26. Holden
HOLDEN
I stared at the open crates lying on the floor of the north barn and shook my head. “We can sell these to someone else.”
“No way,” Graham said, grunting as he dragged a crate of SIGs over to the wall. “Morrow said he’d take the whole thing. A deal’s a deal.”
We had the lights on in the barn, but it wasn’t visible from the main house so I wasn’t worried about Audrey getting curious.
She was still getting her head around living with us on the ranch for the summer. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be amenable to the idea if she knew we ran guns on the side.
“Apparently Morrow’s discovered something called changing his mind,” I said.
Graham straightened. “More like something called changing the terms of a contract after they’ve already been agreed on.”
The north barn was the perfect place to store the guns we sold to the local MCs and vetted criminal crews.
We didn’t deal with psychos or extremists or any of that shit.
Separated from the main house by the east field and a patch of woods, the north barn was isolated, its exterior siding weathered to a soft silver like half the other barns in the county.
Inside it was a different story.
There was still old tack on the walls, and some ancient equipment from Graham’s grandparents, but most of the barn had been retrofitted to accommodate the guns and ammo we purchased wholesale from a small number of established suppliers.
Metal shelves lined the walls, boxes of ammo organized by type, and locked steel cages held the ARs, AKs, and shotguns. The smaller pieces — Glocks, Sigs, 1911s — were kept in locked metal cabinets while they waited to be transported to their new homes.
“Help me get these AKs into the crate for Mac,” Graham said.
We started loading the guns into a crate that would be handed over to Mac, the Blades’ president.
“When do you want them moved?” I asked.
“That’s your department,” Graham said.
I shouldn’t have bothered asking. Graham’s answer was always the same. I handled everything transport: timing, equipment, pick-up, and handoff. Ridge handled the inventory management. Graham made the deals.
We didn’t micromanage each other, and the less Graham and Ridge knew about how I planned to move inventory, the better.
We had rules.
For one, we never did business on Calloway property. Pick up and handoff happened off-site — always — to keep the ranch as clean as possible.
Also, we only bought from suppliers we knew, and we only sold to buyers who could be vetted through at least three known associates.
The Feds were tricky. It wasn’t unheard of for them to spend years building a cover to infiltrate an operation like ours.
I looked up as a low rumble sounded from down the road.
I set the AK in my hand in the crate destined for Mac’s compound. “That’ll be Ridge.”
The sound of Ridge’s Low Rider ST got louder as it approached the barn. I didn’t blame him for riding out on the ST instead of one of the horses. There was no moon, the fields as black as pitch. Wouldn’t want to catch a wildcat out hunting or a bear looking for food.
The bike stopped outside the barn and a minute later, Ridge strode inside wearing jeans and his usual flannel shirt.
“She okay?” I asked.
It probably should have worried me that we didn’t even have to use Audrey’s name.
That we knew if there was a “she” in our mouths the pronoun referred to Audrey Sterling.
But fuck it. Yolo and all that.
“I think so,” Ridge said, running a finger through his hair. “But it’s worse than we thought.”
Graham stopped loading the AKs. “Worse how?”
“The ex is into some bad shit.”
I gestured at the guns around us. “We’re into some bad shit.”
“No, some really bad shit.” Ridge sat on one of the closed crates full of SIGs.
Graham walked over to him. “Spit it out now.”
“She thinks he’s trafficking.”
Graham went still. “Trafficking…”
“People,” Ridge said. “Women.”
Graham cursed.
“Does he know she knows?” I asked.
“He knows she knows something,” Ridge said. “She had to pull it out to use in the custody battle for Ella.”
I looked at Graham. “Did Aloha mention any of this?”
Graham shook his head.
“You heard back from Aloha?” Ridge asked.
I reached for my Zippo and gave it a click. “He made me wait until you got here to tell me the details.”
The click of the Zippo was like reaching for the itch you needed to scratch, but it wasn’t until the flame flared from the lighter that I felt like I’d scratched it.
“You know how I feel about repeating myself,” Graham said. “And anyway, this shit you’re talking about didn’t come up in Aloha’s background on Dean Ashcroft.”
“He’s clean?” It was hard to believe after what I’d witnessed at the donut shop earlier that night.
Hard to believe after what I’d been witnessing at the donut shop since I started following Audrey two months ago.
“Didn’t say that,” Graham said.
Ridge lifted his eyebrows and waited for Graham to continue.
“Guy has some domestics,” Graham said. “Two from before he met Audrey, one after they were married.”
“She called the police?” Ridge asked.
“Once,” Graham said, “but she walked it back.”
“Asshole’s been tormenting her for years,” Ridge said.
“That what she told you?” Graham asked.
“Among other things,” Ridge said.
“What other things?” There was a hard edge to Graham’s voice that made me think the line of questioning wasn’t all about information.
He didn’t like that Ridge was getting close to Audrey.
That Ridge was beating Graham to it.
“Ella started talking about a crying woman with Dean, a woman who wasn’t allowed to talk, and then Audrey found a bunch of women’s clothing and shit in a storage unit belonging to Ashcroft Distribution.”
“Maybe Ashcroft’s a crossdresser,” I said.
Ridge rolled his eyes. “The clothes were used, numb-nuts, and in a lot of different sizes. And there were shoes and jewelry and other shit too.”
Graham rubbed at his beard. “Still not evidence he’s trafficking women.”
“Maybe not, but when Audrey brought it up, Dean told her to keep quiet for Ella’s sake, because he knows ‘how to make little girls disappear.’”
I stared into the flame flickering above my Zippo. “I’ll light that motherfucker up."
“No, you won’t.” Graham’s words were more than a warning.
They were an edict. He knew I wasn’t just talking shit.
I was always looking for an excuse to light a fire, and I couldn’t think of a better one than Audrey’s piece of shit ex-husband.
“We’re going to take this slow. Think real hard about what we’re getting into. ”
I scuffed at the dirt with my boot. I was an act-first-ask-questions-later kind of guy, but that wasn’t how Graham rolled, and when it came right down to it, the ranch belonged to Graham.
His word was law.
“Just to clarify,” Ridge said, “taking it slow does’t mean doing nothing, does it?”
“Fuck no.” Graham resumed loading the AKs. “I hired Aloha for a standard background on Ashcroft. Now that we know more about him, I’ll tell Aloha to dig deep. Real deep.”
That was when I knew Graham was in deep shit too. Because I might be an act-first-ask-questions-later kind of guy, but Graham was usually from the mind-my-own-damn-business school of thought.
So why then did he suddenly want to be all up in Audrey Sterling’s business?