“Thanks, brother.”
I hung up and headed outside, where the sound was loud. They were close. I walked to the end of the driveway as the roar of engines died.
Piper had just parked his bike in front of the house next door. And with him, as usual, was Blazer.
I was almost relieved to see them. At least it wasn’t friends of Sanchuk’s. If he had any.
They got off their bikes and headed over as I walked out to meet them. I didn’t really care whatever they might’ve done last night to help me or Summer; still didn’t particularly want them on her property.
At least they seemed to know it. We stood in the street, blocked from Summer’s house by the trees. Even if she looked out a window, she wouldn’t see us.
“Morning, Ronan,” Piper said, just like we were neighbors, chatting across the fence over a morning coffee. “Nice day to be alive, wouldn’t you say?”
“Any day I wake up is a nice day to be alive.”
Especially when I wake up next to Summer.
He chuckled. “True enough, brother.”
Brother, was it?
What did he think, because he’d saved my ass last night, we were brothers now?
Or maybe that’s what he wanted me to think. More chance I might feel eager to do him a solid in return.
“Any chance you’re here to tell me why Blair Sanchuk was arrested last night?” I inquired.
“I can’t say why he was arrested. The inner workings of the Vancouver Police Department are a mystery to a man like me. But Blazer might have some idea.”
I looked at Blazer.
“Let’s just say that the first time our boys paid a visit to Sanchuk’s apartment,” Blazer informed me, “it wasn’t nearly as clean as it was when you saw it.”
I considered that.
First time…?
“You got evidence?” I ventured. “Something that could be used against him?”
“Oh, we got evidence,” Piper said.
“The man didn’t exactly cover his tracks,” Blazer said.
“He had product stashed all over the apartment,” Piper supplied. “Found it in about fourteen different places, was it?”
“Something like that,” Blazer said.
I didn’t bother bursting their bubble by mentioning they’d missed one stash. The one the caretaker found.
“You turned it all over to the cops?”
“Riiight,” Piper drawled. “Because I walked into a meetin’ with a cop and handed him a pile of meth, and he believed me that it wasn’t mine. I wore my Sunday best and gave him a pinky swear. We’re friends on Facebook now.”
Yeah, I really didn’t need the sarcasm.
“It wasn’t the product we found that’s gonna do him in,” Blazer informed me. “It’s the intel. Like his phones, and all the shit in them. And the product the cops found when they tore apart that motel room last night.”
I considered that. “You found phones at Sanchuk’s place?”
“Yup,” Piper said. “Two phones. Couple of SIM cards. A laptop. We got some real tech savvy guys in our crew. Bet you didn’t know that.”
I said nothing.
“Cracked into that shit,” he went on, “unearthed a whole trail of skeletons in Sanchuk’s closet. Somehow, that evidence made it into the hands of the police. Like I said, I don’t pretend to know how the police do their jobs. They do theirs, I do mine.”
“Right.”
“But I guess the boys down at the cop shop are all rock hard right now over the idea of takin’ down a member of an out-of-country criminal organization that’s been tryin’ to set up shop in our fine city.” He shrugged. “So I hear, anyway.”
I was still fucking curious how that whole arrangement came about. But however it happened, the fact was he’d somehow served up whatever evidence his club found to the police, and I was grateful.
He didn’t have to do that.
After I left the motel last night, Piper could’ve done whatever he wanted with Sanchuk. Dead, in prison, or driven out of the province, what did it matter to Piper? No matter where Sanchuk ended up, we’d all be rid of him. He didn’t have to turn him over to the police, let the authorities deal with the problem. That was hardly the Kings’ MO.
The Kings were outlaws, plain and simple. They didn’t do things by the rules.
Which meant there was a reason they did last night. A deeply calculated reason.
“We found somethin’ else in Sanchuk’s place,” he told me. “A bunch of women’s clothing. Dresses and lingerie and shit, really nice, stuffed in some plastic bags. Had ‘stolen goods’ written all over it, so to speak. My boys seized it along with everything else. Had no idea who it might belong to, and once they went through it, they dumped it. But they found this, too.” He dug in the pocket of the leather Kings cut he was wearing under his dark hoodie. He held something out to me, and I took it.
It was a woman’s delicate gold ring. It had three small diamonds in it, and when I turned it over, it was engraved inside.
Summer.
I’d never seen the ring before, but I knew what it was.
It was the ring Summer’s dad had given her.
Sanchuk. He fucking stole that wardrobe case outside her show.
For no other reason, maybe, than he was a fucking creep, and he had the opportunity.
I looked at Piper. He said nothing, but he was waiting. Gauging my reaction.
He had to know that handling things this way—turning Sanchuk over to the police, and turning Summer’s ring over to me—would go a long way to winning my favor. Sanchuk would be put away behind bars, so I wouldn’t have to worry about him creeping on Summer, and at the same time, Piper earned himself some respect with the Players’ new head of security.
He probably knew about the position Jude had offered me this morning. And he was probably counting on the fact that I’d take the offer, because of my attachment to Summer.
I could practically hear them talking about me, planning it all out.
In my new position—if I accepted it—I’d be working closely with Jude and
