Dillon's Universe: A Perdition MC Novel

by Isabel Wroth

  “You decrypted the drive?”

  “Yes, finally,” he groaned, putting his tablet down to reach for her hand. “How does it feel?”

  Nasa carefully cradled her palm in both of his, as though she'd broken her wrist, not gotten a tattoo. The dragon was made of black and blue wires and computer circuits, the precise lines stretched from the tip of her fingers, across the back of her hand, and twisted around her wrist all the way up to her elbow. In his talons, the dragon carried a shield with an inscription Dillon had trouble looking away from for very long. In simple letters, it read,

  I am Nasa's treasure.

  A week after they'd come back from Dallas, Nasa came to her and said he wanted to talk to her about getting his brand. She asked him for time to get used to the lingo of Biker Land regarding 'property,' and a few hours later, he'd come back with two designs.

  One for a tattoo, the other for the pattern he'd have embroidered on her Dragon Scale vest. The feminine biker cut claimed her as 'Property of,' and her tattoo marked her as treasure. A compromise to bridge the traditions of Nasa's people while honoring Dillon's feelings.

  That same day, she'd gone with him to The Boneyard and endured the pain of getting Nasa's brand with a goofy smile on her face.

  He didn't have any more room on his arms, so he'd had the artist at the tattoo shop create a mechanical tiger. Her elegant face was twisted in a vicious snarl, crouched protectively over the skin she had clenched possessively in her claws, and the words permanently carved over his heart.

  Property of Dillon.

  “It's still a little sore, but not bad. How's yours?” Dillon slid her hand under his shirt, up over the taut muscles of his belly, and up his chest to carefully cover the tiger. When she spread her fingers just right, her ink lined up with what he'd already had, in purposeful point of connection.

  “Feels good,” he rumbled, leaning in to snatch a kiss. “Like I got a sunburn.”

  A door slammed violently somewhere inside the compound, hard enough to make the wine glasses hanging above the kitchen bar rattle.

  “That sounds like a fuckin' personal problem to me!” Top bellowed, and from the volume, Dillon assumed he was on the phone. “I don't give a fat damn if that dickhead can't get his act together. I don't want any more of your shit-ass product, and you people assured me this whole clusterfuck was settled. If I don't see my goddamn money within the next twenty-four hours, I guaran-damn-tee you'll have six of my guys on your porch to collect!”

  Dillon had gotten fairly used to the creative threats Top tossed around on any given day, but this sounded particularly unpleasant. When she looked up at Nasa for direction, he was struggling not to laugh as he explained.

  “Top ordered some vitamins from one of those companies whose whole scheme is automatic renewal? The vitamins sucked and didn't do anything for him, so he wanted to cancel, but they've continued to charge his card.

  “I told him I'd take care of it, but he insisted on doing it himself. I think it makes him feel like there's a gaping hole in his life if he doesn't have new assholes to tear on the regular.”

  Nasa pulled her hand out from under his shirt in order to press a kiss to the center of her palm, rubbing it in while they eavesdropped.

  “Oh, you think I don't know where you live, huh?” Top chortled wickedly. “Chester Abrams of Greenbriar Court, Denver Colorado, age thirty-seven, divorced with no kids, working this criminal pyramid scheme to bilk senior citizens out of their social security.

  “That's right. I know who you are, you rat-ass mother fucker, and I will come for you like the shadow of death. My money, by this time tomorrow, or I will shove my boot so far up your ass, you'll lick your lips and taste leather. You get me, son? Good.”

  After a brief pause rife with muttered curses, Top's voice blasted through every intercom speaker in the building with the subtlety of a fog horn.

  “Church, mother fuckers! Right now!” Even over the ringing of her ears, Dillon heard the scuff and shuffle of Top's cowboy boots on the concrete floors headed their way. He was scowling, but there was a definite sparkle of glee in his bright eyes. Right up until he saw the blender on the counter. “Fuck me! Did Athena rope you into making alfalfa ass juice for me?”

  “Considering I'm here all the time and she's not, I volunteered. You want extra green shit today?” Dillon teased, just to watch his lip curl in disgust.

