Chapter 4
Storm
Nearly as soon as Magnum was gone, Mad Dog shook his head and said, “Maybe we don’t need the dates. Do you know the names of the people taken in Birmingham?”
I frowned at him while I put it together in my head. Someone they knew had been taken, maybe? Was that why Bud thought this chapter was my best chance at getting help?
It took me a few seconds to get my mind onto the right list. I wouldn’t know everyone off the top of my head, but I’d spent time downtown talking to witnesses, so I’d get most of them.
I started naming them, and when I got to Mason Barnes, Squatch jerked like he’d been hit and said, “Fuck. Shit.”
I stopped and looked at him, waiting for an explanation, and he said, “We’ve been looking for him since he went missing. The cops don’t care. No one cares.”
“I care,” I told him. “Marine, veteran. All-around badass dealing with bad shit he saw in… everyone assumes Afghanistan, but his record is classified and I can’t get it.
He wasn’t interested in getting help to stop drinking, but even trashed, he’d help others in the homeless camp who needed it.
Made sure no one fucked with the girls who didn’t want to be fucked with.
Everyone liked him except the assholes, best I could tell, and they had a healthy respect for him. ”
Magnum had stepped in while I was talking, but I ignored him while I tried to sort through what I knew.
“Mason’s brother reported him missing, but I don’t remember the brother’s name off the top of my head, and I could never find contact info that actually led to him. How are ya’ll connected to him?”
“Brother of one of our members,” Mad Dog said.
Magnum stepped closer and told Mad Dog, “Looks like she didn’t need to get to her info, after all.” He met my gaze. “You knew all that off the top of your head?”
“I feel like I know so many of the missing… it’s why I decided to keep going even after I found out what it’ll take to bring this organization down.”
Mad Dog looked at Magnum, and I wasn’t sure what to think about the look that passed between them, but it ended with Magnum nodding, and then Mad Dog went full-on into leader mode.
“We’ll keep you safe, but you won’t do anything without Magnum’s approval, and there’ll be some things he’ll need to check in with me on before he can give the okay.
You will not move faster or slower than we are willing to go.
That’s our price. We get a say in how the investigation goes; we keep you safe. ”
I considered that and said, “I get veto power over massively illegal activity. I’m good with grey-area stuff, but I have a moral code.
I’m not above cloning phones and invading privacy, but…
” I shook my head. “We aren’t going to be able to call law enforcement for help, and I get that means I’m probably not going to be comfortable with some of what’ll have to be done, but can you let me help work any op we decide on so we are defensive and not completely offensive? ”
“We have a moral code, too,” Squatch said. “You hurt one of ours, we hurt you.”
“If we can’t agree on how to move forward,” Mad Dog said, “we’ll bring Bud and Nickie in to mediate. Does that work?”
I looked at Bud, but he was looking at Mad Dog. “I didn’t agree to that!”
“You brought her to us,” Mad Dog said with a smile, “and as much as I appreciate that, it comes with a bitch of a responsibility.”
Bud smiled at me and then told Mad Dog, “Yeah, I know, and she’ll accept it because she knows Nickie will be the voice of reason even if I’m not.”
I nodded, not because I thought Nickie would persuade them if it came down to it, but because I figured it was the best deal I was likely to get. “Yeah, okay.”
“I have some rules,” Magnum said. “We’ll get Skippy to help me craft the best route out of here so no one can track back to us, not even the best, which is quite possibly who’ll be looking for us.
You do not go online unless we are doing it together.
I’ll put your phone in a lockbox so you have custody of it, but you can’t use it — and you won’t have Wi-Fi on your laptop, either.
I know it’ll kill you not to check on your bank balance and your home security system, but they need to think you’re completely off-grid. ”
It would kill me to stay away from my social media accounts and my email, but it couldn’t be helped. I knew better than to access them, and it pissed me off that he didn’t trust me to stay offline — but he didn’t know me, so I tried to be chill.
“You can lock my phone if you want. I don’t have a death wish, so I won’t be pulling it from the bags anytime soon. Doesn’t matter if it’s under another layer.”
He nodded. “We’ll discuss other house rules later, when it’s just us.
You’ll have your own room and bathroom. We’ll have to figure out whether your activity on my smart TVs might point to you.
