Chapter 21
CHAPTER 21
“ L et’s get this over with. I don’t like being separated from Suzi when the Warriors are still after her.”
“I get you,” Gage said. As the most recent of the Sabre men to almost lose his Little girl, Deke bet he did. Deke wouldn’t have an easy time until the Warriors were gone from Darling. No, scratch that, from Tennessee period. And when they’d come after Suzi most recently, he’d been with her the entire time. If she’d been separated from him, he would have lost his shit.
He’d known he loved Suzi for a long time. And he knew she loved him but they were still new and getting to know one another’s triggers and quirks. The way she grew up, she had nothing to relate to when it came to loyalty. She’d learn there was absolutely nothing she could do to make him leave.
She was his everything, his entire world.
“All right, we have several things to discuss, and I want to make some plans,” Reid said. “I’m fucking sick of being on the defensive with these pricks. It’s time to take the fight to them. I want fucking with Sabre and our Littles to cost them.”
Deke was all in for that.
“Do we have any idea how they figured out Suzi was at the cabin with me? I knew I shouldn’t have let her invite the girls over, but she’d been doing so good with her Little, and she missed her posse, so I caved. If anything had happened to her…
He didn’t finish that sentence because he didn’t need to. Every one of the men at this table understood what he meant.
Pyro, who had finally told them his name was Zane Thorne, shifted in his chair, drawing Deke’s attention. He wasn’t making the kid leave the meeting because he had impressed Law, but that didn’t mean he liked him.
It wasn’t his personality. In the short amount of time Deke had been around him, Zane had tried to get on his good side. The problem was when it came to Suzi’s safety, he didn’t have a good side. In addition, Deke didn’t know Zane, therefore he didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him. As scrawny as the kid was, Deke figured he could toss him a pretty good distance. He didn’t trust him nearly that much.
Reid nodded. “I wondered how they found her, too. It would suck if they’d followed one of us out. I put Sawyer on it, and he has the answer.” The smirk that crossed Reid’s face seemed out of place, given the seriousness of the situation. “Sawyer, you want to explain?”
Sawyer gave Reid his middle finger. “You can be a real dick sometimes,” he said.
All eyes turned to Deke. What the fuck?
Sawyer cleared his throat. “The problem did come from the party, but the Warriors didn’t follow anyone out. We also did a sweep and found no trackers on any of the cars. I did a standard screening for all the possible ways they could have located her and it turned out to be simple.”
“Well, let’s hear it,” Deke said. “I think I mentioned I’m in a hurry to get back to Suzi, so today would be nice.”
Sawyer sighed. “The Warriors found out because your girl called them.”
What. The. Fuck.
“Why in the hell would she do that?” Deke growled.
“She wasn’t trying to call them. She called the office of The Daily Nugget and left a voicemail for Carly Trawick.”
“That’s not possible,” Deke said. “I took her phone practically as soon as we got to the cabin. She was only allowed to use it twice a week. The rest of the time, her phone and all her devices stayed in my office in my desk drawer. There’s no way she could have called anyone, especially at the par—fuck!”
“Yeah,” Gage said. “Trust me, brother. We’ve all been there. These girls are all sweetness and light. Right up until the moment they aren’t.”
“You are not wrong,” Reid agreed.
Deke stared at the table and tried not to punch a hole in it. “She lied to me,” he told his brothers. “I caught her coming back upstairs at close to one o’clock in the morning after everyone else was asleep. When I asked her what she was doing, she said she was looking for me because she couldn’t sleep. I even caught her going back into her room instead of mine, and I still fell for it.”
“Don’t feel bad, man,” Law said. “We’ve all been there. If it’s any consolation, psychologists say it’s a good sign when our Littles start acting out. It means they are developing a bond of trust we won’t abandon them if they aren’t perfect.”
Deke rubbed his palms against his thighs. “Well, I hope she enjoys the way I prove to her I can handle any test she gives me. Jesus, she could have been hurt. What if the alarm had failed and she’d been there alone?”
No, his naughty Little girl had one hell of a lesson coming her way. He’d hoped she still thought her test was worth it.
Reid’s smirk was back. “Just make sure you find out what was going on in her head first. You know what they say. To assume just makes an ass out of u and me .”
That was his boss. Ever the philosopher.
“Um, who’s Dr. Phil? Does he work with Bones?” Pyro… Zane… whoever asked.
Lawson threw a cup at him. “Shut the fuck up, kid. You can look it up on your phone later.” Lawson grinned to let the kid know he was joking, but Deke suddenly felt ancient.
“All right, back to the matter at hand. That solved mystery number one,” Reid said. “I want to talk about the connection between The Society and the Lawless Warriors.”
Everyone looked at Zane. To his credit, the kid didn’t squirm under their stares. “Look, I got no problem sharing what I know, but you got to understand I don’t know much. I started hanging around a club in San Bernadino when I was sixteen. When I turned seventeen, they invited me to prospect. I never made it past that, which means I was a grunt. I didn’t go to church. I wasn’t in on any plans. I was expendable.”
