Reese nodded and I cried, wishing they could have saved Cora, because even though they didn’t say it out loud, she was dead, we were just waiting for the confirmation.
Reese
I looked at Zoey who had cried herself to sleep after everyone had arrived. Currently her head was on Mrs. O’Malley’s lap while the older woman sang softly to her, running her hands down her head soothing her. Her feet were on Mom’s lap as she petted her leg and stared into space. The women had converged on the house with the men when Michael had called.
Brit and Mrs. Roark were in the kitchen cooking food as a distraction and Maria, Mia, and Brook were helping them by cleaning up behind them, getting plates out, and glasses so people could come and go if they needed to eat.
Rucker had attached himself to Maria, and everywhere she went he did too. It was not surprising that Ranger seemed a bit put out by it. If I hadn’t been so fucking stressed I may have laughed when I saw Mr. Roark eyeing the two and then smile big, ‘cause yeah, that was fucking frightening. I would warn Zoey later.
I turned and saw the crowd in my office. Everyone was in there, as was Reilly who looked pissed the fuck off that someone had actually hurt his ‘girl’s’ feelings. Tony was on the phone and as I walked in he hung up.
“So far nothing,” he said to the room and then turned and nodded to Michael who had his hand in Zoey’s briefcase and was pulling out all the files that had been in it.
Shit had hit the fan when Maria had called her office and asked for this case to be transferred to the Special Prosecutor’s office to be handled by someone who was completely biased and had further reach than just one borough. Shit was about to get fucking real, especially since I had called in my last marker to the Feds to inform them of what our web search had found.
They had agreed to meet in the morning at the Office of Special Prosecution with all of their information, which we would completely do, AFTER we looked at the file. Tony and I both agreed the Feds would cut us out, and no way in hell was that happening. Ranger had been completely on board, which should have surprised us a little, considering he was a cop, but this was his sister, and he had already lost a wife with these maniacs, he was not losing someone else. The Feds could fucking arrest my ass before I would let them take over Zoey’s security.
“Okay,” Michael said and thumbed through the files until he found the one he was looking for. “Jorge Vasquez.”
Everyone stopped what they were doing and crowded around the table so we could all look at what had caused all of this fucking mess. Because none of us actually thought this situation was going to prove to be simple. The police had five dead boys currently, and many more who had shown up at home beaten and bloody refusing to tell anyone what the hell was going on. Cal and Bry had found out this info when they asked questions around the gym. Apparently, none of Fin’s kids were involved, they had been sharing about their friends though. In each instance the kid had been from a single family home with a parent who was abusive, struggling with addiction, and owed money to some unknown source. Things were beginning to add up and the sick picture they were getting, all of the O’Malleys were in to stop this shit from continuing.
“Arrested last week for possession of coke, he had been put in a holding cell for the night at the courthouse. Says here he was in a cell with five other young men. Jorge was apparently a talker, one of the boys in the cell told his lawyer the next morning about what Jorge said, and it must have been good because his lawyer has made arrangements for the kid’s charges to be dropped, which was for petty theft if his provided information to the Prosecutor’s office about an open unsolved homicide of a decorated policeman’s wife,” Michael said and looked at Ranger.
“What the fuck?” Ranger whispered and then Michael continued to read.
“There are no specifics, however, the lawyer had a signed notarized document which names names.”
Chapter Twenty
Michael
The shit had hit the fan to say the least. Ranger had exploded and it had taken all of them to hold the man back from leaving to find the lawyer of the young boy and demanding the info. Thankfully, my father and Mr. Roark had taken the devastated man in hand and locked themselves in my office to talk to him.
Rucker had heard his dad’s roar of pain and come running, with Maria right behind the young boy. Fortunately, my mom had also come and took Rucker back downstairs while Maria had been briefed on what happened.
She had been just as upset and began making calls to her office, demanding to know who had been assigned to this case and what info if any they had. So far, they had no idea who had been given the information, since Maria’s boss had barely received the information and had yet to review it; however, after hearing the situation, he agreed to send it to the Special Prosecution’s office with the request to add it to the case they had already pushed up there.
Then Maria had continued to call until she finally had a name of the man who would be heading this investigation. When she hung up the phone, she announced, “Nixon Williams is the lawyer; his chief investigator will be Thad Briggs Special Agent assigned to the case with the Feds. They are going to be at the meeting tomorrow, although Briggs is asking to have the addresses of Zoey, Judge Sanders, and me for extra protection. They think you were all targeted because according to the young man’s lawyer, the names he has are of at least one high ranking police officer and several other high profile community members. They are moving to get the kid and his lawyer into custody as well.”
“Fuck,” I said and closed my eyes. “This was going to be bad, another police officer, when Ranger and Zoey hear this, you know saying this is a clusterfuck is going to be an understatement.”
Reese growled, “Do we know what precinct the cop is in?”
Maria shook her head and then looked at Tony who was already calling in his guys to put their plan into motion. Jet and Reed had already set the foundation for their covers by asking around about some quick ways to make fast cash. They had also begun trashing Fin and the other O’Malleys in public.
