CHAPTER TWENTY NOW WE’VE GOT BY PROXY BEEF
CHAPTER TWENTY
NOW WE’VE GOT BY PROXY BEEF
RHYS
“I’m gonna replace the panel with an upgraded model,” Glitch said, explaining some of the feature differences between the two.
It was important info, yeah, but I knew that wasn’t why he was sharing it. Our extended silence would’ve made it pretty damn obvious we were waiting till Lo was out of earshot. She was good. She would’ve clocked that within seconds.
Jury was closest to the door and inched over before peeking into the hall. He stayed like that for a few beats before confirming, “She was doing something on her phone, but she’s gone.”
What was she doing? What was so important?
That question expanded to include wondering again what she’d been doing the day before in my office. There’d been a fuck-ton of typing, scowling, and smiling.
The thought pissed me off more than it should, and I took it out on Jury.
He had it coming.
For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, I punched him in the shoulder. “A date, you dickhead?”
“That’s a weird way to ask me out, but sure. I’m down.”
I punched him again. “Why the fuck would you say I had a date last night?”
He shrugged, then instantly winced. “You said you were busy. Rye’s closed. That left date.”
That made sense, but I didn’t buy his bullshit.
This motherfucker said it on purpose.
I jerked my chin toward the doorway. “You wanna make a play for Lo, have at it. But do it after she’s out of my fuckin’ bar.”
“That wasn’t what I was doing,” he said. “But fair enough.”
I wanted to punch him again. Harder that time and right in his pretty boy face.
I choked on it and the acid that burned in my damn gut.
He was a prick, but he gave me a good idea.
I hadn’t gotten laid in too damn long. Not saying that my attraction to Lo was just because I was desperate or some shit.
It was there because of her. But ending the dry spell could at least offer a distraction so I wasn’t sitting around, obsessing over her with my dick in my hand.
A date is exactly what I need.
I meant it, but even in my own head, the words sounded sarcastic.
Unsure how long Lo would stay gone, I moved on to what was important. “What’s actually happening?”
Glitch shined a flashlight into the hole, focusing on two cables. One connected to the plate thing that was in there for the control panel. The other hung down with a little plastic piece halfway through and frayed wires at the end.
“That looks like a fire waiting to happen,” I muttered, happy he hadn’t said anything earlier.
Contrary to her insistence she wouldn’t narc, I knew how Lo did her job. I saw it with Piper. I experienced it when she tackled me down and tried to shield my body with hers. If there was a safety risk, she wasn’t keeping silent.
“It’s worse than that,” Glitch said. “Someone jacked this shit.”
“Already told you I didn’t touch it.”
“No, not jacked it up. They tried to jack it. Take over the feed and maybe even the controls.”
I rocked back. “The fuck?”
He flicked the plastic piece, making the wire sway. “That’s what this is.”
“There a way to track where the signal is going?”
“I can already tell you where it’s going.
Nowhere. The other end needs to be connected for it to work.
Right now, it’s rerouting the feed over and over again to itself.
That’s what’s making footage run like you downloaded malware from Napster, LimeWire, and bootleg porno sites with hot MILFs in your area. ”
Hollywood scowled at the hole with surprising intensity.
“Not a fan of MILFs?” I asked.
“Huge fan. That’s why I have my own.” His jaw clenched. “But I almost lost her and Maeve thanks to this kind of electronic fuckery.”
I’d heard the CliffsNotes version of what Mac went through, but it was clearly deeper than what I knew.
Especially since Glitch suddenly seemed ready to throw something through a wall, too. He pushed on. “Anyway, that’s why I called you and everyone else in. How many people have access to this room?”
“Everyone who works for me. People in search of the bathroom who take the wrong hall. People looking to hook up. Bands. The list is fuckin’ endless.”
“So you just don’t use the lock I so painstakingly installed?”
“It took you twenty minutes to put in every electronic handle in this place.”
“Painstakingly,” he emphasized. “So fuckin’ use them.”
It was a hassle to come to the rescue every time an employee forgot the entrance code, so I’d eventually turned off the lock function. But he was right.
Judge gestured around. “You also need cameras in here.”
That one prickled at me. I didn’t need my employees thinking I didn’t trust them and was monitoring their every move. I would emphasize that it wasn’t about them, but with everything going on, I couldn’t be lax.
“Good thing I know a guy who knows a guy who can handle that.” I thought for a second before tacking on, “But no sound.”
The last thing I needed was to overhear the shit they said about me when I inevitably pissed them off. I had a good crew, but spending hours together in a stressful environment would get to anyone.
“Is there a way to narrow down the timeline?” I asked.
Glitch shook his head. “No. If I reconnect it, I could possibly track where the signal pinged to. But that’s a big gamble.
A risky one, too. For one, we don’t know if they’re still trying to do whatever bullshit this is.
It’s possible the wire was never connected properly, so whoever gave up or went a different route.
On the flipside, they might have something in place to happen the moment it turns on.
In the time it takes me to track them, they could infiltrate everything. ”
“So we disconnect everything else before turning just the panel on.”
All four men stared at me like I was a dumbass, but it was Glitch who voiced it.
“Have you never watched a single internet safety video? Getting access out gives access in, and if they’re good, they’ll be able to use that even if nothing else is on at the time.
The cloud is forever. Nothing can ever truly be deleted, and everything is hackable with enough knowhow and patience.
I can turn everything off, but there are still invisible threads to follow and do more damage.
You wanna risk it, I’ll do it. But my advice is to be grateful whoever doesn’t have my superior installation skills and lock the door so they don’t have the chance to do better next time. ”
I sure as fuck didn’t want to make shit worse. “What do you suggest we do now?”
“We pulled everyone but a few guys in. They’re going over every single inch again, checking for anything suspicious.
