Page 53 of Bullet

“Something ongoing, then?”

Bullet rubs his hands down his muscular thighs, caged in those soft, soft jeans. My breath rattles around in my lungs.

“Something that they need the money, more money than Harold has, in order to cover up?”

“If I was a brat kid with my nose so far up daddy’s asshole, what ways could I get myself into trouble?” Bullet has an odd way of putting things, and even stranger is the fact that I find myself appreciating it and wanting to laugh and be playful.

Focus. “Gambling.”

“Possibly. Loan sharks.”

It’s obviously subconscious, but Bullet keeps tracing a finger over a hole in his jeans just above his right knee, working at the frayed edges.

“I’ve seen firsthand how Donny got drunk and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

I was thinking something along that line too. “So many colleges have frat stuff going on. Maybe it’s not just him. Maybe it’s other rich, spoiled kids in their little boys’ club, causing trouble. The kind of trouble that their daddies want hushed up, but they had the means to pay for. Harold might have needed more money.”

“He has properties all over the place. Other assets. He’s loaded.”

I type a few more lines on my document.Frat parties, primal parties? Cover ups? Cash poor?The words cause something ugly to churn sickeningly in my gut.

“What if he needed the cash fast and it was all tied up in investments? What if dumping everything would tip someone off? He’d either have to sell at a loss to sell quickly, or he’d have to pay taxes and dues. But, if that’s true, why not just ask the club for a loan?”

“Why work for it for years when you could just take it?” Bullet finally stops picking at the hole but leans forward, folding his hands in his lap in a pose that makes all his shoulder muscles ripple unreasonably, and the veins in his forearms stand out starkly. “Not steal, but that circles back to your original idea about blackmail. He was making a good salary, sure, but if he needed a massive sum, the club wouldn’t have been able to give that kind of a loan.”

“But if the club was blackmailed, they’d have to find a way to get the cash or risk having certain people go to jail.”

“Yes.”

I stop typing and reach for a pen. The club supplied the lawyerly kind—the ones you have to twist up, and so heavy they could be used as a blunt force object. Leaning back in the chair, I play with it, twisting it up and down.

“Circling back around to Donny… it’s not like they teach Hacking 101 in law school. I’m fine with technology, but I can’t just jump on the dark web, and I don’t have people I know who could do that for me. Other lawyers probably have to, or have hired a PI at some point, but I was never there myself.”

Bullet follows my messy train of thought. This has gone deeper than whatever I was trying to order in my mind earlier. “If something exists, it’s obviously been buried so deep that Wizard might not even find it. It might take some groundwork, but we can do it.”

I tap the pen on my lower lip, but stop immediately when Bullet’s eyes are drawn straight there, darkening. “If that fails, we could always go for broke and do the one thing Harold doesn’t expect.”

He waits for me to continue. I try not to go back to hiding behind my laptop now that his gaze is entirely focused on my face. I think for a moment and speak, “He knows the club. He knows Tyrant is a good man who respects his community and the people in it. Sure, the club might have some cops here on the payroll and you’ve paid people to look the other way, but the fact that you haven’t attracted attention at any other level is quite significant. Blending in with your community and helping out so that people see you as more hero, or at least anti-hero, than criminal villains is a great strategy.”

“I don’t think it’s a strategy for Tyrant,” he protests. “He grew up here. He has family here.”

“For him, it’s clearly not, but that’s just semantics. Harold thinks the club will be fair and play nice. That whatever he has that could be released could do some serious damage. What’s the last thing Tyrant would ever do to someone?”

“Disrespect them.”

“Which includes?”

“Kidnapping, torture, maiming, murder, blackmail.” He counts the points off on his fingers.

“Donny is just right there in Seattle. He might have some security and maybe even a guard, but I think they’re so confident in Tyrant’s nature—or the club being paralyzed by Harold’s implied threats—that he hasn’t felt the need to remove his son from the situation. The last thing we’d want to do, when we’re battling a court case, is to make things worse by going near the little bastard.”

“You think that if Wizard can’t find anything on him, we’d have to kidnap him and get it out of him ourselves?” Bullet asks. It’s clear how distasteful he finds the idea. I never thought he’d enjoy it, but something deep inside me still unclenches. It is clear, though, that he relishes the prospect of having this over and done, so that he and his club can stop worrying.

“Or just kidnap him and hold him for ransom. You think Harold is going to release a bunch of shit on the club when his precious son is in someone’s basement and he wants him back in one piece? The unpredictability of what Harold thought was a sure bet would send a pretty glaring message.” I can’t believe I’ve actually just suggested that the club hold someone for ransom. I’m not even officially on the club’s payroll, and already I’m thinking like an outlaw. Then again, sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.

“What if all of this is just a misunderstanding? Donny acts like a prick and whines to his father, Harold gets mad and lashes out—”

“Why not just talk it out, then? Why disappear? There’s something that just doesn’t make sense, and if it’s not Donny, I don’t know what the hell it could be.”

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