Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 45515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 228(@200wpm)___ 182(@250wpm)___ 152(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 228(@200wpm)___ 182(@250wpm)___ 152(@300wpm)
“Wouldn’t put it past him,” Falcon agreed. “He’s a wily son of a bitch.”
“Was.” I grunted. “And I get your point. But trust me when I say he was in no shape to make that kind of story convincing. All he could do was withhold information. Which he steadfastly did. Even when he was screaming. No. he had someone prepared to make good on his threat. Probably part of the reason he wanted to leave town. It gave him free rein to hurt Scarlet while distancing himself from any violence toward the girls. At least, I hope so. If not, then he was a truly evil man. And if there’s one person that evil in our midst, there could be more. We’re a secretive lot by nature, so this hurts in ways we’ve not even considered before.”
“On it, Prez,” Crush said softly. “I’ll get Byte to help, if you’re good with that.”
I thought about Byte. He was younger than Crush by close to ten years and fresh out of the CIA. He’d put in his time and that time hadn’t been kind to him. He’d also been on more than one mission with Hammer. “He gonna have a problem with this? I know Byte and Hammer were close.”
“They weren’t.” Crush snorted. “Hammer was an asshole in the extreme. Byte tolerated him because he was part of the club, but I know Byte can absolutely believe this of him. I certainly do.”
“Fuckin’ little pissants. Both’a you,” Spike muttered.
“Spike, you’re out of this meeting.” I had to take a stand on this if we were going to ferret out who was working with Hammer. “Listen up, people.” I put as much hard authority as I could in my voice. “I know Hammer is guilty. That’s not up for debate. What I’m interested in is finding out who was working with the son of a bitch. If your loyalty is to him, you need to get the fuck out.” I turned to the now fuming Spike. “You’re confined to quarters until further notice. I’ll have food prepared and sent up by officers I trust.”
“Come the fuck on, Prez! You might have had time to process this, but I don’t remember a single fuckin’ thing that would lead me to believe Hammer was capable of harming a kid. Not one.”
“You can process it in your quarters.”
“Fuck!” Spike smacked the back of the chair, tipping it over, and stormed out of the room.
“Anyone else?”
There were a few grumbles but nothing overt. I could see Crush noting every single one of them mentally, too. Crush was the more unbiased of the two, but Byte would be fine. Crush would keep him focused on the right thing. It was the way they worked. While Byte was the better investigator, Crush could keep his personal feelings out of the work. I figured it came with age.
“Good. No one is exempt from this investigation, Crush. Even me. I want to know everyone Hammer had contact with and to what extent. I absolutely will not have anyone in this club who is willing to harm a woman in our care unless there is a fuckin’ good reason, or willing to harm a child for any fuckin’ reason.”
“Understood.” Crush shook his head slightly, closing his eyes and taking a breath. I got it. He kept an eye on things most of us would prefer to be kept quiet, but this was a whole different level of spying on his brothers. It set him apart and now he was including Byte. No one blamed Crush for what he had to do. Not really. But it was still damned uncomfortable to know he knew some of the darkest secrets some of them had. He would never mention anything to anyone else, and he only talked to me if he deemed the situation a security risk. This was something else entirely, and we all knew it. Thing was, of all of us, I trusted Crush the most. He was the only one who ever willingly came to me with issues of his own. He said if he could know everyone’s private business in the club, I could know his.
“Good. You two get on it. I want a detailed report every twelve hours, or anytime you find something important.” I gave the room a hard stare, daring anyone to go against me.
“Don’t you think that’s an invasion of privacy, Prez?” The kid, Jackhammer -- yeah, wasn’t touching that one -- raised a finger in the air. He had an innocent, dumb expression on his face I would have found adorably naive and laughed it off in any other circumstance. Given the situation, though, I was less than amused.
“No. You done somethin’ you don’t want Crush to find out?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Well, yeah, actually. Don’t we all?” There were some grunted assents and some scowls thrown the kid’s way. Looked like the club was solidly divided on this one.