17. Deacon
DEACON
Plug leapt up like a bat out of hell as his laptop started dinging and singing.
“What’s happening?” I asked as I slowly stood.
Plug’s fingers moved across his laptop before his face even focused on the screen.
“Fucking Christ, what the hell did they find?” he whispered to himself.
“Let me see,” I said as I stormed toward him.
I shoved my men out of the way and didn’t give a flying fuck about their grunting or groaning or complaining. The sanctuary we once built for ourselves was way too small for us. But as I loomed over Plug’s shoulder, I still couldn’t see what the hell happened.
“Tell me what I’m looking at,” I commanded.
Plug shook his head. “I don’t know yet. Just let me do what I do. Mace!”
“Printer’s going!?” he called out over the growing roar of the crowded room.
I yanked my head up and found Mace. “Go grab everything and bring it back so we can see.”
Mace shoved his finger into the air. “Got it!”
“What the hell is all this shit?” Deadlock asked as he took up a spot at Plug’s other side.
Plug shook his head again. “Right now, I’m just printing it off as quickly as I can. Now shut up and let me focus.”
“Are you sure it’s the guys and not a trap?” I asked.
Plug peeked over at me quickly before resuming what he was doing. He didn’t grace me with an answer, and I didn’t like that. But emails popped up with a furious frenzy behind them and I grew worried. Were my men all right? Were they under duress? Was this a last-minute plea from more men we’d lose?
“I shouldn’t have sent them alone,” I groaned as I raked my hands through my hair.
“You didn’t,” Rico said. “You sent the three of them together so that they could watch each other’s backs.”
“Then why do I get the feeling that this isn’t good?”
“Because up until this point, nothing’s been good about this situation,” Plug said as a grin spread across his face. “But it looks like the game might just be changing for us.”
“Why?” I asked as I hunched back down over his shoulder. “What did you see?”
“It’s not what I’m seeing or not seeing, it’s simply the sheer volume of it. They’ve stumbled across something, and judging by some of the personables I’m catching in some of these emails? They may have found their home base.”
I’d never heard my men cheer so hard. High fives were shared all around and whoops and hollers filled the corners of our sanctuary.
Even I had to succumb to the smallest of smirks that ticked my stubbled cheeks.
Fucking hell, I needed a shave. I hadn’t properly cleaned myself up since Char came to stay with us.
“Wait a second, how long has her dot been stationary?” Deadlock asked.
That pulled my attention back to the screen. “Plug?”
“Coming right up,” he said as his finger clickity-clacked across the keyboard. “Oh.”
I turned back toward him. “Oh?”
Plug smiled from ear to ear. “Gotcha, bitch.”
“What? Where is she?” Deadlock asked.
“A motel,” Plug said as he pulled up the address and phone number. “She’s been stopped at a motel for… fifteen minutes now.”
“Holy fucking hell!” Mace exclaimed above our heads.
I took off. I don’t know what possessed me to leave my men back there or what the fuck took over, but I booked it.
Plug said something about camera angles, but I didn’t give a flying fuck.
I knew he’d do everything that he could to get us the information we needed.
That much was for certain. But as I stormed out into the hallway, I damn near ran over Mace as he huffed and puffed.
“I got here as… as quickly as I could. You… you need to…”
He held out a piece of paper among the stack he clenched in his other fist, and I yanked it out of his grasp.
He bent over, heaving for air as I held the paper out for me to read.
Of course, I inherited my father’s bullshit eyesight.
Always came in handy during situations where I needed information, and quickly.
But there wasn’t much to digest on the page.
Other than my sheer shock, of course.
“The email,” Mace said as he rose up and finished catching his breath. “Read the email.”
I already did, though. Over and over. And every single time my gaze ran over those words with that picture attached, my heart sank deeper into my gut.
“Come on, Plug needs to see these,” I said as I turned on the heels of my feet.
We both raced back into the room where Plug already had camera angles from the motel pulled up.
“This must be where she’s been staying this entire time,” Rico said.
“The fuck is she doing?” I asked.
“Here,” I said as I handed the papers to Plug and continued watching the screen.
Plug’s gasp pulled the guys toward him as I watched the scene unfold on the projector screen hanging from the ceiling.
I watched as that woman shoved shit into the back of that black van.
Duffle bags and suitcases. A couple of plastic trash bags.
Oh yeah. That woman had been in that motel room for a while.
She even had her own towels that she stuffed into the front seat of her vehicle.
“She’s making a break for it,” Mace said.
I shook my head. “It wouldn’t be that simple with her.”
Then we all watched in silence as she took out those gasoline jugs from the van.
The ones we knew she filled up at the gas station she stopped at.
My jaw slowly sank to the floor as she lugged them back into the motel room.
Her shadow danced along the door. It didn’t take a genius to know that she was coating that fucking room in gasoline. Seven goddamn jugs of it.
