air cooled the heat Bex had left across my skin without touching the cold pressure sitting deeper, where every photograph of her routes and each piece of surveillance equipment from that case had lodged.
Pike had paid a man to find the holes in my protection, identify when Bex moved, and put another tracker close enough to my woman that the impulse to tear both men apart had become physical.
The building waited in one of the most remote corners of Black Crowns land, tucked beyond a dry wash where the compound’s ordinary traffic never traveled.
From outside, it resembled an old utility structure abandoned years ago, but the interior had reinforced walls, soundproofing, steel restraints, medical supplies, a floor drain, and no windows to tell the man inside how long he’d been there.
Nomad’s truck and three bikes sat beneath the overhang when I arrived.
I entered through the side door and found Stryker near the rear wall, Hawkeye beside him with his arms crossed, while Judge stood at a steel table arranging photographs and equipment into separate rows.
Ghost leaned against the far counter looking almost bored, though his dark eyes tracked every movement made by the man secured to the chair in the center of the room.
Lyle Brenner had blood drying beneath his nose and dirt ground into one side of his face from the moment Falcon put him onto the roadside.
His right wrist was fastened to the chair arm, while the left remained free enough to fool him into believing cooperation might improve his position.
The cellular trail camera, portable plate reader, fresh magnetic tracker, and printed photographs of Bex’s vehicle and former routes sat on the table in front of him, making denial a waste of breath he attempted anyway.
“I install surveillance equipment,” Brenner insisted when I entered, his voice hoarse but still carrying enough attitude to prove the brothers hadn’t done more than secure him. “That shit’s mine, and I was on public land. You have no right to hold me.”
Stryker’s gaze met mine. “Spent the last twenty minutes hiding behind ignorance. Claims he doesn’t know why the fuck he’s here.”
“He knows.” I looked at Brenner, watching fear spread across his face as he finally recognized me. “He just hasn’t decided the truth scares him less than I do.”
I shrugged my cut off my shoulders, then pulled my shirt over my head, not wanting to get any blood on it.
Recognition entered Brenner’s face when he spotted my tattoos, followed by the kind of fear men usually experienced once they understood the quiet man studying them wasn’t only the computer specialist they’d expected.
I took the chair across from him, rested both forearms on my thighs, and held his eyes until his restless movement stopped.
“Darren Pike hired you,” I stated.
“Don’t know anybody by that name.”
“That excuse is about to get expensive.” I nodded toward Judge, who slid a photograph of Pike’s Yukon beside the equipment case.
“He met you at a gas station this afternoon, handed you that case, and sent you east toward my road. You were caught hiding equipment aimed at the only approach to my house with my woman’s vehicle information in your pocket. ”
Brenner licked his lower lip and shifted against the restraints. “Some guy hired me through a burner. Never gave me a name.”
I caught his free hand before he could jerk it away, flattened it against the chair arm, and separated his smallest finger from the others. “You get one lie without paying for it. You already used yours.”
“Wait—”
I bent the finger backward until the joint snapped, and his scream struck the soundproofed walls hard enough to come back at him.
He bucked against the chair while I kept his wrist pinned, watching sweat break across his forehead as fear finally replaced the calculation in his eyes.
The sound gave the rage under my skin somewhere to go, and I let myself enjoy the instant Brenner understood that I had no problem taking him apart one piece at a time.
“Darren Pike hired you,” I repeated.
“Yes,” Brenner gasped, cradling his injured hand against his stomach when I released him. “Pike hired me.”
“What did he order?”
“He wanted the trail camera and reader covering that road. Said he needed to know which vehicles went in and out, which one carried Rebecca Raines, who drove her, and whether security stayed with her every time.” His words accelerated when my hand returned to the chair arm.
“Then I was supposed to rebuild her routine and put the magnetic tracker on her SUV the next time it appeared somewhere public.”
I wanted Brenner’s hand ruined badly enough that he could never install another device, but he was bought by Pike, who was the road to the person above him. I needed every name attached to the other end first.
“How much?”
“Two thousand through my business when I took the job and three more in cash after the tracker went live.” Brenner swallowed, breathing through his open mouth while he held the broken finger tight against his chest. “The transfer said roadside-camera maintenance. Pike hires me for divorce cases and insurance work sometimes, but this was the first time he gave me route maps and all that other shit.”
“Who gave Pike the information?”
“I don’t know.”
I grabbed his hand again and closed my fingers around the next joint, increasing the pressure until the tendon stood out beneath Brenner’s skin.
His face went gray, and his feet scraped frantically against the concrete as he tried to pull his arm somewhere it couldn’t go.
“That answer buys you nothing. Tell me what you heard.”
“He never used names,” Brenner blurted. “I heard him talking to someone he called ‘the deputy.’ Said he would tell him when she went back to work and which routes the protection teams were using. Then Pike made another call and said the county computer guy claimed her old number was still active but wasn’t reaching her phone anymore. ”
“What else?”
