by Eve R. Hart
“Yeah, and what are you gonna do about it, old man?” I asked jokingly.
“String you up by your toes until you get some sense in that noggin of yours.”
And what could I say to that?
My phone vibrated. I knew what I would see even before I pulled it out of my pocket.
“I gotta go,” I said getting to my feet as I read the message letting me know that I had twenty minutes to get back.
“Yeah, yeah.” He waved me off like he got it.
I grabbed my sweater and headed to the door.
“Thanks, Mr. Watkins,” I called out before I opened the door.
“You can call me Ed when you bring her back to see me.”
I laughed all the way out to my bike.
That right there was incentive enough to go get her.
Not that I really needed it.
Iron didn’t have much more than what I already knew. I mean, I had been with Sketch last night. But I was there to fill in a few of the blanks that Iron had.
Cable was still working on trying to make something out of the locations. I didn’t really think there would be anything there since these were pretty much locations of where groups of homeless people gathered. However, Cable and Sketch had come up with an idea and were still working on getting places that weren’t on the list, figuring that we could try to get in front of their plan. That was pretty smart, that way we could do ride-bys and keep an eye out.
“There was something that pizza shop guy said,” I said, hating that I didn’t even know the guy’s name but I guessed that wasn’t all that important. Everyone gave me their eyes and ears and I went on. “He said that the girl said they had accents.”
And I was met with pinched brows like they were all trying to figure out where I was going with this.
“And Bocca said that Keften spoke in Croatian, right? So what if Keften has found men to rebuild his empire? We all thought this was a better location, on the coast, more access to ship girls off. Some men overseas will pay top dollar for an American girl.”
Iron nodded like he was trying to slide all the pieces into place.
“Cable,” I said looking at him as something started to come together in my head. “Could you find, I don’t know, maybe a recording of Keften speaking? Or hell, even some man talking Croatian. Maybe we can track down the girl that is looking for her sister and see if that was the language they were speaking?”
“That’s a good idea, Lake.” Iron may not have been smiling with his mouth but I saw the twinkle of pride for me in his eyes. “Cable, get on that. Do you think you know anyone that might have Keften recorded?”
“Not sure. He is good at staying under the radar, as we all know, but I’ll ask around.”
“Good,” Iron said with a firm nod. “Anyone else got any suggestions?”
No one said anything.
“Alright then. I’ll get Sketch to track down this girl. Maybe she’d be willing to help us and not try to go after whoever this is by herself.”
With that out of the way, he started in on the moves for the next couple of weeks. There was a hand-off with the Irish at the end of the week but I wasn’t needed on that one. Then next week, we were making a run to Moon Hill to drop off some crates. It looked like Ky and I were both going to be on that one. As well as Brand, Charming, B-ry, and Knight. Iron even wanted to send three prospects along with us and I could tell that he didn’t want to take any chances right now.
“Lake, get some rest. I want you at the docks tonight. I’m going to add one more person to the night patrols. If what you suspect is right, I don’t want to leave any openings for girls to get shipped out of the city. Mason, you help out at the garage today.”
The meeting ended and I walked out of there feeling like maybe we’d gotten somewhere, but not really.
Then I went back to my room and crashed hard.
When I woke up a few hours later, I had the need to hear Bridget’s voice. And this time, I didn’t hesitate to call her.
“Hey,” she answered in a sweet but sexy voice that I knew she did on purpose.
“Hi,” I said with a laugh. “Mr. Watkins made me open your gift this morning.”
Oh, yeah, I was totally making it known that it wasn’t my idea to open them early.
Her laugh was beautiful as it filtered into my ear.
“Do not try to get him in trouble.”
“Well, it was all him. I swear.” I laughed again. I loved that I always did with her. She lightened my soul and warmed my heart. “I love it.”
“Really?” she asked like she couldn’t believe that I did. “I mean, I know it’s silly and stupid and probably nothing you’d ever want. But I was walking by this shop and I saw them and this image of the two of you popped into my head. Well, I just couldn’t resist.”
“Bridge,” I said softly trying to stop her verbal runaway train. “I love it.” I felt the need to repeat it so she really heard me.
It wasn’t a lie. It was the cutest and most thoughtful gift. It was definitely all her, that was for sure. I wouldn’t have expected something like that, but at the same time, I did only after I opened it. I honestly couldn’t wait to wear it with the old man while we watched game show reruns.
“Did Ed like it?”
“Of course,” I replied.
“I want to see. Model it for me, hot stuff.”
I barked out a laugh and couldn’t believe that I was actually going to do it. Only for her. I couldn’t see myself letting go with anyone else the way I could with Bridget.
“Can you see me?” I asked after I switched over to video and did my best to prop the phone up on the pillows.
“Yeah,” she said with way too much excitement in her tone. “Come on, let me see.”
Shaking my head, I stripped off my cut and placed it on the bed. A second later I had the old man sweater on and was surprised at how soft and comfortable it felt.
