“I think that’s enough church for a Saturday,” Diesel said. “Knox, you got anything else you wanna spill?”
I wanted to tell them about the deal Monroe made with Diego. If she was gonna be working for us and protecting us, then we needed to be able to provide the same for her. If those assholes swooped into town, Diego would see it as her inability to hold up her end of the bargain, and who knew what the hell would come from that.
But we were all on edge and someone was two seconds away from getting pumped with lead.
“Nah. I’m good for now,” I said.
“Then let’s all get out of here and go our separate ways before someone else ends up dead,” Diesel said.
I left as quickly as I could before anyone got any fucking ideas. I hated that it came to this. I hopped back onto my bike and took the long way back into town. I wove in and out of canyons to try and lose any tail that might be on me and clear my head. I had to find a way to convince Monroe to keep me as abreast with this case as she possibly could without threatening her damn job.
The ride back to my place was long, but needed. By the time I got there, I knew how I was gonna handle Monroe. But not only that, I also knew how I was gonna handle Diego. The one thing the Latin Cobras respected more than honoring a deal was honesty. If I could feed them information to cover their own asses while Monroe was handing it to me, I could get them off her back and keep her safe. I could handle that kinda target on my body better than Monroe could, and the idea of her getting hurt over this shit made my palms sweat.
But when I pulled up to my place, I saw a woman standing in front of my front door.
“You Knox?” she asked.
“Who’s asking?”
“Just answer the damn question.”
This petite blonde woman had legs for days and eyes filled with a tepid fire. She looked tired. Worn down. Fed up with whatever had been slung across her shoulders. I scanned her body, making it look like I was checking her out when I was really checking her for firearms and shit.
But she was clean of any weapon, so I parked my bike and approached her.
“You got a name?” I asked.
“You got a place we can talk?” she asked.
“If you got a name, yeah.”
“My name’s Everly.”
“Pretty name for a pretty girl,” I said.
“I’m not here to fuck you, I’m here to talk.”
“Don’t worry. You’re not my type,” I said. “How do you know me?”
“Let me in and I’ll tell you.”
“No thanks. I’m not into harming women, and if you come at me in my home I’m not so sure I won’t put ya into a wall.”
“I’m not going to come at you. I’m not my brother,” she said.
“And who’s your brother?” I asked.
“Rex,” she said.
I felt my blood ice over in my veins as my eyes held her gaze.
“My brother’s name is Rex.”
Chapter 24
Monroe
I walked directly past the empty waiting room and stomped down the hallway. I was finally waking up after pumping my body full of caffeine and I was ready to get to work. I had to find a way to keep the government out of this town. The deal I’d made with Diego kept playing on repeat in my mind, and I knew if I failed my end of the bargain I’d be in for a world of hurt. I walked directly to Bradley Scott’s office and found him and Rose hunched over his desk. I came in and shut the door, then carried the three cups of coffee I’d picked up over to the desk.
“The RICO case is pending, so it’s all hands on deck,” Rose said.
“Thanks for the coffee,” Bradley said.
“And before you apologize, don’t. The only reason I got the message so quickly was because the screeching cat next door woke me up,” Rose said.
“Don’t ask. We’re still trying to figure out a legal way to get rid of it,” Bradley said.
“What do we have so far?” I asked. “If the RICO case is pending then that means they’ve got license to dip into the city. Which means they’ve got information we didn’t know they had.”
“I just got off the phone with the assistant U.S. attorney, and it’s not good,” Bradley said.
“They’re being fed information from within the club,” Rose said.
“Someone’s ratting out The Dead Souls?” I asked.
“Yep. But the name of the informant is confidential so we’ve got no idea who is it,” Rose said.
“And before you ask, there are ways of figuring it out, but it takes time and means that even in a legal court of law could be considered gray, at best,” Bradley said.
“So… what do we do? This is where my ignorance comes into play,” I said.
“A good lawyer can always admit when they don’t know, but a great lawyer ponies up and learns. Pull up a chair,” Rose said.
“A RICO case is always messy, but the thing is that they have to have concrete evidence of what’s going on,” Bradley said. “Even with an informant, that informant has to get them steadfast evidence.”
“Like being wired during a conversation or videotaping something,” I said.
“More than that. Because of recording laws, sometimes even those don’t hold up in court. The best course of action is a paper trail,” Rose said.
“Do clubs like The Dead Souls even have paper trails?” I asked.
“They do, but they aren’t always electronic,” Bradley said. “You know, if they’re guilty of what they’re doing.”
“Okay, we’re still playing that game? Sure. Got it. If they’re guilty of what RICO says they are, how would a paper trail like theirs work?”
“Everything is written down and stored somewhere,” Bradley said. “Nothing’s electronic. The only bank accounts those men probably have are personal checking accounts in their names. No investment accounts. No savings accounts. No accounts that are onshore anywhere.”
I hooked my eyes with Bradley and read between the lines. That meant this club had offshore accounts somewhere. Which was probably the first step in how they cleaned their laundered money. The government wouldn’t find it right off the bat, but once they did it would be used as circumstantial evidence against them in court.