Not a problem if you’re watching something popular, but if you’ve been watching something offbeat, you’ll have to wait to finish. ”
I nodded. “Right. I’m going to be investigating in all my free time, so I’m not sure I’ll be watching much TV.”
He shook his head. “You’ll be investigating when we can do it together.”
I shook my head right back. “I’ll have my data on my laptop, which won’t be connected to the ‘net. I’ll be working even when we aren’t online.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Okay. We’ll need to shut your wi-fi card down so it isn’t even looking for a network. Bluetooth, too.”
“Goes without saying,” I told him. “I have some cash on me, but not enough to pay my room and board beyond a week or two. We’ll have to figure something out so I can pay you after the fact.”
“No payment,” Mad Dog said. “You’re a guest of the club.
Help us find Mason, even if it doesn’t end well, and we’ll be in your debt.
” He stood. “And now I need to go talk to Gears.” He looked around the room and back to me.
“Squatch is our Sergeant-at-Arms, which means he’s responsible for the club’s security.
He, Magnum, and Skippy will be responsible for coming up with protocols and rules. ”
“Skippy is your geek?”
Bud was about to shake his head in the negative when Magnum said, “Yes. Hacker extraordinaire, which means he knows how to keep shit safe from hackers. Gears is our graphics guy, which I don’t think will help with this, so we can probably keep him out of most of it, but…
” He sighed and looked at Squatch. “He can’t come out there more often than he has in the past. We don’t know who these guys are watching, and Gears has been loud about wanting the police to look for his brother. ”
“Agreed,” Squatch said.
“You’re good with staying?” Bud asked me.
“If you aren’t, you need to speak up. This chapter has skin in the game, and they’re the most likely to put time into helping you.
The most I can offer you is a safehouse an hour outside of Atlanta that isn’t associated with the club, but no guards or geeks. ”
“I’m good,” I told him. “And I can’t thank you enough for the introduction and help.”
- - - ? - - -
Magnum
My background is in computer security and not as a personal bodyguard, but I still knew one of the top priorities was making my charge feel safe and comfortable.
Once everyone had left but Squatch, I told Storm, “I’m gonna throw some steaks on the grill. You have a preference between beef and venison?”
“Beef, but I’m okay with either. I can work on the side dishes, assuming you have a well-stocked fridge and pantry.”
I smiled. “I do. I was thinking I’d fry up some squash, and maybe dice some potatoes and stick them in the air fryer with some spices.”
She nodded. “I’ll get started cutting the potatoes and squash. I can toss the potatoes with rosemary, salt, and olive oil, get them started in the air fryer, and then fry the squash.”
Hmm. It seemed maybe she really did know a little about cooking.
“I eat a lot,” I told her. “Figure three times more than you assume.” I looked at Squatch. “And the big guy eats twice as much as me. I’ll salt the steaks and help dice the potatoes.”
“I’m going to think this through and make notes while ya’ll do that,” Squatch said.
“It occurs to me, in order to fulfill blondie’s defensive wish, it might work for us to rent a cabin far from other people and not close to us, at least a three or four-hour drive away.
Steal a car from the airport so they don’t know who we are by the plates, and then not be as careful as we’ve been about proxies when we go online to research them, so they find us. ”
I nodded, because I’d been thinking along the same lines, though I hadn’t intended to share it with Storm just yet, if at all.
“That can work, but they’re going to know exactly how many people we have in the house and hidden in the woods.
We can’t hide people nearby to even the playing field, and if they see a dozen or more of us, they’re gonna regroup and bring more people in.
” Storm shrugged. “Or just use one of their rumored heart-attack machines, or killer sounds, to take us all out from a distance.”
Squatch grunted and furrowed his brow. I could practically hear the gears grinding in his head, trying to figure out how to counter a threat with tech we couldn’t begin to counter.
Not only that, while our animal forms might help us with some of it, it was possible any sonar weapons would be even worse with our enhanced hearing.
“Right,” Storm said. “If we do an oopsie with a proxy, their automated sigint grid will flag it within minutes. They’ll deploy a radar satellite or a high-altitude drone to get a thermal fix on the structure, and if they count more than two or three heartbeats inside, or see armed sentries in the treeline, they might send in a team capable of handling however many people we have, but they may also choose to paint the roof with a localized microwave emitter or an aerosolized neurotoxin and wait for the twitching to stop. ”