Chapter 27
CHAPTER 27
W ilder saw the tow truck leaving with a wrecked sedan. Firemen were leaving as well. A harried-looking older man in a wrinkled suit took a flash drive from LeeAnn. The second he saw Wilder, he hurried into his police cruiser and peeled off, literally leaving rubber marks on the street.
LeeAnn was dressed in winter white pants with a fuchsia sweater. There was a frown on her face as she coughed from the sand the cruiser kicked up. “Mr. Townsend!” LeeAnn called to him. One of the reasons Wilder had hired her was because LeeAnn didn’t suffer the vapors. She did look slightly put out, which only made her more determined. “I am so sorry to call you, but look at this mess.”
“The electrician will be here in two hours,” Wilder told her as she led him to the side of the building where the sedan had hit the electrical panels. “What happened?”
“Drunk driver.”
“At eleven in the morning?” Wilder asked, examining the brick that had been struck to make sure there was no obvious structural damage.
“Southerners take brunch very seriously, Mr. Townsend.” LeeAnn paused and looked behind Wilder as if watching something. “I turned the security footage over to Detective Chambers but emailed both of us a digital copy for quick viewing. Should I also send it to our insurance agency?”
“Yes, and get a structural engineer to verify the building is safe before we open tonight. I want it in writing that there is no danger present for our patrons.”
“Wilder! Finally, I found you.” Wilder turned and saw what LeeAnn had been watching. Collins Hanover strode over in four-inch designer heels, a black pantsuit fitted to her body, and a don’t mess with me attitude on her face. “I have been calling you and you won’t get back to me. I even went to Bryce, but he said he didn’t know which club you were at. I tried this one after getting nothing from L.A., Vegas, and Miami. I figured if you weren’t here, you had to be overseas.”
“I’ve been a little busy, Collins. Especially since my security systems seem to be going down a lot.” Wilder respected Collins, but this was business and his business was suffering because of her security system failures.
“I know. That’s why I’ve been trying to get a hold of you. I was able to place a bit of code in my system and track anyone who hacks it. I found who was coming in and shutting down my security.” Collins glanced at LeeAnn and then back to Wilder. “Can we talk in your office?”
Could this lead to Seabrook? If Collins had the evidence proving he was behind this, then Wilder could turn it over to Peter and this would be over.
“I’ve brought some techs with me,” Collins was saying and Wilder realized he hadn’t been paying attention to her as they walked into the nightclub. Wilder glanced around and saw a bunch of men up on ladders working on his security system.
“What for?”
“We need to put in updated hardware that’s encrypted. Software updates can only do so much. This hardware is new and has a lot of tricks up its sleeves that your current security doesn’t have,” Collins explained.
Wilder entered his code to his office and went in first to turn on the lights. Wilder looked over at the bank of cameras and saw they were being dismantled. Shortly, there’d be no cameras up at all. “Who did it?” Wilder asked, taking a seat behind his desk.
“I don’t know what you did to piss them off, but piss them off you did.” Collins was doing something on her tablet and then turned it around. Wilder didn’t say anything as he looked at a picture of a man he knew. “This is Nikolas Luciano, the head of the New York Italian crime family.”
Wilder leaned forward looking at the photo of the man he’d asked to help him. The same man who had pointed the finger at Fergus Kelly. “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” Collins confirmed as someone knocked on Wilder’s door. “That will be my lead tech. I told him to come get me when they finished taking down the old hardware.”
Collins opened the door and everything changed in that instant.
Bex stood in front of a handcuffed Sean Kilpatrick who was sitting in a club chair in Wilder’s living room. “Why didn’t you contact local police or FBI to pick me up?” Bex asked her very irritated captain.
“Seabrook said anyone who brought you and Townsend in would get a promotion. Murphy was there backing him up. I’m ready for a bigger office.”
“There’s a warrant for Wilder Townsend?” Olivia asked before Bex could.
“Yeah. It was issued last night.”
“For what?” Olivia asked, already pulling out her phone, no doubt to find it herself.
“We have evidence he’s colluded with the Luciano crime family to supply the drugs he’s dealing at his nightclubs.”
