Chapter 6
RAMPAGE
Lily came back downstairs with an empty plate and a look on her face that Rampage recognized.
He was at the kitchen table with Irish, Blade and Savage, laptop open, three different browser tabs running searches on Marcus Delling's phone number, and he didn't look up when she came in.
But he clocked it, the particular expression of a woman who'd gone upstairs to do a kindness and come back with something unexpected.
"She okay?" he asked.
"She's—" Lily set the plate in the sink. Paused. "She's holding it together really hard. You know that thing where someone is so okay that you can tell they're absolutely not okay?"
"Yeah."
"That." She turned around, leaning against the counter. "She laughed at my joke about the squat rack, though. Like a real laugh. She's funny."
"Focus," Blade said, not looking up from his own screen. "Delling."
Lily threw a dish towel at him. He caught it without looking. “Behave yourself, little girl.” He said lightly and then winked at her.
Clover appeared in the kitchen doorway, assessed the situation, lifted his head and gave a dramatic sigh, as if knowing these humans didn’t have time to play right now, and left again.
"The Denver connection," Irish said, pulling up a tab and turning the laptop so Rampage could see it.
"Dax sent the cases over for us to look at it.
Two cases, both open. Women went missing after Facebook Marketplace transactions.
Different fake profiles, different product listings, but the methodology is identical.
The listings targeted at women, solo transactions, vehicles disabled after first contact.
They stopped to help and the women disappeared. "
Rampage stared at the screen.
"Same guy?" Savage asked.
"Same network, at minimum. The profiles were created on the same IP before it got masked. Whoever's running this has done it enough to get better at covering tracks, but not enough to be perfect."
"Ages?" Rampage asked.
"Twenty-two and twenty-seven. Both women. Both living alone." Irish paused. "Both curvy blondes."
The kitchen went quiet. Emily fit the description to a T. Whoever it was doing this most definitely had a type.
Rampage closed the laptop like closing it would change the information on it. He knew he didn’t have to tell the men anything, but Lily was still in the room. He turned to her. "Emily doesn't hear that part yet."
"Agreed," Lily said immediately, and her voice had lost all the lightness.
"She hears that she was targeted, that it's organized, that we're running it down. She doesn't hear she fits a specific physical profile until we know more." He looked at Irish. "Get this to Phantom. He needs to loop in his federal contacts today, not tomorrow."
"Already drafted the message."
"Send it."
Savage leaned back in his chair. "We keeping her here?"
"As long as it takes."
"She going to be okay with that?"
Rampage thought about Emily sitting on the bed this morning with her jaw set and her eyes clear saying I said okay like a woman who'd made a decision and intended to stand on it.
"Yeah," he said. "She'll be okay with it.” He paused. “And if she’s not I’ll make her okay with it.”
“So, it’s like that,” Irish said with a chuckle.
“Like what?” Lily asked.
“She’s his.” Blade explained.
“I could have told you that last night,” Savage added.
“Yeah,” Rampage confirmed. “She’s mine.”
Emily came downstairs around ten.
He could tell by the damp ends of her hair, pulled back now that she’d showered, and she'd borrowed something from the women's communal stash of spares that the club kept around, dark leggings and a soft gray hoodie that was slightly too big for her and made her look younger than she probably was.
She came into the common room with her hands wrapped around her phone and stopped in the doorway, taking in the space in daylight.
Nicole was on the couch with Lily. Savage was at the table. Irish was on the floor with Clover across him, giving the dog belly rubs.
Emily looked at Irish and the dog.
"He's on your lap," she said.
"He's not on my lap," Irish said. "He's adjacent to my lap."
"That is a hundred-pound dog sitting on your legs."
"He's sitting near my legs."
"Irish," Lily said, "you are literally feeding him a piece of your toast right now."
"He was looking at me."
Emily laughed and it caught his attention. It was a real laugh, so full it filled the air around him with warmth. It did something to the room. Even Savage looked up.
She found a spot on the end of the couch near Nicole, tucked her feet under herself, and Clover immediately abandoned Irish, crossed the room, and put his entire head on her knee.
"Traitor," Irish said.
"He has good taste," Emily told him.
Rampage watched from the kitchen doorway.
He'd been watching her all morning in the careful, unobtrusive way he watched everything.
He tracked her comfort level, the moments she tightened up, the moments she loosened.
She was better than she'd been at four in the morning when the walls were thin enough to carry the sound of her not sleeping.
Being around people was helping. Being around these people specifically, which told him something about her.
She was the kind of person who regulated by connection, he figured she was an extrovert.
It clocked with her teaching yoga classes and personal training sessions.
She liked being around people, which was good for him, since the Clubhouse was like Grand Central Station.
Nicole leaned over and said something quiet to her. Emily's expression shifted surprise, then something softer.
He needed to stop watching her from doorways and go do something useful.
He almost managed it.
"You're hovering," Savannah said from directly behind him, which meant he hadn't heard her come in, which was embarrassing.
"I'm standing in the kitchen about to refill my coffee."
"You're watching her like she might disappear if you look away." Savannah stepped up beside him, coffee in hand, completely unintimidated. "It's sweet."
"It's not sweet. It's tactical. I’m keeping her safe."
"Sure." She sipped her coffee. "She asked Lily what everyone's jobs were this morning. Wanted to understand how the club functioned. Lil said she had questions about everything but not in a nosy way, just genuinely curious. Wanted to understand the world she'd landed in."
Rampage filed that away.
"She also," Savannah continued, in the particular tone of a woman who knew she was delivering relevant information and was enjoying it slightly more than necessary, "asked if you were always like this."
He looked at her. "Like what."
"Lily's words were, and I quote, 'intense but not in a scary way, more like a brick wall that's on your side.'" Savannah smiled into her mug. "She was quoting Emily."
Rampage looked back at the common room, where Emily was now attempting to explain to Irish why a grown man should not be this emotionally dependent on a dog, and Irish was responding with what appeared to be a detailed and impassioned counterargument.
A brick wall that's on your side.
He went back to the table and opened his laptop, he could at least pretend he was working and not obsessively watching his little girl.