Page 53 of The Devil's Ice

Wolf Connor and those babies… they’re my ‘get out of jail free’ card, and also my ‘gimme shelter’ card. Time to play my hand.

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“So that’s everything that we know for sure,” Scars finished. “I wish that I had some news about Wolf, but I don’t.”

The Road Devils all stared at their President, visibly stunned at the bombshells that he’d just lobbed into the middle of the conference room. Now they knew everything about Denton, and Bale, and the (supposed) CI, and the plan concocted by Wolf and Scars that had been intended to keep Wolf safe – a plan that was as useful as an fire poker made of ice, now that Bale had been exposed as the treacherous piece of shit that he was.

“King?” Scars turned to the other man. “Anything that I forgot?”

“You covered it,” King said. “I think we’re all up to speed.”

“So what now?” Cowboy asked. “I mean, I get why storming into Utah and trying to take the Hellions clubhouse is a terrible idea all over the place, but do we haveanymoves? Anything at all?”

“Well, we can always get hands on this Bale fucker,” Kansas snarled. “Maybe he’d come up with a few helpful ideas if Ice got some time alone in a room with him?”

Every eye turned to Ice now, standing silently in the back of the room as usual, arms crossed. He shrugged.

“I have no objections to some one-on-one time with that motherfucker,” Ice said calmly. “I don’t know how we’d be able to trust anything that he told me, though. Someone this deep into double- and triple-lives would have backup plans for his backup plans.”

The men digested that with disquiet. Ice was right, and they knew it.

“So – what?” Saint burst out. “We gotnothing? We leave Wolf on his own, we just give up on Dux and Drake’s kids?”

“Did I say that?” Scars said, his blue eyes shining with that dangerous glint that every man in the room knew meant danger. “Huh?”

“Sorry,” Saint muttered. “I was out of line.”

“I have an idea for a way to get close to The Hellions, like through a trapdoor that they won’t see –”

Scars was interrupted by a tentative knock at the door, and Ice shot his President a look before opening it. Every member of the MC was present, and it was an iron-clad rule that when the club was assembled in this room with the door closed, it was like they’d entered another dimension: none of them existed to the outside world. The fact that someone was actually interrupting either meant that they had a death wish – and Ice had his gun out now, in case he got to grant that wish – or some other horrible tragedy had taken place, and the news couldn’t wait.

To a man, they hoped that Ice was going to have to shoot whoever was standing there, because they weren’t sure that they could handle any more bad news.

Ice opened the door, glared down at Elle standing there, wringing her hands.

“Elle!” Viking crossed the room immediately. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, I know I shouldn’t,” she said. “I just thought – I don’t think this can wait.”

“What can’t?” Scars demanded.

“A call came in on the bar landline,” Elle said. “I think you need to take it, Scars. He’s calling back in two minutes, he said.”

“Who is?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t give a name.”

“So why do you think I need to talk to him?”

“Because,” Elle said, her voice shaking. “He said that he can help you get Wolfandthe babies back, but he doesn’t have much time.”

“Why not?” King demanded.

“I don’t know. He didn’t say any more than that.”

“Shit.” Scars hurried across the room, nodded at Ice, King and Cain. “You three come with me, watch the bar doors while I’m on the phone. The rest of you, get your asses into the parking lot and over to Blue Dragon and the garage. This feels like a fucking set-up and I don’t like it.”

The men rushed down the hallway, out of the bar, to their various assigned areas. They shot suspicious looks around them as they walked, not trusting anything or anyone that they saw, and thanked Christ that to a man, they were armed.

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