Chapter 4 #2
“What does that mean?” Lucky demanded.
“He avoids the cameras as well as Scar.” Keys typed on his tablet and the television monitor showed several clips of the outside properties. There was nothing specific on the frames but the occasional twitch of a shadow at the very edge.
“I thought you adjusted the blind spots,” Ghost said, clear accusation in his voice.
Keys’ expression tightened. “I did! I even used many of you as test subjects. Scar was the only one able to pass through undetected, and I figured, you know, it was Scar and it was good enough.” The kid’s cheeks flamed as he admitted to his error.
Though Ghost’s eyes screamed you were wrong, he kept his mouth shut. Steel silently commended him for that. Keys clearly already knew he’d messed up, and Ghost berating him in front of all his brothers would not change that.
“We need to clear the woods,” Ghost announced. “We took away his sniper’s perches but clearly he has another nest.”
Angel’s head snapped to her President. “You think it’s the same person? The one who framed Steel?”
“The MO is very different,” Ranger pointed out, not arguing with Ghost but playing devil’s advocate.
Ghost, though, ignored the two comments and turned to Keys. “How long has he been watching us?” His voice was calm. Too calm, Steel noted.
“I can’t be positive, and there’s a lot of footage I still have to go through, but I recalibrated a program to help me with it and I found little discrepancies like this going back to August.” His babbling revealed how nervous Keys was by his admission.
Six months.
The angry grumbling between the brothers was like a low hum in the room. Last August, Pumpkin had still been in rehab and Dixie Gilbert hadn’t yet returned to Mount Grove, nor had she been murdered.
Steel had been right. This man was a trained sniper, one with extreme patience.
Dixie Gilbert hadn’t been planned, but likely a murder had been.
It was only through his surveillance of Steel and the club that the opportunity had presented itself, and even then, he still had moved slowly.
Dixie Gilbert had returned at the end of September but wasn’t murdered until the end of October.
The chances were beyond slim that there were two men after the club. Two skilled, patient, resourceful men.
The heavy snowfall had been the perfect cover, and he’d likely watched the adults and kids on the frozen pond countless times over the winter.
But he wouldn’t have just had the amount of salt Keys was saying he’d needed in his back pocket.
Another plan executed after weeks of surveillance and an opportunity presented itself.
“The break-in at Little Shoes,” Steel said, speaking up for the first time. “It doesn’t fit the pattern.”
Keys swallowed hard. “Actually, it does. I’ve been working on so many things and getting things ready for Tom and me to officially bring people on in the spring, and I…” Shame crossed his face as he looked away, wiping under his glasses. “I missed it.”
“Missed what?”
Keys typed into his tablet once more. “This.”
The image on the television screen switched again to the club’s Harley-Davidson dealership.
The timestamp in the top corner showed this was surveillance from last July.
Everyone watched as one of the night janitors walked into the showroom with a mop and a bucket.
His face wasn’t covered, and Steel immediately recognized Brendon, the middle-aged man who had worked for the previous owners too.
The club had kept him as one of the few non-member employees they had outside the service department.
For several minutes, it looked like Brendon was doing his normal routine.
Taking out the trash, cleaning the windows, wiping down the countertops…
But the closer he got to the sales counter and the register, the more jumpy he appeared, his eyes flicking to the cameras and continuously looking over his shoulder like he was checking if someone was watching him even though he was alone in the building.
As he took a cloth to wipe down the desk, he knocked over one of the monitors. His paranoia got the best of him because he continued to check his surroundings as he picked it up and placed it back on the counter.
In a way, the whole thing could be taken innocently. Maybe there was a noise outside that kept spooking him, or he’d recently been mugged or had broken up with a crazy ex. But Steel knew it was none of those things, otherwise Keys wouldn’t be showing them the footage.
Keys paused and zoomed in on the computer monitor.
“There’s a thumb drive in one of the ports that shouldn’t be.
” He reached into his pocket and pulled, Steel assumed, the same device out.
