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CHAPTER14
Tati
Onyx had not wantedme to go toBottoms.
Really… that should have been good enough for me to give the idea an additional twentieth spin around my brain, since I’d already mulled it over, and over, and over.
But thePredatorschain of command had all talked it through so many times, had put what we thought were all the right precautions into place, that it really should have been fine. But as I made my rounds around the bar, talking to people, putting in the work that had been neglected in favor of our lockdown, I couldn’t help thinking…somethingdoesn’t feel quite right about this.
Because I couldn’t put my finger on it, I chalked it up to paranoia, even when Onyx hit me up checking in halfway through the day. I didn’t want to be the one who raised an alarm for no reason.
But then a couple of guys walked in who I didn’t recognize and that set off a warning bell in my head. From my seat at the bar, I pulled out my phone to text Keira, making sure they were in my line of sight at the same time. I frowned, breaking my view for long enough to glare at the glitched-out screen of my phone, and set it to restart.
Luckily, Keira walked out from the back a moment later, and I subtly flagged her down.
“Hey, the cameras just went down,” she told me, before I could even get my information out. “Something weird is going on.”
“Agreed,” I said reaching out for a subtle touch at her elbow to signal in the strangers’ direction. “Go get Gavin.”
Gavin—Ghost—had been doing a magnificent job in his role as treasurer for thePredators.
The position Kev had been so butthurt about not being named to.
Butthisshit right here, this was a large part of whyhewas unqualified for that position. Gavin was great with the numbers, the analysis, investments, financial structure, all of that.
But he didn’t get the nickname for nothing.
“We can’t get in touch with our exterior scouts either,” Keira told me, just before she made her casual exit to grab Gavin.
I had my gun in my lap, ready but out of sight, so I didn’t alarm any otherPredatorsmembers.
Not without cause.
And… I didn’t want to alarm the strangers either. I had a feeling that if I got up from where I’d been sitting, it would be the trigger that set something off. For now… they were just observing. And maybe that was all they were here for.
But the technical glitches, us not being able to get ahold of anyone outside the bar…
I had a bad feeling this was much more.
Did theyreallythink they could just walk in here and no one would notice that they didn’t belong?
It fed into a theory I had aboutThe Gardenas a whole; most relationships, platonic or otherwise were actively discouraged.
By and large, theRosesandThornsdidn’t know each other like that.
Not in massive numbers.
The same thing was true with theMarauders. They had lots of members, in chapters all over the place. It was howThornshad been able to just show up in their ink and colors, infiltrating their space to carry out an attack.
Meanwhile, the VegasMaraudersswore they didn’t know who those guys were.
They didn’t recognize them, but hadn’t said anything about it because that wasn’t uncommon.
Just the same as not knowing for sure who was aRoseorThornuntil the ink answered for them.
Around here?
Wekneweach other.
