Page 43 of Triple the Danger

Savage nodded. “We’d be the same. Alright, we know they’re smart enough to evade us, but they won’t be lying low for long. If they’re willing to try that shit in broad daylight, they’re getting desperate.”

“The bastard driving wasn’t skilled for that kind of chase,” the Predators VP, Jag, remarked. He was a quiet guy normally, with hard edges, and a very good second-in-command for their group. With some gray in his scruffy beard, short black hair, eyes a hard cast-iron gray, and a scar on the left side of his jaw, he gave off the unapproachable air of someone you didn’t fuck with. Not if you didn’t want your face bashed in, anyway. Jax had a healthy respect for him. Well, for all of them.

“Yeah, he was all over the road,” Ursa agreed. “I’d have given him a ten percent chance of getting away without crashing the car, but the bastard surprised me.” Their Treasurer, he was one of the larger ones of the group. He stood at six-four, with a thick black beard that Jax was sure had grown even longer since the last time he’d seen him. His hair was a matching black shade, with two intricate braids woven through the top, and his eyes were dark and calculating, no matter the situation or mood. Glitch had mentioned once that his brain never seemed to stop running, and that he loved numbers and odds, which explained his comment on the driver’s chances. Personally, Jax was happy leaving that kind of thing to him.

“We need to figure out where they are,” Rogue grunted. “They can’t be far.”

“We can take a look around town,” Tiger offered, glancing at Simba for confirmation, who nodded his agreement. Tiger was their Sergeant at Arms, standing at six-one with a tidy beard the color of straw, with a bit of silver weaved through. His eyes were a tawny brown, but while the rest of his brothers had plenty of ink, Tiger sported only one visible tattoo on his bicep. It made Jax wonder why he wanted only that one in that spot, but it wasn’t his place to ask.

“Appreciate it,” Savage said with a nod. He looked at Code. “Any luck on IDing this guy?”

Before he could answer, the door to the room flew open, and they all whipped around to find Karissa and Glitch striding in, looking downright livid. “Don’t even think about it,” Glitch warned Savage when he opened his mouth to blast them. She slammed the door behind them. “When my team is here, I’m with them, which means so is Karissa. Which, again, means that we are to be involved alongside our team in any meetings, including ones in this little sanctum. We are not Old Ladies, we are Predators MC members.” Then her venomous gaze sliced toward her team. “And you eight,” she spat, her wrathful indignation a living thing. “We’ll deal with you later, along with the blatant disrespect of not notifying us about Church.” She and Karissa completely ignored their men and went to stand at the back of the room with the Predators.

The room was silent, and the tension was thick. Savage’s expression was thunderous, while Razor and Code looked like they weren’t sure whether to beg for forgiveness or run for cover. Even the Predators looked uneasy, and that was saying something.

Finally, Karissa said, “Are you going to continue, or is there another problem?” There was a biting tone in her voice that told Jax not only was she pissed, she was ready to raise all kinds of hell.

“The two of you,” Savage began icily.

“Stop,” Simba grunted. “They’re right, and you know it. When we’re here, they are members of our club first, and Old Ladies to your club second. We didn’t include them; that’s a slap in the face to any member, including them. The invitation should have been extended, and we fucked up. You have your ways of running your MC, but as much as it’s going to bother you, when we’re here, they are to be included. They’re our members. Their biology shouldn’t matter.”

“This is why women shouldn’t be allowed in MCs,” Ink huffed. Karissa and Glitch leveled him with glares that said they’d like to light him on fire.

“Enough,” Savage barked. “Now, back to what we were discussing. Simba, you and your men are willing to try to find out where these assholes are hiding. Did Glitch get you up to speed on the situation?”

“I’m standing right here and can answer for myself,” Glitch interjected, the biting affront in her voice undeniable. “But yes, I did. I also have information on our third man, if you’d like to hear it. Or would you rather I leave and let you all fumble your way through it?”

“Glitch,” Code warned.

“Fuck off, Code,” Glitch snapped at him.

“For fucks sake,” Savage gritted out. “Just tell us what you found.”