  “If y'all put any more green shit in it, might as well change my fuckin’ road name to Bruce!” Top complained, but dutifully took the glass from her and made it disappear. She waited, watching him smack his previously curled lips together, peering into the now empty glass with a curious harrumph. “Either I'm losing the ability to taste horrible shit or that actually wasn't as bad. What'd you do?”

  “I tweaked the recipe slightly and added apples.” The sweetness of them cut the bitterness of the greens down to a more tolerable level while still providing all the nutrients Top needed.

  “Huh.” Top thunked the empty glass down on the counter and pointed a finger gun at her. “You've just been promoted to full time juice maker. Church.”

  Dillon let her eyebrows drift up, a smirk curling her lips. “I thought that was a G.O.L.F situation.”

  “What? We ain't goin' in there to knock anyone’s balls around.”

  “Before the Scots finally got around to naming their sport, they'd hang up a sign that said, 'Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden,' which then became Golf.”

  “Learn somethin' new every goddamn day,” Top declared with a bounce of his bushy brows. “Well, this here is a Community Church session, and if the rest of the girls were in house, I'm sure they'd be in on it too.” He strode off, muttering under his breath. “Hate fuckin' golf. I got better shit to do with my time than whack a ball, get in the cart, watch the damn grass grow for a minute, then get out and whack it some more. Fuckin' ridiculous.”

  “So what goes on in a normal 'Church' meeting?” Dillon asked Nasa.

  He gave her an incredibly serious face, looking around surreptitiously, as though preparing to impart state secrets. “We talk about things we don't want the women involved in. How to avoid Athena's latest health binge, our plans for world domination, talk smack about our Call of Duty squad scores.

  “Confidential client info, who we're picking for our Fantasy Football teams, budgets and quarterly statements, and anything semi-illegal we may be preparing to engage in. You know, guy shit.”

  She gave a lofty nod and followed along beside him. “Guy shit. Got it. But it's good news, right?”

  “Best news we've had in days,” Nasa promised.

  It didn't take long for all the bikers in residence to file in and sit down, and none of them seemed to be bothered or surprised by her presence. Nasa got busy plugging stuff into the big monitor on the wall, and without making them wait, announced victoriously,

  “We hit the mother lode.” A list appeared on the screen, slowly scrolling down. “Rachel deserves a goddamn medal when we find her because she stole a complete, extremely detailed list of every single person in Texas, Nevada, and Florida who help move the Leviathans merchandise or are involved with sales.”

  Leather creaked as every man in the room eagerly perked up. “And it's not just the patched-in members. Although, I've got stats on every one of them, their history, life stories, how they joined the club, what their vices are, and a cheat sheet of all their priors. The stuff marked off in yellow represent all the shit Perdition has shut down.”

  Nasa used an actual laser pointer to circle the portions of the list highlighted, and she was pretty sure she wasn't alone in feeling pleased to see the sizable amount of color to indicate the interference. It wasn't quite a quarter of the list, but almost, and that meant Perdition had done some serious damage to the Leviathan's smuggling operation.

  “And the stuff highlighted in blue?” Top asked, squinting until Saint poked him with a pair of reading glasses. Top glared harshly at his vice president, but snatched the gla
sses and jammed them on his face without a word.

  “Far as I can tell? The names of all the people Ghost has taken out himself.” Nasa's answer had murmurs of surprise and confusion running around the room, but no one spoke up to interrupt as he continued. “There's a family tree of each of their drug suppliers, from the production crew to the street dealers.

  “Arms dealers, small time and large where the Leviathans get their hardware, and computer hacktivists they utilize to do work for them. I've got tattoo artists, accountants, doctors, truck drivers, teachers of all fuckin' things, and stash house owners.

  “I've got addresses for the places where they take the people they kidnap, recordings of phone calls between Leviathans and their suppliers... This is the Holy Grail of organized crime, and considering Dillon and I got Ghost to confirm he's not Andrew Stanfield, now more than ever, I'm convinced he's undercover for Homeland or some other agency on assignment.”

  Shocked silence had descended upon them all, but Roar was the first to recover. “Ghost is an undercover agent taking out the Leviathans one by one, all by himself?”

