Chapter 17
Trick/Jase
I called King to let him know that Rossi had called and needed to postpone the upcoming fight.
“His fighter got stabbed – he didn’t offer any details, so I didn’t ask – and he needs to make a substitution.
He’ll announce the change in fighters, then said he needs to give the bettors time to cancel their original bets if they want to, or place new ones.
He’ll let me know the new date once he figures out who’s going to replace Gino. ”
King’s reply was drowned out by the alarm blaring, followed by Lauren’s scream.
“Fuck, we’ve got trouble. Send help.” I shouted into the phone as I grabbed my gun from the nightstand. I didn’t even take time to end the call; I just shoved the phone in my back pocket as I sprinted down the hall.
Lauren was standing in the middle of the living room, unharmed, but scared shitless judging by the wide-eyed look of panic on her face. I scanned the room, not seeing anyone else, then grabbed her and covered her body as best I could while urging her into the guest room.
After making sure she had a weapon, I cautiously made my way down the hall, keeping my finger on the trigger as I searched for the sonofabitch who had the balls to try to break in.
I searched every inch of the house. The back door stood open about two inches, but the intruder was long gone.
I slammed the door shut with more force than necessary, then locked it.
I jabbed at the keypad on the wall next to it, punching in the code to turn the damned alarm off.
My ears were ringing, and I took a deep breath and rolled my neck to rid myself of the tension holding my muscles rigid. I fished my phone out of my pocket, finding that the call was still connected.
“Prez?”
“Fuckin’ hell,” he barked into the phone. “Are you two all right?”
“Yeah,” I muttered, quickly explaining what happened as I sped through the house again, making sure all the windows were locked.
“I’m already on the way there. Lucky, Joker, Viking, Bull, and Bodhi are with me, and Brick’s on his way.”
I was still tense when I collected Lauren from the guest room. Her normally fair complexion was even paler, and she was shaking from head to toe.
It took a few minutes to get her calmed down enough to walk into the living room. I settled her on the couch and told her that the others would be here soon.
Before I could say anything else, Jagger called to check in. He and Rome had taken their wives to a concert, but they’d received the group text King had sent out.
“We’re up in Noblesville, but Rome and I can be there in about forty-five minutes,” He said, speaking loudly to be heard over the sound of music playing in the background.
“No, just stay there and enjoy your date night. We’re OK, and the rest of the cavalry should be here any minute. We can handle things.”
I tossed my phone down on the coffee table, then took hold of Lauren’s hands. They were cold, and she still looked ghostly pale.
King and the others showed up a few minutes later, and I quickly got up to disarm the alarm and unlock the front door for them.
Viking was the first one through the door, closely followed by King.
Lauren stood and stumbled into her uncle’s arms, clinging to him as he whispered gruffly in her ear.
One by one the rest of them walked in, until Lauren’s living room was filled with six of my club brothers, all of whom looked pissed as hell.
“Tell me again exactly what the fuck happened,” King ordered. I gave them a run-down on the situation, finishing by explaining that I’d found the back door standing open a couple of inches.
“Elvis!” She gasped, interrupting me, then whirled around and ran down the hall, frantically calling his name.
Shit! I’d forgotten about the damned cat.
I glanced around, not seeing any sign of him.
Viking sighed heavily, then pointed to the others. “Fan out, brothers. She’s gonna lose her shit if we can’t find the demon’s spawn she calls a cat.”
I stayed inside, trying to keep Lauren calm while we searched under beds, in closets, and behind the couch. Bodhi, Joker, and Lucky wandered around the yard, using the flashlights on their phones to peer under bushes and look up in the trees, all the while calling for the cat.
“We’ll find him, girlie,” Viking assured her as he leaned over to look behind a chair in the living room.
“I hope he didn’t go outside. He’s so helpless,” she whispered, trying to hold back her tears.
I barely stopped the disbelieving snort from escaping. Helpless, my ass. With those razor-sharp claws, that cat could defend himself as well as I could, but I was smart enough not to say that.