Glitch moved around the table toward Code. When Code went to pull her into his lap, she bared her teeth at him, making him sigh and back off. Instead, she logged in to his computer and pulled up the video from the gate camera, and then a picture. “I ran his face through the recognition system, and it turns out that he is none other than the counterfeit ringleader, Jared Long. He comes from money, and likes to continue making it, it seems. When Jared here was younger, he liked to gamble, and got himself into some trouble with some bookies from his hometown. Mommy and Daddy paid the bookies, but also cut him off until he got himself straightened out. Went to a fancy rehab for the rich and infamous, and six months later, walked out a new man. And I say ‘new’ lightly. Because while he was there, Jared made himself a friend, and they started to cook up some schemes.”

“Wait, there was a second name last time,” Ink remarked excitedly, clearly following where Glitch was going with this.

“Nice to know someone was paying attention,” Glitch said with a wry smile at Ink. Another photo popped up on the screen. “This is who I believe is Long’s second in command in their little ring. Curtis Lin, he’s also a trust fund kid that grew up with all the luxuries he could ever want. Amassed a huge gambling debt and a hardcore addiction to pills, so off he went to rehab after his parents paid off the people after him. Rehab seems to be where Jared and Curtis met and became friends, and was the birthplace of their operation. After leaving rehab, they mostly fell off the radar, other than Jared being hired at a bank, and Curtis going to law school. Both their parents pulled strings to get them to where they are. Jared was hired at a bank that his father invested a hell of a lot of money into, and Curtis’s parents bought his way into Harvard. And considering the grades I saw, they obviously paid off the school and the Bar Association to get him the credentials he needed to practice.”

“Must be nice to be so rich,” Taz quipped, grinning at Glitch.

Glitch ignored him and continued, “After that, they both rose up the ranks, until Jared was the manager, and Curtis set up a small law firm. In all that time, they seemed to have kept themselves out of major debts with bookies, but then, it looks like Curtis got in a little too deep and slid back into his old ways. Owed a local bookie about a hundred grand. He managed to pay that back, though I can’t find where that money came from, because no money was taken from his or his parents accounts. I even checked Jared’s finances, and found nothing.”

“You think that’s when they started making counterfeit bills,” Warg inserted, dark eyes honed on Glitch for confirmation. One of the Predator’s Enforcers, Warg gave off the same intense, don’t-fuck-with-me vibes that they all did. He was a large Black man, standing at six-four, with black hair that he currently had shaved on the sides and braided on top in an intricate style that Jax wasn’t sure how to describe. All he knew was that it made him look hard, edgy. While most of the Predators had beards, Warg sported a thin goatee around his mouth. Tattoos covered his arms, hands, and if he wasn’t mistaken, peeked from under the collar of his shirt.

Glitch nodded. “It would explain why there’s no withdrawals, but the problem disappeared. And our boy Jared here, being a bank manager, would have access to plenty of money and could make sure the counterfeit bills were undetectable.”

“He probably used his own bank to test them,” Vulture, their other Enforcer, suggested, his whiskey brown eyes glaring at the screen. The tallest of their team, the man stood at six-seven and looked like a modern-day Viking. He had a long, thick, dark brown beard; he kept the sides of his head shaved, and wore the rest of his hair in a long, intricate braid that fell down his back. He was covered in ink, and had small gauges in his earlobes. He was also the one that the twins loved to tease Rogue about the most, by calling him “Viking Daddy”.

“Once they perfected their fakes, they would have been able to continue making them and use them wherever they wanted,” Steel agreed, mouth pulled into a grim line. “Fuckers were probably planning it all along.”

“When rich kids get cut off, they either man up or they crumble,” Copper, the final member of the Predators, and their Secretary, sighed. He was Japanese-American, and the shortest member of the group at five-eleven. He was lean and wiry, with black eyes and long black hair that he wore down to his shoulders.

“They probably brought in the others once they got their counterfeits perfect so that nothing could be tied back to just them,” Razor added grimly. “Were you able to figure out who the other members of the ring are?”

“Possibly,” Glitch replied, clicking a few more buttons and popping up another four pictures. “These are some well-known associates of Jared and Curtis; their names match the initials on the papers Saylor found. Are they part of it? Not sure, but it’s looking that way. They all have jobs that could, in one way or another, make them perfect candidates for this kind of team. There’s Cyril Freeman, a post office worker; Aaron Blair, a truck driver; Seth Rush, a corrections officer; and finally, Nathaniel Kelly, who works for the Coast Guard.”

“They’ve got every avenue covered but air,” Jax remarked, sitting forward as he stared at the pictures on the screen. “Mail, road, jails or cops, and water.”

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