Chapter 2 #2
Regan’s voice came through his truck’s speakers and caught him off guard. She didn’t use a performance voice or have a news-anchor cadence. Her voice was clear and intelligent. It sounded like she was sitting across from him.
There was no theatrical music, no breathless revelation staging. Just the facts, organized and sourced and cross-referenced. She was patient, thorough, and apparently incapable of letting a thread alone once she’d picked it up.
By the end of part one, Ray’s crimes had been laid out carefully, specifically, and irrefutably.
CB listened to part two. Then part three.
He sat in the parking lot long after the last episode ended, engine off, windows down.
Ray had made his choices. That was the truth of it, and he’d known it long before Regan said it into a microphone. His uncle had been charming, genuinely useful in certain areas, and rotten in others. The rottenness had not been secret to anyone who’d grown up in the Outlaws.
And the apple hadn’t fallen far from the rotten tree. Ryder hadn’t been intimidated by his father’s prison sentence. If anything, from what CB knew, Ryder was in full business expansion mode.
What CB hadn’t expected was to sit in the Hill’s Tavern parking lot and feel something that wasn’t quite gratitude, but in the same neighborhood. A woman he’d never met had said what he’d known his whole life—his uncle was a dirty cop.
His phone pinged with an incoming email. A new report came from SPS. There had been three disturbance calls to law enforcement in the past few months. All resolved without action—of course.
Because Ray Briggs might be in prison, but some of his fellow officers were still at it. He recognized one of the names in the responding officers’ reports: Denny Crue.
Denny had been three years ahead of CB in school and had been at the Outlaws’ campground every summer of CB’s childhood. He’d taught CB and Ryder to fish at the lake.
CB stared out the windshield for a moment, remembering an eleven-year-old Denny who’d been patient with him and Ryder, teaching them to cast. Now, he was a foot soldier for Outlaw business, which included extorting people like the Hills for protection money.
The sign above the door was old, but the windows were clean. It was the kind of place that had regulars and kept the same hours it had always kept. With the exception of the new lunch menu, the place was the same as it had been before he’d left to join the Army.
CB hadn’t called to schedule a meeting with Lucy. He wanted to case the place first, to walk in unannounced and get a feel for things. That was the intelligence work in him, arriving before expectations could be managed. See the room as it was.
A bell above the door announced him as he entered, and inside, the smell of coffee, stale beer, and old wood gave the place its atmosphere.
The lunch rush was over. Only four customers at tables, and a woman behind the bar in her mid-sixties, who looked up at the bell and went immediately, visibly pleased.
“You must be Clive,” she said, as he settled on a barstool. “I’m Lucy. Can I get you some coffee? A beer?”
“Friends call me CB. Coffee, please.”
She poured while he scanned the exits, the sightlines, the table positions. One customer was reading a paperback; the other three, who were deliberately ignoring him, were their own kind of data.
There was a door behind the bar, partially ajar. Beyond it, the sounds of someone in the back shuffling things around filtered out.
“I’m usually back there, doing the cooking,” Lucy said, setting the coffee in front of him. “But Regan insisted on filling out her inventory spreadsheet the moment the rush was over.” She rolled her eyes. “That girl and her spreadsheets. She’ll be out in a minute.”
Lucy wiped the counter and studied him. “Your family’s been in this area a long time.”
“It has.”
“I knew your father. Henry—my husband, God rest his soul—knew him better.” Old grief flared in her eyes. “Henry loved everyone.”
“My father spoke well of him.” Wade had mentioned Henry Hill exactly twice in CB’s memory, but both times had been without the edge he brought to most subjects. From Wade, that was as close to warmth as it got.
Lucy reached under the bar and brought out a manila envelope. “I have some photos for you,” she said. “They were Henry’s. I thought you might want them.”
She couldn’t have surprised him more. He opened the envelope and shook out some aged pictures.
There was his dad, decades younger, with Ray and Henry outside this very bar, raising beers together.
Another of Wade on his motorcycle, his black Outlaws jacket in mint condition, and CB’s mom on the back, her hair windblown, a smile lighting up her face.
He studied that one for a long moment, his own mouth curving up at the edges. “These are fantastic. Thank you.”
Lucy opened her mouth to say something else when a woman who looked like a younger version of her came through the swinging door, studying a screen. “Mom, I think we’re short on the Malbec order. I’m going to need you to —”
She looked up and came to a dead stop.
The one thing CB hadn’t done was get a photo of her. He was inadequately prepared for Regan Hill standing ten feet away, looking at him like she’d just come face to face with the last person in the world she wanted to see.
Her dark hair was pulled into a messy bun on top of her head.
Several curly strands had escaped and framed her face.
Her tan skin was highlighted by a bright turquoise tank top and cut-off shorts.
A butterfly tattoo peeked out from the neck of the top, and she wore a silver cuff around her left wrist. Her eyes were a rich sable, the top lids lined in black with wings at the outside corners.
As he tried to find his manners, she recovered—clean, with no visible tells except a slight adjustment in how she held the tablet, her fingers tightening on it.
She knew who he was.
He stayed seated and unmoving, the smile on his face now there for an entirely different reason. Damn, she was beautiful. “Hey,” he said.
She stepped back. “Mom, who is this?”