Fuck, this kid wasn’t much more than cannon fodder for the Warriors. They certainly threw him under the bus with no hesitation when Deke caught him.
“Fair enough,” Reid said. “I want to know why you’re here and what you are getting from associating with The Society.”
Zane shook his head. “We were sent here to expand the drug trade for whoever the Warrior get their drugs from. I’m not sure, but I think they’re coming in from South America.”
“Why Darling?” Gage asked. “Why not Nashville or Memphis? Darling is a small market to expand a drug trade.”
“All I can tell you is they relied a lot on the DA here, that Boucher guy. He was tight with The Society and was smoothing the way for them whenever they asked. I think the Warriors wanted the same benefits. I didn’t hear much, so a lot of this is me putting two and two together, but I think they had bigger plans for Boucher than him staying the DA for the counties he runs now.”
That made sense to Deke. Boucher had made a name for himself until he fucked it all up. He handled some high visibility cases and was getting more popular in state polls every year.
Deke turned to Sawyer. “We might want to dig into the groundwork being laid behind the scenes to move Boucher to the state level. It would be a nice transition from district attorney to Attorney General to governor to who knows what. We’ve known for a long time The Society has connections in powerful circles. It’s worth a look.”
Lawson spoke up. “I’ve been tracking Boucher’s movement ever since he ghosted. Some of my contacts have him in the northeast. I have reported sightings of him, or someone who looks like him, in Richmond, Washington, and Philly.”
“You think he’s headed to New York?” Gage asked.
Lawson shrugged. “It’s possible. Lots of trafficking of every kind goes through New York.”
Sawyer spoke up. “It’s also possible he’s still trying to track down his daughter Sera.”
Gage snapped to attention at that. “Breezy’s sister may be in New York?”
“I can’t say,” Sawyer said. “But it’s a hell of a big place to lose yourself in.”
“Well, fuck me,” Gage said, slumping back in his chair.
A thought occurred to Deke. “Maybe we should look at the places and routes of sale the Warriors and The Society have in common. Maybe they’ve come up with some kind of mutually beneficial arrangement.”
Sawyer’s eyes lit up. “That’s not a bad idea. It will take some time, but I’ll get on it.”
“One thing,” Zane spoke up again. “Like I said, I don’t know a lot about shit that was going down with the Warriors, but I’m not sure Boucher is as far away as you think.”
Everyone at the table came alert. “Why would you say that?” Deke demanded.
“Just a feeling. I know they were getting ready for some VIP to come to town. No one used any names, but it could have been him.”
Deke’s phone rang. “What’s up, Hutch?”
“Man, your girl bugged out. The shit hit the fan a little while ago. I thought she was in the bathroom, but when I checked, she was gone. Have you seen the papers?”
Why in the fuck would Hutch tell him his Little girl was missing and then ask about the local paper? “I don’t care about the fucking Daily Nugget, Hutch,” Deke roared. “Tell me what the hell you’re doing to find Suzi?
“Breathe, brother. I just figured out she’s gone. And I’m not talking about The Daily Nugget. I’m talking about the big papers and the television news. The story of Alex Boucher leaked, and Suzi freaked the hell out. As soon as I can get someone to cover the girls, I’m headed out to find her. She couldn’t have made it far. Sorry, man. I swear I thought she was here.”
Deke stilled, his mind going back again to the night of the party. Suzi had gone downstairs and used her phone to call the paper. Had she told Carly to print the story? She’d been sitting on it for weeks.
Deke rejected the thought as soon as it entered his mind. He didn’t believe that for one second. He didn’t know the explanation, but he knew Suzi kept her promises. She’d said she would talk to him first, and that’s what she would have done. He didn’t know why she called her office, but he knew it wasn’t to tell Carly to run with the story about Breezy’s father.
Right now, he just needed to find his Little girl. And to paddle her ass for leaving Books N Brews the way she had. Hutch was a great friend and a great Daddy. This wasn’t on him.
Deke knew Hutch would throw himself in front of a bullet for any of their Littles. “I know, man. I’m pissed at myself for not bringing her with me to Sabre. I’m headed that way.”
“We’ll find her, man. I have Ezra and Shawn on their way from the police station. They’ll be here any second, and I’ll head out. Keep it tight so you can be there for her when we find her. Her world just imploded.”
“I don’t get why it was such a big deal,” Deke said. “She was planning to publish it anyway. Sure, Carly putting out early was a stupid move, but the results would have been the same either way.”
“You need to see the article. Get someone else to drive. I don’t know how it happened, but Suzi didn’t publish the story. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure she wrote the article that was published.”
That made no sense to Deke. “What the hell does that mean? No one other than Suzi and Carly had access to it. Granted, the Warriors could have finally found where she hid it on her laptop, but they wouldn’t have put it out there either.”
What the hell did that mean? Other than Carly, no one had access to it.
Deke was hanging onto his control by a fucking thread.
Hutch sighed. “We know who published it. Her name is on the byline.”
Deke’s control snapped. “Just fucking tell me,” he boomed.
“Calm down, brother. The article claims to be written by Terri Daily.”
Son of a bitch. He should have known who’d published it.
Terri fucking Daily.