Page 70 of Rune’s Solace

“There you go.”

Devil sat back slowly, looking at the photograph. “Disposable.”

“Clean,” Mystic corrected. “Least from Drago. Rickard gets caught, there’s nothin’ tying him to Dragon Fire. No patch, no history, no calls before prison, nothin’. He’s just some hard old con who got out and went back to doing hard old con shit.”

“You got money changing hands?” I asked.

Mystic shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Calls?”

“Not yet.”

“Then we’re guessing,” I said.

“We’re adding,” Devil replied.

I looked at him.

He tapped the table once with a finger. “Drago’s sitting in a cell with a man who’s nineteen days from freedom. He’s got money, he’s got a woman he wants taken back, and he’s got Mystic sitting here breathing when he’d rather he wasn’t. Rickard walks out with nothing waiting on him. Six weeks later he’s in Charleston circling this club and Amy.” Devil’s eyes went to Mystic. “You know the contract?”

“No. But I’d bet my patch on the way of it. Zeynep brought back. Mystic dead. Maybe both, maybe more if he gets the chance.”

“One man?” Gearhead asked.

“One man nobody sees coming,” Devil said. “We been looking for Dragon Fire patches, known associates, vehicles, faces. This bastard could’ve walked past every one of us at a gas station and we’d never have looked twice.”

That sat ugly.

Because he already had.

He’d stood forty feet from me on a college campus while I watched Amy laugh over coffee, and he’d followed her through Charleston with me sitting right there. He’d gotten close enough to put a hole in her radiator, close enough to stand in a parking garage and put her on the concrete with one look, and every man on this property had spent those same weeks facing the other direction because we’d been waiting on Drago to send one of his own.

He hadn’t.

He’d bought himself a stranger.

“That’s who’s been circling us,” Mystic said. “Not one of Drago’s soldiers. Hired hand. Man with no patch and nothin’ to lose.”

Around the table, everybody shifted as the answer sunk in. Chain swore again. Gearhead sat back and rubbed his jaw. Bolt looked toward Devil, already moving ahead to whatever came next, and I could damn near feel the room locking onto the reality of it because finally there was one, Drago, Broad River, Rickard, nineteen days in a cell, money, contract.

It fit. That was the problem. It fit everything except the one thing that mattered most to me. I stared at Cal Rickard’s face lying upside down in the middle of the table and heard Mystic’s words again. They still thought this was all about Zeynep, they didn’t know the full extent of why Cal Rickard would come for Amy.

“That’s not all of it.”

The room shut up.

Devil’s eyes came to mine. “What?”

I reached across the table and turned the booking photo until Cal Rickard was facing me. “That bastard wants Amy back and the reason isn’t one I can give you freely, it’s not mine to give, but let’s just say he’s one sick motherfucker.”

Nobody answered, but understanding was written all over their faces.

“We have to get rid of him before he manages to get her back.”

Devil had gone still.

So had Mystic.