“Meeeowww.”
The plaintive sound came from the direction of the laundry room, and Lauren almost tripped me in her haste to get there first. We found him huddled behind the dryer, and she offered up a handful of cat treats shaped like tiny, putrid-green mice in order to coax him out.
They looked absolutely revolting, but they did the trick.
He leaped into her arms, rubbing his head under her chin and purring loudly. I reached out to scratch behind his ears, and he hissed and swiped at me, making it clear that he thought this entire shitshow was somehow my fault.
I jerked my hand back in the nick of time, then headed outside to let the others know they could call off their search.
I found Lucky standing in the front yard, with his light shining on the landscaping under the living room window.
“You need to see this,” he said grimly, waving me over and pointing at the ground where a small section of plants and flowers had been freshly trampled on.
“Somebody was standing here, man, and you can see right in this window between the slats in the blinds. Joker and Bodhi are checking out the other windows.”
“I’ll fuckin’ kill him, Luck,” I snarled.
He clapped me on the shoulder and nodded. “Yeah, and I’ll gladly help you, but we’ve gotta find him first.”
Brick pulled into the driveway then, and I filled him in on everything that had happened. Joker and Bodhi joined us, telling me that since there was grass under all the other windows, they couldn’t tell if he’d tried looking in them or not.
“Hey, guys, do me a favor and don’t mention anything in front of Lauren about the footprints. It’s gonna really fuck with her head, and I’d rather tell her when we’re alone.”
They all agreed, and the five of us walked inside. Lauren was sitting on the couch, and I was happy to see that the color had returned to her cheeks, and she looked angry more so than frightened now. Elvis was curled up on her lap, glaring balefully at everyone.
Brick cleared his throat to get our attention.
“The bastard hacked our system. He put the cameras on a recorded loop instead of live monitoring, so there was no sign of movement on our end. He tried to disable the alarm, and probably thought that it had worked, so he figured he was safe to break in.”
Brick’s announcement was met with a lot of cursing, mostly mine.
“How the fuck does that happen?”
Brick sighed heavily. “I don’t know, brother. Our system is state-of-the-art, but there’s obviously a weak link somewhere that compromised our firewall. I’ve already got our techs working on it.”
King rubbed his fingers over the bridge of his nose, something he always did when he was frustrated.
“Bull and I checked the back door while you were looking for the cat. There are no signs of forced entry. The frame is intact, there are no scratches around the lock, no pry marks, nothing. Are you sure the door was locked?”
“Yeah, it was fuckin’ locked. I checked it myself when I got here this afternoon, and we didn’t go outside at all after that.”
“Well, we can add lockpicking to his skills then, along with the hacking,” Bull noted.
I looked at Lauren, who was staring at us wide-eyed, just listening to the conversation flowing around her.
“You need to pack your bags, darlin’. I know staying at the clubhouse isn’t ideal, but we don’t have a choice anymore. We can’t stay here.”
She must have tightened her grip on the cat, because the furball yowled and jumped off her lap, dashing down the hall toward the bedrooms.
“I know,” she said, looking resigned to the situation.
Brick and Joker left right after that, since they wanted to get back to the office to help figure out how the hell Beau had gotten around the firewalls they have in place.
I told Lucky and Bodhi that they could head out, too. “Can you two check with the neighbors in the morning, see if any of them have cameras or saw anything?”
I knew if they went knocking on doors this late in the evening – even if they took their cuts off – they would still spook people, who would then likely call the cops.
The last thing we wanted was to attract the attention of law enforcement in this instance, especially since I was planning to make Beau disappear permanently.
King and I had come to an understanding several months back when we’d tried to find Pic after he’d stolen from the club…If we’re gonna kill people, we make damned sure we don’t get caught.
“Don’t bother trying the people who rent the other side of the duplex. They left for vacation last Saturday,” Lauren reminded me.
