Chapter Six
Spade
The silence in my living room pressed against my ears like a physical weight.
Three hours of circling each other like wary predators, both of us carrying too many thoughts and not enough certainty.
I sat on my leather couch, elbows on knees, staring at the glass of whiskey I hadn’t touched.
The ice had melted. Diluted. Useless. Like every lead that seemed promising until it slipped through our fingers.
The wall clock ticked, each sound distinct in the quiet room.
No TV. No music. No distractions. That’s how I lived -- minimal, ordered, controlled.
A single lamp cast long shadows across the hardwood floor.
My coffee table held nothing but my glass and a single coaster.
No clutter. No mess. No evidence of life beyond necessity.
Footsteps in the hallway drew my attention.
Soft. Hesitant. Not the confident stride Lila had shown earlier.
I didn’t turn as she entered but watched her reflection in the darkened window across from me.
She paused at the threshold, scanning the room methodically -- exits first, windows second, furniture placement third.
Looking for threats. Escape routes. Tactical advantages.
The behavior was automatic, ingrained. Same as mine.
“Drink?” I asked, finally turning to face her directly.
She flinched slightly at my voice despite its low volume. Too keyed up. Running on adrenaline and fear for too long. “Yes,” she answered, stepping fully into the room. “Please.”
I stood, moving to the cabinet where I kept the bottle. She tracked my movement with that same hyper vigilance I’d noticed since she arrived. Always watching. Always ready. I poured two fingers of whiskey into a clean glass, no ice this time.
When I turned back, she had positioned herself on the couch with clear sightlines to both the door and the window. Back to the wall. Defensive posture.
“Here.” I held out the glass.
Her fingers trembled slightly as they wrapped around it, the slight tremor betraying what her composed expression tried to hide. She took a larger sip than I expected, not wincing at the burn. “Not your first whiskey,” I observed, returning to my seat. Not too close. Not too far.
“Not by a long shot.” Her attempt at a smile didn’t reach her eyes.
The clock continued its relentless ticking as silence stretched between us again. Different tension now. Not the electric charge from earlier. Something more fragile. Uncertain.
“Tell me what happened.” I kept my voice neutral. “With the Horsemen. All of it.”
Her gaze snapped to mine, wary and assessing. Testing whether this was an interrogation or something else. I held her gaze steadily, offering neither threat nor comfort. Just space for truth.
She took another sip, longer this time, as if gathering courage from the burning liquid. “I told you I was their accountant.” Her voice had an edge I hadn’t heard before. “What I didn’t tell you was that I’d been suspicious before Marie died.”
The name hung between us. Marie. Her sister. The civilian casualty. The reason she was here.
“Numbers don’t lie,” she continued, staring into her glass. “Operations didn’t match expenses. Profits disappeared without explanation. At first, I thought it was just standard club business -- skimming, laundering, usual stuff.”
I nodded. Every MC had its financial gray areas. Necessary business practice.
“But then I started putting the pieces together.” Her voice dropped lower, almost a whisper now. “Large payments going out right before rival operations failed. Money coming in after successful ambushes.” She looked up at me, eyes haunted. “Your operations.”
The whiskey turned bitter on my tongue. I set my glass down, controlling the movement precisely. No sound against the table. No betrayal of the rage building inside me.
“I started an unauthorized audit.” She shifted on the couch, shoulders hunching slightly. “Late nights. Extra hours. Cross-referencing bank records with incident reports I shouldn’t have had access to.”
“How’d you get those?” The question came automatically.
A bitter smile touched her lips. “Butcher. Cheap bastard didn’t want to buy me a computer. Trusted me with his password instead. Thought I was too afraid of him to look at anything I wasn’t supposed to.”
“But you did.”
“I did.” Her fingers tightened around her glass. “After Marie died, I had to know why. Had to understand if it was really random or…” She trailed off.
“Or if someone was responsible,” I finished for her.
She nodded, taking another sip. “I traced everything back. Money flows. Information exchanges. Dates that aligned too perfectly to be coincidence.” Her voice dropped to that whisper again, forcing me to lean closer to hear.
“That’s when I found the payments to your club.
Or rather, to someone inside your club.”
