Chapter 20
Devlin
When we walked back into the conference room, I saw that Regan and Aubrey were gone and a few of Lucian’s men had taken their place. Rhys looked up from his computer and remarked, “I didn’t think they needed to be a part of this.”
“Agreed,” I returned, then asked, “What have we discovered?”
Lucian interjected first. “I took a look at the Greene family, and I found something interesting.” He began to speak as the large monitor displayed his screen for the entire room.
“Mr. Greene was a trust fund brat who seemed to want to do good. But something happened about ten years before he died, and I think it’s the connection between Bradon/Michael and Kendra/Delilah. ”
I took a seat and looked at the monitor as he spoke.
“He took in a young boy from the foster system when the boy was six. That would make his daughter seven, maybe eight years old.” The image flipped, and I saw records from the Tennessee Department of Child Services.
“If you look here, Mr. Greene was listed as guardian of a boy named Michael Badcock for eight months. Michael told Elise he was sent away to boarding school at eight. I think the dates will match up.”
“He sent the boy to a boarding school and gave away custody at the same time?” James inquired.
“It seems like something happened inside the house, and from the report, it had to do with the Greene’s’ eldest daughter. There isn’t a lot of details, but it seems the girl was getting the boy to do more and more reckless things.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“There was a fire in the woods that nearly burned down a house at the edge of the lake. The report says the girl forced the boy to do it, but when confronted, the boy tried to take all the blame,” Lucian explained.
“Again, there’s scarce information. My guess is money covered it all up and they shipped the boy off while still making sure to support him. ”
“Why pay when they gave up custody?” Rhys asked.
“Guilt is my guess. If Kendra/Delilah is as crazy as I know her to be, I think she suckered that little boy into doing her bidding,” James surmised.
“So, how do we find them?” Freddie, our head of security, asked from his vantage point at the edge of the room.
I stood and looked at every man in the room before I answered. “Shock and fucking awe is how. We find the three warehouses and we raid them all at the same time.”
“What about the Rider’s Cross PD?” James threw out.
“I’ll handle that,” I remarked and picked up my phone.
Dialing a number, I waited for an answer.
“Sheriff Lee, Devlin Callahan.” I paused while he replied before I continued.
“I have a situation and need your help, I have a tip that there’s some bad people holed up in a warehouse in Rider’s Cross.
Do you still play poker with the sheriff over there?
” Again, he spoke, confirming my question.
“Can you give him a call and let him know I need access to the area and a blind eye from his department?” Another answer.
“And, of course, Callahan Security would like to donate to the PD to help with whatever needs they may have. For the community, of course.”
James smiled and shook his head as I wrote down the address where to send our donation and when I hung up the phone, I texted the address where we would be to Sheriff Lee before I looked at the men and explained. “We’ll have access to the warehouses, and anything we find will be ours to deal with.”
“How the fuck did you just get the cops to agree to let you do whatever you want?” Rhys questioned.
I looked at him and smirked, “I’m not a dick like you, Rhys.” Turning, I went to leave the room when I added, “And money talks.”
I took the stairs down to the armory with thundering footsteps following behind me.
As I unlocked the armory and began to fill a bag with needed supplies, I saw James grabbing the first aid kit and handing it to Skid.
He was a great field medic and probably should have been a doctor.
He inspected the bag and zipped it up before slipping his arms though the straps and putting it on his back.
I made sure to grab extra clips, plenty of ammo, a few knives for whatever they could be used for, and on a whim, I slipped two grenades into the duffle. Handing it to James, I looked at everyone and asked, “Are you ready to go to war?”
Nods and thumbs up were returned, and without another word, I turned and walked out of the armory.
Using the stairs again, we walked down to the parking garage then split up into three groups.
The only way to find them was to hit all three warehouses at the same time, so Lucian led one team, Rhys took another, while James insisted on staying beside me.
I thought the bullet wound in my shoulder had made him leery of leaving me alone, and I was grateful that he, Skid, and two of Lucian’s men were joining me. Each vehicle had five men, with a combination of Lucian’s mercenaries and mine.
Regan had made GPS marks on a map for us, and James drove as we made our way to the small town of Rider’s Cross. It was about thirty minutes to the Flats and another fifteen to Rider’s Cross, and during the drive, I got a message from Sheriff Lee.
Sheriff Lee: Rider’s Cross Sheriff is aware and is on board with your request.
“We’re clear of PD,” I remarked to James, and he gave a nod as he continued through Portstill and into the Flats.
“Where did their money come from?” Skid asked, and I realized that was a good question.
I opened the laptop I had and began searching through the banking apps we’d designed. The account number was routed outside of the country, and while I had a blank check in America, foreign accounts were harder to track.
Closing the laptop, I said to James, “We need to get a trace on the accounts and see who’s funding them and how much more they have before they’re tapped out.”
He nodded again as he entered the Flats and began to move through the familiar streets.
We were kings in this area for years, but we weren’t cruel.
He and I never hurt anyone for the hell of it and never someone who didn’t deserve it.
As we passed the vacant lot where the whorehouse I’d rescued Elise from when she was a little girl used to stand, I started to think about something else.
“How many kids were in the house?”