Lucy didn’t hide how pleased she was about how her plan was unfolding. “Oh, Regan. You know exactly who this is. Clive Briggs. He was kind enough to come by and pick up some photographs your dad had. I’ve been meaning to get them to him, so I called him.”
Lucy sent him a play along or I’ll string you up by your thumbs look. CB held up one of the pictures as proof.
Regan glanced from the photo to him to her mom. “Is that right?”
“It is.” Lucy smiled with the kind of satisfaction that only a mother who’d outmaneuvered her independent daughter could fully own. “And while he’s here, I thought the two of you could talk about those threatening letters.”
A beat.
“You called him about some old pictures,” Regan repeated, as if confirming this wasn’t a setup that she totally knew was.
“I did.” Lucy wiped her hands on a towel and glanced at one of the tables. “And since he works for that security outfit you told me about, why don’t you pick his brain about those letters while I refill George’s glass?”
Regan’s face flickered with the briefest of emotions before they were gone. Irritation, yes, but something else…fear.
For her mom.
If Ryder and Denny were behind the letters, she should be scared.
CB liked Lucy, even though her attempt at subterfuge was horrible. He might have to give her pointers if he ever got permission from her daughter to set foot in here again.
“Mr. Briggs,” Regan said.
“CB,” he said, still grinning. He couldn’t wipe the damn thing off his face.
“CB.” She stared at the bar top for a moment, carefully setting down the tablet. “My mother seems to have invited you here under false pretenses. I apologize for that.”
“No apology needed. I’m sure her intentions are good, and it sounds like you need help.”
She gripped the edge of the bar. “What exactly did she tell you?”
“That you’ve received two extortion demands in the past month. That the amount has escalated, and there was a personal threat in the most recent one.”
Regan glanced at her mother, who had refilled George’s glass and was chatting with their favorite regular. “She was thorough,” Regan said.
“She’s worried about you.”
“She doesn’t need to be.”
Yes, she does . CB slid the pictures back into the envelope. “She’s your mother. Comes with the territory.”
Regan sighed, and it was filled with loving aggravation. She topped off CB’s coffee, as if buying herself time to decide whether to tell him the rest.
“You know who I am,” she said as she returned the pot to the burner.
“I do.”
“And you came anyway.”
“Who I am and who you are doesn’t change the fact that you’re being harassed. I work for a company that handles this exact type of situation.”
She studied him, her dark eyes liquid pools. He’d been evaluated by a lot of people in difficult situations, so it didn’t bother him. In fact, he stared back, letting himself be an open book. Hell, he’d let her stare at him all day if she wanted.
Finally, she grabbed her own cup of coffee. He tried not to look at her ass when she turned her back to him. Failed. Luckily, she didn’t catch him. “The notes came from the Canon Outlaws,” she said, holding the cup close to her chest but not drinking any as she faced him again.
“I assumed.”
“Then you know that going to the local police isn’t an option.”
“I know it’s complicated.”
“It’s not complicated. Two deputies are colluding with them. The judge who handled the last Outlaw-connected case plays poker with—” She caught herself. Looked at him.
“My cousin Ryder,” he finished for her.
A pause. “Yes.”
Outside, a loud truck pulled into the lot. One of the lunch customers laughed at something.
Handle carefully . “I haven’t been part of the Outlaws since I left for the Army when I was eighteen,” he said.
“I have no loyalty to or affiliation with them, outside of taking care of my father, who has suffered a stroke. I’m not here to tell you what to do.
I’m here because your mother asked me to come and because the threat is real.
I’m good at handling this kind of problem. What happens next is your call.”
Regan stared at him again for a long moment. He got the impression she was trying to find an angle. “I’ll think about it,” she said.
“Fair enough.” He stood and placed a card with his personal number on the back next to the coffee cup. “I’m here to help if you want it.”
He nodded to Lucy on the way out, who gave him a smile.
The summer air was sharp and clean, and the mountains were enormous above the roofline. He walked to his truck. Sat. Let the debrief run in the back of his mind the way it always did after a first read of a new situation.
She knows who I am. She knows the Outlaws. She’s scared for her mother, and she’s not going to admit it. She’ll call. Probably tonight .
He looked at the envelope Lucy had given him. Opened it and pulled out the photograph with his mom. She looked so happy. She’d had no idea what was coming.
CB returned it to the envelope and placed it on the passenger seat. He’d give it to Wade on Sunday.
He pulled out of the lot, heading for the SPS compound. Half a mile up the highway, he passed a black pickup truck with tinted windows idling at a food stand with a clean view of Hill’s Tavern.
He noted it. Tonight, then . Not tomorrow .
He drove past without slowing. When he reached the first intersection, he turned left instead of right and circled back.
The truck was still there.
CB found a spot in the parking lot of the antiques dealer next to a farmer’s food stand with a clear line of sight in both directions, cut the engine, and settled in.
He called Mack. “I haven’t been officially hired yet, but this one’s got teeth. Both of these women are in danger.”
“What do you want to do?” Mack asked.
“Play watchdog for now. You okay with that?”
“You’ll miss your session with Doc,” he said with a note of teasing.
“Really sorry about that,” CB said, not sorry at all.
“Your call. Keep me posted.”
“Copy that.”
CB picked another of Regan’s podcasts and settled in to listen.