Chapter 33
Hellfire
"Looks like they're finally talking about it," Static said, taking the remote off the table in the meeting room as he walked in, and flicking on the TV hanging on the wall.
I watched the reporter on the screen recount what the police had found in Amato's mansion.
It didn't surprise us that it had taken two weeks to talk about what they'd found there.
He didn't likely invite many people over and all of his made men were dead.
If their families found the slaughter, it wasn't like they were going to step forward and be connected to a bunch of criminals.
So, we weren't even sure how long it took them to find the scene.
They'd probably taken their time combing through everything, too.
We weren't worried about them finding anything connecting us to the murders. Riptide had erased our prints from the cops’ system and if they found more at the crime scene, they wouldn't have anything to compare it to.
"The death toll keeps rising in The Catalina Foothills as the police investigate what looks to be a gang retaliation.
" I snorted in amusement. They always thought shit was gang related.
Of course, there was no way for them to know it was Butcher related.
"The police have asked that anyone having information please call this number.
" The reporter was a beautiful blonde who looked appropriately horrified about the story she was reporting on.
She repeated the number for the information hotline.
"Shut it off," Lock told Static. As soon as the screen flicked off, he asked, "Have you and Dash taken care of everything, Rip?"
"Yeah. All the cameras are wiped and there's nothing left that will connect us to that shit. Everyone's information is off the criminal databases. I've got Dash triple checking for us, but we should be in the clear."
"Won't Fremont put it together?" Hush asked.
"Yeah, he will," Lock replied. "But there's no way he's going to involve himself in this. It would draw too much attention."
"He'll lay low for a while," Priest predicted.
Lock nodded in agreement. "We just bought ourselves some time to rest and recoup." His eyes met mine. "How's Kit?"
"Healing," I told him. It would be a bit before she was completely healed up, but the doctor was happy with the progress so far.
"And you?"
"Fine," I told him.
He nodded again. "Angelo, Amato’s cousin, was with the men who escaped the mansion. His guys were trying to get him out of there after they realized Amato wasn't going to live."
"Angelo won’t be taking over anything anymore. The Amato empire is finished," Butcher said as he played with the blade of his knife.
"Good," Priest said, "one down, one to go."
"Should we just go on the offensive?" Ricochet asked.
"No," Lock told him. "We need to regroup. This time I want to actually utilize the fucking plan I make," he replied, giving Butcher a hard look. Butcher just grinned and shrugged. The look Lock shot me was less stern because it wasn't like I planned to get taken the way Butcher had.
"What do we do in the meantime?" Smoke asked.
"We'll open The Bunker up again. And start back up on building the school," Lockout told us. "Give the families a chance to take a breath and prepare for what comes next."
"I contacted everyone helping us keep the cops off our asses and told them they could stop," I told Lock and the others.
It had been Lock's orders, but the others didn't know what I'd found out yet, so I relayed it.
"Jackie told me the cops have pulled back.
" I looked over at Lock, "So, Fremont is definitely dialing it back. "
"Good. Rip, make sure you thank everyone in person. Compensate them for the trouble."
"Will do."
"What else?" Lock asked, looking around.
I let my mind wander to the woman who was sleeping upstairs, naked, in my bed, and what I was planning to do to her once I was released from church.
I'd never take Kit being around for granted again.
She'd been there, in the background, for years, but now she was always at the forefront of my mind.
I couldn't wait to take the next steps together.
Get married. Have babies. Grow old. It was going to be fucking fun going through life with my woman.
* * *
Four Months Later
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and grinned at the photo that Kit had sent me. My heart rate skyrocketed as I looked at her lying naked on our kitchen table.
"What the fuck is so important that you're looking at your phone?" Smoke complained. We were waiting on Lock to start church. He was usually the first one here, so there was a tension filling the room as we waited.
"I should be a dick and show you," I told him. He opened his mouth to comment, but snapped it closed when I warned, "Keep it up and I will. It will fucking traumatize you, I promise you that."
He narrowed his eyes, but didn't say anything else. I knew how to take care of my friend, and the threat of telling him about my and his sister's sexcapades always managed to make him back down.
Looking at the picture again, I grinned despite the shouting happening out in the hallway.
There was a time I didn't think I had a shot of making her mine. Now all I had to do was convince her to stick around for the rest of my life. And I planned to show her how good I was for her, every day. It didn’t matter what threats were coming for us, we’d face them together.
