5. Dallas
DALLAS
“Come on, in the trash. Let’s go.”
“Fucking Christ,” Mace mumbled as he tossed his broken cell into the bag.
“Gauge!” Deac exclaimed.
I heard his heavy footfalls barreling down the hallway. “Got the cameras off.”
I gathered the last of the cell phones between all of us and tied off the bag. “Cell phones are gathered.”
“The sheriff and his men outside?” Deac asked.
“Yep,” Gauge said as he called from one of the back rooms, “he’s got his men flying in all directions right now. I told him to keep us in the loop if they found anything.”
I tossed the bag into the garbage tote in the corner before I turned toward our men.
We were packed in like sardines, and the need for blood filled my nostrils.
Gauge stood in the corner, looming over all of us with his teeth gritted together and his fists balled up.
Deac did his best to breathe evenly, despite the fact that his entire body vibrated with fury.
And as I stood there, leaning against the closed garage door, I thought about Baitfish.
My God, the things he must be enduring.
I’d take my time killing those motherfuckers.
Just so I could hear them scream.
“Everyone!” Deac bellowed over our heads. “We’re under siege.”
He took a second and drew in a massive breath before clearing his throat.
“Options, let’s hear ’em.”
“They’ve been steps ahead of us for a while, and that tells me this is professional,” one of our prospects, Rico, said.
Gauge shook his head. “Not even the government is this organized.”
“Are we entertaining Nielson’s suggestion?” I asked.
The sea of heads nodded, and my stomach curled in on itself.
“So assume this is a hit for a second,” Deac said as he ran his hands down his face. “We’ve got Doc who threw the signal at us, we’ve got cameras stationed around town that line our delivery routes, and now they’ve targeted one of our businesses and taken one of our own.”
“Do we assume Bait is the target?” Rico asked. “Because I’m not gonna lie, this feels like someone’s trying to split us up more than anything.”
“Divide and conquer,” I said.
Deac shook his head. “I’m not comfortable assuming anything right now. It could get Bait killed.”
If he’s not already dead.
The entire room slowly turned their heads toward me, and I rolled my lips over my teeth.
“Didn’t mean to say that out loud,” I said.
“Obviously,” Deac said flatly.
“How’s Rat doing? Anyone know?” Gauge asked.
I lifted my fingers into the air. “Our doctor took him over to Lone Star to work on patching him up. He’s pretty roughed up, but he’ll survive.”
“Thank fuck for that, at least,” Gauge murmured.
“All right,” Deac said as he tilted his head toward the ceiling, “our focus needs to be on getting Baitfish back. Once we have him, we can decide who’s dying. But he needs us right now, and we can’t let him down.”
“What do we do then, Boss?” Rico asked.
And just as Deac nodded toward him, I heard a familiar trilling off in the distance.
“The fuck?” Deac asked.
I furrowed my brow. “That’s the SAT phone.”
“That must be Plug and Mace,” Gauge said as he came closer to all of us.
“Or it could be someone else,” Rico said.
All of us inched closer to the closet where the sound trilled from.
The sharp noise pierced the air, causing all of us to move like one singular blob toward the wary noise.
Plug was smart, so it was completely feasible that he called us.
However, we could no longer underestimate whoever the hell was gunning for us.
And as Deac whipped the closet door open, I reached for the phone before picking up the call and placing it on speaker.
“Speak,” I said as I looked around at the guys, hunched and huddled all around me.
“Dallas! Thank fuck,” Plug said.
We all collectively sighed with relief as Mace shouted. “The van didn’t show up on any traffic cameras in the two towns they should’ve passed through, you guys!”
“So they turned off into the desert before they got there,” Deac said.
“It’s the only other option, but there’s an endless amount of sandy acreage to explore in order to find those fucking tire tracks.”
“And that still doesn’t take into account using the desert to go around towns to get to where they wanna go!” Mace exclaimed.
“Raaaaaaaah-AAAAAAAAAAH!”
The bellow that encompassed Deac’s entire existence held him hostage as he whipped around.
His hands gripped the nearest table and, as if it were feather light, he flipped it against the walls.
