Page 37 of The Devil's Ice

“Denton’s dead.”

“He –what?”

“Dead. Murdered.”

Scars paused, and in a matter of seconds, he had adjusted to this new reality. “How?”

“He was dragged to death.”

“Like – dragged behind acar?”

“A motorcycle, Bale told me.”

The mood in the room sharpened immediately, went up several notches and gear levels.

“How does he know that for sure?” Scars asked. “That it was a bike?”

“Because Denton was still chained up to it when they found the body.” King sighed. “Well…piecesof the body. He was scattered over about two miles, and had no skin or muscle on his front at all. He had to be identified by a tattoo on his shoulder, since there was no face left to speak of.”

“He was dragged on hisfront?”

“Yeah. Chained by his wrists to the back of the bike, it looks like. His insides are on the outside, torn out of his body and left all over the road.”

“Jesus Christ,” Scars breathed; this wasfartoo vivid imagery. Scars had seen exactly one dragging injury in his life, and it was one of the most gruesome things he’d ever laid eyes on, with the skin and muscle gone, ripped off right down to ribcage and intestines… andthathad been a legitimate accident and the guy had been dragged under the car all of maybe fifty feet. “I’m sorry, man. I know that you two went way back.”

“So help me get who did this.” King’s gray eyes were absolute steel, but still watchful. “Help me get fucking Viper Grant.”

“He’s been pretty busy, huh?” Scars commented casually, as if he was talking about the weather. “Between kidnapping two kids in Pennsylvania, and trying to kill two people in Colorado, and somehow getting the jump on a seasoned cop in Utah – he’sclearlya man who has too much fucking time on his hands. He seems to be way more informed about us than we presumed, too.”

King was silent, and Ice and Scars exchanged quick glances. The silence was unsettling in a weird way, like King was actually considering whether to tell them what was on his mind… like he wasn’t sure that he fully trusted them with what he was thinking.

“King,” Scars said quietly, deciding to broach the touchy subject. “How sure are you that this was The Hellions? And if it was, how sure are you that they’re doing all of this on their own?”

King shot him a look. “How sure areyou?”

“I’m not.” Scars held out his hands, palms-up. “That’s why I’m asking.”

“I’m also not so fucking sure. Not anymore.”

Silence fell again, but this felt different: it was the quiet of smart, suspicious men privately rearranging and reorganizing their thoughts. Like something was coming into focus that they hadn’t quite pinned down yet – something that was going to change the whole picture, and not for the better.

“Bale,” Ice finally said, uttering the only word that was echoing over and over in his head. “Is it possible?”

King exhaled, hard. “I wouldn’t have thought so, man. I mean, Denton vouched for him without reservation or hesitation, and in my experience, the man hasneverbeen wrong about a colleague, notoncein more than ten years of us working together. The man’s instincts were world-class. Better than mine, in a few cases.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Scars said carefully. “Was this Denton’s first at being wrong?”

“Maybe.” King stared at the other men, and he was totally focused again. “Maybe.”

“So, maybe we walk through that possibility,” Scars said. “We go back to the very beginning, and we say that Bale is dirty, and we treat it as fact. If it’s true – and we’re saying that it is – what happens first?”

“He convinces Denton to bring him on board because of his experience in the gang unit,” King said. “He uses our trust in Denton to give him credibility, and then he’s in the door here with all of us.”

“Uh-huh,” Scars agreed. “Then he tells us that he has a CI inside The Hellions, but we can’t know anything about him, because he’s high-up in the club, and he’d be at risk if word got out. For all we know, hedoesactually have a man inside, but I doubt that he’d use any intel gained from him to help us.”

“Right.” King sighed. “So then Bale’s ouronlypoint of contact to the club, and he moves back and forth between us and his mystery man freely – assuming said man exists – reporting what he says his CI has toldhim. Which he can tell us is anything at all, right?”

“And maybe Denton gets suspicious about something,” Scars added. “I mean, he had his own contacts in the Utah MC world – maybe he caught wind of something that made him question Bale.”

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