5. Dallas
DALLAS
“I… think I should go with him,” I said, pointing after Gauge.
Deac punctuated my statement with a nod of his head, and out the door I went.
Gauge turned his room into absolute carnage, and there was no reason for him to do that to Plug’s face.
We were all doing the best that we could.
This special agent royally fucked over our world, and yet we were somehow still standing.
A man down, and barely breathing, but still fighting.
The last thing we needed was infighting.
“Plug!” Gauge barked. “Where the fuck are you!?”
As we charged through the upper level of the clubhouse, my mind wandered. I understood their worry. Deac was never so fucking silent. Gauge never looked more determined. And me?
I never felt so helpless.
We couldn’t reach her. Our precious Char, and she was completely out of reach.
It was never supposed to happen. She was supposed to be safe with us.
That was what we promised her, that we could protect her.
And look at where she ended up because of it.
The thought made my stomach curdle. I felt bile creeping up the back of my throat.
I had no idea if Char was safe, or still being harassed by Marcie, or even protected by the sheriff while she sat, rotting away in that cell.
Did they already process her? Did she officially have a record?
Would they take her back to D.C. to lock her away there?
Maybe throw her into a prison somewhere without bail until trial.
My head swirled with so many unanswered questions as Gauge murmured some half-assed apology I didn’t catch to Plug.
I drew in a sharp breath of air to tell him to put some gusto behind those words of his. Except Plug beat me to the punch.
“I think I know how Marcie did it,” he said.
“What?” Gauge glowered.
That pulled me out of my trance. “You do?”
Plug grinned. “Yep.”
Gauge let out an ear-piercing whistle before my voice followed right behind the sound.
“Deac! Get your ass down here! Plug’s got info!”
His heavy bootfalls ricocheted over our heads before he flung himself down the stairs.
I never heard Deac move with that kind of precision and speed in the years I’d known him.
He prided himself on taking his time. On making people wait for him.
It was his power move. The one he loved pulling out when people pissed him off and thought they could bark directions at him like any old fool.
But when it came to Char, we were all weak.
We all marched to a different tune when she was involved.
“You got us,” Rat said as he came in behind Deac.
The man came to stand beside me, but all he did was cross his arms over his chest. It made him look enormous.
“Talk,” Deac commanded.
“Okay,” Plug said as he stood from the desk in his bedroom, “so understand that this is only a theory. There’s really no way to prove what really?—”
“Get on with it,” Gauge snarled.
Plug held up his hands in mock surrender before flopping back down into his seat. “Come here and take a look at this.”
All three of us, Rat included, gathered around behind Plug.
We watched as he pulled up all sorts of camera angles around town, and confusion washed over me.
Where the hell did he get all of those angles?
There were only a couple of traffic cameras in town and a few security cameras scattered across the local businesses.
But nothing that should’ve given us the perspectives he had.
Especially when he pulled up an angle that looked right down onto the front door of Char’s studio apartment.
“Remember when she switched vehicles?” Plug asked as I studied the black and white images on the screen.
I pointed. “Where are those cameras?”
Plug chuckled. “You didn’t think I was gonna let those little black cameras go to waste, did you?”
That got Gauge to smile as he reached down and patted the man’s shoulder. “When you’re good, Plug.”
“Oh you just wait,” he said with a smile as he pressed the space bar on his laptop. “Now watch while I talk.”
My eyes bounced around from camera angle to camera angle, watching that blacked out SUV roll through each of the screens.
“Is she headed to the bar?” Deac asked.
“Not quite,” Plug said as he hooked his elbow over the back of his chair. “Remember when she switched up vehicles and we saw her in that navy hatchback at the precinct?”
“Is that the outside of the precinct?” I asked.
“Holy fuck, Char,” Gauge said breathlessly.
“I know there’s a lot happening at once,” Plug said as he scooted his chair out of the way so we could get closer to the laptop screen. “Just take it in as you can, and we can rewind whenever you need.”
“Oh. My. God,” Rat murmured.
“Holy shit,” Gauge hissed as he raked his hands through his hair.
Deac’s jaw hit the floor. “The navy hatchback was a diversion.”
I continued watching the snippets though.
Some of them were terrible quality, with television static that interrupted every once in a while.
But it tracked that blacked out van perfectly.
I watched as it rolled from screen to screen.
I watched as it pulled up to the bar, then past the bar, then down the alley where Char lived.
My back locked up as I hunched over. I placed my palm onto Plug’s desk as I watched Marcie back that fucking van into the alleyway, and it didn’t take a goddamn genius to put together what came next.
“Holy. Fucking. Shit,” Deac said flatly.
All of us watched, helpless as we saw Marcie force her way into Char’s apartment.
I shivered with fury as the screen stayed still and shadows danced beyond the threshold of her front door.
I straightened my back. My fists balled up at my sides.
All of my muscles locked up, because it was either staying still as stone or snapping everyone’s neck within the vicinity.
But nothing held a candle to the absolute fury that washed its way through my veins when I watched that bullshit special agent haul Char out of her own apartment in handcuffs.
And when I saw the way Marcie shoved Char into the back of that van, dropping her right onto her face, the need to taste her blood sat against my teeth.
“Gauge, your palms are bleeding,” Rat pointed out.
“Can we kill her now?” I glowered.
