Chapter Seven
Griffin
Lana Thompson, a family lawyer who worked closely with Hannah, Knuckles’ old lady, arrived at the compound just after seven in the morning carrying two hard cases and a leather satchel.
I knew she worked as a family lawyer, but she’d also recently worked with Rip’s brother, Ethan, on a domestic violence case at Haven.
Haven was literally what the place meant to so many women and children in abusive situations.
Right now, Lana and Knight were the brains working through Veda’s ledgers and files and videos.
I couldn’t deny having a lawyer basically on retainer made everything a lot different.
She moved through the main common room comfortably, like she felt right at home with the rough-looking bunch of ex-con bikers.
She actually did. I knew her history with the club well enough to know she had walked into worse rooms with less preparation and walked out having extracted whatever she came for.
She was small but athletic, her red hair up in an elegant twist, green eyes already reading the space as she came through the door.
She looked at the table where Knight had spread Veda’s materials and continued to work.
His office was in the process of an upgrade -- which was code for he’d gotten a new gaming system he wanted to install -- and didn’t have the spare room at the moment.
“Knight.” Lana put her briefcase on the table.
One of the brothers had taken the cases from her the second she’d entered.
He set them on the table beside her stuff.
She looked around at the mess of papers and printouts Knight had “organized” on the table.
Which was to say, everything lay scattered randomly.
“You know, this would be much easier in your office.”
“Can’t,” Knight grumbled as he moved stuff into more piles to give Lana room. “Got a system upgrade going on. Place is kind of crowded.”
Lana didn’t bat an eyelash. “So, Brynn said she wanted something big and expensive and you were afraid of getting it for her because of the threat Lavender made to your balls the other day if you bought her one more ridiculously big and expensive computer doodad.”
Knight stopped and glared at Lana. “I’m not afraid of my wife.”
Lana snorted. “I’d advise you not to say that under oath.”
Knight grinned. “I can get around her. Besides, she likes my balls right where they are.”
I stood against the far wall with my arms crossed and watched as Lana and Knight went to work. He cleared off the table completely, and she opened the cases and waited for him to finish.
Knight stepped back without being asked and gave her room to move. She handled the ledgers with care, turning pages slowly, reading without expression. She sorted the files Veda had pulled from Carl’s office into three distinct piles in under ten minutes.
Veda stood across the table from her. She had come in with her arms wrapped around herself, her gaze moving over Lana with the same careful assessment she used on everyone in this compound who was not me, though Pain said Nadine did a good bit to make her feel more at ease.
I liked that she seemed to already be forming bonds here.
“Buyer initials in two letters. Transport dates in seven-digit codes. Photos of intake documentation… You’ve got it all here, Veda.
” She pointed to one page. “Each woman was assigned a set of abbreviations which match the notations on the photos. All in the same handwriting. All in simplistic, commonly used coding.” She waved a hand toward the whole, fucked-up mess in front of her. “You’ve got it all.”
Veda let out a long, slow breath I hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Should have. I should have been reassuring her, but I still felt raw and angry over knowing Iron had a fucking hit out on Veda. Probably why I’d missed her body language before.
Lana turned to a page near the back of the secondary ledger she’d printed out from the files on one of the hard drives Veda had brought us.
She set her finger under an entry and pushed the ledger toward Veda without speaking.
Veda looked down. I’d read the ledger the night before standing over Knight’s shoulder and I knew what was on that page.
“That’s Tessa’s code.” The two-letter code that corresponded to Tessa Garrison and the transport date. The client designation. The word Special, printed in Carl’s cramped handwriting, underlined twice.
Veda pressed both hands flat on the table. She stood very still and read the entry again and her jaw set in a line so hard I could see the muscle flex at the corner of her face.
“Have you identified the buyer?” Veda spoke on a thread of sound, her voice soft and reedy, like it took every ounce of strength fueled by determination not to break down.
“I’ve got Rip’s brother, Ethan, looking into it. He’s got friends on the force he trusts to go digging quietly. We have a good idea, but I don’t want to say until I’m sure.”
