Chapter 11
Sabre
Iwake early and lie still for a minute, enjoying the feeling of Linsey’s warm body resting against mine. Her hand is resting flat on my chest. I outfitted this place for one man and his knives. Now I have a full house, and it leaves me feeling less alone.
I slide away carefully, trying not to wake her. She stirs but doesn’t wake. I don’t like the dark circles blooming under her eyes.
I get dressed and head down to the kitchen. While my coffee is brewing, I study the note that asshole left for her.
I take the first drink of coffee and then make a start on breakfast. I’ve got eggs on the counter and bacon in my skillet when Noah comes creeping into the kitchen.
He’s quiet as a little mouse in the morning.
He’s already dressed but looks only half awake.
His boots are laced, but his hair is clearly finger combed.
I give him a chin-jerk acknowledgment. “Mornin’, Noah.”
“Good morning, sir.” He climbs onto a stool at the counter and watches me lay bacon in the pan.
“You realize it’s six on a non-school morning, right?”
“Yeah,” he says, yawning. “I thought I should get up, stay alert, and patrol the area.”
“That’s a bit of overkill, don’t ya think, buddy?”
“I don’t know. Is your house safe?”
I nod. “Yeah, even if someone were out to get ya, nobody knows you’re here. We wired electronic security to cover every angle of the exterior. If any of the alarms go off around this property, a full team of security experts gets notified.”
He gestures towards his clipboard, resting on top of his backpack. “We should probably do checks on all the windows and doors like we did at our place, right?”
“Yeah, you can continue doin’ that job here if you like.”
He asks, “How many throws am I allowed today?”
“Same as it was at your house. It depends on whether you get your homework and chores done.”
“I don’t have chores here yet,” he shoots back.
“Sure you do. You’re on egg duty. Crack six into that bowl and don’t leave any shell in it.”
He smiles and gets to work with the enthusiasm he brings to everything. And by the time Aunt Carol shuffles out in her robe, looking none the worse for her ordeal last night, breakfast is almost finished.
I hand her a cup of black coffee. She blows on it forever before taking a sip.
“Did you file the proper permits for this?” she asks.
“Come again, ma’am?”
“This isn’t coffee. It’s an industrial-grade solvent. Tomorrow, I’ll show you how civilized people make coffee. Do you have a coffee grinder?”
“I had one.”
“Well, I’m gonna start a list of things we need from the house, and that’s going at the top.”
“Good idea, ma’am.”
Right as I’m puttin’ breakfast on the table, Linsey comes out in one of my shirts with her hair loose around her shoulders and eases down into a chair. I refill everybody’s coffee, sit down at the head of the table, and bring everyone up to speed.
“Whoever tried to climb through your window at your place last night knew what they were doing. If he wasn’t a professional, he was at least well-versed in crime.
That means he’s probably not going to stop.
When you don’t come back to the house, he’ll be leveragin’ whatever brain cells he has to track you down. ”
Aunt Carol’s hands tighten around her coffee cup. “What are you saying, Sabre? You’re scaring me.”
“I’m not tryin’ to scare you, but you need to understand that things are gonna get worse before they get better.” I glance at Noah. “Do you want to tell them what the military protocol is for that situation?”
“Sergeant Rock says that when you’re being hunted, your best bet is to find a safe place and stay there until you can locate your adversary and turn the tables on him.”
“Then that’s what you need to do. My place is safe. You need to stay here, keep your heads down, and give me and my club brothers enough time to figure this out.”
A short silence spins out in the room.
Then Noah asks, “Does that mean I can’t go to school until we catch this person?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what that means. Your mom and I will make sure you don’t fall behind by bringin’ your schoolwork home. You’ll do every bit of the work, and when this is over, you’ll walk back into that classroom and pick right back up where you left off.”
Noah thinks it over for a few seconds and then asks, “Can I set up a study area? Sergeant Rock says an organized workspace is a force multiplier.”
That doesn’t sound like the Sergeant Rock I read but I don’t point that out. Instead, I answer his question. “Yeah, I’ve got a small empty room at the end of the second floor. I’ll put a table and a comfortable office chair in there for you.”
Linsey’s been pretty quiet this morning. She’s swirling her coffee around in her mug, taking small sips as she listens to me talk.
“What about my job?” she asks. “And my classes?”
“You going to work when your face and name are all over the company website is a really bad idea. It takes two men working around the clock to effectively protect one person in a public settin’. That’s a lot of manpower, Linsey.”
“Sabre, this isn’t just a job. It’s my career. If I lose this job, there isn’t another one in this small town.” Her voice is calm, but she’s white-knuckling her coffee mug. “And the owner’s been good to me. I can’t call her this morning and just walk away from all of it.”
“I’m not asking you to walk away, just step back until you’re safe again.
” I reach over and put my hand flat over hers until the mug stops turning.
“The Fig survived the banquet shutdown, and it’ll survive this.
After what happened at the mayor’s banquet, your employers aren’t gonna want to risk your ex showin’ up with yet more unhinged fuckery. Just tell them the truth.”
She looks at our hands for a long moment. “You’ve given this some thought, haven’t you?”
“Yeah. I’ve spent most of the night thinkin’ about how to keep the three of you safe, and this is the best way.”
She turns her hand over under mine and laces her fingers through mine, squeezing once. Then she reaches for her phone. “Okay. I’ll call the owner and see if I can take a leave of absence. Then I’ll draft the post for the class pages saying classes are temporarily postponed.”
