“Trey,” he rumbled with a slight smile. “How’re you doing, Son?”
“I’m good,” I said quietly and reached into my pocket. Pulling out the small photo, I placed it on the table and pushed it to my dad.
Inhaling sharply, he carefully picked it up and traced his finger over my mother’s face. “You went to the house.”
“I couldn’t go inside,” I confessed. “I had someone go in and get the photo albums for me. Should’ve done it a long time ago, but—”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.” He studied the picture for a few moments longer before placing it on the table and pushing it back to me.
“That’s yours. I had copies made and kept the original at home.”
“Thank you,” he said and continued to stare at the picture.
“Dad,” I said uncomfortably. “I need to ask you something.”
“What’s troubling you, Son?”
“Uh, I had a dream a few weeks ago. About Mom. I’ve had dreams about her before, but this one was different. It was like I was talking to her. And she told something. Um, and I want to know if it’s true.”
“What did she say?” he asked, and I got the feeling that he already knew what I was going to say.
“She said that Sarah told y’all about her ex-husband. That the club was trying to help her.”
Dad sat back in his chair and visibly swallowed. “Yes, we knew about him. And, yes, the club was trying to help her. We were trying to do things the right way, and it completely backfired.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Trey, at the time, you were sixteen years old. We didn’t want you worried or scared. I hate to say it, but we thought, even if he did come after Sarah, the chances of you or your mother being in danger were slim to none. I should’ve demanded that your mother stay away from that house or insisted on having a prospect at the house when I wasn’t there. It’s the biggest regret of my life.”
“Dad,” I said and reached out for his hand. “That’s not why I asked. I want to know if…I wanted to know if it was really Mom,” I whispered.
He patted my hand. “It was. She talks to me when she has something to say that I need to hear.”
“I miss her.”
“I do, too,” he said and sighed. “But, remember, she’s with you every day.”
“That’s what she said.”
“Your mother was a magnificent woman. It doesn’t surprise me at all that she’s found a way to still be a part of our lives. And speaking of magnificent women, I heard you got yourself a girl.”
I snorted and shook my head. “I should’ve known Leigh would tell you.” Leigh had gotten licensed as a minister not long after my dad was sentenced so she could visit him without it counting against his allotted visitations.
I cleared my throat and shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, I’ve met someone.”
“Tell me about her.”
I chuckled. “She’s hard to put into words. She’s, uh, she’s pretty badass, to be honest. Beautiful, strong, a bit of a smart-ass. You’d like her.”
“Wish I could meet her, Son. If she’s still around in a few years, maybe I can,” he said solemnly.
“Yeah, I don’t know how long she’ll be around. She’s only here because of her job.”
“Leigh said Jonah’s girl was only in town because of her job but look how that turned out.”
“River’s a nurse. They need nurses everywhere. Tatum’s job isn’t like that.”
“Do you want her to stay?” he asked.
I didn’t have to think about it. “Yes.”
“Are you willing to go with her if she can’t stay?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “As much as I don’t want her to go, I can’t leave the club either. They’re my family.”
“Be sure you tell her what you just told me. Don’t wait until it’s too late or assume she knows.”
“Mom knew how much you loved her,” I said quietly.
“I know she did. And I knew how much she loved me. She never asked me to find a job that would keep me at home, and I’ve spent every day since her death wishing she had. Maybe she would still be here.”
“Or maybe I would be without both parents. You can’t play the ‘what if’ game, Dad. You’re the one who taught me that.”
He snorted. “Yeah, but it’s not always easy to take your own advice.” Then, he clapped his hands together. “So, tell me about the rest of the club. How’s everyone doing? Any more trouble with the gym?”
Before I was ready, our time was up. Saying goodbye to him never got easier, either. I don’t know how he handled it, but I rode hell-bent for leather all the way to Devil Springs and usually spent the rest of the day beating the hell out of something with my fists or my bat.
Instead of going to the gym or the clubhouse, I headed to Tatum’s place. I knew she would be willing to help me work out my frustrations without questioning me about them. It was one of the things I loved about her.
Loved. Yes, I loved her. And after hearing what my dad had to say, I was going to tell her sooner rather than later.
Upon this realization, I let off the gas and slowed to a much safer speed, even though I couldn’t wait to get to her.
When I arrived at her place, I was surprised she wasn’t waiting at the back door for me. Since she could hear me coming, she always met me at the door. I knocked several times, but she didn’t answer. I knew better than to walk into the house and risk startling her, so I pulled out my phone and called her. It rang several times before going to her voicemail.
Next, I called Coal. “Hey, brother, can you look out front and tell me if Tatum’s truck is parked in the lot?”
“Yeah, man, just a sec.” I heard him moving around and a few moments later, he said, “It’s not here.”
“Will you double check and see if she’s at the store?”
“Sure. Everything okay?”
“I just got back to her place, and her truck’s not here. As far as I know, she didn’t plan on going anywhere, but she’s not answering her phone.”
“She’s not answering the door here, and there aren’t any lights on.”
“Thanks, brother. Let me know if you happen to see her,” I said and ended the call as an uneasy feeling settled in my gut.
