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RIDGE
From the window by the table, I had a perfect view of the restaurant’s entrance as well as the ocean, volatile with today’s storms.
I’d arrived early for my meeting with Seraphina Reeve, San Luis Obispo county’s new assistant district attorney and the woman hell-bent on bringing an end to Los Caballeros—an organization whose traditions withstood the tests of hundreds of years.
That she knew about the secret entity was a problem in itself. Did she truly, or like so many others, had she heard the rumors but had no confirmation?
Glancing up, I saw her walk through the front door, the look on her face as angry as the sea. Or was it troubled?
“Noah,” she said, pulling out the chair on the opposite side of the table I’d chosen. “Not surprised you arrived before me.” She, too, was early.
I waited for her to get settled. After she had, I still didn’t speak. She’d asked for this meeting, and I’d let her show her hand before I did mine.
“I see. Well, this is a waste of time,” she muttered when I didn’t offer up as much as a hello.
“Why did you ask for this meeting, Sera?”
Yeah, when we talked on the phone the first time and I used the nickname, she’d vehemently told me not to call her that. However, I’d also told her everyone called me Ridge—not Noah—yet she insisted on doing so.
“As you know, your club has operated outside the law for years. I’m here with an offer.”
I raised a brow and waited.
“Brix Avila pleads guilty to several counts of obstruction of justice, and that will be the end of it. Along with proof you’ve disbanded. If you or anyone else is found guilty of interfering with a single other investigation, we’ll prosecute to the full extent of the law.”
I took a minute to process the words she’d just vomited and did exactly what Brix would’ve done in my place. I sat back in my chair and laughed. Hard. Then signaled Barb, the waitress who usually waited on me.
“Check, please.”
I shookmy head as I left, rushing to my truck once I was outside. The storm was picking up, and soon, there’d be a downpour.
My club, as Seraphina called it, had been in existence since the fourteen hundreds. A junior prosecutor working for a central California coastal county was hardly a match for us. No matter how beguiling she was.
“If I have to, I’ll subpoena Addison Reagan and her mother,” said the woman, who’d followed me out to the parking lot. “Maybe then Brix will listen to reason.”
The woman she was referring to, Addison Reagan, had been charged with a murder both Seraphina and I knew she didn’t commit. I didn’t bother to tell her that by the time either woman received as much as a summons, the murder charges against her would be dropped. She’d find out soon enough on her own. Not that it was what she’d subpoena her for. No, it was Los Caballeros’ involvement in finding the real killer the ADA would question Addy about. Neither Brix nor any of the rest of Los Caballeros would ever allow that to happen.
I opened the driver’s-side door and was in my truck, about to shut it and drive away, when I heard her say, “Wait. Please.”
Her two simple words would have been easy to ignore if I hadn’t heard the tone in which they were uttered.
“What?” I said, not looking at her.
“There’s another reason I wanted to talk to you.”
“Not interested, Ms. Reeve.”
“But—”
“If you’d led with something other than an idle threat, Sera, maybe then I would’ve listened.” I slammed the door shut, started the engine, and drove away, wishing I could stop myself from glancing in the rearview mirror at the woman still standing in the rain, looking as though she was about to cry.
After driving far enough away that she couldn’t see me, I pulled over, dug out my cell phone, and sent a text to the man who had been my best friend since we were both in elementary school. Hard to believe that was thirty years ago.
Call me ASAP, read the group text I sent to Brix and the San Luis Obispo County sheriff, Conrad Krouse, a man everyone called Vader. He’d been given the nickname of the Star Wars character because of how loud his breathing sounded on the other end of a phone call.
Since I knew they were currently on a private plane, returning from Alamos, Mexico, I wasn’t sure when they might have a signal. I put the truck in gear and took the back roads south to where my new house was being built.
When I’d purchased the property on See Canyon Road and walked the land to find a building site that would take advantage of the sweeping ocean views, I envisioned living there with the woman I’d planned to ask to marry me.
