Chapter 14
JACK
Six trucks approach, all with big, rig-mounted spotlights operated by men standing on the beds of the trucks.
I wish I was holding my gun instead of my cell phone, but even if I was, I wouldn’t dare shoot.
Camile could be on the back of one of those trucks.
Besides, we’re out here in the open, while they’re semi-protected by the vehicles, so if anyone is going to end up shot, it’ll probably be us.
How did they know we were here?
My mind immediately goes to the three men who betrayed us in the first place. The ones still sitting in the cooler, probably slowly getting colder and sleepier with every passing hour. They won’t survive in there forever.
Ghost used psychological tactics on them, and Big Mike used more direct violence, and they cried and swore they didn’t know anything more than what they’d already told us.
Yes, they admitted they’d been giving information to the Revenants and that some of them were interested in Camile, and where she was staying.
They even admitted that they’d let them onto my fucking territory, but they claimed not to know what they were planning.
They are total idiots, and hardly the bravest of men, so I’m inclined to believe them, but what if it’s a lie?
The sounds of gun safeties clicking off echo around us, and someone speaks into a loudspeaker on top of one of the trucks.
“What the fuck are you doing on my compound in my empty tool shed on an evening like this, Jack?”
I know the voice immediately. That slight southern lilt that Beau has is instantly recognizable.
The Revenants might be a rival gang, but we had conversations with them when we first moved into the area.
Or at least, I did, with their President and two of his henchmen.
Beau was born in Savannah and moved this way many years ago, for the love of a woman.
That all went wrong, but he ended up in an MC chapter, and eventually, he branched out on his own and set up this one.
He’s just a little younger than me, and while he doesn’t have my bulk, he’s broad-shouldered and strong from years of riding and fighting.
“I need to ask you some questions,” I shout back.
Fuck this. I must find where Camile is. That girl is all that matters right now. My phone buzzes in my palm, and I glance at the screen.
Beau chuckles into the loudspeaker and it echoes around us, eerily bouncing off the trees in the woods to our rear. “I don’t think you’re in any position to be calling the shots here, Jack. We’re the ones with our guns trained on you.” His southern lilt is as smooth as molasses.
“Yeah, that might be true.” I look back down at my phone screen and smirk. “But right about now, you’re encircled by my men, and they have their guns on you.”
Clicks ring out in the night air, and I can’t see my men beyond the trucks, due to the damn lights in my eyes, but I know they’re there, thanks to Ghost’s message.
“We seem to have ourselves a real Mexican standoff,” Big Mike says.
“You do realize that I have more men than these here in the trucks.” Beau laughs, seemingly unfazed by the situation. “I could get the entire club here in minutes.”
“Yeah, and I have even more men still in the woods around your compound that haven’t made themselves known.
” I shrug lazily. “My chapter is bigger than yours as it is, but my old chapter came to help out, too, and you are, trust me, completely outgunned. I don’t want any trouble,” I add, and lift my hands, shoving my phone in my pocket first, and showing my palms. I’m trying to prove to Beau that I’m not holding my gun.
I keep talking. “I just want one thing… one thing and then I walk away, and I forget about the fact that you took our shipment. We can wipe the slate clean, and trust me, Beau, that is in your best interests. You do not want a war with my club.” I put as much of the power and gravitas into my voice as I can muster.
“I can’t think for one minute what you could want from me that has you creeping in here and breaking into my outbuilding.” Beau is still talking into the loudspeaker, and I wish he’d just get down off the damn truck and talk man to man.
“You’ve got a woman of ours,” Ace says. “We want her back.”
“What the fuck?”
Beau shouts the word fuck so sharply into the speaker that it hurts my ears. The loudspeaker squeals with reverberation.
The next moment, he finally steps down off the truck. I hear one of his men saying something like not a good idea, Prez, but Beau shrugs off the words and tells the man to keep a gun trained on us as he walks toward our position.
“What the fuck are you accusing me of here, Jack?” he snarls as he reaches us, standing almost toe to toe with me, hands on his hips.
“A woman from our compound has been taken, and three of our men were involved. Right now, they’re sitting in a cooler, and probably have hypothermia.