The bruise on her jaw caught the light as she turned her head.
Her free hand moved to it unconsciously, fingers barely touching the discolored skin as if the memory itself caused physical pain.
“They caught me in the office after hours.” The words came faster now, tumbling out like she couldn’t hold them back any longer.
“Butcher. Two of his lieutenants. I had financial records spread across my table -- evidence I’d been collecting for weeks.
” Her gaze fixed on something only she could see.
Reliving it. “I told them I was finalizing quarterly reports. Butcher didn’t buy it.
” Her fingers traced the bruise again. “This was his opening argument.”
The casual way she referenced her assault made my jaw clench. Matter-of-fact. Clinical. Distancing herself from the trauma with words.
“I told you I had already secured most of the evidence. Dead drops. Digital backups.” Her voice steadied as she continued. “They underestimated me. Always did. Just the bookkeeper. Just a woman. Invisible.”
“What happened next?” I kept my voice level despite the anger building in my chest. Not at her -- for her.
“I managed to get to the door. Made it to my car.” She finished her whiskey in one swallow. “Barely made it out of the compound before they started shooting.”
The admission hung in the air between us. The Horsemen hadn’t just threatened her. They’d actively tried to kill her. And she’d still walked into our clubhouse alone, armed with nothing but information and courage.
“I barely made it out,” she repeated, softer now, the glass trembling slightly in her grip. “And I knew then I couldn’t just run. They’d find me eventually. And if what I’d discovered was true -- if someone in your club was feeding them information -- more people would die.”
Her eyes finally met mine again, the vulnerability she’d shown momentarily eclipsed by determination. “So I came to you. Because the truth was the only weapon I had left.”
I studied her face in the lamplight -- the bruise, the exhaustion, the steel beneath it all. She’d risked everything. Was still risking everything. And I still wasn’t sure if I could trust her completely. But I was beginning to want to.
I set my untouched whiskey on the table, processing what she’d told me. Her courage wasn’t in question anymore. Neither was her intelligence. But something still nagged at me. “What happened after you escaped?” I asked, watching her face carefully for tells. For inconsistencies. For lies.
She rubbed her thumb against the rim of her empty glass, considering her answer.
The lamp cast half her face in shadow, making her expression harder to read.
“I had about twenty minutes before they would realize I wasn’t coming back,” she said.
“I’d prepared for this possibility. Had a go-bag in my trunk. Cash. Burner phone. Clothes.”
“Smart.”
“Paranoid.” She set her glass down beside mine. “But paranoia kept me alive.”
“So you made copies of the records.” Not a question. She’d arrived with a folder of evidence too detailed to have been compiled on the run.
She nodded. “External hard drive with everything I could download. Physical copies of the most important documents. Kept them separate -- drive in my bag, papers taped under the spare tire.”
I noted the strategy. Professional. Practiced. Not her first contingency plan.
“First twenty-four hours were the most dangerous.” She shifted on the couch, tucking one leg under her. Getting comfortable with her story. With me. “They’d check bus stations. Airports. Train depots. I drove straight through the night, stopped only for gas, paid cash.”
“Where’d you go?”
“North, then east, then south. Never in a straight line.” Her mouth quirked in a humorless smile. “Stayed at a motel outside Oklahoma City the first night. Cash only, registered under a fake name. Left before dawn.”
Standard procedure for someone with enemies on their trail. For someone who knew how pursuit worked. “Second day I abandoned my car in a shopping mall parking lot. Took a cab to a used car dealership, paid cash for a ten-year-old Honda. No financing. No extra paperwork.”
“They’d still track it eventually.”
“Eventually,” she agreed. “But I only needed it for three days. Sold it to a college kid in Missouri for half what I paid. Took the loss as the cost of staying alive.” She pushed up her sleeve, revealing a bruise I hadn’t noticed before.
Finger marks. Someone had grabbed her hard enough to leave evidence.
Recent enough that the marks were still visible.
“Third car almost got me killed,” she said, her voice flattening as she gestured to the bruise. “Gas station in Tennessee. Middle of nowhere. Thought I was being careful.”
I leaned forward, resting my forearms on my knees. Giving her space to continue but showing I was listening. That her story mattered.