Page 20 of Striker

Before I can get back to the conversation with Beth, my phone jingles.

It’s Jasper. I go ahead and send him the cleaned-up photo while we’re talking. I tell him about seeing the gray truck in a ditch, about the Vale lead, and about my plan for tracking the money.

Jasper doesn’t waste words. Like always, he’s short and to the point. “Send that face to the brothers’ group chat. I’ll put every available club brother and prospect on the street tonight. Somebody in this town has seen him, rented him a room, sold him a tank of gas. If we find the man attached to that fuckin’ face, we find who’s behind this whole mess. You work on trackin’ the money.”

I don’t like the idea of sitting up here on my hill and letting other men track this fucker down. But I do it anyway. I won’t let my pride get in the way of catching this asshole. Holding myself back from running this man down is the hardest thing I’ve had to do in a long time.

Beth’s waiting for me to put the phone down. She immediately asks, “What happens if they track us down before we can track them down?”

I break it all down for her. “If they come here, they’ll trigger my electronic security system. If the alarm goes off, you take Josie to the back bedroom upstairs. The door to that room has a solid core, and I put a deadbolt on the inside last Tuesday. Lock it behind you and stay quiet. Think of it as a safe room. I keep a burner phone on a charger in there. It has my cell phone number and contacts for all the club officers. Once you call any of those numbers and let us know there’s trouble, it will bring every club brother in the vicinity to this hill inside of ten minutes. No matter what happens, you only have to hold out for ten minutes and help will arrive.”

She nods, looking a little shell-shocked.

I try to come up with something to say to smooth over the shock of what I just told her. “I know all that’s probably overkill. But I figure we should err on the side of safety.”

“It’s getting late,” Beth says. “I should give Josie her bath and get her down for the night.” She scoops her daughter up off the sofa and turns the cartoons off. Josie looks drowsy already. If it were me, I’d tuck her into bed and let her take a bath in the morning. But since no one asked me, I keep my opinions to myself.

“Good night, Striker,” Beth says over her shoulder right before she goes upstairs.

“Night, Beth. Hope you get a good night’s sleep.”

I wait till I hear the water running in the tub before sitting down at my desk and getting back to work. Somewhere out there forty of my club brothers are prowling through Cedar Falls lookin’ for the man who’s been stalking the woman I love. They thought she was all alone with no one to protect her. They’re fixing to learn how wrong they were.

Chapter 10

Beth

My attorney slides a file folder across the desk before I can even get Josie settled down on my lap. She keeps flailing her arms around and wiggling to get down. Striker holds his hands out and she eagerly goes to him. Annoyingly, she settles right down on his knee, tinkering with the nameplate on my estate lawyer’s desk.

“Between the deed, the insurance binder, and the bank statements you dropped off the other day, I’ve got what I need to file for probate this week,” he explains. “Your uncle not having a will makes probate simpler in a lot of ways. You’re his only living relative, so everything will go to you. Once I get the notice published and file for letters from the court, the four-month clock starts running. That’s meant to give creditors time to come forward and make claims against the estate. All of your uncle’s debts need to be cleared before we can close the probate period.”

I nod, catching most of that. “Thank you for explaining the process and the time frame to expect.”

I nervously hand him a copy of my former employer’s hearing notice. “I found this in his drawer as well. I’m not sure what to make of it. Would you mind taking a look, telling me what you think?”

He scans the first page, and his eyebrows go up before he sets it down on the desk in front of him. “I can read it for you, as a professional courtesy. But I want you to know estate law and federal criminal law fall into distinctly different categories.”

“I don’t need to understand the legal nuances of the notification, just the basics.”

“This is one of the biggest cases that’s ever been tried in our neck of the woods. Every attorney in town was fascinated by this case, no matter their area of specialty.”

Glancing over the multipage document, he says without looking up, “This is a collateral attack on his sentence via a 2255 motion. They aren’t arguing a standard trial error to an appellate court. They are telling the district judge that your original testimony was coerced through threats of a RICO indictment. The judge scheduled an evidentiary hearing, and because you disappeared, the defense is claiming the government hid you away.”

“Is there anything I need to do right now?”

He sets the paperwork down and looks directly at me. “Well, they’re also saying you can’t be found for a subpoena. That means you need to contact the U.S. Attorney’s Office and let them know you are ready and willing to testify again if called upon. It would be a shame for Mr. Vale to end up released on a technicality.”

I let him know, “I’ll be sure to alert the prosecutor’s office, make sure they have my current contact information, and make sure they know that I’m willing to cooperate if they need me.”

“That would be best,” my attorney responds. “It took a lot of man-hours from law enforcement, the prosecutor, and the judiciary to put this man behind bars. We wouldn’t want all that time and effort to go to waste.”

By the time we say our goodbyes, I feel a lot better about the probate and feel like I have a better handle on Vale’s legal basis for a new hearing.

***

I’ve been to the clubhouse once since I came back, the day Striker told his brothers he’d been wrong about me. It’s Saturday, which means all the club brothers are having church, and the prospects are guarding the clubhouse and grounds. Striker told me all about how things roll at the clubhouse.

Two women are on the front porch blowing bubbles for a cluster of kids. One of them is a little boy about Josie’s size. He starts running towards her before we even reach the front steps. He’s really cute and excited to find a really young kid to play with. Most of the others look to be six to eight.