She steps away from the table to make her call.
I hate that her food is getting cold. But she comes back smiling.
“They totally understood when I asked for a leave of absence. It took some convincing when I asked for a job carve-out. I convinced them it would save the rest of the team a lot of time and energy if I took over planning their upcoming menu updates, tracking and ordering stock, which is all electronic, and managing incoming catering requests. They finally saw the light. It’s not a full-time job but it’s a work-from-home opportunity that keeps me employed while we sort this all out. ”
I reach over and squeeze her hand. “I’m happy that worked out for you, darlin’. You would have been bored out of your everlovin’ mind sittin’ here all day with endless hours to fill. I’ll get Zen to set you up with a VPN, so working online is safer for you.”
Relief is stamped all over her pretty face, and I’m glad to see it.
I bring a piece of crispy bacon to her mouth and say, “Eat up. Your breakfast is gettin’ cold.”
She takes a gigantic bite off the piece I’m holding out for her, and I throw the rest in my mouth. We finish eating and get on with our day, only with much less awkwardness.
They make me a list of what needs collecting from the house.
Other than clothes, it’s essential things like medications for Aunt Carol, Noah’s school kit, and Linsey wanted the fire safe from her closet that contained birth certificates, her college diploma, and Noah’s school records.
Her aunt also wanted the coffee grinder and stash of beans from the freezer—that woman certainly takes her morning brew seriously.
I step out onto the porch and text Talon their list. Linsey’s list contained nothing really personal, so I add a couple of other items, like the quilt draped over the back of her sofa that she likes to spread over herself and the pillow off her bed just so she feels at home at my house.
Talon texts back a thumbs-up.
The retrieval run rolls at four. Talon leads it with Tusk and a couple of young prospects. He calls when they’re heading back. “Let Miss Carol know I got her grinder and her beans. Tell her she’s got better coffee equipment than the clubhouse and I’m filin’ a grievance.”
“You think you’re funny, brother, but you’re not. Did you get the rest of the stuff on their list?”
“Yeah, we got it all.” He pauses for a few seconds and adds, “I put a stop on their mail, like you asked. It goes into effect tomorrow. They’re gonna hold it at the post office and we’ll send somebody a couple times a week.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that, Talon.”
“Yeah, I’m a great friend. Look, Rick is gonna take first shift tonight with Levi backin’ him up. I’ve got pairs of prospects rotating every eight hours. The cameras are still rollin’ in case whoever that ignorant fuck was gets curious enough to come back for a second look.”
“Thanks again, brother,” I tell him.
“No problem. I know sometimes it takes a village to raise an idiot.”
“You’re getting village idiot mixed up with it taking a village to raise a child.”
“No, I’m not,” he deadpans back.
I cut the call, so he doesn’t hear me chuckle. My best friend is the master of lame-ass jokes.
***
Church is at six. I drop a kiss on Linsey’s cheek and remind her to set the security system when I leave.
Our meeting room’s full when I get there.
Siege has the gavel in front of him and Zen’s laptop is already wired into the screen on the wall.
I stand up and walk the brothers through it.
The hospital. The sentence, aggravated by weapons and drug charges.
The early release, which pisses them off as bad as it pissed off me.
The surveillance, the break-in, the envelope and the message about her being his in God’s eyes.
“You know how I feel about people using religion to excuse their evilness,” Rigs grumbles.
Rigs used to be a chaplain back in the Marines.
He got stripped of his role after he nearly killed a man who was messing with his underage cousin.
He might not be officially a man of God anymore, but he still believes in his own way.
“Dylan checked in with his parole officer in Billings on Friday afternoon,” I tell the table.
“In person, on schedule, fourteen hours away. So either he checked in and drove straight through, or somebody came in his place. Which means we can’t even say for certain who we’re huntin’.
What I can tell you is somebody broke into Linsey’s aunt’s home, and I want this fucker found. ”
Siege doesn’t deliberate long. He never does when there’s a kid in the mix. He looks around the room once and brings the gavel down.
“The Legion ain’t waitin’ for a second attempt.
This is Sabre’s woman, and he’s been a righteous brother.
We owe him our support on this.” He points the gavel down the table.
“Zen, keep trackin’ the ex. Hack his phone if you have to.
Dig through his family’s social media. Talon, Rider, canvass the area.
Hotels, motels, rentals. Anybody with links to Montana, I wanna know. Tex, give Sabre whatever he needs.”
Then the gavel swings around to me. “And your job is keepin’ that family at your house and safe. If anything pops off there, you don’t do anything stupid and you don’t go it alone. Shelter and wait for backup. We hunt as a club. Understood?”
“Understood, Prez.”
***
I’m the last one up, standing in my kitchen gazing out the window above the sink, wondering if Dylan is out there somewhere, creeping around, watching the house.
My phone buzzes on the counter. It’s Zen.
“What’s up, Zen? Talk to me, brother.”
“The partial plate came back. It’s a rental that was picked up in Billings, Montana on Thursday morning and returned early Sunday morning.
We’re still tracking the name on the booking.
Looks like it might be the ex. Though, if the information we got is right, he met with his parole officer then.
That would have given him a very short time frame to locate the house, because the car was returned to the rental agency in Billings nine hours after he broke into Linsey’s house. ”
“If it’s her ex, he knew exactly where to find her,” I say.
Zen continues, “So, here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m pullin’ camera footage from every gas station near her street. It’s gonna take some time. But it’s a thread, brother, and threads unravel.”