  It made perfect sense to her, but Dillon stayed quiet, watching the men of Perdition thinking it over, seriously considering it everything Nasa had brought to them.

  “Technically, he used us to take out a hefty chunk of the Leviathans for him while he was here with us,” Saint answered with a testy curl of his lip. “Which—as much as I hate to admit it—was a pretty smart move. The only part of this new theory I find hard to swallow is that no agency would sanction the murder of innocent civilians in order to keep Lewis's cover.”

  “He didn't take out innocents though, did he?” Damon pointed out. “Contractor Jerry turned out to be laundering money through his business and reporting his undocumented workers to ICE when they asked for a fair wage.

  “The UPS driver had a history of domestic violence, and we found out after I tapped some of my military contacts, the medical discharge the real Toad got wasn't because of a bodily injury.

  “It was the sort of discharge the military gives someone who's fucked up so bad, it would make international news and cause more problems than the court marshal was worth. Maybe Lewis is purposefully taking out dirtbags to keep his cover and performing a civil service all at the same time.”

  “No way,” Roar insisted with a stubborn shake of his head. “Just because Ghost has this crazy detailed list and is taking out civilians who aren't exactly lily white doesn't mean he works for the government.”

  “That's true, but the pieces still fit.” Top grunted in displeasure.

  Ruckus looked around at his brothers in wide-eyed astonishment. “Am I hearing y'all right? Are we actually considering this asshole is a good guy?”

  Nasa cut a harsh glare toward the redhead. “Undercover agent or not, there is no world in which John Lewis, Toad, Ghost, or whatever the fuck he's calling himself, is a good guy. The pile of facts we have to prove it—most recently added is how he threatened to blow up a shelter full of women and kids if he didn't get what he wanted—is of the giant steaming variety.”

  Ruckus raised two thumbs up over his head, “So that's a no on the good guy part. Got it.”

  “Now that's established,” Pen drawled facetiously. “Agent Granger created the task force after we started hunting for Ghost. He could be the one feeding that asshole.”

  “It's a fair assumption that anyone outside this room could be feeding Ghost information,” Nasa pointed out, “Obviously not counting the women.”

  “Then we don't give Granger shit,” Roar stated, as though it was a foregone conclusion. “I never liked that tool, anyway. So, what are we going to do?”

  “For now, we're not gonna do shit,” Top declared firmly, leaning back in his chair to fold his hands over his belly, frowning so hard it made deep grooves in his forehead.

  Nasa looked as though he'd been hit upside the back of the head with a two by four. Clearly, it hadn't occurred to him he wouldn't be able to utilize what he'd uncovered, especially after everything they'd done, everything they'd been through, to get it. In looking around, no one seemed happy with the decision, and Dillon couldn't claim she felt great about letting the information just sit.

  However, Top was right. She certainly didn't want to be doing any of Ghost's dirty work for him. Neither did she want to screw up what appeared to be an investigation that might lead to dismantling all the truly terrible shit the Leviathans were doing.

  “Like Saint said, we've been doing his dirty work by taking players off the board for him, and I'm not too keen on being used as a pawn. And, on the rare chance this nutball is a government agent, I can't in good conscience screw with this kind of long term undercover op.”

  Heads nodded in agreement with Top's assessment, but scowls of unhappiness still clouded most everyone's face.

  “Not to totally change the subject, but Nasa, you said Ghost might have reason to go after Rachel,” Gee spoke slowly in his calm, quiet voice. “If we keep pushing Vanguard to tell us where to look for her, are we delivering her right into Ghost's hands?”

  “Shit,” Raid swore, thumping his fist on the table.

  Damon's chair creaked as he rocked back and forth, pressing his fingertips together in a steeple, staring at nothing in particular. “I hate to sound like an asshole, but Dillon already got this girl to safety, and she's warned the people she can to keep an eye on Rachel. Far as I'm concerned, we don't need to stick our noses in it any further when we've got problems of our own to handle.”

  “I'm not down for sittin' around with my thumb up my ass doing nothing,” Pen snapped, angrily shoving his fists under his armpits.