I had no idea if any of this was going to work, right now, I wanted to wrap Zoey up and take her far away from here, although I knew she wouldn’t stand for it. Noel was her sister-in-law, her brother’s wife, and her nephew’s mother, she wanted to know why she had been killed. Hell, they deserved to know why.
Reese came up and handed me some printouts of what he had been searching for on the web and explained, “I found the video feed for the fights, it goes live one minute before the fight to take bets, and dies the second someone loses and by loses, I mean someone is killed. Because according to the chatter I could find, one boy beats the other boy until he is unconscious and then the loser is killed on the video for losing. They took bets on that too, how long it took them to die. Swear to God, man, these people are sick fucks.”
I nodded and looked at the sheet. “Everyone have a sign in?” I asked and Reese nodded.
“Yeah, can’t get the list unless I create an account with the leader and get approved, I would guess it involves a background check as well as them tracing the IP address where we are, not giving them that until we figure out how to do this safe. I can create a fake IP address with an overseas server, it can be broken though and I don’t want to chance it leading back to Zoey,” Reese said and the rest of the guys joined the conversation.
“What about a bot?” Cal suggested. I looked at Reese and he was nodding his head slowly.
“It would take a while to build but it could work, create bot to find another member in the link, attach to theirs to watch the fights, the only problem is, if the person is online at the same time, and they were smart, they would be able to see what we are doing,” Reese said and then Sean looked out the window deep in thought and when he turned back I knew my brother had figured something out.
“Tor,” Sean said and Reese stood up straight.
“Dude,” Reese said slowly and then looked around the room at the confused looks on s
ome of their faces.
“What is Tor?” Falon asked and the rest of the guys nodded.
“Well, what we would do is spoof a location, set up our own website, create it as another fighting ring, and lure them all in, piss off the other dudes, so they come after us, we can leave a trail of simple info, which could lead them right where we want them. I would guess they would send peons but we could potentially piss them off to come directly at us,” Reese said and everyone thought for a few minutes and then Sean said.
“If we lured people, we could gain access to people’s information through their payment info, we could require them to make a deposit in order for them to bet, put money up front and then trace that shit back. Bank servers think their shit is secure, since it only had a bunch of numbers and has to go through like a million fire walls to get into it, but if they have to provide us some collateral before they can bet, like a card or something, we can hack it.”
My eyebrows raised as I looked at my serious brother and laughed, “Hey, bro, you have skills you haven’t shared yet with us?”
Sean’s face turned a little red, he was the straight-laced one, of all the kids, he preferred to tat and help out in the gym, instead of use the degree he earned in architecture, which was weird but then, we O’Malley’s danced to the beat of our own drums.
“Dated this chick once,” Sean muttered. “She kinda got in trouble with the FBI for hacking, listened to her and her geek friends enough I picked some shit up.”
“Oh my God, the mountain talks,” Brit whispered from behind us and we all turned and I smiled at her.
I was so glad she was here for Zoey and had announced this morning she was taking a leave of absence from her job until Zoey was out of danger. She was worried about her best friend and had also admitted she wasn’t fond of her job in Cali.
Sean frowned at the small woman and then ignored her, “If she is not in jail, she may help us as well.”
Brit snorted. “As uninteresting as it is to listen about your hoochie mama, I came up here for a reason. The food is ready, and Zoey is awake and pacing again, I figured if you could use a break, you may want to go and talk to her and hopefully get her settled down.”
I nodded and then looked at Reese who was already moving to the door, fuck he was worried, which made me worried, so I looked at my brothers, “Hey, we are going to take a break from this for a while, call us if you need us.”
My brothers nodded and I followed Reese, damn we were already pussy whipped.
Zoey
I heard my brother yell, that was what woke me up, and then the whole house had suddenly gone wired so I was awake. Knowing my men weren’t going to let me in on this, they were protecting me, and I was okay with it. Really I was, I just couldn’t settle, I knew bad news was coming, I could feel it.
Reese and then Michael appeared in the living room and without a word they both took me in their arms and we stood there for a second. Yes, this was where I belonged, even with all the shit swirling, and Cora still missing, they could still make me calm. Damn, would there ever be a time we could actually sit down and talk about stuff? Probably not in the foreseeable future.
“How you hanging in there, babe?” Reese muttered and I sighed and leaned back.
“No so hot,” I admitted and looked at both of them.
“Our girl had a bad day,” Michael muttered and then Reese’s arms tightened a bit around me and I nodded.
“Sorry,” Reese said and I smiled a little and leaned my head on his chest.
“I know,” I whispered.
“Are you hungry?” Michael asked.
I knew I had to eat but right then the thought of food made me want to hurl. It sucked but it was like waiting for the next shoe to drop because you knew it was gonna happen.
“No,” I whispered and then asked, “Okay, what had Ranger so pissed? I know it had to be about Noel.”
Neither man answered me so I leaned back and looked at their faces, yeah, I was right, it was about Noel, and something was seriously wrong.