“Now show me those model moves. Give me, shy boy.”
I laughed but did my best coy look in her direction.
What the fuck was up with this?
Why?
I had no answers for any of it but the fact that I didn’t hesitate told me a lot. I could make a fool out of myself in front of her and have no regrets about it. And that clued me in to something even deeper.
“Show me fierce.”
I clawed at the air like a tiger.
She fell over in a fit of giggles and I lost her face for a second.
“Now, make that sweater sexy.” She bit at the air after she gave me her demand.
I whipped the sweater down my arm and gave her my shoulder, which was still covered by my tee. I knew I was nowhere near pulling the sexy thing off. But she was laughing and I was smiling like an idiot and that was all that mattered.
“Alright, alright. Please stop,” she said, still laughing hysterically.
“What, this not doing it for you?”
I hooked my thumb in the waistband of my pants and pulled them down until she got a peek at the band of my boxer-briefs as I gave her an overly dramatic pout of my lips. Just to nail the look, I fluttered my lashes a few times.
“Oh, God. That is awful. I love it! But please stop now.”
I kept the sweater on as I flopped onto the bed and snatched up my phone.
“Thank you,” I said softly as I looked over the features of her face. I mapped them out and cataloged them for when I didn’t have her face to look at. I never wanted to forget her and I wanted to remember every little thing about her.
“I wish I was there,” she said shocking the shit out of me.
For the most part, we avoided the whole distance thing. We knew it was there hanging over our heads but we didn’t ever acknowledge it. A few times she’d said she missed me and I might have said it a few more than that. We hadn’t talked about what might come when her lease was up or the fact that I really wanted to be with her.
This.
This was big.
&
nbsp; At least to me.
It was hard not to take it as a sign and run with it. Hop on my bike, drive down to Tampa, and bring her home with me.
Yeah, I was that lovesick, I guess you could say.
“I’m sorry,” she said looking away as her hand swatted blindly at the air like she could somehow wipe those words away.
I couldn’t tell, but I sensed that she was trying to hold herself together.
“It’s that time of the month and all. You know us gals, we get all emotional as we ride the hormone train.”
“Bridge,” I said with a plea in my tone. I knew she was trying to play it off since I’d been so shocked that I couldn’t manage to say anything back for a good long minute. “Look at me.” And she did, slowly dragging her eyes back up to the screen. “I wish you were here too.”
And now I was having a case of male PMS because my eyes were suddenly a little clouded over with tears.
“Not a day goes by where I don’t think about you,” I added.
Sure, I may not have been around her physically that much. We only got a few days to be together. And she kind of crashed into my life with such a punch— literally— that I wasn’t really sure how I felt about her at first. But that didn’t mean that I hadn’t gotten to know her through our talks. Even though she was far away, we were in touch, calling each other almost every other day. Sometimes more depending on what was going on.
Before either of us could say anything else, a blur of a body ran right by my window catching my attention immediately.
Then B-ry’s booming voice yelled out Laurel’s name like there was something wrong.
“Bridge, I gotta go. I’ll call you back,” I said with urgency and hesitation.
“Okay,” she replied back and I could tell she understood.
I rushed out of my room to see B-ry grabbing Laurel and pull her into his body. Cable and Mouse were standing further back, just beyond my door.
“The fuck?” I asked quietly because I could tell that Laurel was upset and I didn’t want to make it worse.
“I found a recording of Keften speaking in both English and Croatian. A buddy of mine had tapped into his phone about a year ago and saved it. I was letting Mouse and B-ry listen to it. Laurel was waiting for him outside my room…”
“And she heard it?” I cringed because that was club business. But I couldn’t figure out why she was so upset unless there was something said about his trafficking. Yeah, that would have been bad.
“Yeah. And she recognized Keften’s voice.”
My head whipped to the side to look at him.
“Steve was working for Keften?” I asked as all the little pieces started coming together in my head.
“That’s what I’m getting, though I think we really need her to confirm that in words.” Cable didn’t seem too happy about dragging her through all of it again.
And I tended to agree. She’d been through so much already and it seemed like she was just beginning to climb her way out of that hole and try her best to move on. We all knew it wasn’t something she’d get over. No one could. And while it could have been a lot worse, it was still something that would leave a scar and a pang of fear in the background for the rest of her life.
B-ry was murmuring lowly into her ear. Her head was buried in his chest and I couldn’t hear anything from this far away.
A moment later, B-ry looked over at us with a scary as fuck fire in his eyes. With a nod, he told us everything we needed to know.
“Fuck,” Mouse said looking down.
“We need to go to Iron,” Cable said like we all didn’t know that already.
I had a feeling we needed to call Axe and Bocca as well. Maybe there were some missing chunks of what had happened that we could fill in. I had a good idea of a few things that hadn’t been figured out so far.
Like, that Steve had actually been a huge missing link.
An hour later, Iron called Church and we were sitting around the table with his phone in the middle on speaker.