Shit. This was getting serious.
“Okay,” I said. “So, everything is done by hand. Numbers are calculated and written down by hand. Names are probably in code and tracked by hand. Which means they probably have stashes of money waiting to be cleaned somewhere in their territory and they do it in small chunks so as to not send off warning signals.”
“You’re picking it up,” Rose said.
“What do we do with that information? Do we try to get them to give up their paper trail? Do we bring them all in here to talk? Do we go to them? Should we notify them?” I asked.
“This is The Dead Souls. There’s a good chance they already know about this,” Rose said. “But we involve them as little as we can.”
“Then how do we figure out who’s giving them up to the government. Shouldn’t we have the right to question him?”
“How do you know it’s not a ‘her’?” Bradley asked.
“With the time I spent around Knox in jail, I got the sense that the women and children are pretty much kept out of the loop from this lifestyle. So, it only stands to reason that the core group of people we’d be looking at are guys,” I said.
“She’s right,” Rose said. “We haven’t met the entire club. Only those who need help. But they’ve all been male.”
“I think it’s ignorant to rule out possibilities based on circumstantial evidence,” Bradley said.
“Fine. But tossing that aside, do we have any idea who actually killed Blaze?” I asked.
“The police have a lead on it, yes. But nothing has panned out so far. Until they have something concrete, we can’t run with that yet,” Rose said.
“Then what the hell can we run with?” I asked. “Because it doesn’t sound like we have much
.”
“I know it’s frustrating, but this is our job. Until the police can follow the lead on Shepard’s death, we have to dig into the law and find some loopholes.”
“Loopholes,” I said.
“Yes. Anything to stall them coming into the city. Having them touch down here is going to mean serious trouble for a lot of people,” Bradley said.
“We’re not doing something illegal here, are we?” I asked.
“No. We’re not. But it’s going to get harder to defend the guys that keep us on payroll and it’s going to be harder to keep you out of Diego’s grasp,” Rose said.
I sighed as I flopped down into the chair behind me. I took a sip of my coffee as Bradley and Rose looked me up and down. A month. I was a month into my new job straight out of law school and I was already trying to find loopholes in the law and keep my head intact with a rival gang on the other side of the city. This wasn’t what I’d envisioned when I got my law degree. I thought I would be helping people. Saving lives. Keeping innocent people out of jail. And while Knox was innocent of that murder, he wasn’t an innocent man.
He had done plenty of things in his life, I was sure of it.
“We can give you five minutes to process everything, and then we need you to get to work,” Rose said. “I’m digging through this information the informant has been feeding the attorney and Bradley’s working on riding the police. Which means you have to rifle through the laws of California and see what you can find.”
“California has some of the strictest laws on this kind of thing in the nation,” I said.
“Then you’ll need a lot more coffee,” Bradley said.
I took one last pull from my drink before I sat up and got to work. I flipped the book open and uncapped a highlighter, ready to mark things up and take notes in the margins. My mind was spinning as I unpacked all the legal mumbo jumbo in this disgustingly long book. Did they expect me to go through this whole damn thing to find what we were looking for?
Every phone call Bradley made caused him to grow more and more agitated. Every piece of paper Rose flipped through to try and unpack made her sigh a little heavier. People were bringing in boxes of information from fuck-knew-where and would slam them onto the desk the three of us were sitting at. The hours ticked by without my highlighter running across any line of disgusting law code I’d read, and my stomach was growling louder than a tiger on the prowl.
“I think lunch would do us all some good,” Rose said.
“I’ll run out and get it,” Bradley said. “I’m going to make a personal stop to the police station. I think they’re withholding something from me and I’m not appreciative of it.”
“Sink your teeth into them, sweetheart,” Rose said.
“And bring back a burger and fries along with a giant bucket of concentrated caffeine,” I said.
“Got it. What do you want, baby?” Bradley asked.
“You know me. A large salad and a large french fry with a soda,” Rose said.
“I’ll be back in about an hour. Try not to make too much progress without me,” Bradley said.
“I don’t like your tone of joking,” I said.
Bradley walked out and shut the door. I sighed as I leaned back into my chair and felt Rose’s eyes follow me. She was eyeing me closely and it made me uncomfortable. I turned my gaze to her and cocked my head, committing to memory the way she was looking at me.
“I need to ask you a question and I need you to be honest with me,” she said.
“You have my word,” I said.
“Are you sleeping with Knox?”
I felt the blood drain from my face as Rose crossed her leg over her knee.
“Evidence. The hickey on the side of your neck. You wear that cheap foundation so it cracks and flakes off once it dries. Get a better one for the dry heat of California,” Rose said.
“Why would you assume it was Knox?” I asked.
“Circumstantial,” she said. “How adamant you were about getting him out of gen-pop. How long you stayed with him in the infirmary. The look in your eye when I told you to drop the case and keep it from getting personal.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m sleeping with him,” I said.
