AllFreeNovel
Share Us
On orders of the US government, I’d hacked into plenty of things. Foreign government’s satellites, private businesses camera feeds, financial records. You name it and I’d poked my nose in it. But this was different because it was unsanctioned. What I was about to do meant risking my job and my freedom. There could be no evidence left behind. No digital footprint, no detectable keystrokes, no mistakes.
As “Executioner’s Tax” played from somewhere in the back of the garage, I took a deep breath, and plunged in. If I had the guts to go undercover in a motorcycle club to save my sister, I could hack into the DEA’s database for the same purpose. Besides, it wasn’t as if my boss had been thinking of my safety when he’d dangled the carrot of my sister’s freedom in front of me.
Anger fueled my keystrokes as everything else faded into the background. Screen by screen, I searched, my eyes scanning all the information the DEA had on the cartel. My brain automatically cataloged and saved everything I saw—known houses, aliases, safe houses, fields, workers, suspected government contacts, and associates. But no mention of Marco. Anywhere.
I’d gotten what I needed, yet I still hesitated to cover my tracks and sever the link. My boss’s words played inside my head. Before me, they’d never had a man on the inside, never gotten close. The government had spent years trying to bring down the cartel, and The Deviants along with them, and I had to wonder how far they’d go. Would they, for example, set up one of their own to get the job done? And, more importantly, was I willing to let them get away with it?
If I was smart, I’d let this go. Use Marco to barter for my sister’s freedom, and walk away, while I still could. But what happened if Marco wasn’t enough? If they kept coming for her? Once I did this, it couldn’t be undone. I’d never have the chance to know what they knew. What my sister had done, and what they could prove, might be two very different things.
Was I willing to risk it all on the word of the DEA? If you’d asked me that same question a few months ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated. Now, I couldn’t be sure. Something about that just didn’t sit right with me, and I knew I had my answer.
The file on the club was significantly smaller than the one on the cartel, and I wasn’t sure if that was because the club was better at covering their tracks or if the cartel didn’t give a shit. I tended to think it was the latter. In Mexico, the cartel was untouchable because they owned the president. While that wasn’t the case in the US, it would be difficult to extradite them without the help of the Mexican government.
As I scanned the file, I wondered if that was why the DEA had been gunning so hard for The Deviants. They knew they couldn’t reel in the big fish, but they still had to prove to the American people they were stemming the tide of drugs entering the US. The sad fact was, even if they took down The Deviants, it would only temporarily slow the cartel down. The Italians, Irish, Polish, and Russians would be there, waiting for their chance. Drugs were too lucrative for criminals to give up on them, no matter how long the prison sentences were.
A sense of unease settled in the pit of my stomach as I neared the end of the file. All of it I’d already seen before, which didn’t make a bit of sense, until I came to the very last note. At least now I knew why they’d sent me here. Bile climbed up my throat, and I bent over the trash can underneath my desk. The coffee I’d drank this morning tasted bitter coming back up as I emptied the contents of my stomach.
When I was done, I wiped my mouth off with a napkin Stella had left on my desk this morning and tied off the bag. I needed to pull myself together and get my head in the game. Erasing one’s digital footprint was painstaking work, and like I said before, there could be no mistakes. The DEA could never find out that I knew the truth.
For a long time afterward, I sat there at my desk in the garage, staring off into space, wondering what I was going to do about the fucked-up situation I found myself in.
“Earth to Brandy,” Stella said, making me jump.
“Balls! How long have you been standing there?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Long enough to know you look like you could use a stiff drink and I need a break from staring at the same four walls.”
My fucked-up brain would be triggered by the smell of alcohol and sweat. Not to mention the likelihood of losing my shit whenever a man bumped into me. Still, all of that was more appealing than having to face either my sister or Hunter. Right now, I just wanted to forget what I’d seen.
“Can I spend the night at your place?”
She smirked. “As long as you don’t rub it in that you’re only spending the night at my place because your vagina needs a break from all the pounding it’s taken lately.”
God, I loved this girl. Even when she said things just to make me blush.
Before Hunter and Stella barged into my life, I was an empty shell, living only to protect my sister. Which was tragically fucked-up, considering I had avoided my sister for years, watching out for her from afar like some creeper. Not that my staying away had done any good. My mental state never improved, and Cherry was still in danger. The only thing that had really changed was the source of the threat.
My phone buzzed from atop the desk, a text message from PICKLEBUSTER lighting up the screen. Speak of the devil.
“If you can ask Tweak to let my sister know where I’ll be, I’ll just go grab a few things and we can head over to your place.”
She gave me a funny look but walked back down the hall to find Tweak. I slipped out the front door, knowing the music in back would cover the sound of the bell, and took the long way around to the club’s garage. No one was in there when I poked my head in, and I scurried up the steps.
It was my lucky day, because for once, my sister wasn’t behind the bar. In fact, it was a little weird that no one was in the club’s common area, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Beast passed me in the upstairs hallway, his eyebrow raised at my unusually brisk pace, but thankfully he didn’t ask any questions. As I shut the door to Hunter’s room, I sagged against it, staring down at the phone in my hand. The hand that shook, making it hard to click on the message.
PICKLEBUSTER: Paint me a cucumber and call me green.
The same coded message as last time. With a deep breath in, I pressed the button to call, and held the phone up to my ear.
“Smith?”
“Yes.”
My voice had a breathless quality to it, but thankfully it remained steady. He couldn’t know anything was off or how unnerved I was at the sound of his voice.
“Hadn’t heard from you in a while.”