“Fuck it,” I muttered and reached for the door, giving the knob a cursory turn. Unexpectedly, I found it to be unlocked. And that’s when I knew something was wrong.
I pulled my gun from its holster and chambered a round right before I dialed Copper. “I need you and anyone available to get over to Tatum’s place right now.”
“Be right there, brother,” he vowed.
Slowly, I made my way into the house, quietly and methodically moving from room to room. Once I cleared the main level, I started to go up the stairs, but the door to the basement caught my eye.
Throwing caution to the wind, I hauled ass down the stairs as fast as I could and went straight for the wine cellar. Crashing through there like a bull in a china shop, I reached for the shelves attached to the rear wall and pulled as hard as I could. When nothing happened, I started pulling the bottles from the shelves and carelessly tossing them to the floor.
Suddenly, I heard several clicks, as if multiple locks were being unlocked at the same time. I pushed against the wall again, and that time it turned with ease. I stepped inside and quickly closed the secret door behind me.
I wanted to yell for her, but I didn’t want to give away my location in case I could be heard from outside the secret space, which appeared to be a tunnel. Or so I thought. Lights illuminated the passage with each step I took until I found myself staring at another door.
I yanked it open and stepped into a pitch-black room. “Tatum,” I whispered. “It’s Trey. Baby, are you in here?”
A light clicked on, and a woman who looked just like Tatum stepped out of the shadows. With my gun aimed at her head, I demanded, “Who the fuck are you, and where is Ta
tum?”
The woman started shaking and crying. “Nooo! They got her! I know they got her!” As if I wasn’t pointing a gun at her, she charged me and started shaking me by my shirt. “You have to help her!”
“Woman! I won’t ask again. Who are you? Who has Tatum?”
“I’m her sister!” she screamed and beat her fists against my chest. “Call Luke! Now!”
“Batta!” Copper’s deep voice echoed down the hall. “I’ve got Luke on the line. The house is clear. Come back to the wine cellar and bring Josie with you.”
I continued to stare at the crying woman in complete and total shock. I’d met Tatum’s sister, and she was not the woman I met, but she looked almost identical to Tatum. She wasn’t as tall and her muscles weren’t as defined, but there were far more similarities than there were differences.
“Batta!” Copper roared. “Now!”
I gestured toward the door with my gun. “Go.”
She didn’t hesitate and almost ran for the secret door. She reached to the side and pressed a button, causing the door to swivel open with ease. “Luke! Let me talk to Luke,” she cried.
Copper shoved the phone into her trembling hands as I stepped back into the light. “The fuck is going on?”
Copper shook his head. “I don’t know all the details yet, but that,” he nodded to the woman, “is Tatum’s sister Josie. Luke won’t give the identity of the other woman.”
“‘Adrianna.’ Cristofano called her ‘Adrianna’,” I mumbled.
“Here,” Josie said and held out the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”
Copper put the phone to his ear and took a few steps away. Josie pointed her red-rimmed eyes, ones so much like her sister’s, at me. “My sister loves you.”
“I love your sister,” I said softly.
“We have to get her back,” she cried.
“We will.”
“Church. Right here, right now,” Copper ordered. “Josie, Luke wants you to go back into your hideout. I’m going to have two armed men guarding you while we go get your sister.”
“O-okay,” she said shakily.
“This is my brother, Bronze, and my cousin, Coal. Coal is also Luke’s nephew. They’ll be sitting right out here in the wine cellar, but I need you to go on in there now,” Copper said gently.
“Okay, just, please hurry,” she pled.
“We will. I promise you that,” he vowed.
Once she was gone, Copper laid it all out for us. “Tatum’s real sister, Josie, married Sheldon Morgan who was involved in selling human organs on the black market. According to Luke, Josie knew nothing about it until she discovered a woman locked in what she thought was a storage room in their basement. That woman was Adrianna Smith, also known as Clarise Barrington. Sheldon came home in the middle of Josie’s discovery. Adrianna ran up the stairs and kicked Sheldon in the back just as he fired a shot at Josie. The shot missed her, but his body collided with Josie before he fell to the floor and dropped the gun. Josie got the gun and put a bullet in Sheldon before she lost consciousness beside him. Tatum got there only seconds after the shots were fired.”
“How the hell did they end up in Devil Springs? And where is Adrianna now?” Judge asked.
“They knew Sheldon wasn’t acting on his own, but they had no leads. Someone out there wanted Adrianna’s organs and was willing to pay a lot of money for them. In order to protect Adrianna while trying to catch the other partners, they gave bogus information to the media, filed contradictory police reports, and had Adrianna and Josie swap identities. Luke sent them here in case he needed to call on us to help protect them—which he ultimately did,” Copper explained.
“I don’t really give a fuck about the why of it right now!” I bellowed. “We need to find my woman! Right the fuck now! We don’t know how long she’s been gone, or who has her!”
Copper exhaled slowly and glanced at Judge and Bronze before focusing on me. “They do know how long she’s been gone. And they do know who has her.”
“What?” I bellowed and swiped an entire row of wine bottles from the shelf beside me.
“Tatum and Adrianna used themselves as bait. Lu—” Copper’s words were cut off by the feral roar of outrage I released.