"So what's the problem?" Lockout asked, stalking into the room. He looked like he was already in a bad mood.
I shoved my phone into the pocket of my jeans and tried to focus on the matter at hand. My old lady was going to make good on the teasing invitation she’d just sent me, just as soon as I got the fuck out of here.
Everyone was quiet as Lock raised a brow at Static, waiting on him to answer.
Work on the school was progressing to the point where Lock had put him in charge of speaking to The State Board of Education and The Arizona State Board for Charter Schools.
"There's a problem with the accreditation process," Static explained. "But there shouldn't be."
Lock's expression darkened in response.
Static sighed. “This isn’t the typical bureaucratic bullshit.
This is deliberate. And it gets worse. There was a surprise inspection yesterday from a new guy.
He wouldn’t say what happened to the old inspector.
Wasn’t much I could do other than let him do another one.
He ‘found’ a series of violations,” he told us with a sigh.
“Violations that didn’t exist when we passed the last inspection with flying colors.
And to top it all off, Child Protective Services wants to interview the children. Find out why they aren’t in school.
“Fucking pricks,” Smokehouse muttered. Everyone at the table looked pissed off, but he was the only one to say anything once Static stopped speaking.
I'd been pulling double shifts both at my family's business and at the school.
It'd taken a little over a month before I'd been able to do anything, thanks to my leg having a hole in it, but once the pain faded, I'd jumped right back in.
Everybody had been busting their ass. “I think I liked it better when all we had to do was fight armed gunmen,” I told the room.
“No fucking kidding. Lock, how do we fight this?” Hush asked.
Lock didn’t answer. He tapped his index finger on the table while thinking through the barrage of problems Static had just dumped on him.
Static chimed in after a minute of silence. “Lockout, we’re in so far over our heads here…I’m at the limit of what I can do, what we can do. We can’t threaten or fight our way through this one. We need help.”
Lockout's mood took an instant shift. The aggression and fire that suddenly flared in his eyes was unlike anything I’d seen with him before. He fixed his eyes on Static. “No.”
Static continued unperturbed. “I had a talk with Riptide, seeing as he’s the VP.”
Lockout gripped the table in front of him, his fingers digging into the wood. I could hear the wood groan under the pressure. “I said no,” he growled, looking furious.
Riptide chimed in. “I knew that’s what you’d say, but with CPS closing in now, and the possibility of the kids being taken, well, I made a call.”
This was bad. Really bad. You didn’t go behind the president’s back. For Static, a prospect, and Rip to make a decision that they knew Lockout wouldn’t approve of? Bad. Somehow, Lockout already seemed to know whatever decision they made and he looked like he wanted to kill them both.
“What-” I broke off when the door to the meeting room slammed open and hit the wall with a bang.
My gun was in my hand before I even knew I was reaching for it.
The man standing there had my mouth dropping open.
Through my gun sights I was looking at Lockout.
I glanced back over my shoulder and saw Lockout still sitting at the table.
My eyes moved back to the doorway. The only difference between the two men was the suit.
Well, that and the man in the doorway was grinning while our president was spitting out a string of curses that were both creative and mechanically impossible.
The man standing there must have shocked the rest of my brothers into inaction as well because the only one moving was Lockout.
I studied the man who was shoving his hands into the pockets of his designer suit.
I never knew Lock had a twin brother, but the guy standing there couldn't be anything else because he was the spitting image of our president.
Gone were the jeans and cut, replaced with an expensive suit, but the same hazel eyes scanned the room and I'd seen that shit-eating grin often enough to recognize it.
"Hello, Liam."
“Oh shit,” Hush muttered.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" Lockout roared, standing up so quickly his heavy wooden chair skidded backward and crashed into the wall. "Get. The. Fuck. Out!"
I glanced over and met Smoke and Ricochet's wide eyes. Clearly there was some bad blood here, judging off Lock's reaction.
"Out," Lock snarled, pointing toward the door.
The newcomer lifted his hands in mock surrender with a satisfied, smug smile. "Not this time brother. This time we settle it.”
They left us alone and there was silence for a few heartbeats before Toxic finally asked, "Who the fuck is that?"
"That, gentleman," Static said with a lopsided smile, "is the man from Idaho."
"Goddamn it," Riptide muttered before he hurried from the room. A few seconds later something slammed hard into the wall, causing the TV to wobble on its rack.
"This is going to be interesting," Butcher said with a growing grin.
"You don't know the half of it," Static said, before he too went out into the hall to try to help.
***
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