Page 31 of Celtic Dragon
We finish dinner and Honey and I clean up the kitchen while the boys finish their game. When all is said and done, the boys check the house and grounds, then double-check that all the doors and windows are locked. When the house is secure, we all turn in for the night. Spike takes the room that Rebel slept in while he was here last week and Dbag sleeps on the couch.
I offered him one of the other guest rooms, but he was insistent that it would be better if he were out in the living space in case he was needed. I assume that meant in case someone tried to break into the house in the middle of the night, but I’m not going to ask him to elaborate on that. Sometimes, it’s definitely better to not know everything.
I get to the top of the steps and walk into my room. I flick on the switch of my bedroom and what I see laying on the bed leaves me speechless. Words can’t even emerge from my mouth as shock overwhelms me. As I stare at the single-stem rose and note laying on my bed, all I can do is make a sound that isn’t human, but a terror-filled wail of horror that chills me to the bone. Whoever left the note this morning has been in the house!
Chapter 11
Caden
“I’m Patrick, Balefire’s older brother.” Patrick is tall and slender, definitely unlike the build that Rebel has, and I really can’t see much of a resemblance. Patrick looks to be about thirty. He has red hair, freckles, and deep green eyes. I really can’t picture him with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder and I wonder what role he plays in the organization. He looks more like brains than muscle.
“I’m Damon, Patrick’s older brother.” Now this guy could be Rebel’s twin. He is also tall but has a much bigger build than Patrick. I’m guessing that he’s about my age. He has Rebel’s blond hair and light green eyes. I can definitely picture Damon with an AK-47 or two slung over his shoulder. He’s definitely muscle, but I’m not sure if he’s got any brains.
“I’m Ice,” I say. It’s a bit overwhelming to meet your family members for the first time at my age. It’s also surreal. I’ve had all this family that I knew nothing about until recently. I think back to when my mom was killed and how lost and alone I felt. All I had was Ari, who was ten at the time and she needed me to be strong. Things would’ve been so much easier if I had known about my family in Ireland or Ace. But then again, if I had, I may not have ended up in the MC.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that everything has happened as it should. My life took the path it was supposed to take. It brought me here to Belfast to meet my two cousins for the first time.
After all the introductions are made and the small talk put aside, it’s time to get down to the matter at hand. Patrick says, “Ice, we really appreciate you and your crew coming to help us out.”
“We’re family, right? And even before I knew Rebel and I were related, he was my brother. We take that shit seriously in the club. We always protect our own.”
I don’t really know anything about Patrick and Damon, but it seems to me that they’re worried, frazzled, and a bit scared. It is odd to me that men that have spent their lives dealing with violence are handling this so poorly. Something doesn’t add up. I say, “Before we get into all the details, I have a couple of questions. First, why did you wait two weeks before you contacted Rebel about your parents’ disappearance? And two: I assume you have many contacts within your organization. Why my club? Why me?”
“We think their abduction came from the inside,” Damon says nervously.
His words fall to the floor like a dead weight. A rat! At least, that’s what we call it. I’m not sure what it is called in their world, but a rat is a rat no matter what world you place it in.
He continues, “We’re keeping their disappearance on the hush-hush in the hopes that the person responsible will slip up. But after about two weeks, we started getting desperate. That’s when we got Rebel involved. We knew he was part of your MC. We also knew that the Knights are huge, with Chapters all over the US and in Europe. You and your club were the outsiders we needed to trust.”
“Nothing like laying all the pressure on my club, Damon,” I reply.
“That’s unfair. If you knew there was someone in your club that turned against you, you can’t tell me that you wouldn’t find the one thing or person that you could trust to fish them out. Right?”
He had a point. “Well, if you put it that way …” I pause for a minute and then continue, “So, why don’t you start from the beginning and tell us everything that’s happened leading up to and after their disappearance?”
“Although things have been building over the last several years, threats against my mam and da started to really heat up this past January after we attempted to kill a police officer in north Belfast. We hit him several times at a petrol station on Crumlin Road, Ardoyne. Unfortunately for us, he lived.”
“We?” I ask.
“My da and me. We fired about ten shots and the son of a bitch still survived,” Damon says. “Over the course of the next several months, we made several more attempts to kill PSNI.”
I interrupted, asking, “PSNI?”
“Police Service of Northern Ireland.”
“And they are British?” I ask.
“Yes. They are more like a militant group than a police force like you may be used to in the States,” he adds.
“Ok, go on.”
“In February we planted a bomb near a PSNI home, but it didn't result in any injuries. In March one of our roadside bombs exploded as an armored PSNI truck passed in Strabane. Again, no injuries, but our presence was building.”
He takes a breath and then continues, “In April, we made our first big mistake. This is when we started to believe we had someone on the inside turn. Our target was another PSNI officer, but something went amiss and the bomb was left outside the gates of a school.”
“So you think that your rat purposely left that bomb at the school?” I ask.
“Two of our guys were supposed to plant that bomb at the home of the PSNI officer. When they were walking to the house, one of the guys claimed that they were being followed. Because of this, the other guy panicked. Apparently they dropped the bomb and left it. Shit really hit the fan after that.”
