Page 26 of Cruel Savior

“We’ll talk to her when she’s ready. For now, we are going to work the information.”

“Which is?”

"Tel was able to trace the order for the box delivery to Turner's house to a shell company in Seattle. We thought it was a dead end, but when he was investigating some of the payments going in and out of the new MC out of Seattle, he noticed similarities."

"What?" several of the members all echoed together.

"Are you certain?" I asked.

JD and Tel were both nodding.

"So, this new group that seems to be moving in and absorbing Frank's operation is associated with whomever killed the FBI agent and is currently trying to track Mandy?" I repeated the obvious because I couldn't seem to wrap my head around it. "How is that even possible? Every sign of this murder and the associated threats comes across as personal. Why would some conglomerate care about avenging Frank's death? That doesn't make any sense. If they aren't family..."

We were missing something. There had to be a connection beyond this. "We need to know who's behind the corporation."

"Agreed. However, they've buttoned up their operation pretty tight. I'm honestly surprised we found this. I think someone screwed up when they sent that box. Maybe they didn't understand what they were dealing with."

"You think it was the MC?"

"There's a better than decent chance. Their president isn't as much of an idiot as we wish he was though. He's former Army Intelligence. Tel broke that file too. Got himself into trouble overseas and court marshaled. He had connections though and a very high-priced lawyer got him out of a less than honorable discharge with minimal time in a military brig. But mistakes can happen."

Cash whistled beside me. "That's a lot to unpack."

"Right?!"I said. "It sounds like whoever is behind this corporation has been busy making plans for quite some time. Like since maybe before Frank's death. Is that possible?”

“Anything is possible. I’m not ruling out anything at this point. Frank was a mean bastard, but he had more tricks up his sleeve than a shittastic magician. I wouldn’t put it past him to have planned for what happened after his death. Most of those mafia types do. Although usually, there is a hierarchy in their organization that is followed unless someone fights to usurp the heir. And we had enough people on the inside of his organization that should have known if that was the case. Especially if there was someone being groomed to take his place.”

I pressed my thumbs to my temples and rubbed the headache that now pounded there. I didn’t need any more evidence to know that we were in this much deeper than we’d known. I should have been surprised that these two cases might be connected, but I wasn’t. It seemed to be the way these things tended to go.

As we all moved to the conference room where we held Church, Tel began laying out all the facts and figures he’d uncovered.

I wasn’t going to lie, while the information was critical in connecting the dots, it was far from sexy. I wanted to hear about guns, drugs, and violence. Those were the kinds of crime I wanted to sink my teeth in. Money-laundering, embezzlement, and mail fraud were not my specialties.

By the time Tel finished spelling it out hours later, I had to admit it all looked kind of iffy and coincidental. But again, I didn’t believe in coincidences. All this information was more than enough for me to jump onboard the Mazzeo train. We thought our mix-up in the Seattle mafia had ended with Frank’s death and Izzy’s refusal to touch anything to do with his business.

Apparently, that was not the case.

I rubbed the back of my neck and stretched my head from side to side. “I need to get back to Amanda,” I said to JD. “It’s been too long.”

Both of them looked at the time on their cellphones. “Yeah. I think we’re about done here. Tel has all of his surveillance set up, and to be honest, we’re gonna need this guy to make another move.”

“I hope you aren’t suggesting we use Mandy as bait.”

From the look on JD’s face that’s exactly what he was suggesting.

“She’s safe here. As long as she doesn’t wander off, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about. If this fucker comes here looking for her, then so be it. Saves us some time of hunting him. But we’re also going to have a crew on both the Turner house and his hunting cabin. He’s not getting close again without us knowing.”

“That’s assuming he plans to be the one making the moves. If he’s part of that corporate mafia group, then he’s got countless thugs at his disposal.”

JD shrugged. “Don’t matter either way. We’re ready. If he sends someone to do his dirty work, we’ll nab him and get the information we need any way we have to.”

Fuck. This situation was getting dark. JD had just implied that we’d be using the basement again. How long had it been since we’d had to torture anyone?

“I’ve got to go.” I palmed my phone as I stood and then shoved it into my pocket. I had a woman I desperately wanted to talk to waiting at my place, and we were long overdue for a conversation.

“Check in later, so we can figure out our next steps,” JD said, before turning his attention back to the rest of the men gathered around the table.

I smiled at his dismissal. He likely wouldn’t admit it, but our president seemed to have a soft spot for matchmaking. This wasn’t the first time he’d made overt nudges.

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