21. Dallas
DALLAS
I straightened my crooked back as I emerged into the kitchen.
“So how’d she respond?” Deac asked.
I rolled my eyes as I ripped my wallet out of my back pocket and slapped a hundred dollar bill into Deacon’s outstretched palm.
“Told ya,” he said with a grin.
I flopped into a chair at the kitchen table. “She’s not gonna be our fan for a while until she can wrap her head around some things.”
“She’ll come around,” Deac said as he shoved the money into his back pocket.
“I’m gonna go talk to her,” Gauge said as he turned off the stove.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” I murmured.
Gauge just chuckled as he walked on by, though. “Sometimes, Dallas, a soft touch is all that’s necessary.”
“Yeah, Dallas,” Deac said jokingly.
I wasn’t so sure, however. I saw that look in her eye. The sheer hatred and disgust of it all. She was beginning to see who we really were. Who we chose to be. She got a glimpse of the monster inside all of us; monsters who reminded her of her father.
It didn’t take a genius to see that.
“Think he’ll have any luck?” Deac asked as he craned his neck to look up at the ceiling.
I heard someone stumbling around. “I think if anyone can, it’s him.”
“He’s always been a softie when it counts.”
“Yeah.”
Mace shuffled into the kitchen. “Morning.”
Deac pointed. “Coffee’s that way, food’s on the stove.”
“Gauge’s food?” he asked groggily.
“Of course,” I said.
“Thank fuck,” Mace said breathlessly.
“I’ll act like I didn’t hear that,” Rat said as he emerged from the dining room.
“We all know your cooking is shit, cut it out,” Deac said.
Rat smirked as he slid his dirty dishes into the sink. Water filtered through the pipes over our heads and my eyebrows hiked up onto my face.
“You don’t think?—”
Rat eased himself into a chair beside Deac. “Don’t hold your breath, she retched above my head for a while there.”
I pinned him with a look. “She was what?”
“Guys!” Plug exclaimed as he soared into the kitchen. “I’ve finally got something.”
“Let me see,” Deac said as he held up his hand.
“Please tell me we finally know who this bitch is,” Mace said as he sat down with a heaping plate of food.
“She was really throwing up?” I asked Rat.
All he did was nod before turning his attention to Plug, though. Jesus Christ, the stress alone made her vomit.
It made me wonder if she even attempted to eat.
“What am I looking at?” Deac asked as he held the papers up to his face.
“That,” Plug said as he pointed, “is a snapshot of Special Agent Monica DeFleur in one of those black vans.”
“Let me see,” I said as I held out my hand.
Deac handed me the papers and I quickly studied them. “That’s why you wanted Char to circle the women that looked like that agent.”
Plug nodded. “I needed some base features to go off of, and after compiling a few edits as to how she might look, it gave me a face to search for when scouring the traffic cams. Guess where that was taken?”
“Where?” Rat asked as he yanked the paper out of my hands.
“The next town over. Huffley Valley.”
“We finally have her fucking face,” Rat muttered. “Get wrecked, bitch.”
He tossed the paper onto the table before Mace quickly scooped it up and studied it while shoveling his face full of cheesy eggs.
“This chicken scratch down here yours?” Mace asked with his mouth full.
“Swallow,” Deac and I said in unison.
Rat chuckled as Mace made a show of swallowing his food. Even went so far as to open his mouth and stick his fucking tongue out.
A show that made me grin. “All right, all right. We get it. Now, what were you saying?”
He put down his fork and pointed to the bottom of this picture. “This your chicken scratch, Plug?”
“Yep. That’s the crossroads where this traffic cam is. Just a note that I took,” he said.
“Right, right,” Mace said as he placed the picture down for all of us to see.
“Was she going anywhere in particular?” Deac asked.
“If she was, I couldn’t track her beyond the cameras in town,” Plug said. “But I can finally piece together an entire day’s worth of activities for her.”
“So there’s more pictures of her that you have?” I asked.
Plug grinned as he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket.
Even in his fucking pajamas, he wore that damned thing.
He was always dedicated to us. Sometimes a bit too much.
But he had a fire lit underneath his ass, and I’d seen him single-handedly tear down someone’s world from behind his computer screen.
Finally, we were dropping pieces in place.
“Eating in a diner,” he said as he placed down another picture from a traffic camera.
“Visiting the bank,” he said as he placed yet another one down.
“Grocery shopping,” he said as he slipped another one down onto the table.
The question itched at the back of my mind. “Why are we just now getting pictures of her like this? I mean, it’s not the first time you’ve scoured these traffic cams.”
