Page 57 of Trick
“I hope he didn’t go outside. He’s so helpless,” she whispered, trying to hold back her tears.
I barely stopped the disbelieving snort from escaping. Helpless, my ass. With those razor-sharp claws, that cat could defend himself as well as I could, but I was smart enough not to say that.
“Meeeowww.”
The plaintive sound came from the direction of the laundry room, and Lauren almost tripped me in her haste to get there first. We found him huddled behind the dryer, and she offered up a handful of cat treats shaped like tiny, putrid-green mice in order to coax him out. They looked absolutely revolting, but they did the trick.
He leaped into her arms, rubbing his head under her chin and purring loudly. I reached out to scratch behind his ears, and he hissed and swiped at me, making it clear that he thought this entire shitshow was somehow my fault.
I jerked my hand back in the nick of time, then headed outside to let the others know they could call off their search.
I found Lucky standing in the front yard, with his light shining on the landscaping under the living room window.
“You need to see this,” he said grimly, waving me over and pointing at the ground where a small section of plants and flowers had been freshly trampled on.
“Somebody was standing here, man, and you can see right in this window between the slats in the blinds. Joker and Bodhi are checking out the other windows.”
“I’ll fuckin’ kill him, Luck,” I snarled.
He clapped me on the shoulder and nodded. “Yeah, and I’ll gladly help you, but we’ve gotta find him first.”
Brick pulled into the driveway then, and I filled him in on everything that had happened. Joker and Bodhi joined us, telling me that since there was grass under all the other windows, they couldn’t tell if he’d tried looking in them or not.
“Hey, guys, do me a favor and don’t mention anything in front of Lauren about the footprints. It’s gonna really fuck with her head, and I’d rather tell her when we’re alone.”
They all agreed, and the five of us walked inside. Lauren was sitting on the couch, and I was happy to see that the color had returned to her cheeks, and she looked angry more so than frightened now. Elvis was curled up on her lap, glaring balefully at everyone.
Brick cleared his throat to get our attention. “The bastard hacked our system. He put the cameras on a recorded loop instead of live monitoring, so there was no sign of movement on our end. He tried to disable the alarm, and probably thought that it had worked, so he figured he was safe to break in.”
Brick’s announcement was met with a lot of cursing, mostly mine.
“How the fuck does that happen?”
Brick sighed heavily. “I don’t know, brother. Our system is state-of-the-art, but there’s obviously a weak link somewhere that compromised our firewall. I’ve already got our techs working on it.”
King rubbed his fingers over the bridge of his nose, something he always did when he was frustrated. “Bull and I checked the back door while you were looking for the cat. There are no signs of forced entry. The frame is intact, there are no scratches around the lock, no pry marks, nothing. Are you sure the door was locked?”
“Yeah, it was fuckin’ locked. I checked it myself when I got here this afternoon, and we didn’t go outside at all after that.”
“Well, we can add lockpicking to his skills then, along with the hacking,” Bull noted.
I looked at Lauren, who was staring at us wide-eyed, just listening to the conversation flowing around her.
“You need to pack your bags, darlin’. I know staying at the clubhouse isn’t ideal, but we don’t have a choice anymore. We can’t stay here.”
She must have tightened her grip on the cat, because the furball yowled and jumped off her lap, dashing down the hall toward the bedrooms.
“I know,” she said, looking resigned to the situation.
Brick and Joker left right after that, since they wanted to get back to the office to help figure out how the hell Beau had gotten around the firewalls they have in place.
I told Lucky and Bodhi that they could head out, too. “Can you two check with the neighbors in the morning, see if any of them have cameras or saw anything?”
I knew if they went knocking on doors this late in the evening – even if they took their cuts off – they would still spook people, who would then likely call the cops. The last thing we wanted was to attract the attention of law enforcement in this instance, especially since I was planning to make Beau disappear permanently.
King and I had come to an understanding several months back when we’d tried to find Pic after he’d stolen from the club…If we’re gonna kill people, we make damned sure we don’t get caught.
“Don’t bother trying the people who rent the other side of the duplex. They left for vacation last Saturday,” Lauren reminded me.
