“You talk to your contact lately in Cali with those mattresses?” a voice asks from behind me.
Turning around, I see Taz there, a clipboard in hand. Jerking my chin up, my brows furrow. “Not recently. There a problem?”
Taz shakes his head. “Not necessarily, but we learned with our last supplier to always keep them on their toes. Need someone to take a road trip up there, make sure he remembers who exactly he’s dealing with. Thought I’d give you the opportunity to join since he’s your guy.”
“It’s Punchers territory,” I point out.
I don’t have a problem heading up there at all, not in the fucking slightest. Santa Rosa is goddamn calling my name, I’m so ready to skin a couple Punchers alive at this point, I would volunteer for just about anything that gets me anywhere near their clubhouse.
Taz’s eyes widen, obviously reading my eager look correctly. “You can’t do anything, Hawk. Dragon would lose his shit,” he hisses.
Leaning forward, I tilt my head to the side. “Those fucks took your wife. Your woman. You seriously just going to let Dragon pussyfoot around until they do something else, until they rape or kill her?”
Taz’s body jerks and his chest puffs up in anger. He leans forward, his jaw clenched. “Don’t fuck with me, Hawk. If you’re thinking you’ll get me all hot and pissed off and I’ll follow your plan to get in there and go behind Dragon’s back, you got another thing coming. I know that I’ll get retribution for what they did. Patience, brother.”
“Fuck that,” I snarl. “Patience got us nothin’ but Trista taken.”
He shakes his head once. “I’m not givin’ up on Dragon, not yet. If you’re going to fly off of the handle and ruin it all, I won’t tell you when they’re headed up there.”
Pride. It’s a fucker of a thing. Instead of telling him to mind his own shit and I’ll do what I want, I grind my teeth together, gnashing them and wearing down the enamel as I hold back everything that I want to say.
“I’ll bide my time, but just to say, if he doesn’t have a solid plan soon, I ain’t holdin’ back shit.”
“Nobody would expect you to and I’ll be the first one at your back.”
I snort, unsure if I believe him. Doesn’t matter, once this shit is done with Avah, my priority is the Donkey Punchers, with or without Dragon’s approval.
“Guys are leaving in three days, figured you didn’t want to head out that soon, but that’s the only time I could schedule them between runs to head out that far north,” Taz announces.
“I’ll be with them. Need to see Marshall anyway, it’s been a while.”
Taz jerks his chin and I turn around at the sound of someone’s boots approaching behind me. I’m surprised to see that it’s Worm, our resident computer whiz and intelligence guy. I asked him yesterday to find out what he could on this senator that has used Avah’s services before, especially since she refused to give me very much information about him.
“You are a fast motherfucker,” I call out.
He jerks his head, but he’s not smiling. Instead, he’s got his brows furrowed and a frown on his face as he closes the distance between us.
“Got a place you wanna talk?” he asks as his greeting.
“Right here is as good as any.”
He nods his head a couple of times, then turns and walks over to the picnic table that’s in the shade. I notice as he’s walking away that he has a stack of papers in his hand. Following behind him, I sink down on the bench across from him and place my forearms on the table.
“You wanna tell me what the fuck you’re acting like this for?” I demand.
Worm clears his throat. “Yeah,” he rasps. “This guy, he’s bad news, brother. Not just bad, like he’s a dick bad news, like he’s in with the wrong fucking people bad news.”
Leaning forward, I grin. “Brother, we’re the wrong fucking people kind of news.”
He chuckles, though it’s a nervous type of laugh. “We’re fucking saints compared to the crowd he hangs around, Hawk.”
“Explain,” I demand.
“All those guys we took out, the ones who bought, kept, and abused women? Yeah, he is part of an underground group that visits one another on the monthly to play with their pets.”
There’s a moment of silence. He pauses and I inhale a deep breath. “Why didn’t we already get rid of his ass?” I demand.
“He flies under the radar, uses a pseudonym with documentation for that name. He was a ghost and even when I had his real name, it took some serious fucking illegal digging to figure it all out. No way in fuck would I have ever found it had I not been able to piece it all together with Avah’s involvement.”
Just thinking about the fact that this motherfucker has been inside of Avah, that he was a client, and he’s the kind of man that he is. Thinking about the fact that he’s had her, alone, and now he’s stalking her. It makes me want to take him out and make him pay for every misdeed he’s ever done to a woman.
“He’s protected, Hawk,” Worm says, reading my mind, or maybe he wants to do exactly what I do with this bastard.
“He has to be alone sometime,” I point out.
Worm shakes his head. “He’s not. He has two men, his guards. They are with him twenty-four seven. That doesn’t include the government security that is with him as well. His personal guards though, they know everything. They are with him always.”
“Fuck,” I hiss. “There won’t be any way to get in and out quietly.”
Worm shakes his head. “No way, and I can’t disable his security. He’s locked up fucking tight.”
“Any way to