“Well, you know me and my software,” Plug said as he leaned back in his seat, “I kept it running in the background to pick up anything and everything on those black vans. Then once I had some features to go along with it, it wasn’t long before my software pinged these pictures.
But they’re the only ones that have popped up so far. ”
“She’s baiting us,” Rat said.
We all turned to face him as he picked up his black-and-blue face.
“If she’s just now allowing herself to be seen on those cameras, then it’s because she wants us to see. She’s either baiting us or taunting us.”
Rat placed his head in his hands and I stood. “We should get you back upstairs now that you’ve eaten.”
He shook his head, though. “I’m more of use to you down here.”
“You’re more of use to us alive,” Deac said curtly, “and if you push yourself with the concussion that you’ve got, your state of living will become questionable at best.”
Rat shot him a look. “I see you talked to the doctor.”
“I always talk to the doctor,” he said flatly. “Now upstairs with you.”
“Deac,” he groaned, “I can’t sleep. I can barely move. I might as well help, or run patrol routes, if I can actually do that.”
That’s when Gauge found his way back into the kitchen. “You’re not going anywhere until the doctor clears you, and that isn’t gonna be for a while.”
I turned to face him. “How is she?”
Gauge simply smiled, though. “Whatever she decides, she’ll be okay.”
“The hell does that mean?” Deac asked.
Gauge’s eyes fell to the table. “Is that her? The woman we’re looking for?”
I nodded. “Plug finally found her on traffic cams in Huffley Valley.”
He slowly cased his eyes toward the man. “Just now?”
Plug leaned his chair back so that it balanced on its two back legs. “These are the events of her day yesterday. For whatever the reason, she’s no longer dodging the cameras.”
“That can’t be good,” Gauge murmured.
“It’s most likely not,” Rat said.
Gauge walked over to Rat. “Come on, I’ll help you get back into bed.”
Rat looked up at him with a stoic stare. “Even if I can only sit next to Plug and help him out, I’m not getting back in that bed. There are plenty of things I can do while I’m resting.”
“You can’t stare at a screen with a concussion. Even I know that,” Plug said.
“Bait is dead!” Rat exclaimed.
He slammed his fists into the kitchen table, and it silenced all of us.
“My best friend is dead,” Rat said as his voice broke, “and I deserve a chance at seeing this through. I deserve a chance at catching his murderer.”
Deac looked over at me and I simply shrugged. Not my crew, not my call. He even looked up at Gauge, who pretty much did the same thing. Then our stalwart, daring President looked down at the pictures we had of that woman who finally decided to show her face.
He slid the pictures toward Rat. “You’re damn right, you do. So take those pictures up to Char. We need to know if that’s the woman she talked to.”
“If she’s not out of the shower, just talk through the door. That’s how she and I talked earlier,” Gauge said.
“At least she talked to you,” I murmured.
“On it,” Rat said as he scooped up the pictures and left the kitchen.
I watched him lumber out of the room, his crooked form haunting all of us as he disappeared around the corner and up the steps.
“You sure this is a good idea?” I asked.
We all heard Rat taking the steps one by one, still unable to walk properly with the beating he sustained.
“Should someone go help him?” Mace asked as he lowered his voice.
Deac shook his head, though. “Let him do this. Maybe it’ll bring him some peace.”
Gauge scoffed. “Men like us don’t get peace.”
“Then,” I said as I stood to my feet, “neither will she. If Char can confirm that she’s the ATF agent, then we have to tread carefully. If she’s letting us see her face now, it means she’s got nothing to lose.”
“Maybe she never did,” Deac murmured.
“What was that?” Gauge asked.
Deac ran his hands down his face. “The more we get into this, the more worried I become that Char’s right. I think we’re dealing with an angry victim, and I think Rat was right when he said she tried to bait us.”
“You think she’s trying to get us to react to seeing her on camera?” I asked.
“Worse than that,” Deac said as he flopped his head back on his shoulders. “I think she’s on a suicide mission. I think she expects us to react, and react hard.”
“So our best bet is to stay put. Is that what you’re saying?” Gauge asked.
Deac stood to his feet. “Lockdown-A. No one goes anywhere, or does anything, without prior permission from me. And until we know more, that’s exactly how we’re gonna treat this situation: we stay put and see if she lashes out again. Maybe then, she’ll make another mistake.”
And while it wasn’t the best idea in the world, it was the best bad idea anyone came up with since the start of it all. I just hoped her lashing out didn’t mean killing another one of our men.
Because I wasn’t sure if Deac could handle another blow like that.