Page 29 of Crucified By the Dark
All of this information piqued Trev’s interest. “Go on.”
“The guns the Golden Dragons were using were military grade, and we were wondering how they were getting their supply. They were coming from Morry, but I’m pretty positive she doesn’t know. Every time she brought in a new shipment, they were divided up.” Kes held up a finger. “To Righteous members, such as us, those from other clubs she has alliances with was , and finally, the Golden Dragons. They never purchased massive quantities, so the shipments wouldn’t flag as suspicious.”
“What makes you so certain she didn’t know? Not that I think she would, but I’m curious.”
“I found yet another shell company in the mass of companies my father had buried in our corporate structure. This one was set up to look like a sovereignty fighters group specifically targeting those wrongfully held and imprisoned by war criminals. The paperwork is incredible. I’m talking about forged docomeents, fake correspondence, and fake redacted missions. I thought they were legit at first sight, but I got a friend who owed me a favor to look into it, and it’s all fake. In fact, the money that has been funding it wasn’t from my father. It was none other than, dun dun dun, Dean’s father.”
“What?” Trev didn’t get blindsided much, but this went beyond his suspicions of what was going on.
“More specifically, the cartel itself, but we both know that nothing happens in that cartel without Diego’s say-so.” Kes stood. “Do you mind if I get a water?”
“No, go ahead.” Trev rubbed his chin as he thought about the news. The Dragons were drug runners, and more importantly, it was how they hid their human trafficking. So far, they’d uncovered a dozen major corporations, three senators, and a couple of judges that were all in on it at some level. “Do you think Dean knows what is going on?”
The mini fridge door opened as Kes grabbed a water. “I thought about that too, but I can’t reach him. His phone goes straight to voicemail. I tried tracking it, and it shows him as nowhere.” Kes slowly made his way back to the couch. “Not entirely unusual for Dean, but it’s been like that for weeks, which is strange. He may go completely off the grid for a few days while on a hunt, but never this long.”
“You’re thinking that Dean is behind all of this, aren’t you,” Trev asked, and Kes flopped back down onto the couch.
“That brings me to the S.O.S. message. It was to you.” Kes reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone. “Here is the message.Crosshairs, the bogies used to be friendlies, don’t trust anyone. They are working for private sector, and Maeve is their targeted asset. If you get this and I’m….”Kes pressed stop, and Trev stared at the black phone. “The rest is cut off. That was all Zumi could recover, but he said more, and we need to know what it is.”
“Well, that won’t happen while he’s in a coma.” Trev tapped his chin. “Friendlies could mean anyone we used to know,” Trev said, but his gut was churning. “I had that weird encounter with Miller a few months back. I told you about that.” Kes nodded. “His words,the Righteous would fall,and how it was all a figment of our imagination still bounces around inside my head. That message keeps me up at night.”
“I have too many things keeping me up at night, but I agree.”
Could Dean have turned against them? Could he have gone back to his father and was attacking the Righteous members from within the cartel organization? If he was, what was his motive?
“No, I don’t believe that Dean would do this. I know what it looks like, but we spent over a month in the desert with that man, and Dean was a team man. He helped drag your ass across the desert when you were at your worst, and it could’ve cost him his own life. That is not the type of man that turns on his unit.” Trev stood and began to pace as he thought out loud. “I handpicked him because of that.”
“I don’t have an answer for that, and there have been so many surprises that I wouldn’t even try to guess, but here is the weird thing. How did Wolf even know about Maeve?”
“That is a good question.” Trev continued to pace as his brain swirled with the new information.
“He called me a couple of weeks back and said he was working a job and didn’t know who to trust anymore. I told him to be careful, but he mentioned nothing of Maeve. Could she have been his job?”
“For whom? The Righteous or the Marshals,” Trev asked and stopped pacing long enough to pour himself another drink.
“No idea why the Righteous would want her. You said it yourself, she has no real record that they would target, but we did help her escape going to prison,” Kes said as Trev sipped the scotch.
“Do we know where she is?”
Trev turned and looked at Kes as he lifted his shoulder. “No clue. I dropped her off on the strip in Vegas, and I haven’t seen her since. Morry hasn’t said anything, and to the best of my knowledge, she wasn’t with Wolf in the accident. At least she wasn’t taken to the hospital or found in the Hummer.”
“We need to find out where the Hummer was taken, and then we need to get our hands on it. We need to figure out if Maeve was in the vehicle, and we have to find out if she was taken or if she’s hiding and still trying to reach Morry if she hasn’t already. Wolf said she is an asset. That could only mean that she is important to someone.”
“Sure, but who and why would they frame her for murder and then call her an asset? None of this makes sense. It’s like a puzzle we’re trying to solve without the image to reference.”
They sat in silence and stared at one another, neither of them coming up with any answers. “Well, to start with, let’s find that Hummer and pay whatever we need to to get our hands on it. Then I guess we need to wait and see what Wolf can remember once he is awake.”
“I will make some calls and see where it was towed.” Kes hit a number on his phone and walked to the other side of the office.
Trev pulled out his phone and tried to call Morry, but her phone went straight to voicemail. A reoccurring theme lately. He decided not to leave a message just in case it was intercepted. This was the kind of information you got in person.
Hitting end, he looked over at Kes, then at the picture on the table. Dean’s smiling face stared back at him, and maybe it was naïve of him, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe that Dean had gone rogue.
There were many things in this life that Trev had gotten wrong over the years, but a judgment of character wasn’t one of them. It was clear that they were under attack, and at the moment, the enemy had the upper hand. The question remained, what the hell was going on?
It was dark when they rolled back onto Legion property. Morry could see the lights of the buildings and the security fence in the distance. It always amazed her that she’d taken this place from a single dingy long building— that she wouldn’t have let a rat eat off the floor in—to the thriving spot it was.
There were many bumps along the road, and she had scars on her body to prove that she’d paid with blood, sweat, and tears. But now there was a full-time mechanic garage for all the vehicles. A storage area for all the merch they moved, including a large bar for those in the club, complete with very large bouncers who worked the doors to keep those from the clinic out. There was a large dorm-type spot with rooms for the club guys and a separate wing for the sweetbutts. Then, of course, there was the clinic. It had surgery rooms, a full-time doctor, therapy sessions, a mess hall, mandatory classes for any degree they wanted, and a barn she built for the handful of therapy horses.