Glass shattered, wood splintered, and blood spilled before I was taken to the ground by two big bodies.
“Trey,” Copper gritted out as he and Judge struggled to contain me. “We got you. We’ve always got you.”
Those words. Those were the same words they said to me on the night I lost my mom. They didn’t let me down then, and I knew they wouldn’t this time.
28
If I had a stroke because of Tatum Cross, I was going to make sure she was the one tasked with wiping my ass for the rest of my life. The woman was damn good at her job and more loyal than anyone I knew, but she was the most impatient pain in the ass to ever exist. It was much worse with this case because it hit her on a personal level. And not just because it involved her sister. No, Tatum was rushing this case because she’d fallen in love with a biker, and keeping secrets from him was eating her up inside, even if she wasn’t ready to admit it to anyone, including herself.
Against my better judgment, I helped her get all of her ducks in a row so she could toss herself out there as a piece of bait for organ traders. Hell, we were both probably going to get fired for this stunt, even if we were successful. And there was a good chance we wouldn’t be, but I also knew there was no way I could stop her. She was going through with her plans with or without my help, and I couldn’t in good conscience let her go it alone. That’s not how our team worked.
Part of me thought Tatum’s plan was borderline genius, while the other part of me thought it was utterly insane. If it didn’t work, we would tank the entire investigation, but more importantly, innocent lives could be lost. I couldn’t let that happen. So, I called in every possible favor I could and made a few deals with the devil to put her plan in motion.
It wasn’t anywhere near as solid as our normal plans. Nothing was foolproof, and our backup plan had the same chances as a snowflake in hell, but it was the best we could do, and we were going with it.
In exchange for the destruction of some records, Luca’s uncle, Giovanni Peccati, agreed to front the money and put the word out that his daughter was in desperate need of a kidney transplant. Fictitious medical records were created, fake social media pages popped up, and word was spread on the dark web. And, most importantly, we secured our own surgeon, which was crucial to the deal going through.
Within days, one of Nolan’s associates, Chandler, contacted Giovanni and scheduled a meeting. Giovanni met with Chandler and handed over the file we prepared for him, along with a deposit of fifty thousand dollars in cash.
Once the deal was made, we knew Nolan and Simon would move quickly. Giovanni was offering too much money for them to refuse. With the money and most of the legwork out of the way, Tatum knew they wouldn’t pass up the chance to use Adrianna as the donor for a member of the very family she betrayed them for. I had to agree with her; it was poetic justice at its finest.
So, with a plan held together with bubblegum and dry-rotted rope, we dropped the bait in the water and prayed for a bite. It was going to take the good Lord above, all nine lives, and a stroke of the strongest luck to pull it off, but we were nothing if not determined.
I called Phoenix and told him that Tatum was on her way to pick up her sister because we needed to move her to a safe house closer to our home base so we could easily question her if needed. Tatum arrived at the Croftridge clubhouse on schedule and left with Adrianna as planned.
Once the girls made it to Cedar Valley, they stopped for lunch at a hole-in-the-wall diner near the airport. As planned, Monica, a woman on our payroll, tipped off Nolan’s man, Chandler.
The girls got back on the road. Dave and Jack were following them at a safe distance, and Matt was tracking them via satellite. It wasn’t long before they picked up a tail, as expected.
This was the part of the plan I had the biggest problem with. Once the girls were cornered, there was no guarantee they would take Tatum with them. It was highly likely they would save themselves the trouble and kill her on the spot. And, I didn’t care if it meant blowing the case wide fucking open, there was no way I was letting that happen on my watch.
Before any of us were ready, everything kicked into high gear. One second everything was fine, and the next, I heard the sound of a large impact followed by the live feed from Tatum’s dashcam turning end over end.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! They’ve been hit!” I screamed into my headpiece. “Get in there now! Now!”
I heard Jack’s vehicle accelerate, but it did nothing to calm me. “Fucking hurry, man!” I yelled and put my fist through the dry wall.
Tires screeched to a halt followed by Dave’s booming voice. “Go, Jack! Go after them!”
His labored breathing filled my ears before deafening silence took over. “Dave? Talk to me, Dave.”
“No,” he whispered. “No, no, no.”
“What? Tell me what I can’t see, Dave.”
“I think Adrianna’s dead! And they took Tatum!”
“Fuck!” I roared. “Matt! I need a location! Gus, get us a bird in the air! Somebody get local PD on the phone. We need an ambo on scene, now!”
29
Tears streaked down my face. I didn’t know if Adrianna was still alive. If she was, I knew she was seriously injured, and I prayed Dave and Jack got to her in time. I swore I would keep her safe, and I was going to annihilate anyone and everyone who played a part in making me break my promise.
After my truck was rammed and sent rolling off the road, I was unceremoniously yanked through the window and tossed into the back of a cargo van. Goon One quickly cuffed my hands behind my back while Goon Two sped off down the road.
I let the anger and rage fuel me with a determination that burned hotter than a thousand suns. Every last one of these motherfuckers was going down.
Batta: Blackwings MC - Devil Springs - Book Four Page 16