“I heard him in the background of the phone call this morning.”
“You could’ve started there.”
“Would it have made any difference?” she asked.
I clenched my jaw as I tossed my gaze out the window.
“If he heard this conversation-”
“He didn’t,” I said. “That’s why I was speaking in such generalities this morning.”
“But if he did, Monroe, it could compromise everything. And with this deal you have with Diego, it’s going to look like you’re giving him favor over your deal.”
“I take it that’s a bad thing.”
“If Knox overheard anything and took it back to his club and Diego finds out about it, yes. It’s going to look like you’re loyal to them-”
“I’m his lawyer. Of course I’m loyal to them,” I said.
“I’m two ticks and a hair away from pulling you off this case. Now I’m addressing this with Bradley out of the room because he would’ve fired you on the spot. But with all the things you orchestrated for Knox while he was in jail, I have to say I was impressed.”
“Thanks,” I said. “So since you seem to know more than you let on to the outside world, I take it you know how to fix this.”
“I can’t advise you on anything,” she said. “Because the advice I would give you would be way outside the boundaries of legality.”
“Uh huh. So what it is you think I shouldn’t do?” I asked.
“I don’t think you should tell Diego what’s going on, and I don’t think you should keep blabbing your mouth when it comes to Knox. I also don’t think you should be honest with Diego about what’s going on and why this case has been dropped into our laps.”
I held Rose’s eyes as I unpacked what she was telling me. Was she seriously suggesting I have another sit-down with Diego, stare him in the face, and feed him information? After admitting to him why this case was pending? He’d kill me on the spot with his bare hands despite the weapon he carried on his hip.
But Rose wasn’t joking. Her unwavering stare told me she was completely serious.
“Fine,” I said. “I… won’t do it.”
“Good girl,” she said. “Now, we need to get back to work.”
Chapter 25
Knox
I let the woman into my apartment and watched her carefully. What the fuck was Rex’s sister doing here? If my club knew anyone connected to The Black Saddles was in my fuckin’ apartment, they’d have a damn field day. She stood at my door and watched me as I crossed through my place, then I looked back and studied her.
“You come to the wrong place if you want me to offer you something,” I said.
“So I’m going to stand here at the door like an idiot?” Everly asked.
“You’re gonna do whatever the hell you wanna do. Sit. Stand. Get a damn drink. You’re a grown girl. You can move.”
She huffed and rolled her eyes. Like I’d insulted her somehow. I pulled a couple of beers out of the fridge then made my way to where she was sitting. I offered her one and she shook her head, her body perched on the edge of my couch.
“Fine. More for me,” I said.
“I can’t keep secrets for my brother any longer,” Everly said. “It’s all… a bit too much.”
“What secrets?” I asked.
“Look, The Black Saddles don’t operate well. They bring in anyone they want to and frequently put their families in danger. I’ve been out and about in Redding and some guy will come up and flirt with me, then all of a sudden some asshole wearing a Black Saddles jacket will put his arm around me and claim me as his. They’ll scare men off in a heartbeat. I haven’t been on a reasonable date in years.”
“Not my problem,” I said.
“The Black Saddles are puny, at best. M
y brother thinks he’s tough stuff, but he’s got no idea. I can’t blame him. We were raised in a rough house. My mother left us with our drunk father and we frequently had to fend for ourselves.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t excuse what he’s done,” she said.
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“I overheard your name at one of their infamous campfires. I swear they’re gonna burn down the whole damn town someday. But some of his crew or gang buddies or whatever were talking and your name came up pretty frequently. A few online searches and a couple of newspaper articles later, and here I am.”
“My information’s in news articles,” I said.
“It took me a few shots before I found you. Not like your address is out there for the public. But I finally found you and that was the point,” she said.
I studied the woman as she slowly slid back onto my couch. She was as opposite from Rex as they came. Her honey blonde hair was wrapped in a perfect twist on top of her head. Hair sprayed and gelled down so not a flyaway was out of place. Her long legs peeked out from underneath a perfectly-ironed skirt, and her shirt was smoothed down so no wrinkles were showing as she sat. Her nails were perfectly groomed and her makeup looked like it had been applied with an industrial ruler.
I could only imagine the childhood she had that made her the way she was.
“Whatcha got for me?” I asked.
“Blaze’s death was a set up,” Everly said.
“I already know that,” I said. “Went to prison for it.”
“I know who framed you for it,” she said.
That phrase caught my attention. The woman’s hazel eyes connected with mine and I gave her a decent once over. Could I trust this woman? Her and the words she was spewing? Was she sent as some decoy to throw me off whatever trail my guys and I were on? Finding me through some internet searches and news articles seemed pretty far-fetched. But it wasn’t like I hid where I lived. I just didn’t know a lot of people who came over to shoot the shit.
Except Monroe.
And possibly Diesel.
“I know you don’t know if you can trust me, and that’s fine. Doesn’t change the information I have for you, though,” Everly said.
Knox (Dead Souls MC Book 1) Page 15