Bex didn’t know how to correct him, or maybe he was right. Maybe they’d invited a wolf into their henhouse and didn’t even realize it when they turned to Nikolas for help. “What evidence do you have of this?”
“His security company came forward with evidence it was the Lucianos who had been taking down the security feeds and breaking into his clubs. We think it’s because Wilder was seen with Fergus Kelly recently, which made the Lucianos mad,” Sean explained.
Everyone frowned and looked at each other. Granger was letting Bex take the lead, so she nodded her head as if she understood the evidence. “And I’m sure you have insider information on Fergus Kelly’s business dealings and who he sees.”
Sean’s brow furrowed. “Inside information? No, I only have what we all have. Street cameras picked up Wilder entering the back of The Golden Harp last night with known gang members from a motorcycle club called the Minos.”
Bex squatted down in front of Sean and looked him in the eye. “We all know. You don’t have to hide it anymore.”
“Know what? Bex, I don’t know what you think you know.”
“That you have inside information on Fergus Kelly because you’re his nephew.” Bex watched Sean’s reaction. Shock and then laughter was not what Bex was expecting.
“You think I’m a mob boss’s nephew? Are you nuts?” Bex looked over at Olivia, Granger, TJ, and PJ. They looked as surprised by Sean’s reaction as Bex for the main reason that his reaction was very honest.
Bex reached into her back pocket, grabbed her phone, and pulled up the evidence Ryker had found. “What’s your mother’s maiden name?”
“O’Connor.”
“And have you met your maternal grandparents?” Bex asked.
“No. They died in a car accident when I was two. Bex, what is this about?”
Bex turned her phone for Sean to see. “This is your mother, right?” Sean nodded at the photograph of her. “And this is your father?” Sean nodded again. “And these are your grandparents.”
“No. I mean, I don’t remember them. That’s not the people my mom has in a frame at her house. I don’t know who those people are.”
“These are your mother’s real parents. The Kellys.” Sean was shaking his head, but Bex ignored him and went on. “Here they are with your mother when she graduated from high school. Here’s your mother’s birth certificate from Ireland. Here’s her high school diploma. Then, when she was eighteen, she was supposed to marry a higher up of the Porzio family. They were in the Italian family in charge of New York at the time the Kellys had needed an infusion of power or they faced being forgotten. It worked for the Porzios, too since they had two girls and wanted some strong male figures to come in until they could have some grandsons. Your mother was to marry the nephew of the boss who was the next up and coming leader of the family,” Bex explained, but Sean kept shaking his head.
“No. That’s not my mom. She’s an O’Connor.”
“Here’s the DNA, Sean.”
“Where did you get that?” Sean’s face was red and he was clearly getting upset.
“We have hackers too,” Granger told him, diverting any crime away from Bex. “You’re his nephew. There’s no doubt.”
Sean was shaking his head even as he read the documents. “No, my mom hates criminals. It’s why I became a police officer. To take people like Fergus Kelly down.”
“Sean, I think it’s time you call your mother,” Bex said. “Because right now, it’s our belief you’re feeding information to Fergus Kelly to frame Wilder Townsend to take down WET, which is The Golden Harp’s main competition.”
The door to Wilder’s office opened and a man in work clothes and a baseball cap walked in, slapped a piece of heavy tape over the latch so the door couldn’t lock and stepped into the room. Wilder knew who it was before he even looked up. “Watch out, Collins!”
Wilder stood to protect Collins when Fergus Kelly looked up and grinned as he pulled a gun from his work clothes. It was two against one. Even with a gun, Wilder would be able to take him down with Collins’s help. Wilder looked to Collins, ready to communicate a game plan with a look, but instead of seeing Collins ready to disarm Fergus, she moved to join him, pulling her own weapon and aiming it right at Wilder.
“I see you’re finally putting things together,” Collins casually said.
And he was, he was just having trouble connecting the final dots.
