“So that motherfuckin’ traitorous rat-bastard not only fucked us in the ass when he stole from us, he also could have had the cops crawlin’ up our asses for dealin’ out of our businesses?” Cowboy snarled, thrusting his hands through his dirty blond hair as he paced back and forth beside the table.
We were all quiet for a moment as we contemplated the shitstorm Pic had caused, and how much worse it could havebeen. Then, wanting to get this briefing done and over with, I continued.
“That’s not all, brothers. She confirmed that Pic does have help here on the inside. She’s not sure who, or if it’s more than one person, but Pic let something slip about it during her beatdown. He was paranoid as fuck that night, ranting about how the club had turned on him. He told her he needed to make a call to ‘get the latest intel’ and make sure we hadn’t tracked them to Kansas City.”
“Sonofabitch!” Irish roared, as Bull slammed his fists on the tabletop so hard it shook. Trick and I had the same reaction when we’d talked to Cyn, and I’d already shared that tidbit with Cowboy, so he wasn’t surprised. Irish and Bull were hearing it for the first time though, so I gave them a few minutes to calm down.
“Based on the information from Cyn, Trick and I rolled into Kansas City late Wednesday afternoon and found the roadside motel they’d stayed at, but according to the old guy who owned the place, Pic had skipped out sometime over the weekend. He trashed the room before he left, even smashed the TV and slashed up the mattress. We gave the owner ten grand, too, to help cover the damages and to keep his mouth shut about us being there. We stayed around there, scouting out all the tat shops and no-tell motels we could find. We also got the lowdown on where to score and cruised those areas but didn’t see anything aside from junkies and whores.”
Trick snorted and shook his head. “The junkies we tried to talk to didn’t even know their own fuckin’ names, let alone Pic’s, and the whores weren’t much better. One of ‘em dropped to her knees and offered to suck me off right there on the damned corner for five bucks. I think I needed a shot of penicillin just from breathing the same air as her.”
“Jesus,” Irish screwed his face up at that little detail. “I don’t even want to imagine how nasty a five-buck blowie is.”
“Well, you wouldn’t need to worry about her teeth, because she didn’t have any,” Trick told him.
“No, but I’ll bet your dick would turn a pretty shade of green right before it fell off.”
I shuddered at the mental image Irish painted for us, and Trick looked a little sick at the idea.
“So where does this fuckin’ leave us?” Bull asked, glaring at Irish and Trick both for getting the briefing off-track.
I shrugged. “I wish to hell I knew. I asked Cyn to contact me if the fucker makes any attempt to contact her. She ditched the pay-as-you-go phone she’d been using with him, and she said they’d never talked about where she’s from, so he shouldn’t be able to find her. At this point, just keep those alerts out for his name, and we’ll have to hope something pops up.”
“Does anybody else think it’s strange that they left Colorado, and headed back east to Kansas City instead of continuing west? I mean, it would be easy for a stripper and a tattoo artist to hide in plain sight if they went to Las Vegas or Reno, or even kept on going until they got to Los Angeles.”
I nodded at Cowboy, because Trick and I had already wondered about that.
“We asked Cyn why they picked Kansas City, thinking maybe they were making their way back here. She said she didn’t know why he picked it, but she didn’t think he planned to come back. She said Pic talked about seeing his kids, but that he was too scared of us and Lola’s family to come anywhere near Indy. He also told her that Vegas would be too obvious for them to go there.”
“With him tweakin’ that hard, who the hell knows what’s going through his mind? His thought process probably makes as much sense as sticking Viking in a thong and making him work the pole at Fallen Angels.”
“Fuckin’ hell, Irish. I just about managed to put the green dicks out of my mind, but now I’ve got that fuckin’ horror show burned into my brain. What the fuck’s wrong with you, man?”
I laughed at Bull’s look of outraged disgust, then called an end to the briefing before heading upstairs to shower off the aches and pains of the road.
Cowboy waved me over to the bar when I came back downstairs forty-five minutes later, feeling much better after taking a long shower. I’d let the hot water pound against my back to ease my stiff muscles. It made a nice change from lukewarm trickle of water that passed for a shower in those cheap-ass motels we’d been stuck in. I’d taken a little extra time trimming the scruff of my beard, which had gotten a little out of hand in the last four days. I planned to swing by Ella’s house when she finished work, and hoped I could take her to dinner. I’d missed the hell out of her – another reason why I’d enjoyed my shower so much. I hadn’t really been able to take matters into my own hands while I’d been sharing a room with Trick, so it was a relief to be able to rub one out in the privacy of my own damned shower. It hadn’t taken long, especially since I thought about all the things I might get to do with her luscious body later tonight.
I sat on the stool next to him and glanced around. The common room had a few more people hanging around in it, and I realized it might be later than I thought. I’d forgotten to grab my phone from Bull before I went upstairs, and I wasn’t sure what time it was without it.
“Shit, I need to grab my phone from Bull,” I told him, then started to stand up again. He stopped me and slid my phone across the bar top.
“He left it with me before he went out to get some dinner. He said you have a shit-ton of voicemails and texts,” he warned. “Oh, and Jagger’s trying to get hold of you. He’s called twice in the last twenty minutes, so I answered the second time in case something was wrong. He said it’s not an emergency, but he needs to talk to you ASAP.”
Thanking him, I glanced at the time on the screen, surprised to find that it was already five- fifteen.
“Shit, I didn’t realize it was so late,” I muttered. I sat down on one of the stools at the end of the bar, then hit the button to call Jag back.
“Hey, Prez,” he greeted. “Cowboy said you’re back in action. Everything OK?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine. Everything OK on your end?”
“Well, that’s why I called. Uh, I’m not sure if this is gonna be a problem for you, but I thought you might want to know that Ella’s here at the bar, and she’s with Ryan Simpson.”
“What the fuck do you mean, she’s with Simpson? Like they’re on a fuckin’ date, or she just ran into him there?” She’d damned well better not be on a fucking date.
“They came in together, and it sure as hell looks like a date to me. Carla just dropped off the drinks they ordered.”
“Sonofabitch! Keep an eye on them. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” I jumped up from the stool and pocketed my phone. Cowboy grabbed my arm before I could take a step.
“Is there trouble at the bar? I’ll round up Trick and some of the boys, and we can meet you there.”
“No, nothing like that. It’s Ella, and she’s there on a goddamned date.”
Cowboy released my arm and sat back down with a low whistle. “Well, I’ll let you handle that on your own, brother. Good luck,” he called, but I was already hallway out the door.
