Chapter 18 #2
I held out a hand, and someone dropped a tire iron into it. Before the asshole even realized I was swinging, I’d broken his kneecap. His scream bounced off the office walls, but I waited patiently until he looked at me again.
“Let’s try this without the bullshit,” I asked. “Who gives the orders?”
The answers came in pieces at first, dragged out between breaths.
I encouraged him to keep talking whenever he tried to hold back information.
The insider had been supplying the crew for years, slipping out small amounts that nobody noticed and larger loads whenever the company’s schedule created an opening.
The fundraiser was supposed to cover one final shipment big enough to keep them working for months, but the insider disappeared, and the Black Crowns reached the warehouse before they moved everything.
“The fire?” I asked.
He licked blood from his upper lip and glanced toward the men outside the office. The pause lasted just long enough to make me narrow my eyes.
“Insider insisted the records had to go,” he blurted out.
“And the device under my woman’s truck?”
His gaze shifted toward the door. Trigger, Wraith, and Smoke stood beyond it, close enough to hear and far enough to let me work. None of them had moved an inch.
I leaned forward, and he flinched. “Answer.”
“He promised he’d clean up the girl problem before she found the original paperwork.”
Everything inside me went still. My easy grin shifted into something dark and lethal. Calling Tamsin a problem had shortened several lives. Promising to eliminate her meant their remaining time would be particularly unpleasant.
Smoke glanced at me, then back at the prisoner. “Well, that was fucking stupid.”
The prisoner must have seen the change in my smile because the rest of his blood drained from his face, and he started talking fast as if getting me the information quicker would save him from his fate.
He didn’t know the insider’s name because the crew leader handled those meetings, and he’d never been told where either man lived.
What he knew was that they still had access to another Bellamy property, and the crew leader had been waiting for the insider to deliver the remaining material and destroy whatever records had survived.
“Which property?”
“I don’t know.” His voice cracked as he shook his head. “Swear to fuck, I don’t. Range, storage yard, somewhere the company uses. They never brought the low guys in.”
I held his gaze until the fear settled into something real. He had reached the bottom of what he knew, and that meant he was no longer needed. I drew out my pistol and put a bullet in his head.
Trigger looked down at the body, then back at me. “Damn, brother. After that ‘girl problem’ shit, I thought you’d take your fucking time. Shooting him that fast was almost merciful.”
I holstered the pistol. “My woman is waiting.”
I stood, left the body with Trigger and Wraith to deal with, and walked outside to call Tamsin with my blood still cold in my veins.
She answered on the first ring, fast enough that I suspected the phone had already been in her hand. The concern packed into my name reached me before anything else.
“Gavin?”
The sound of my name in her voice loosened the pressure in my chest without touching the anger.
I looked across the yard at brothers securing cases and prisoners beneath the portable lights, then turned toward the darker edge of the property where no one else could hear her.
“We recovered all the Bellamy property. Site’s secure. ”
Her next breath came slower, and the tension remained clear beneath her voice.
“Was anyone hurt?”
“Not a scratch.”
Tamsin huffed. “That wasn’t exactly what I asked.”
A rough smile pulled at my mouth because she knew me too well despite the short time we’d been together. I turned farther from the yard lights and rested one hand against the fence.
“No brothers were injured. Neither was I.”
She sighed softly, the relief evident. Then she asked, “Did you find out who is behind this?”
“Got everyone who was there. The bastard running the outside crew wasn’t on-site, and neither was the person feeding him information from Bellamy.”
“So they're still out there.”
“For now.” I didn’t like the defeat I heard in her tone, so I changed the subject. “Found one surprise in the storage building.”
“The damaged case?” she guessed.
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“You were right.”
“I’m going to need more information than that,” she groused, irritation edging through the relief already moving into her voice.
“Saving the rest for when I’m close enough to enjoy your reaction.”
She chuckled, but her voice was shaky enough to tell me exactly how tightly she had been holding herself together. “You’re impossible.”
“You keep saying that like it’s gonna change something.”
“Fair point.” Her voice softened before she added, “Come back.”
“Always, pretty girl.”
I ended the call, then returned to the warehouse while the club stripped the operation down. Bellamy material was secured for transport, phones and records went into our vehicles, and the surviving crew members were handled.
The raid had taken their primary storage site, most of their manpower, and enough records to expose the outside operation.
What remained was the insider, the crew leader, and whatever they had staged at another Bellamy property.
They would know before sunrise that this place was gone, and desperate men rarely stayed still.