AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jesus. Dicklasaur? Crystal balls? Before I completely turned into Ryder’s ass, I pulled out a cigarette, shoved it in my mouth, and spoke around it as I lit it.
“Now, how about we cut the shit and work together before one of ’em winds up in the wrong hands?”
“What did you have in mind?”
Hunter didn’t have the range of emotions it took to pull off terse, but if he did, that’s how he would have sounded.
“For starters, why don’t you tell me what you know about the sister.”
“Delilah Matthews. Age twenty-two. Mother and father both died in a car crash six years ago. One sibling, Jules Matthews. Worked in a hair salon downtown after graduating from cosmetology school. No boyfriend, no friends. The old lady next door was the one who reported her missing. When I went to her apartment, everything was immaculate except for a layer of crime scene dust.”
“If it weren’t for her brother, she would have made the perfect target. How in the hell did they miss that shit?”
“Turns out, quite easily. When his connection to the CIA didn’t turn up in any of my searches, I asked Marco to look into it. He called me back about an hour ago to say it’s standard CIA protocol to wipe everything when an agent goes undercover.”
“Since when do we have an in with the CIA?”
“We don’t,” he intoned. “The cartel does.”
“Ah.” I knew the way our new prospect spoke seemed oddly familiar. To have that kind of clout, he must be a close relative of Valentina’s. “Any idea what Jules was working on?”
“That’s the part that concerns me.” His light eyes scanned my face, giving me the sensation of being a bug burning in the light of his microscope. “He was supposed to bring down Antonio Sanchez, Stella’s ex-boyfriend, by any means necessary.”
Just when I thought I’d made peace with Stel’s newly discovered dating life, somehow it would pop up again like a bad penny and prove me wrong. Every fucking time. It was like I couldn’t escape the intangible proof that I’d made a fucking mess of things and placed Stel squarely in harm’s way.
“Dirty but clean my ass.”
“Hmm. We’re missing something here. Possibly a connection between Jules, Antonio, and whoever’s behind this human trafficking ring?”
“The sister could be our missing link.”
I exhaled a cloud of smoke as I pondered how to gain her trust. With what she’d been through, it wasn’t going to be easy. Then the answer came to me, and the beauty of it was, everyone would get what they wanted.
“Stel’s going after them no matter what we say or do, and from what you said Brandy will follow Stel’s lead, which means so will the sister.”
“Are you saying we give the girls free rein?”
“No. I’m suggesting a joint effort between the girls and the club. They share information and agree not to act on it without us, and the club provides the muscle and guns they need to bring down the human trafficking ring.”
“What about the girl? How do you propose we get her to talk?”
“Simple,” I said, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “We both know that if she wants to go up against these men and survive, she’ll need to learn self-defense and how to shoot a gun. I’ll offer to teach her both and have her singing like a canary.”
“Let’s hope for her sake that you can. Otherwise, we’ll have to do things my way, and Ryder’s never been fond of my methods.”
CHAPTER 20
SWITCH
Stel had unwittingly helped me convince Jules’s sister, Delilah, to let me train her when she told the girls that I was “a decent shot.” Then, she’d looked over and given me a teasing lopsided smile, shocking the hell out of me. My girl was actually busting my balls. Something she used to enjoy doing on the regular down in the shop. Now, she quickly caught herself, shook it off, turned on her heel, and left the kitchen, but I was still counting it as progress.
One brief unguarded moment didn’t mean she’d changed her stance on speaking to me, but it gave me a piece of normalcy I could cling to. Besides, Mad Dog wasn’t faring any better than me, and he was her father. But Stel was as stubborn as they came, and she never did anything she didn’t damn well want to.
Delilah, on the other hand, was an altogether different sort of complicated. Both women came with their own set of challenges, but I think I’d take Stel’s stoic silence over Delilah’s space cadet episodes.
She often zoned out in the middle of our self-defense training, and I’d spent more time over the last couple of days trying to get her attention than I did anything else. Which didn’t bode well for my goal of getting her to talk, considering the girl hadn’t said more than ten words to me.
On top of that, my back hurt something fierce from sleeping on Hunter’s front porch swing, Stel avoided me, Brandy was about as skittish as a deer, and Hunter didn’t even want the girls in his house let alone me. Needless to say, I was frustrated as hell right now, and I didn’t have it in me to rein in my temper with Delilah.