“I listened to that file, that’s definitely him,” Bocca said though we didn’t have any doubts. “And Laurel recognized his voice?”
“Yeah,” Iron responded.
He’d had a quick sit down with Laurel but made sure not to draw it out. She was positive that was the men she’d heard when she was locked in that cage for three weeks. She never saw his face because Steve kept her in a separate room. But she said there was no denying it was Keften.
I couldn’t help but feel a little dumb that we’d missed it.
How the hell didn’t we put that together?
I guess the fucker was a little better than us.
But he was about to find out what happened to you when you fucked with us.
You know, just as soon as we found him.
He had evaded us this long but now we knew where he was, sort of. We knew he was in the city. And I had no doubt that we’d turn over every rock and look in every crack until we had him.
“He was working with Steve?” Bocca asked like he was trying to make sure he had all the facts straight.
“Yep. Honestly didn’t see that coming, though I should have.” Iron gave a sad shake of his head as if he was disappointed in himself for missing it.
“You didn’t get any answers out of Steve?” Axe asked jumping in.
“No, fucker held out until the end. Which was surprising since he was a spineless fuck,” B-ry answered and I could hear the deadly edge in his tone.
There was a knock at the door and we all froze.
With a chin jerk, Iron signaled for Ky to get the door.
“Hey,” Laurel said through the cracked open door. “Look I know this is your super secret sacred room, but I just remembered something.”
“Come in,” Iron called out and she took a shaky step inside.
“I don’t know if this will help, but the guy— Steve, he said something that I forgot about until just now.”
“Go on, sweetheart,” Iron coaxed gently.
“He was talking to the guy with the accent and said something about telling him that he was the reason he hadn’t been caught. Something about… uh, some ‘fucker sniffing around’ and the accent guy said that Steve was supposed to get him new clients, whatever that meant.”
Eyes bounced around as we all looked at each other. She didn’t have a clue what it meant but I was pretty sure we all did.
And it was like I had suspected. Steve had been the missing link to a bunch of unanswered questions.
“Thank you, Laurel. That was a huge help,” Iron’s voice was soft as he spoke to her.
“Okay,” she said with a nod and I got the sense that she was barely hanging on. “Well, that was all. I’m going to go now.”
She left, without looking up at any of us, not even B-ry, who looked like he was about to jump out of his seat.
I couldn’t imagine that it was easy being torn like that, knowing that the person you loved needed you but so did your club.
It was something I couldn’t even think about right now.
“So that was how Keften knew who I was,” Bocca said once the clink of the door closing rang out in the room. “Fuck!”
“We’re headed that way,” Axe said, his voice dark and terrifying. Which was something that still caught me off guard because I was used to hearing him speak without any hint of emotion in his tone.
The call went dead and I knew we had to get ready for chaos.
Moon Hill brothers were coming in, things were about to get dark as fuck.
And I prayed that this would end in a calm take-down rather than a bloody war.
I didn’t want to see any more brothers fall.
But I wanted Keften to pay for everything.
For all those souls that were taken too early.
For all the girls that were out there, living a life of torture that they couldn’t escape.
For the street kids that already lived in their own kind of hell.
For Laurel.
<
br /> For Bocca.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Bridget
“Merry Christmas,” Lake said with a sweet smile as I answered the video call.
The heaviness that I’d sensed from him recently was still there, but I could tell he was trying his hardest to push it away for me.
There was something going on with the club. I didn’t ask and he didn’t tell me. That wasn’t to say that I couldn’t see how it was wearing him down. I made a silent promise a little while ago to always try to make him laugh whenever he called me. I wanted to be the light in his life, not another thing that stressed him out. And I thought I was doing a pretty good job so far.
“Merry Christmas,” I said back with a huge smile.
It sucked that we were so far apart. And it really blew that the last two weeks he’d had a lot going on and only seemed like he had time to call me either really late at night or super early in the morning. It wasn’t that it bothered me that he woke me up because, come on, I could always go back to sleep after we ended the call. It wasn’t like I had a job or anything to do. And in truth, I was desperate to hear his voice. But it also would have been nice to talk to him when I didn’t feel half-asleep.
I had nothing to do but catch up on the things in the world that I’d missed while I was working so hard to keep the PI firm open. I should have been actively looking for a job or at least trying to figure out some kind of direction for my life. But I just hadn’t. I’d come to realize that I had nothing holding me here and maybe somewhere deep in the smart part of my brain, I was trying to avoid anything that might keep me here. Anything I could use as an attachment.
But why?
I had a tiny idea how to answer that.
That idea grew bigger and bigger each day and when Lake pretty much confessed that he was feeling the same as I was, it was all I could do not to tell him I was moving up there.
Actually, I was about to open my mouth two weeks ago and dive into that serious conversation when he had to rush off. I was a little disappointed but I knew he wasn’t brushing me off and that there was really something going on.
Then the days— and weeks— that followed there just never seemed like the right time to say something.
