Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 74971 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74971 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
A part of me wondered which convict Slash was going to size up to invite to the club that was in that building right now, dreaming of the kind of life we lived. With real food and kitchen sex.
Just as I started to round the back of the clubhouse, though, I saw Slash standing there, phone pressed to his ear, jaw tight, eyes far away.
Something was up.
I mean, a phone call that early in the day always meant something was going on.
Was it Riff and Raff?
They’d taken off to do a run in the south, taking our supply we currently had in the vault, and collecting up some guns to deliver to the sister chapter in Florida, a somewhat new part of their job, thanks to the Golden Glades crew getting a big contract with an international arms dealer.
“Yeah. Okay. I’ll keep you posted,” he agreed, nodding at me, then ending the call.
“Everything alright?” I asked, watching as Slash let out a sigh.
“Yeah,” he said, but he dragged out the end, a telltale sign of nothing being emergent, but something being up.
“Who was it?”
“Raff,” he said.
“He okay?”
“Yeah. They made it down to Golden Glades, no problem. But there’s some shit about their contact wanting us to track someone down in our neck of the woods.”
“Track someone down?” I asked, surprised. That wasn’t exactly part of our job. I mean, sure, if we knew we had an enemy, yeah, we figured out where they were and what they were up to, then we took them out.
But we sure as shit didn’t contract ourselves out for someone else.
“It’s a weapons designer,” he said.
“A weapon… designer,” I repeated, my brows furrowing. “Those exist?”
“Apparently,” he agreed.
“The fuck do they do? Create different types of guns?”
“In the official, legal, way, they mostly modify current guns to make them better or safer. That kind of shit.”
“And in the unofficial, illegal way?” I asked, since that was what we dealt in.
“They build guns and other stuff that do interesting and different shit. The kind of interesting and different shit that some people will pay a fuckton of money to get their hands on.”
“And, what, we’ve been commissioned to get our hands on it?”
“Seems like there was some sort of arrangement, but then this designer fell off the grid. And since we’re the closest, we get tasked with finding them and getting the guns. Two of them. Worth a hundred grand each, it seems.”
“No shit?” I asked, straightening.
Sure, there was a substantial arms market. And getting your hands on certain weapons could set you back, on the high end, eight to ten grand. Maybe fifteen if it was really hard to source.
But a hundred?
“The fuck does it do? Come with a beer dispenser and make naked women come running or some shit?”
“I wasn’t given the details. I don’t think anyone has the details but the buyer and the designer. So now we have to find this fuck who is trying to renege on his deal.”
“Was he paid already?”
“Only twenty grand for each gun.”
“But forty grand can go a long way for a conman,” I said.
“That’s the worry,” Slash agreed.
“So what do we know?”
“The best anyone got down there was that the last email came from somewhere up in Modoc County.”
“Modoc,” I repeated. “That’s the middle of fucking nowhere,” I said, reaching up to rub the slight beard I’d been growing the past few months.
To that, Slash’s brow rose as he waved down toward Shady Valley.
That was fair enough.
There were fifty-eight counties in California. Ours landed way down at fifty-second when it came to population. And Modoc was just a bit lower at fifty-sixth.
That said, Modoc wasn’t exactly close. It was a solid eight to nine hour drive. Then we were in the middle of nowhere with no idea how to locate this person.
It wasn’t like we could walk around and ask where the local black market gun designer lived.
“I mean rural has its advantages and disadvantages,” Slash said. “We won’t have to try to sift through millions of people to find this guy. But on the other hand, smaller towns are more suspicious and protective of their residents, and might not be fond of strangers asking questions.”
“When are we leaving? What?” I asked when I saw the way he sucked in his cheek. When you knew someone as long as we’d known each other, there was no missing those kinds of tells.
“We’re not all going. It’s too long of a trip to be leaving the clubhouse empty,” he said.
“Who is going?” I asked.
I mean, he wasn’t going to send Judge, who had a wife and kid. Crow and Morgaine were in the family way. And something about his face then told me that he wasn’t planning on heading out either.
That left… me.
Detroit.
And Coach.
Since Riff and Raff were in Florida.