Page 39 of Torrent’s Treasure

“Harley,” Sally cautioned.

“Sorry, Mom,” he mumbled.

Willow led them across the paved driveway to a large greenhouse, greeting a couple workers as they walked through. Cecilia wasn’t sure how sorry Harley really was, but she appreciated him not sharing anymore about Mav’s escapades. She was positive that eventually Calliope would see something eye-opening, but until then, Cecilia was going to live blissfully in denial land where Calliope was innocent until her thirtieth birthday.

“Ask any questions or if you see something you want for the clubhouse, let me know,” Willow said.

Calliope skipped and stopped at a flowering plant. Cecilia hadn’t worried much about flowers or plants because her apartment didn’t have great sunlight and she’d worked long shifts. The plants would have been just one more thing to take care of, but she loved the fresh flowers in their suite. Maybe some plants might be nice too.

Making the suite feel more like home was happening gradually. Torrent had the cute items he’d made that she’d placed around the rooms. Sally had brought them some cute throws for their suite.

“So, what plant would be good in our rooms?” Cecilia asked.

She hid a grin at the animation on Willow’s face as she started talking about the best indoor plants and how much water and sun they needed.

Torrent waited in the barn on the back of Willow’s property while Fury guarded the door and Mammoth waited at the gate to let the Honey Creek Badgers MC in. Dragon had wanted a friendly face at the gate for them, and Mammoth had gone on the run and met them.

Bravo and Deacon had stayed back to keep the shop running.

The door opened and Fury led them in.

“Dragon, this is Mace, President of the Honey Creek Badgers MC, his VP Guru, and his Sgt. at Arms Axel,” Fury said.

Dragon shook their hands and introduced his officers. Torrent was impressed that Dragon didn’t show any surprise that the VP, Guru, was a woman. She and Axel weren’t in their MC cut either, which Torrent found strange.

“Shall we get down to business?” Dragon asked.

Mace nodded and took a seat after Dragon did on one of the hay bales arranged in a circle.

“First, I want to say I’m sorry about what happened to your woman,” Mace offered, his tone genuinely sincere.

“I appreciate it,” Torrent replied, giving a tight nod.

“That being said, it gave us the break we’d been looking for. We’ve had Chief Fink and his brother on our radar for the last six months and have been trying to figure out how to get someone close to them,” Mace explained.

“Why have you been surveilling them?” Dragon interjected.

“I’m not sure how much Fury told you about what we do,” Mace admitted, glancing around the circle.

“I told them that you are former military and first responders who are working to track down who killed one of your friends,” Fury said.

“Okay, let me back up a little,” Mace began, leaning forward. “I was FBI. When my sister was helping to prosecute a man, she was killed by his followers. When I realized that the case was going nowhere and there had to be someone higher up in my organization helping, I approached my family and friends from high school about forming an MC with our purpose to be to track down and eliminate the man responsible for my sister’s death and his followers, workers, whatever. You traffic in humans as far as I’m concerned, you’re slave owners and deserve to be dealt with accordingly.

“Chief Fink and his brother pinged on our radar when they met with another cog in the trafficking business we’re tracing. The brother being taken out of the picture and the Chief on vacation,” Mace continued, air-quoting, “presents a unique opportunity. Guru and Axel, who will go by their government names, Abby and Jonah, will go undercover as police officers. Jonah will play that he’s looking for opportunities for cash and is willing to step across the line. Abby is going to play a different part. She’ll be the sweet, unaware sister of Jonah who never asks questions. She’ll be loyal and look like a great face for the department. Once we get enough information from the Chief, Honey Creek Badgers will plan on taking him down and having him leave a resignation letter. If all goes as planned, Jonah will move up and meet the next layer in the ring,” Mace laid out.

“How are you going to make sure you get the job?” Dragon asked.

Torrent was wondering the same thing.

“Our tech person has been culling the applicants until Jonah looks fantastic, and his resume says that he has a sister who wants a job too. I think that there’ll be no way he won’t choose them,” Mace assured them.

“To cement our cover, as soon as I get hired, I’ll be pulling over whoever of you I see first. If we want to set up a time, I’m good with that too. I need him to believe that I hate your club, bikers, and anything to do with you because you want to live outside the law,” Jonah added, mapping out the strategy.

“Makes sense. How do you propose to help keep Cecilia and Calliope safe?” Torrent demanded, his protective instincts kicking in.

“Well, we plan on adding so many issues that he won’t have time to focus on anything else. Prior to him hiring us, we’re still going to mess with him. Our tech person has planted multiple lines of code that will screw up his day. Between computers crashing, files going missing, or his personal insurance having issues, he’ll be too swamped to bother her,” Abby replied.

Torrent could live with that. He listened as Abby and Jonah gave them what information their club had, and Dragon shared the Grave Prowlers’ information.