He tossed it on Steel’s coffee table. “It was there for weeks before I implemented my new security system. There’s no way he could have known when I was going to do that, but luck was on his side because he never removed it.
Even though the device had done what it was meant to do, he never retrieved it, which meant when I launched my new software and synced our entire network, it read the device as one of ours. ”
Ghost straightened, standing off the wall he’d been leaning against. “Are you saying that you linked our network to this bastard?”
Keys’ chin wobbled as he nodded. “My system is impenetrable. No one could get into it from the outside. But,” he indicated the thumb drive, “he was already in, and unknowingly I gave him access.”
Ghost’s fists clenched at his sides, but he did not rage or tear Keys a new asshole. Instead, in a very controlled voice, he turned to Ranger. “Bring me Brendon.”
Ranger nodded once and left Steel’s house.
“Explain what this has to do with the break-in at the consignment store,” Ghost demanded, none too gently, of Keys.
“I think he was testing the system,” Keys said, his voice low. Christ, he looked so fucking young and small. “It also explains how he knew about the panic buttons.”
“And how he’s been able to walk around the property like Scar,” Starbucks added. “He literally had a map of where to walk.”
“Is he out of our system?” Ghost demanded.
Keys nodded. “I swear. I double and tripled checked, and I had R—” His face flamed. “I mean, MV, Non Cras’ Tech. She verified, too. He’s out, and he can’t get back in.”
No wonder Ghost had told Steel to join this meeting; it was all connected. The dealership, Dixie Gilbert’s murder, the consignment store break-in, and now the pond being salted… But what was the goal? What was the endgame?
Steel did not like not knowing. Moreover, he did not like how he couldn’t see what his opponent was doing. Like he was playing on a chessboard with no visible squares.
“Go back to the night of the snowstorm,” Ghost ordered Keys. “I want to see it again.”
Keys pressed the necessary buttons and then the video changed.
He still was wiping under his glasses every few seconds, driving home just how young he was.
Keys was smart—so fucking smart. And it was rare that he was wrong or made a mistake.
To have it be of this magnitude? Steel wasn’t sure if Ghost would punish Keys or not.
It was no longer his call to make, but he hoped Ghost took into account that Keys was likely kicking himself harder than Ghost ever could.
The kid was making amends, but there still had to be some form of penance.
There would be, if it was anyone else, regardless of age.
“Fast forward,” Ghost ordered. “I want to see—”
A blade flew through the air, whisking right through the center of the brothers, and pierced the television on the wall. The screen shattered as momentum forced it back and then it slipped from the rack, dangling crooked by just some wires and weak screws.
Scar stood in the back of the room, a white gauze bandage wrapped around his forehead and black hair. He was shaking, rage radiating off him like rays from a sun. His sapphire eyes appeared darker and yet flared with unkempt emotion.
Tally came bursting into the room behind him, slightly out of breath. “Fucking Christ, are you sure you’re not part robot? What the fuck, Scar? You’re supposed to stay in bed. I got all naked and everything for you!”
Scar’s attention, though, was not on his woman. His head turned, and his eyes landed on Steel. Quick as lightning, Scar bolted, and the next second, had Steel pinned up against the wall by his neck.
Steel was no slouch, but the immeasurable pressure suddenly on his throat took him by surprise. He tried to move, to bend Scar’s arm, to push him off. His efforts were as useless as trying to move stone.
Scar’s eyes blazed, and the wrap around his head only made him appear more menacing. Everything else faded away. Steel no longer saw the room they were in or heard the club brothers’ shouts as they tried to get Scar to release him. There was nothing but the two men and their shared fury.
Steel knew in that moment there was nothing he could do to stop Scar, and that was terrifying in and of itself.
He was a warrior, a fighter. He never surrendered.
He had always been the last line of defense.
It had been many years since Steel faced down the barrel of a gun, both literally and metaphorically, and knew he wouldn’t reign victorious.
Yet it was also humbling. His life was in Scar’s hands, and there wasn’t a fucking thing he could do about it.