They nodded, telling me they’d let me know if they got anything useful, then hugged Lauren before taking off.
King, Bull, and Viking stayed with us while I helped Lauren pack a suitcase, plus all the assorted crap the cat apparently couldn’t live without.
“Are you sure we need to take this?” I asked, pointing at the four-foot tall scratching post with a bunch of little shelves sticking out the side and toys and shit hanging from it.
“Definitely,” she said adamantly. “I’m worried that Elvis won’t do well in such a huge place with all those strangers. Plus, the noise may be too much for him, especially after he was traumatized already. The cat tree will help him relax.”
“Traumatized, my wrinkled old ass. That fleabag will be fine,” Viking grumbled, glaring at the cat tree like it personally offended him.
King coughed to hide his chuckle. Lauren rolled her eyes at her uncle, and I wisely kept my damned mouth shut.
“Lauren, we’ll get you set up in the VIP suite in the annex. It’s attached to the main building so you’ll be safe, but it’s quieter than the actual clubhouse so the cat shouldn’t freak out too much.” He gave a ghost of a smile when he mentioned Elvis.
While Lauren busied herself with gathering all the lotions and creams and shit from the bathroom that she wanted to take, Bull filled King, Viking and me in on what he’d found on the custodian from the recording studio.
“Let me pull up my notes.” He tapped and swiped at his phone screen for a few seconds, then gave us the rundown.
“John Darnell, he goes by JD. Born and raised in Indianapolis. Fifty-two, joined the Marines straight out of high school and served 8 years as a mechanic before receiving an Honorable discharge. Married at thirty-three, divorced at forty-one. No kids. Lives alone. No criminal record, aside from a parking ticket ten years ago. Just paid off his mortgage. He has excellent credit and a pretty sweet investment portfolio. We should ask him for some fuckin’ stock tips,” he joked.
“Started working at the recording studio when he left the service and he’s been there ever since.
The old lady who owns it is his aunt. He doesn’t have any social media presence that I could find,” he said, then chuckled.
“He’s a fuckin’ do-gooder type. I found his name mentioned in a couple of news articles.
He won an award as Volunteer of the Year with a group that builds houses for homeless vets and also helped develop a community garden over near Garfield Park. ”
“Good to know. Thanks, brother,” I told him.
“Are you thinking he could help us keep an eye on Lauren when she’s working?”
I considered King’s question. “Maybe. One of us still needs to shadow her, especially since that motherfucker’s escalating, but it will be nice to have a former Marine around if we need extra backup.”
I glanced down the hall to make sure Lauren was still in the bathroom, then motioned the others in closer. Keeping my voice low so she couldn’t hear me, I told them about the footprints that Lucky had found.
“I’m gonna wait to tell her until we get her settled in at the clubhouse. I don’t want her looking over her shoulder, afraid that he could still be watching us while we’re getting things packed up.”
“That’s probably best,” King agreed.
“We need to find that walking shitstain she was engaged to,” Viking fumed. “Fuckin’ Peeping Tom pervert. I wanna rip out his eyeballs and piss in the empty sockets.”
That sounded like a great idea to me, especially given what he probably saw when Lauren and I were fooling around on the couch right under the window. I kept that thought to myself, too, of course.
“I haven’t gotten any pings on the alerts I set for his bank account and credit cards, so he must be using cash to travel,” Bull pointed out.
“Keep on it,” King instructed him. “Tracking that bastard down is your top priority.”
“Understood. I’m gonna head back to the clubhouse now to run everything I have on him again.”
“Text me if you find anything,” I told him.
“Me, too,” Viking chimed in.
“I’m planning to pull an all-nighter so it may be late, or really fuckin’ early, depending on how you look at it,” he warned.
“I don’t care what time it is. I want to know the second anything comes up, and thanks, brother. I appreciate you busting your ass on this.”
He looked at me and nodded. “Anything for family.”
He left after that, and Lauren told us she was ready to go just a few minutes later.