Bex was watching as Sean’s face turned white when his mother confirmed over speakerphone that she was in fact a Kelly. It had taken a bit of a push, but after telling her the evidence they had, she finally told Sean that Fergus was her brother. She had changed her name in Ireland and then again in England before moving to New York and getting married, yet again changing her name. It was only dumb luck that she’d stayed in New York. She’d meant to move on to California but had met her husband in Grand Central Station and never made her train. She’d fallen in love. Real love. Not the kind that was forced for power. She had tried to get her husband to move out of New York, but he had a family business, so she hid in plain sight by dying her red hair brown and staying in the predominately Italian neighborhood. She figured Fergus wouldn’t go near the Italians after she stood one powerful man up at the altar.
Sean hung up with his mother as Bex’s phone began to ring. It was an unknown number. “Hello?” she asked hesitantly.
“It’s Kale. I’m sending you a link. You need to see it now.”
Then he hung up as her phone dinged with an incoming text message. It was a link, just like he said it would be. Bex clicked it and saw the security feeds at WET Charleston fill the screen. Bex leaned forward, pinched the screen and zoomed a live feed.
Two people held guns on Wilder in his office. “That’s Fergus Kelly, right?” Bex asked, zooming in tight on the man’s face and showing it to Sean.
“Yeah, that’s him. What is this? Is this live?” Sean asked.
“He’s holding Wilder at gunpoint at WET,” Bex told the room.
“Let’s go!” Damon yelled as people were already checking ammunition and moving toward the door.
“Wait. We need a plan. There’s a second person and a lot of men both inside and outside of the club,” Bex told them moving the zoom to the woman. “Who is she?”
Granger looked over her shoulder. “I don’t know. Never seen her before.”
“Let me see,” Sean said, holding up his cuffed hands and motioning for her to turn the phone again. Bex did and Sean went even more pale than before. He looked frozen in instant death as he stared at the screen. “I don’t understand. What’s going on here?”
Bex zoomed out so Sean could see the guns and turned on the volume. The woman smiled and it wasn’t a nice one. “That’s how the drugs were planted at my clubs,” they heard Wilder say. “You gave Fergus the codes to my buildings and manipulated any video evidence of it. Your Fergus’s partner.”
“I told you he was smarter than he looked,” Collins joked with Fergus.
Bex really looked at Sean. He was frozen, his eyes locked on the screen, and his body was shaking, but she doubted he even realized it. “Sean, who is she?” Bex asked more gently than she felt. She wanted to hit him, to yell at him, to demand to know his part in this.
“That’s my wife,” Sean whispered.
The room fell quiet as if they somehow all heard him even over mobilizing to rescue Wilder. “Your wife?”
“Collins Hanover. She owns Hanover Club Security. She’s the one who told me about the drugs Wilder was dealing. She’s the one who told me about the women and that Wilder was trying to pose as a good guy when he was reporting them to the police. I don’t understand.”
Bex had never been so shocked in her life. “Your wife? I mean, we all know you’re married, but you always called her Lin Kilpatrick and said she used to be a cop.”
“I call her Lin. It’s a nickname. And she did used to be a cop. But she asked I keep her security business private because she didn’t want cops to bug her for inside information she couldn’t legally give them.” Sean shook her head as if trying to clear it. “I don’t understand.”
“Sean,” Bex gently said. “How do Seabrook and Murphy play into this?”
“I don’t know. They iced me out. They know who my wife is and I figured they didn’t want the optics of me being involved with taking down a client of hers. But I came here anyway to prove myself and to make my mother proud. My mother was so against the mafia that I wanted to take down Wilder, the Lucianos, and maybe even the Kellys to make my mother proud.
“Why did you send Max undercover? Did you know he was helping me?” Bex asked, but Sean’s confused look told her the answer.
“It’s a huge operation and Max is the best. It didn’t have anything to do with this.”
Granger came forward, already in a bulletproof vest with SHERIFF emblazoned across the front and back of it and holding two other vests. One he handed to Bex. “If I uncuff you, can you come with us and arrest your own wife or should I keep you here and let you watch on livestream?”
His face suddenly flushed red. His mouth tightened. His eyes narrowed. “I’ll go with you. I might not be able to actually put the cuffs on her, but I won’t stop you from doing so. I want Fergus. I want to make him pay for hurting my mother.”