“She’s gonna blow the whole motel,” Plug said breathlessly.
The last thing we saw before the explosion was her diving toward her fucking van.
She cowered behind it like a little pussy as glass and carpet and concrete ripped its way across the camera’s field of vision.
I didn’t need to hear the screaming to know it was happening.
People running about, jumping from the second story only to slam onto a hard piece of wood.
Or glass. Or sheetrock. A body flew through our field of vision.
People poured out of their rooms. It was absolute mayhem. Carnage, and fucking mayhem.
I turned to Plug, but he already had the answer to my question.
“Yes, I’m recording,” was all he said as he stared at the scene unfolding in front of us.
I kept my eye on that bitch, too. How she used the chaos of the crowd to slip effortlessly back into her van.
How she crawled on all fours, concealing herself with the smoke and the fire just to climb behind the wheel of that motherfucking van.
Nielson had to have given it to her for a reason.
He wasn’t that stupid. I knew he probably did his little independent research that he always did whenever I told him to stay out of it, and I prayed to any God listening for the first time in my life.
I prayed that the sheriff was working with Char and giving her some answers to fill in the holes we still didn’t have a chance to fill.
“We need to get in touch with the guys now,” I said as I turned back to Plug. “Did any of them take any sort of communicative device?”
No one answered me, though. Plug didn’t even look in my direction. All he did was look back down at his laptop, ease himself into his chair, and crack his neck.
“I need to get the rest of this printed off before we wipe and dispose of it,” he murmured.
I took the non-answer and nodded mindlessly. “Do what you need to do.”
“How will we keep tracking her, then?” Mace asked.
I placed the heels of my palms against my temples.
Too much. There was too much to do. Too much to consider.
Too much to pick through. Just too fucking much.
My brain swirled with all sorts of theories and alternative explanations.
Reasons as to why my idiot men left without communication devices, or reasons as to why this bitch now no longer cared about the imprint she left behind.
I mean, she had to know there were cameras around. Cameras she could be caught on.
Was she that pompous and idiotic?
Or was she that calculated and connected?
“Deac?” Rico asked.
I moved away from his outstretched hand. “Just give me a second.”
Mace stepped toward me. “Deac, if you need?—”
I ripped my hair out of its bun. “Just give me a motherfucking second!”
My voice echoed off the rafters of the room as all of my men froze.
They faced me, a mixture of worry and fear behind their eyes.
I roared as I stormed out of the room. I slammed my fist into every single hard surface I found, just trying to remember to breathe.
The pain ricocheted up my arms. My own blood splashed against my clothing.
Anger. I couldn’t see, or breathe, or hear, or smell, or even think through the haze of anger that dropped over my shoulders.
And the one person who helped to level me out wasn’t even there.
I wasn’t sure how long I was gone. But when I moved back into the room, all eyes were on me.
“We need to know who Murphy is,” I said as I cased the room with my eyes. “If that’s Doc’s real name, we need to know who he is and what he really does.”
“A fresh laptop, it is,” Plug said as he disassembled the one in front of him.
“You sure we got everything printed off?” Mace asked.
Plug nodded. “The emails stopped coming about ten minutes ago.”
I pointed at Mace. “You and Plug make sense of all this shit, but give me that email.”
Mace didn’t hesitate. “Where you taking it?”
I grabbed it and shoved it into my leather jacket pocket. “I’m taking it to Nielson, who will also be buying you a fresh laptop.”
“What?” Plug asked.
I nodded toward the stack of papers littering the tabletop. “You and Mace need to make sense of all this. I’m gonna take this email to Nielson and he’s gonna help me figure out who the fuck that man is.”
“Are you sure that’s smart?” Deadlock asked.
I drew in a deep, intentional breath before I spoke. “If Char is willing to go with them, then I have to trust that. She’s always been better at thinking ahead, and if she believes the sheriff can help us, then I do as well. Anyone got an issue with that?”
“Hey, I like her,” Plug said as he held up his hands in mock surrender.
Deadlock nodded. “She makes a mean breakfast.”
“She helps keep you in your place, too,” Rico said with a grin.
“Watch it,” I warned.
“Well she does,” Deadlock whispered.
“I heard that,” I said flatly before I fixed my voice. “But we all know that Nielson’s got some friends in places we don’t. Maybe he’ll be more willing to help us find some answers when we inform him of the carnage this woman just left in her wake.”
“Again,” Plug said.
“Either way,” I said as I stepped out into the hallway, “they’re involved now. Char made sure of that. And they need to know what’s happening. So let me know when the guys are back with Doc’s body.”
“How long should we wait before we go looking for them?” Rico asked.
The question halted me in the hallway. “Twenty minutes.”
And when no other questions came from disembodied voices who followed me out into the hallway, I set my sights on my bike outside.
It was time for me to head to the precinct.