Page 22 of The Devil's Conflict

Bullet nods. “I’m going to see my woman then while we wait.”

I smirk. “Might want to lock the door since your offspring seem to always like to open it.”

His grin is quick and fast. “Where’s the fun in that?” Then he stalks out and I just chuckle and shake my head. If I ever have a woman, that’s the kind of relationship I want. But I don’t have the time or inclination, so I guess I’ll just have to deal with Bullet and Rose instead.

Liar.

Again, I ignore that little voice. I don’t need that thought in my head. Not right now. Instead, I head out of the room, locking it behind me and head down the hall to the main room. I head over to the bar and Sandy walks over and smiles at me. “We’ll be set for when we open,” she assures me. “And Katie’s got a good handle on everything. The servers, we’ll see, but Rose had them running drills for a couple of hours, so it’s sink or swim.”

I nod. “Alright. I’ve got some club stuff to handle tonight, but I’ll be around for the busier part of the night. Rose agreed to hang around, so if I’m not here, see her and she’ll get it figured out.”

“Sure thing, Boss.” She turns and heads back over to Katie, who doesn’t even glance my way. Hopefully, she gets over her shyness, or we might run into some problems.

I turn and stop when I see both servers heading my way. I barely manage to keep my expression neutral when I see the way they look me over before giving me flirtatious smiles. I bite backa sigh. These two are going to be trouble, I can already tell. But if they do their jobs, I can’t say much.

“Hey, Sniper,” Amanda, the one on the left, practically purrs. “We just wanted to make sure that you’re doing okay? Did you need anything?”

“We’re happy to help,” the other, Blair, asks huskily, leaning into me, and fluttering her lashes delicately.

“You both set up for tonight?” I ask briskly, careful to look around the room critically and not at them. I can all but feel the waves of annoyance from them that I’m not giving them the attention they’re looking for.

“All handled,” Amanda promises brightly, lighting touching my forearm. “We can handle a lot when we work together.”

“And we can handle anything you want to throw at us. Even if it’s at the same time,” Blair adds softly, touching my other arm.

Fuck, the men are going to lose their shit with these two. I just have to hope that they don’t go after the taken men or shit is going to go off the rails.

“Good. Then you can help Sandy and Katie get the bar set up, and if there is still time after that, you can help in the kitchen,” I say briskly, stepping back from them. Best to make sure I’m discouraging this now.

Both women share a quick look, and I nearly groan when I see the determination in their eyes when they both look back at me. Fuck. “Sure thing, honey,” Blair replies. “But if you need anything, you come and find us.” Then they move toward the bar, hips swaying and round asses bouncing just enough that I have to force myself to look away.

Damn it to hell. I’m too old for this shit. But I’m a man, so I can appreciate some fine ass when it’s in front of me. I’m old, not dead.

I head back down the hall to the store room, opening it back up and going inside. “Fucking hell, can’t even go in my ownfucking office,” I mutter. Considering the noises I faintly heard on the other side of the door when I walked by, it’ll be a bit before Bullet joins me again. I glance around the room, trying to figure out if there is anywhere else Dagger could have hidden it, just in case this turns out to be a dead end.

I spend the next twenty minutes searching through more boxes and in crates that have collected layers upon layers of dust but come up empty. Though I’m not all that surprised. These would have been easier access to someone possibly finding it. If Dagger had a secret second journal, then he wouldn’t have made it easy to find. Though dry walling it behind a huge-ass cabinet seems a bit extreme.

Then again, Dagger did something of the same in his room so it would make sense that he would do that here. I walk back over to the wall, running my hands slowly and carefully over the area again. The one in his room looked like the wall had never been touched, but there was just the tiniest lip that you could feel with your finger when you touched it, but it would be invisible to the naked eye. But here, it doesn’t seem to be the case. Perhaps because he only planned on coming back for this if absolutely necessary. Or it could be nothing is behind this and it’s just a forgotten repair.

The door opens, and I turn and see Stone and Bullet stepping inside. Bullet looks relaxed, and Stone looks irritated. “You opened the door, didn’t you?” I chuckle.

“Fuck off,” Stone huffs as he moves to my side. “Next time, put a fucking sign on the door.”

“Learn to fucking knock,” Bullet tosses back. “And teach your kid that skill too.” Stone flips him off, still looking at the wall.

“Dagger didn’t do this,” Stone says confidently. “This looks too clean to be his work. The shit he did when he was a Prospect and after when he worked with the construction company was messy as hell.”

“Any point in opening it up?” I ask him.

“Dad said something about that old Prospect helping, so I think it’s better to open up to make sure. I don’t remember if that Matthew prick spent any time with the company, or if he had the skills to do this kind of work or not. But can’t knock the possibility.”

“Then open it up,” Bullet orders. “The sooner we have our answers, the sooner we know if we need to intensify our searches at the other businesses.”

Stone nods and gets to work on carefully removing that section of the wall. It’s messy work, but once it’s pulled away, he pulls a flashlight from his tool belt and peers inside. “Well, I’ll be damned,” I hear him mutter and reach inside. Then he pulls out what looks like a small notebook.

Stone hands it to Bullet, who quickly opens it and scans the pages. He curses and holds out the notebook to me. I take it and narrow my eyes when I see Dagger’s handwriting throughout the pages. But then, when I start reading, I curse, too, because it’s just gibberish that makes no sense. “What the hell are we supposed to do with this?”

“Dagger clearly hid it, which means it means something,” Stone mutters, also sounding annoyed. “And he’s clearly got it written in code in case someone finds it so that someone would probably think it fell out when they were putting up the wall. I mean, look at some of these pages with designs of the wall and dimensions.”

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