They had exchanged messages with some of your guys and claim they were talking to people from your club and helped them take the woman.
The thing is, she’s not a member of our club.
She’s not anybody’s old lady or a sweetbutt.
She’s a girl from the local college. She’s young and vulnerable because she’s just lost her parents, and I fucking want her back so we can keep her safe. The cartel is after her.”
“I’ve got to say I’m disappointed you think so little of me.” Beau smooths his hand over his close-cut beard. “How do you know they were messaging my men?”
“Because they had put “Revenants” in their contacts, literally.”
His brows rise. “That’s fucking stupid.”
“They are fucking stupid. Now, can we move this on?”
“I assure you, Jack, we would never do such a thing. No matter what you believe, my MC wasn’t involved in snatching a girl.”
He’s got old school manners, but I know it’s all a smoke screen. This man would gut another man with a spoon if he needed to.
“Well, you already took our shipments, unprovoked,” I point out. “There was no need for that. There hadn’t been any trouble between any of us before you guys did it, so what are we supposed to think?”
Beau makes a low rumbling growl in his chest and narrows whiskey-colored eyes at me.
“We did the shipment raid as a warning because we’d been given information by some of our men that you guys were going to hit us.
We didn’t want that to happen, so we took some of your weapons. Call it a pre-emptive strike.”
I grit my teeth. “You didn’t think to pick up the phone first and ask me if this information could have been correct?”
“Oh, come on.” A hint of a smile plays at his mouth, but it never quite reaches his eyes.
“You know the kind of world we live in. That’s not how it works.
If you had been planning something, there’s no way you would have admitted to it.
But you’ve got some guys in your outfit who talk too much, and they talked to my men, who then came to me.
It’s one thing for us to take some weapons because you were going to fuck with us, and quite another for us to take a girl. I wouldn’t fucking do that, Jack.”
There’s real sincerity in his voice. I can see Ace processing, and I bet he’s having the exact same thoughts I’m having.
Somebody from the Revenants told Beau that we were going to attack.
They said they got this information from our members.
They then attacked our shipment with information that, presumably, they genuinely did get from us.
And they also took Camile with information that they got from our group. But the initial information was a lie.
I sigh and look at Beau. “I think you’ve got some men in your club lying to you,” I say. “The same way we do.”
He taps two fingers against his lips. “You think there’s a small group working together to bring both our clubs trouble?”
“Sure looks that way. Just out of interest… the men who gave you the information indicating that we were going to attack you, where are they right now?”
Beau glances back at the trucks and gestures with two fingers for someone to come and join him. An exceptionally tall man steps down off the truck and walks toward us. He’s as skinny as he is tall, and he almost looks like an alien in the light beam from the trucks.
“This is Fitz. He’s friendly with the two who reported that you were planning to hit us.” Beau looks to Fitz. “When was the last time you saw Garth and Sutton?”
The one called Fitz shrugs. “Not sure. Got to be at least twenty-four hours, though. They looked like they were headed out.”
“Did they say where they were going?” Beau asks.
“Nah, sorry, Prez. I didn’t think to ask them.”
Beau looks back to me. “When was the girl taken?”
“During the night, last night. We know at least two men came onto our compound. We think it was the three of ours who let them in, cut a hole in our fencing and disabled our security cameras. Luckily, we had additional cameras that weren’t on our mains.
” I shoot a look to Ghost, who has zero reaction at my mentioning the cameras.
I’m sure he’s telling himself he did the right thing by not disabling them the moment Camile went into the house, considering what’s happened.
I go to take my cell back out of my pocket to show Beau the footage, but the moment my hand moves, a dozen weapons are aimed in my face.
“I’m just going for my cell phone, fellas,” I tell them. “You can chill.”
Their own Prez jerks his chin to tell them it’s all right, and they lower the weapons again.
After Camile had been taken, I’d gotten Ghost to send me screenshots of the footage of the men grabbing her. I pull up those images now and show them to Beau and Fitz.
“Does this look like your guys?”
Fitz sucks air in over his teeth. “Kinda hard to tell when they’ve got their faces covered, but yeah, that could be them.”