Plug paused the video and Deac cleared his throat, even with a beet red face. “Okay, so we know what happened to the black van.”
I knew he expected us to talk with him. To put the pieces together.
But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I knew that if I did, someone would die.
If I flinched, even for a moment, I wouldn’t stop flinching until I got on my bike, stormed that precinct, and put a bullet right between Marcie Dickerson’s beady fucking eyeballs.
So I stayed put while Rat stepped up to the plate.
“That would explain the hatchback,” he said as he patted Plug on the shoulder. “If she needed to get around with the van, but discovered the tracking device?—”
Gauge’s brain finally kicked in, though mine was still stalled.
“We roll up to the precinct on our bikes while she’s got that van parked there, and boom.
She switches the device from her van to my bike while we’re all inside fighting the way she probably planned for us to.
It looks like she’s on our tail the entire time, it puts us in panic mode, and she’s got free reign while we run around chasing our own fucking tails. ”
Plug twirled around in his chair with his leg tucked up underneath him. “We have to remember she’s been at this longer than we have. She’s studied us for a while. She knows the moves we’re going to make.”
I finally found my voice as my bloodlust dissipated. “Which means we have to act in the complete opposite way than we usually do.”
“Perfect,” Rat said flatly, “just what we need.”
I sighed heavily as I pinched the bridge of my nose. “That still doesn’t explain how, even though the tracking device was on Gauge’s bike, it showed her sitting right there at the precinct while we headed for her warehouse.”
Plug swiveled his chair to face us. “Like I said, it’s only a working theory based on the camera angles we’ve got, but my assumption is that she cloned the device.
She placed the original device on your bike to find just to frustrate us, but there’s most likely a cloned tracking device on the undercarriage of that navy hatchback somewhere that’s feeding us its location information. ”
I ground my teeth together. “Fuck this bitch.”
“She’s competent, I’ll give her that,” Plug murmured as he swiveled back toward his laptop screen.
I had half a mind to strangle him just for that goddamn comment. But I kept my hands to myself as Gauge let out a bombastic roar.
Plaster was scattered in Plug’s room.
“Oh boy,” Plug said as he ducked.
A piece of his bedroom wall went flying over his head as Gauge stormed out.
He slammed both of his fists into the painted plaster before grabbing handfuls of whatever was behind the fucking stuff and tossing it around Plug’s room.
I stood still as stone in between Rat and Deac, watching the man create total carnage around him in his wake.
He grabbed pictures off the walls and slammed them to the ground.
He shoved his leg out, kicking over decorative tables with vases that Mace insisted on putting up.
And as Gauge charged away from Plug’s room, it wasn’t until I heard him leaping down the stairs to the foyer that I turned to face Plug.
“Feel better!?” Deac called out after the man.
“No!” Gauge bellowed before the crashing of glass was heard.
I pointed to Plug’s walls. “I’ll get that fixed.”
Plug waved his hand dismissively. “I fucking hate that there’s no way to really tell what she did with the tracking device, but like I said, this is the most plausible theory.
She found it, decided to get another vehicle to place it on after cloning it so that she could fool us into thinking she was at the precinct, when really she’s been riding around in that van for God only knows how long now doing whatever the fuck she wants, apparently. ”
Even I could tell that Plug was getting frustrated, and that man never got frustrated.
He was our chipper little guy. The leanest one of the bunch.
And yet, he had one of the highest body counts of all of us.
You’d never know it, looking at his boyish face and his dumbass, lopsided smile. But he was a hellhound in sheep’s skin.
And I saw the angry animal stewing behind his stare.
“You think she rented that hatchback?” I asked.
Plug tilted his head before he drew in a curt breath. But Deac beat him to the punch.
“If you haven’t already checked, do it. Dallas? You ready to go see what else we’ll have to replace in this house?”
Plug’s fingers started zooming across the keyboard. “I’ll check around about that hatchback. See what I can’t come up with.”
“And Plug?” Deac asked.
“Yeah, Bossman?”
“Get all of the proof we’ve got on Marcie together and get it on a thumb drive for me.”
I furrowed my brow. “Wait, why?”
Deac shrugged. “Just call it a hunch.”
“Oooooh, I like hunches. What kind of hunch is it?” Plug asked as he dug around in his desk drawers.
“A hunch?” I asked as I cocked an eyebrow.
Deac shrugged. “I want to make sure we’ve got it all in one place in case I need to pass things off to Char.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t satisfied with his answer. Why wouldn’t he clue me in on this little hunch of his? Since when did we keep shit from each other?
“Don’t look so asshurt,” Deac said, patting my shoulder, “it’s just the beginning stages of a plan. You know how that is.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine, fine. But you’re helping me plaster all these walls back up.”
Deac snickered as he headed out of Plug’s room. “I figured we’d just hire someone for that.”
I caught up to him, trudging out into the hallway. “With us hemorrhaging money the way that we are? You think that’s smart?”
He scoffed. “Well, I wasn’t gonna bring someone in today to do something about it, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I grabbed his shoulder and stopped him just shy of the top step. “Do you think it’s wise to keep hunches to ourselves at this point in the game, though?”
And after a grin spread across his face, he curled his tongue over his teeth and let out a whistle so loud and so great that it rang my fucking ears.
“Thanks for that,” I said flatly as I stuck my finger inside of my ear canal and wiggled it.
“Chuuuuurch!” Deac bellowed.