“What house?” James asked as he took another turn to lead up to Rider’s Cross.
“Steve’s whorehouse,” I remarked. “I know Elise and Regan were there, but were there any other kids? Boys perhaps?”
“Are you thinking that Bradon is another of Steve’s illegitimate kids?” Skid asked from his position in the backseat.
“Maybe,” I returned. “Something about the way he was always watching, standing off to the side, and then the way he would bow down to Kendra. It just got me thinking.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” James added to the conversation. “Steve was a bastard, so it wouldn’t shock me that he had many kids out there.”
“Add that to the list of unanswered questions we have,” I said as we exited the Flats and drove through the woods into Rider’s Cross.
This was a tiny community that started dying years ago when the mills began closing.
Most of the residents moved to find jobs, and the few who remained were living hand-to-mouth, I’d heard.
There were more empty houses than full, less jobs than people, and crime was increasing.
I hated that another community was struggling, but I couldn’t save the world.
We stopped to coordinate just outside the area where Regan believed the siblings were holed up. The three vehicles parked side-by-side, and we rolled down the windows so I could speak to the occupants of both cars.
“We’ll take the middle warehouse. Lucian, you take the closest one, and Rhys, you take the last one. We stay in contact with our coms, and if anyone finds them, you bring them to me.”
I got nods of understanding from Rhys and Lucian before I rolled up the windows and we began to move closer to the warehouses.
Two were on one giant track of land that used to be a cotton processing plant, and the last was on the edge of the old grain storage facility.
I had no guess which one they were at, but if they were here, we were going to find them.
James pulled up to the building we needed to search, and I heard Lucian state his team was ready to penetrate his building. I wanted to wait until Rhys was in position before we made our move. Another minute and Rhys let us know his team was ready to move.
The three groups entered the warehouses at the same time, whispering our locations and movements to the whole group.
Something in the back corner of the second floor of our building caught my eye, and carefully, making sure to look out for an ambush or a trap, we swept the rooms until we got to the back corner.
I leaned down and saw what looked like a false wall covering a doorway, and I motioned for Skid, James, and the other two men to be on alert.
Softly, I pressed the mic to my throat and spoke to the group. “We found a false wall. Going in.”
“Roger,” Rhys replied.
Lucian followed with “Check.”
James raised his gun to the false door, and Skid stepped up, pressing a crowbar into where the board was held in place before he pried it off with a loud pop. If they didn’t know we were here before, they did now.
The five of us rushed into the room, and I was shocked to see what was going on in front of me.
Kendra was riding Bradon’s cock, moaning and writhing as she bounced up and down.
They didn’t seem to know we were there until I chambered a round and James pressed the barrel of his gun to the side of her head.
Her green eyes moved until she looked up at me, then a sinister smile broke out on her face. “I was wondering where you were, lover.”
Bradon laid there with his hands in the air as she pushed herself odd his cock and sauntered up to me. James kept his gun trained on him while Lucian’s man stepped up and kept theirs trained on the naked woman moving closer to me.
In my life, I’d never hurt a woman on purpose, but this bitch was crazy, and I had no qualms about knocking her over the head to get her to stop. When she placed her hands on my chest, I stepped back and lifted the gun to the center of her face.
“You’re not going to shoot me, Devlin,” Kendra remarked.
I lowered the gun, and her smirk grew as if she’d won, but she didn’t know me now and she never did.
With little aim, I fired a round, striking her in the top of the foot, causing her to crumble to the ground.
Bradon tried to jump up to defend her only to be smacked in the side of the head by James’s gun.
He fell to the floor as Kendra screamed from her position at my feet.
“Get them dressed and load them into the van,” I instructed as I stepped back from the two people responsible for hurting my wife.
They were going to die today, but not here. I needed to get information from them, and I needed to control the scene. Looking at James, who was tossing clothes at their nakedness, I instructed, “Get them back to Portstill.”
He nodded and yanked a crying and bloody Bradon from the floor, shoving his clothes against his chest. James knew where to take them, and I wasn’t going to sit around and listen to Kendra bitch and moan about me shooting her.
She had worse things to worry about, and I wasn’t going to give her any more time than necessary. Stepping out of the warehouse, I let Rhys know we had them and to meet us back in Portstill, then I requested Lucian pick me up.
As a gagged and combative Kendra and Bradon were dragged from the hidden room, I started looking around the building for clues to what they were doing here.
A small office on the ground floor seemed to be used frequently from the amount of soda cans and snack wrappers in the trash.
I started rifling through paperwork until I discovered a file.
Opening it, I flipped through the papers quickly, finding answers to most of my questions about them. But I was still going to torture them for the rest of the information, to ensure there wasn’t another threat against my wife or family.
Lucian swung by to give me a ride as I looked through the paperwork, shaking my head at what I was seeing.
Those two were twisted in the head, and people like that didn’t deserve to be walking around in society. It was time for me to end this bullshit and let the good people around here stop fearing the crazy assholes hellbent on terrorizing everyone they met.
If I’d known what their pasts had been, I would have dropped them on the day they’d knocked on my door.
You couldn’t fix crazy, and I wasn’t going to try. Let God sort them out once I arrange their meeting.