I’m gonna pull all this out, rerun upgraded cables, and then install the new panel.
Jury will be working behind everyone, repairing damage as we go instead of waiting till everyone is done.
” He ran his hand over his head. “Fair warning, if it doesn’t fix things, you may not be able to open tomorrow. ”
Shit.
“Let’s hope you’re as good as your ego thinks you are,” I said.
He shot me a distracted middle finger before using the band at the back of his tablet to secure it onto his wrist.
“Normal calculator watch not nerdy enough for you? Have to go full dweeb?”
That got double middle fingers.
“I need to pull Lo into this,” I said.
“You don’t think she bought my bullshit?” Glitch asked.
He’d been convincing. Anyone else would’ve taken it at face value.
Lo wasn’t anyone else.
Which was why I said, “Not for a second.”
“Before you do that, we need to talk about who would do something like this.” Judge folded his arms over his chest. “A lot of people have access, but not a lot of them would know what to do with it.”
“If we were talking employee poaching, fake code violations, and fake online reviews, I’d have a long list of suspects.” I stabbed a finger toward the wall. “With this, I got no clue who, how, or why.”
He tilted his head, thinking it over for a few beats. “You never had beef with Nash, did you?”
“By proxy beef since he’d fucked with my friends, but nothing on my own. Our target customers don’t overlap.” My brows lowered. “Anyway, I thought he was … gone.”
Elliot Nash ran a mini empire of drugs, women, and fuckery.
He’d made a play to recruit Court of Mayhem into his organization.
One of his henchmen had tried to take Harlow as payment for a debt that wasn’t his.
He’d used an in to steal money from Lars’s strip club and had offered to buy him out to expand his own clubs to that prime location.
After having his guys break into Ophelia’s apartment because he got his intel from an escort to the elderly, Nash had gone missing.
I hadn’t asked specifics, but I’d assumed Mayhem had a hand in that.
If not them, then Killian Nox—a Scottish-Irish man who was tight with Jury and Judge from way back, and with Kase and Lars from their time in a cell.
“As far as we know,” Judge confirmed. “No idea how long he’ll stay gone, though.”
“So it wasn’t…”
“Nah, none of us have that nasty blood on our hands.”
“Unfortunately,” Jury spat out.
Judge held a grudge for Nash trying to fuck with the brotherhood he’d worked so hard to build and for the apartment fuckery with O. Jury’s was a lot more personal than that.
With all the adversaries Nash had collected like trading cards, disappearing into the wind was the first smart thing the bastard had ever done.
He was likely pulling the strings from some remote beach since his strip clubs were still running, but I didn’t know or care how that was going.
I made it a rule to steer clear of places where venereal disease clung to the air with the scent of body odor and desperation.
Hollywood paused from whatever he was helping Glitch do. “At the risk of complicating this clusterfuck even more… Any chance this is Lo’s work?”
Glitch answered for me. “The feed was messed up when we watched her do her hype dance before she came inside.”
“I’d pay to see that footage,” Jury said.
I thought about her ass shaking in that uptight outfit. “Not fucking happening.”
The antagonizing bastard just lifted a shoulder in a half-assed shrug. “Maybe I’ll catch it in real life. After this is done.”
There’s a reason I shouldn’t ban him from the premises, but I don’t know why.
“She’s been here before that, right? The night of the shooting.
” Hollywood touched a light scar he’d gotten courtesy of a surprise two-by-four to the head when he and Haze were jumped down the street.
“Not to mention, all the other cops and whoever else you’ve had in here for the raid and surprise inspections. ”
Shit.
Inspections weren’t uncommon. Sometimes they were scheduled, other times there were surprise pop-ins with random frequency.
Add in the bullshit calls, and there’d been an increase in people coming in and out.
I’d chalked all that up to the usual pain-in-the-ass shit I dealt with.
Yeah, it’d been worse recently, but that wasn’t surprising.
The service industry had always been exhausting and competitive.
No one wanted to deal with the long hours, the loud and entitled patrons, and the increasingly shitty tips.
My employees worked too damn hard to get shafted. It didn’t take much for some to burn out, crash out, or simply walk out.
With life the way it was, more and more local places were closing. Or they were being bought out by chain places because they knew they couldn’t compete with their low costs if the restaurant opened nearby. The better option was to cash the check and at least get something out of closing.
Rye’s location was prime. I’d been open long enough to build it into something good. Something different. It put a target on my back when an overabundant number of places were struggling and fighting for a finite number of patrons and capable staff. Sabotage was the most likely assumption.
But Hollywood raised a point. A fucking valid one.
Lo wasn’t behind the shitty installation the night of the shooting.
Her bored partner and I had sat in the break room while she’d talked to Daisy, and then I’d followed her outside to be shot at.
Her partner had taken a while walking Daisy to the car, though.
He might’ve had time to backtrack into the room if one of my crew left the door propped open—something they weren’t supposed to do but did anyway.
Could also be that one of those code violation visits wasn’t because of anonymous tips. It was for access.
“You get the feeling Lo suspects you of something?” Judge asked.
The way she’d watched me in my office popped into my head, but that time, I thought about it with my brain and not my dick.
She’d walked around a bit in between whatever she’d been doing on her phone.
I’d also interrupted her talking to Texas after I’d checked the camera to see what she was up to.
I’d assumed she was being friendly—something that pissed me off—but maybe she was trying to work him.
My business was legit, but I knew how it looked when all the other shit was capped off with a drive-by. It would set off alarms. “She’d have to be fuckin’ stupid not to. And she’s far from that.”
Christ, I’m gonna have to talk to her.
But before that, I need to get her back here because this sneaky meeting is probably biting me in the ass by the second.