The rest was logistics. The meat of the plan. Which meant nothing to me as long as Veda looked like she would shatter at any moment.
“Whatever we do, we need to stay completely clear of these three judges. Like, I mean, I’ve got staff making sure any of the guys here with parole officers who report to any of these judges are moved to officers who report to other judges.”
“What’s this pile?” Veda pointed to a small stack Lana hadn’t explained yet.
“In that stack are the men who would shut this down before it ever got to a filing date. And before you ask, I don’t know how deep they’re in yet. But Seth Miles has taken a personal interest and has his own team working on this.”
“You brought this to Seth?”
Lana shook her head. “I was on my way to his office because I didn’t want to talk over the phone when he called me. Apparently, you beat me to the punch.”
Knuckles grinned, but the smile was anything but congenial. In fact, he looked like the predator he was. “Good. We can sit back and wait for instructions.”
Veda glanced up at Knuckles. “How do you know this person isn’t one of the bad guys? I know who the Miles family is. I never saw them at the club, but they’re not exactly the upstanding citizens they portray themselves as. Everyone knows they rule the Nashville underground with an iron fist.”
“Seth is everything you said and more, Veda.” Knuckles gave her a softer smile. “But he’s also not the bad guy in this story. If anything, he’ll be the avenging dragon. No one does this shit in his city without consequences.”
Veda glanced at all the shit spread out over the table. “Doesn’t look like there’s anyone left to give them consequences.”
Lana gave Knuckles a hard look, but she spoke to Veda. “You let me worry about that. Seth has a plan in place once he has enough information to move. Then you can watch as much of it play out as you want.”
Veda didn’t look convinced but she gave Lana a small smile anyway. “Thank you. For looking at all this. For taking me seriously.”
“This club has your back, Veda.” Knuckles spoke gently.
Hannah, his wife, crossed to Veda and put an arm around her shoulders to comfort the younger woman.
“And Seth and Tonio have ours. We will take care of this whole fucked-up situation. I can’t promise we’ll get Tessa back, but I can promise we will find her. ”
The meeting broke. Knight and Lana remained at the table, heads bent together over the laptop as they murmured and pointed to various things on his screen.
Hannah stepped away from Veda to speak with Knuckles, then I crossed the room to Veda’s side.
She didn’t look up as I approached, her gaze fixed on the stack of papers regarding her sister.
“Come on, honey,” I said, my voice quiet. “You’ve done enough for one day.”
She looked up at me, her eyes hollow. She didn’t argue, just gave a single, jerky nod and let me take her hand to lead her out of the common room and toward the lift that would take us up to our apartments.
I took her back to my apartment. The silence between us was thick, not awkward, just heavy with everything unsaid. I unlocked my door and followed her inside. She went straight to the bathroom. I’m not even a hundred percent sure she knew she wasn’t in her own place.
I let her be. Soon after she shut the door to the bathroom, I heard the water in the sink running.
I stayed in the main room of the apartment after she shut the bathroom door.
At first I figured she needed a minute to herself.
The meeting with Lana had been a lot. Seeing her sister’s entry in that ledger, the word “Special” underlined twice in Carl’s cramped handwriting, had to have gutted her.
I leaned against the kitchen counter and gave her space.
The water ran nonstop for a full five minutes. So I straightened and looked toward the bathroom door. Something didn’t feel right about the situation. She had to be hurting, and I knew I couldn’t leave her in there alone with her pain any longer.
I pushed off the counter and walked over. The door wasn’t locked or even shut all the way. I didn’t knock because I didn’t want to startle her. Instead I put my palm flat on the door and eased it open just enough to look inside.
The bathroom was small, the kind of utilitarian space built into the smaller warehouse apartments most of the guys used.
All of us had been in prison for one thing or another and we were kind of used to the minimalist way of living.
A sink against the far wall under a mirror with a light bar across the top, a toilet, a shower stall with a frosted glass door were pretty much it.
She had her back to me, her shoulders hunched.
The water ran hot enough to steam the mirror at the edges.
She used a wash cloth to scrub her nails, getting under them as best she could. Then she got more soap and started using the washcloth to scrub the backs and palms of her hands.