“So, Squeegee tells me he talked to Kassidy. Said she looks great, she’s happy. We were really glad to hear that,” Connor said. “We spent a lot of time looking for her before we set the blaze.”
“Oh, so you set the fire,” Jack said.
Connor nodded. “We had to keep our promise to Jared, but also had to make sure that Kassidy wasn’t there to be caught in it.”
“Thank you for keeping your word to Jared. Kassidy would have died had you not called.”
Connor’s head didn’t move, but his eyes shifted to Squeegee.
“I called. Was part of my promise to him,” Squeegee said somewhere between defensive and proud.
Connor stared Squeegee down for a few seconds, as he remembered Squeegee destroying his phone outside their clubhouse the night Jared had died. “Dropped your phone, huh?”
“Had to stomp it so that nobody could trace it,” Squeegee said honestly.
“What’d you say?” Connor asked.
“Gave them the address of Jared’s bar, and said, just like your mom.”
“And that would mean?” Connor pressed.
“I don’t know. Just words Jared made me swear on my life to repeat to whoever answered the phone when I called,” Squeegee said.
Connor’s eyes moved back to Jack, who watched the whole interaction with a smirk.
Connor didn’t ask, but Jack decided to give Connor what he wanted anyway. “Private message between my little brother and myself. Wouldn’t mean anything to anybody but me. And it worked. I left my home within five minutes. And thanks to Squeegee continuing to look for Kass, I’m here now. I’ll help with your situation in any way that I can because you were Jared’s friends, but I want some answers, too. Who’s responsible for what happened to him? Who did it? Why?”
Connor looked around the diner, then lowered his voice just in case anyone might be trying to listen. “When we got there, the only person still standing was Trent. He was striding through the barroom with a hard-on, his pants unzipped. We’d already found Jared and the other two outside. Squeegee here shot Trent with the same gun Trent used to kill Jared and the other two. We searched for Kassidy for hours and hours. Once we were sure she wasn’t inside, we moved the bodies inside and lit it up. That’s exactly what Jared asked us to do if anything ever happened to him.” Connor’s gaze strayed over toward Squeegee again. “Other than the phone call we didn’t know about.”
“I thought Trent was one of his Pride,” Jack said.
“He was. Trent was the one he trusted the most. The other two, they were his Pride, too, but not like Trent. He and Trent had a special bond,” Connor said.
“So he betrayed him,” Jack said.
“He did more than that. He came into this whole thing with a plan to win Jared over and take him down. In my opinion, anyway.”
“You know Trent’s last name?”
“Can’t say I ever heard it,” Connor said. He looked around at his men, as each of them shook their heads.
“No,” Connor said, confirming that none of them knew.
“If it’s the same Trent I’m aware of, he was a member of the Falwell Pride. His father is Alpha. We’ve been picking up on whisperings of the old man looking for his son. I tend to believe he was sent by his father to befriend Jared, then take him down, just like you said,” Jack said.
“I’d like to dig up what’s left and tear him apart,” Rance growled.
All eyes swept to Rance, except Jack’s. “Stick a pin in it. We might,” Jack said.
Rance grinned coldly.
“Not that it changes the outcome, but he didn’t plan on us. We took care of him,” Connor said.
“I shot him in the chest with a shotgun three times. Then again in the dick when I walked by his body. From the look of him when we walked in, he’d already raped Kassidy, or was planning to,” Squeegee said.
Jack nodded slowly as he looked at Squeegee. “Shame you can’t kill ‘em, then wake ‘em up and kill them again.”
“I’m real sorry about your brother. He was a good friend and a good man. But what went down has brought us some negative attention,” Connor said.