Tools of all shapes and sizes went clattering to the ground.
Something smashed against the concrete flooring, scattering toward our steel-toed boots.
Our president balled up his fist and whipped around, slamming it into the painted cinderblock behind him.
And as I stood there, watching him assault that wall from all directions, I drew the SAT phone closer to the other guys.
Deac needed his moment, but we still needed information.
“Okay,” I said as I shook my head, “our number one priority is getting Bait back. And since we don’t have a ton of info at our disposal, we’ll have to do this the old fashioned way.”
“On it,” Plug said.
“Loud and clear,” Mace said.
“AAAAAAAAHHHHH!” Deac roared as a chair flew across the garage.
It shattered into pieces against the back door as Gauge ripped the phone from my hand. “Plug. Mace.”
“Hey, Gauge,” they both said together.
“Start your search of the desert from that end. I’ll keep this SAT phone with me. You find something, you call. We find something, we call, and we’ll meet in the middle.”
“Sure thing,” Plug said.
“And guys?” he asked.
“Yeah?” Mace asked.
“Be safe out there. As far as I’m concerned, we’re at war.”
And after Gauge hung up the phone, he handed it back to me. “You sure you wanna do this the old-fashioned way?”
I shrugged. “Do we have any other choice?”
‘Old-fashioned’ for us was code for ‘Plug needs to hack into whatever the fuck he can to get us the information we need, so help us fucking God.’ We were all tired of being left in the dust. Always having to clean up, but never getting the jump on, so to speak.
Deac finally settled down, slumping against the back door as he banged his head back against it.
Over and over, like a ticking time bomb ready to explode.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him like that before, and it made me wonder if Axel felt that way when he was still President.
Or still alive.
“Should we close the shop down until this all blows over?” Rico asked.
All of our men gathered. Twenty-two people deep, and not one of them flinched when I gazed around the room.
As Deac came back to join the fold, we closed ranks.
We heard Sheriff Nielson barking commands to his men outside, but for all we knew they were in on it.
We couldn’t trust anyone, not until we had a grasp on things.
There was something obvious we were missing.
I felt it in my bones.
“It’ll be a fuckton of money out of our pockets if we do, that’s for sure,” Gauge said as he cracked his neck, “and not just in terms of income. We’ll have to pay the entire shop to close down and stay away.”
Deac lifted his head high and nodded. “Everything shuts down until we know what the fuck is going on. Lone Star, here, and Bottle Grounds. We can’t risk another one of our businesses succumbing to whatever the hell this shit is.”
“So what do you want us to do?” Sheriff Nielson asked.
All of us whipped toward the doorway where he stood before Deac’s face grew cold.
“Why the hell are you still here?” he barked.
Nielson shrugged. “No one told me to leave.”
“The call for church didn’t tip you off?” I asked.
But Nielson simply locked his stare with Deac’s. “Would you help us if it were one of my men?”
“In a heartbeat,” Gauge said.
Deac nodded. “You know we would.”
Nielson tilted his head. “So what do you want us to do?”
Deac shook his head. “You guys just need?—”
I interjected, though. We needed all of the help we could get, and I had no issues assuming responsibility for my decisions.
“Start a patrol for Baitfish. It wouldn’t look as weird for the police to be looking around. We’re searching for tire tracks out in the desert. Anything that may lead us to where they took our guy.”
I felt Deac’s eyes on the back of my head as he spoke.
“Until we hear back from Plug, get you and your men scouring the northern desert territory. Take pictures of any tire tracks or footprints you find. Don’t follow them, though.
We don’t know who we’re dealing with, so we don’t know what you’re walking into. ”
The sheriff wasted no time in tilting his mouth toward his shoulder-mounted radio. “All available units to homebase. We have an adult 207. I repeat, an adult 207. Baitfish has been taken.”
And almost immediately, sirens from all directions screamed out in terror as the air around us filled with the sounds and smells of burnt rubber.
“We’ll let you know what we find,” Nielson said as he backtracked out of the room.
And for the first time since we found those fucking cameras, I had hope.
I had hope that we’d find Baitfish alive.