“If I even think you’re about to betray us or my brother, I’ll shoot you myself,” Hunter told him. Sean nodded in understanding as Granger uncuffed him.
“Military and police only. Civilians need to sit this one out. I’ll take the interior office with PJ, TJ, Granger, and Sean,” Bex told them. “Hunter, you lead a group for the front exterior fighting to get in right behind me. Kord, you take the alley entrance. Let’s go.”
Only when Bex rushed outside it wasn’t just military or law enforcement who followed. It was everyone. “Your mother will kill me if I let her future son-in-law die. I’m coming with you,” her father told her as he jogged to one of the SUVs.
“I owe the Townsends my life. I’m coming too,” Landry Langston called out, but it wasn’t only him getting into the passenger van. It was his whole family.
“You’re already my sister and I respect the hell out of you,” Damon told her as he threw a leg over his bike. “But there’s no way I’m not helping my brother.”
“You might need a doctor, and I’m surprisingly good with a knife,” Rowan said, and he and Forrest climbed into his low-slung sports car.
“I can rig explosive devices in my sleep. If you need to breach a door, I’m your guy,” Forrest told her.
“I do this shit for a living,” Kane said, grabbing his own vest from his trunk and tossing an extra one to Forrest. “No way I’m not going after my brother.”
“Yeah, he’s my brother too. Sorry, sis. I’m going.” Stone walked right by her with a look on his face that showed why men feared him on the ice.
“Nico, we have a situation,” Bex heard Pen say into a phone as the wives all walked to one of the cars.
“ Damn ,” Richie said, shaking his head as he watched Maggie pull out an impressive sniper rifle before getting into an SUV with her husband and some of the other Townsends. “There’s my perfect woman and she’s already taken. Does she have a sister?”
“A brother,” Bex answered as she climbed into the family’s SUV.
“If he’s like her, I might be able to swing that.”
Mikey rolled his eyes as they sped off, swinging into line behind Granger’s cruiser just as the sheriff hit the lights and sirens. “You go through women like I go through Ma’s cannoli. You wouldn’t last a day.”
Then all talking stopped as they began strapping on vests, checking weapons, and pocketing ammunition. Bex tried not to let her mind go down the what-if trail. She had to believe Wilder would still be alive by the time they got there. Normally it could take over half an hour to travel the twenty-five miles into Charleston, but as the cop cars fly, they’d make it in less than fifteen. She glanced at the speedometer and saw they were going 110 miles an hour down the highway now that they were out of Shadows Landing. Bex kept her eyes glued to the live feed and discussed entrance points with TJ and PJ since they were the experts being on SWAT.
“What the hell?” Bex gasped as they neared Charleston.
“What happened?” Sean asked from the back seat.
“Nico Saccone just walked up to the front door, identified himself, and said he was here for his meeting with Wilder Townsend.”
“Saccone? The mob boss?” Sean asked with confusion. “That means Lin was right and Wilder is in with the Italians.”
Bex shook her head. “Pen called Nico. He dismantled his grandfather’s crime family and went legit. Nikolas Luciano is some distant cousin who came in with the agreement that no drugs were ever dealt. They both helped us with this case. Because of them, we found out it was Fergus’s drugs. That’s why Wilder went to confront Fergus last night. Nico and Nikolas are helping us.”
“Help from a crime family? They aren’t doing it for no reason. You know that, detective.”
“Nico has a thing for Penelope Townsend,” Bex said. “What I learned when I got here was that Nico is legit now and good friends with Ryker Faulkner, the shipping magnate, and he’s helped Wilder’s friends and family when needed. He helped me when I needed it, Sean. I trust him more than I trust you at this point. Whatever he’s doing right now isn’t for the mafia. It’s for Pen and it’s for us.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Do we need to handcuff you again?” TJ asked. “Because if my sister says it’s so, it’s so. I think by now you should trust her.”
Bex didn’t care what Sean thought. She was happy Nico was being shown upstairs because Wilder would now have an ally in the room against Collins and Fergus.