Page 79 of Cruel Biker

“I better let you go,” she said, pulling away, and he just knew whatever feelings she once had for him were gone. He killed them by being an asshole.

“Will you be okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, you know me, I’ll find a way to bounce back, and Dad’s left a couple of guys to keep me safe. If they get past them to kill me, I deserve to die.”

****

Venom knelt on the floor of his and Morwenna’s ranch home. He’d already gone and checked out Star’s apartment. He understood why Morwenna was so distraught on the phone. They pretty much stabbed her in two, but it wasn’t Star he was looking for at the ranch. Morwenna and Bolt were able to make several kills, and the bodies were still here. The van they drove was outside. It was unregistered. The plates were fake.

“Do you want to tell me why you’re back here?” Gus asked.

“The Karamazov are successful because they’re able to blend in,” Venom said.

“So?”

“I don’t give a fuck who you are. You don’t have a successful kill rate like that, unless you trust who you’re with,” Venom said. “It’s common sense. You could have any rat infiltrate. The Karamazov have rumors spread about them, and that would make it easy for anyone to pretend to be one of them. They’re the enemy. Someone would find a way to remove them. There has to be some mark. Some way of knowing.”

He removed the bulletproof vest, dragging it down the man’s arms, and then he grabbed the shirt, using a knife to tear it open. There were no discernable tattoos on the skin, there was nothing, yet as he stripped him naked across the torso and down the arm, he turned the arm, and there was a barcode, with the words spaced out, but making no mistake, K-a-r-a-m-a-z-o-v was spelled under each line.

“Gotcha,” Venom said. “Look at this.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Gus asked.

“It’s there.

“There is no way for us to be able to find them.”

Venom looked at Gus. “The Karamazov work by doing the hunting,” Venom said.

“Your point?” Gus asked.

“Have you ever thought about putting them on the back foot?” Venom asked. “We hunt them.”

“There’s no way of knowing.”

Venom smiled. “We have the ink.” He took his cell phone out, shot the picture, and smirked at Gus. “It’s time for us to go hunting. To get that ink, it was done by a professional. All we’ve got to do is check out all the tattoo parlors and ask a few simple questions.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Gus asked.

“It’s simple.”

“But, wouldn’t someone have thought to do this? What if they have their own guy or guys to do tattoos?” Gus asked.

Venom got to his feet and made his way outside where his bike was.

“What are you doing now?” Gus asked.

“You know, I never considered you a complainer, but you seem to be doing an awful lot of that, and it is starting to piss me off.” He pulled out his cell phone and called Maverick. His president answered on the first call. “I just thought you would like to know I’m going hunting for Karamazov.” He told Maverick everything he knew, and that he intended to go and talk to a few of the local hotel owners in town. The Karamazov would need to have a place to stay. They were not local, and some of the hotels were on the outskirts of town.

Maverick promised to meet up with him, and Venom was done talking. Gus stopped complaining and got onto his bike. He didn’t keep to the speed limit and made his way to the closest hotel on the edge of town. It wasn’t the fanciest hotel and had been rundown in the past few years. Several of the letters on the sign were not lit, and he figured they were broken.

Pulling into the parking lot, he turned off his ignition and Gus followed suit, only he had stopped talking. Venom made his way inside and spotted a guy named Steve. He was large, a few tattoos on his arms, and a tub of popcorn in his hands. The moment he walked inside, the guy looked afraid.

“I don’t want no trouble,” he said, holding his hands up but keeping a firm grip on that popcorn.

“We don’t want no trouble, Steve,” Venom said. “I need to know if you’ve seen a couple of guys, quiet types. Possibly with this tattoo? Any new people stayed the week? Perhaps paid cash?” He held out his cell phone with the tattoo on.

Steve started to sweat. “I can’t tell you that.”