“That was it. Pike was pissed because he figured somebody had isolated the number and was monitoring anything sent to it.” Brenner’s voice shook harder when I tightened my grip another fraction. “I swear I never met either one. I don’t know who they are.”
I released his hand because the involuntary reactions underneath the fear told me that part was true. The answer didn’t hand me the identities I wanted. Whether the deputy and the county computer guy were two people or one bastard wearing two sets of credentials remained unanswered.
My phone vibrated against my thigh. I pulled it free and watched the screen for a moment. Then I pressed a couple of buttons before I returned the phone to my pocket and looked back at Brenner without anything in my face or posture revealing what had interrupted me.
“What else did Pike tell you to do?”
“That was everything. Watch the road, identify her routine, and place the tracker.” Brenner’s gaze darted from me to Stryker as if our president might offer better odds. “I didn’t know anybody planned to hurt her.”
“You carried photographs of a woman’s home, job, vehicle, and private routes into roadside brush after somebody had already threatened her.
” I leaned forward until the chair creaked beneath the force of Brenner trying to move away.
“You knew they wanted access to her. You just decided not asking why made the money clean.”
“I never touched her.”
“You pointed the men hunting her toward the door.” I took his injured hand again and pressed my thumb into the broken joint until his denial collapsed into a strangled cry. “That still counts.”
Brenner began promising access to his business accounts, every file Pike had ever paid him to build, and the locations of two off-site backups he kept in case a client tried refusing payment.
I made him repeat the timeline three times, changing the order of the questions and returning without warning to minor details until the story held.
He gave us the business account, invoice label, cash-drop location, burner number, dead-mail account, and the list of equipment Pike preferred using when he wanted surveillance separated from his license.
Nothing named the deputy or identified the person using Stowe’s credentials, but it gave us more routes into Pike’s operation without warning him that Brenner had disappeared.
It also gave us a live channel, because Pike expected the roadside camera and plate reader to begin producing vehicle data before morning.
As far as he would know, the equipment was running, Bex’s routine was being rebuilt, and his disposable installer remained exactly where he had left him.
When I stood, Ghost pushed away from the counter and looked toward Brenner’s mangled hand. “Need anything else from him?”
“Not tonight.” I wiped my palm down the front of Brenner’s shirt before meeting his frightened stare. “Tape the finger, then put him somewhere he won’t be found. If Pike calls, Brenner answers exactly the way I tell him.”
Relief sagged through the installer as though the end of my questions meant he had escaped the worst of the night.
I let him believe it for several seconds before bending close.
“Then we go through every job you ever handled for Pike. You’d better hope Rebecca Raines is the first woman you helped him stalk. ”
The relief disappeared. Ghost’s mouth curved with faint satisfaction as he stepped behind the chair and began cutting Brenner loose from the floor anchors without releasing the restraints around his wrists.
Whatever came after we pulled apart his files depended on what was inside them, and Brenner finally looked smart enough to understand that his future had become a matter of how many names we found.
Judge gathered the payment details, burner number, and invoice information while Stryker ordered Nomad and Falcon to maintain their surveillance on Pike without changing a single rotation.
Brenner’s disappearance couldn’t alter Pike’s routine or make the men above him wonder whether the roadside job had failed.
We needed them comfortable enough to keep calling, paying, and exposing themselves.
“I can steer Raines toward Pike’s business disbursements without giving him any of this.
” Judge tapped the invoice details against one gloved palm.
“Jeff’s lawful payment, Nina’s footage, and Pike lying during the interview give the sheriff enough to seek outgoing vendor records and subcontractor accounts.
Once the order lands, the transfer to Brenner identifies the same man through a trail Raines can document himself. ”
“He doesn’t hear that we have Brenner,” Stryker confirmed.
“Not unless his investigation finds him independently.” Judge slid the notes inside his jacket. “Raines builds the paper trail. We keep Brenner off his radar and use Pike’s next instructions to pull the other two bastards into view.”
I used one of the full bathrooms connected to the outer room and scrubbed Brenner’s blood from my hands until the water ran clear. Once I was clean, I dressed again and checked the feed from home before heading for the door.
Ghost stayed with Nomad to move Brenner into the secured holding room, while Hawkeye followed Stryker outside, and Judge stepped away to make his carefully worded call to Raines.
I rode home with a dark need to feel Bex alive and warm beneath my hands.
She would be pissed about what I’d done with my phone earlier, and the thought of that sweet mouth turning sassy made my cock harden against the bike.
I wanted to walk through our door, put her over my shoulder before she finished arguing, and carry her upstairs until Brenner’s voice disappeared beneath hers.
Bex had asked to be there when the ugly work was over.
I didn’t need her inside that building or beside Brenner’s chair to prove she accepted every part of me.
I needed her at home, where I could wrap my hands around her waist and remember exactly why men like him ended up screaming in rooms no one else knew existed. And she would be.