“What?” I said, feeling the panic begin to rise and Michael took a deep breath and answered, you could have let me guess a million times and I would never have imagined the truth, it was fucked up, excuse my language.
“We found out that Jorge had been bragging in lockup about an unsolved murder of a cop’s wife, apparently he knew a lot of info and shared it. They were trying to find out who he had told to shut him up.”
It was like the air had been sucked out of the room, the boy I had stood in front of, the boy who had called me a bitch and I had dismissed because he was a little punk, had known who killed Noel and I hadn’t known. Right in front of me the whole damn time, if I would have just looked at the file closer, if I had asked questions instead of rushing so I could get to my case and then back to the office. How was I going to tell Ranger this, the death of Noel had almost killed him? For months he had been inconsolable, Mrs. Honeychil had called me on several occasions to discuss how depressed he was. And I had the opportunity to help him out and I had blown it off.
More tears began to fall, how many more could I shed before I ran out, it had to be close, because I had cried a million tears so far, and I was about ready to cry a million more. Noel was worth it, heck, the sun and rose and set for Ranger through her. She was his everything, I’m not sure how but I was so happy he kinda pulled himself out of it when I moved back home.
For three months he had finally seemed to move on, I was planning to talk to him about maybe socializing a little with some of his buddies more, I was going to offer to watch Rucker for a whole weekend if he wanted to go hunting or something. Shit, how would he ever look at me the same again.
“No,” I whispered and then sobbed some more. “Noel, she was like the perfect mother you know. I mean, even when I found out I was pregnant, the first thing I thought was I wanted to be a good mom like Noel had been. She had been that good. I hoped Ranger could find some peace maybe, but this, you have no idea what this is going to do to him, none.”
Michael and Reese both wrapped me up, yet again, and held me while I sobbed. People stuck their heads in but left without saying anything when they saw us. It sucked, one step forward and then three steps back. Would this crap ever end?
Chapter Twenty-One
Reese
I should have fucking left my phone upstairs, I knew it. When I felt the vibration and then stepped back and looked at the caller ID, I closed my eyes, not wanting to answer it. Fuck, I knew this was so going to be bad. Jet was calling and he was outside right now with Reed monitoring the scanner for information.
“Yeah?” I said quietly, turning my back to Michael and Zoey, hoping to give a bit of a buffer to the news I know was not going to be good.
“Man,” Jet said quietly. “Get everyone prepped and ready to roll, they just had another body dumped at one of the precincts, a young boy and a woman, both beaten, both shot, but the boy is amazingly still alive, though no looking good for him. We need to get this shit covered like now.”
“The woman?” I whispered, hoping that Zoey couldn’t hear me clearly.
“Sorry, man, called her DOA at the scene, no ID yet, but I gotta think it is Cora, sorry as fuck, man, for your woman this is gonna suck. But they are gonna call, it is only a matter of time,” Jet said and I nodded and then hung up and turned around. Zoey and Michael were looking at me and I knew there was nothing I could do, no soft way to say it, nothing, because this was raw, the pain was real and it was gonna bleed.
“We need to get everyone geared up. They will be calling soon. Two bodies dropped at a station, one was a boy who’s barely hanging on, the other was a woman who was DOA,” I whispered and Zoey’s face just crumbled. Thank God that Michael was so close and I was only a step away. Our girl lost the last grip on her grief and pain and it flowed out freely, wrapping us all in a blanket of sorrow.
At the sound of our woman’s pain everyone came. Reilly got to the room first and looked at my face
and then nodded and went to Zoey and scooped her up in his big arms and carried her to the chair where the large man seemed to surround her with his body, protecting one of his children from the reality of the situation. Hell, Michael and I both took a ragged breath, trying to hold this shit inside, it was ripping our woman apart and I felt helpless as shit. The anger began to rise then.
When Ranger hit the room, and I saw the deep look of grief mixed with worry and rage, I nodded and held nothing back. He had to deal, they were going to call him first, he was the police officer in charge of this case right now, working in conjunction with the other districts, he would not allow himself to be pulled off now. No way.
“Get your phone handy, they will be calling soon. Another dump, a woman, who I am assuming is Cora, and a boy, not dead but close,” I whispered to the man who physically jerked at the news. Fuck.
Maria appeared behind Ranger and quietly whispered, “They just called with the news.”
I nodded and then looked at Tony who was clenching his fists in and out, looking like he was gonna beat the shit outta someone. “Hey,” I said and his eyes hit mine. “We need to get these people covered like now. If this shit hits the news, a social worker killed connected to the kids and a cop’s wife, this will not be contained. Everyone who is remotely connected to this shit is gonna be in danger. Hell, they are going to want to see who comes out in the open, we aren’t going to be able to.”
Tony nodded and then looked at his sister, “Get Biggs on the phone, tell him we want a special meeting with him tonight, we have info and will not be cut outta this. Give him whatever you need to bring my firm on as specialists, call it whatever the fuck you want but as of right now, no one in this house leaves without ink on them, and we are going to demand being involved.”
Pierced and Inked (KO Ink Book 2) Page 16