  “We've done our part,” Frankie argued. “So, unless some fed shows up with a slide show and one helluva an explanation as to what the hell's been going on, I'm not interested in chasing my own ass around in circles.”

  “Stanfield is dead,” Nasa announced even as Saint aggressively turned in his chair to face Frankie, his face pinched in lines of extreme displeasure. “Most of the original Leviathans are in prison serving life sentences or dead. The guys who blew up our compound, all the dickheads in the car who shot up Ripley's shop, shot Saint, they're dead too. They fucked with us, killed two of our own, and they paid the price.

  “Ghost came for that drive-in person. He was seen on camera and did nothing to conceal himself. No hat, no blinding light, no disguises of any kind, which tells me this information was important enough to risk getting burned.

  “Considering the contents of the drive, it does look like he's been gathering evidence for a major op. Whatever we decide to do, I'll be monitoring the Leviathan activity in real time.”

  “Real time?” Gee questioned. “He tag his boys with GPS or something?”

  Dillon watched Nasa's smile turn smug. “Remember how Ghost called Dillon's phone when she first got here?”

  “Of course we remember,” Ruckus grunted. “You went on a rampage and collected all our phones to make sure we hadn't downloaded some stupid app that compromised your security.”

  “Yeah, because that's never happened before,” Nasa snapped, glaring at Ruckus with a wide, accusatory stare. Dillon rolled her lips under her teeth to see Ruckus turn a ruddy red.

  “One time!” Ruckus insisted hotly, throwing his hands up over his head. “It happened one time!”

  “Yeah, and it only took me one time to knock up my wife, twice.” Roar sounded grumpy about it, but even from across the table Dillon could see the masculine pride in his bright eyes.

  A round of chuckles circled the table as the guys took pleasure in seeing Ruckus squirming, but Nasa got on with his explanation. “Taking all our phones was just a precaution. Dillon's phone was the one compromised, but the software didn't show up on the clone I'd made. Everything happened relatively fast after that, and I didn't get a chance to examine it in more detail until later.

  “Ghost installed an app that only activated whenever it connected to an open Bluetooth signal. Wh
en she came here to the compound the first time, each individual Bluetooth on our phones boosted the signal on hers by another hundred feet, which gave Ghost about a mile range.”

  An involuntary shudder worked through Dillon to know he'd been so close, but at least she knew it hadn't been her imagination that day. Ghost had followed her from Dallas and watched her first meeting with the men of Perdition.

  Nasa assured everyone the flaw in his otherwise perfect system had been dealt with. “I'd never heard of anyone utilizing Bluetooth that way, but there's a base code structure, a signature unique to the person who created it.

  “With this big ass list of hackers and programmers, not only can I narrow down who made it, I can work up an algorithm to track everyone using the app in real time. Best of all, they won't know they're being monitored.”

  Raid gave a short sound of amazement. “Could we give that program to the FBI task force and let them scoop up the dregs?”

  “Sure,” Nasa offered with a nod. “But like Roar said, can we really trust Granger to do the right thing? Or that his people are all squeaky clean? There's no guarantee the task force is one hundred percent air tight. If any of their plans leak, it could mean a shit storm for us once Ghost figures out I copied his drive.”

  “We can go around in circles all day arguing about this,” Top declared, lifting his scarred hand to wave at the gathered men. “But we ain't a dictatorship. Let's vote on it. Everyone in favor of sitting on this mountain of info, for now?”

  Dillon watched half of the group put their hands up, the other half remained silent and seething with dissatisfaction.

  “Who wants to give all this to the feds and let them handle it?” A few more hands went up, but even more went down. “And those in favor of continuing this fight on our own, potentially risking our women and kids in the process?” No hands went up, and after a moment of waiting patiently, Top gave Dillon a pointed look.

  “You've been quiet over there. Nothin' to add?”

  Dillon hadn't realized her voice would carry any weight, but everyone at the table waited to hear what she had to say. She looked up at Nasa to find him waiting, his gaze hard even though he gave her a nod and a bit of a smile. They'd talked together about everything that happened at the shelter a dozen times over, but there was one thing that continued to surface in her mind.