Page 88 of Devil's Due

I interrupt. “Only one way out for you, painful or easy. Up to you whether you want to go to your grave with your teeth intact or gone.”

Demon puts his hand on my shoulder. “Or we can make this even easier. Way I see it, you don’t have a club to betray anymore. The question is whether the feds will take all of you down, or just those already convicted. You tell us what we want to know, I could be persuaded to let you ride out of town.”

Another look exchanged between them. Then Cray’s attention turns to Demon whose proposal clearly seems more attractive than mine.

“You’ll really let us go?”

Demon shrugs. “Depends how much of the truth you tell us. Keep playing it dumb, I’ll let Beef here take his time.”

I might fight, but I don’t like it. I prefer it when they can fight back. I haven’t got the ability to distance myself in the same way as an enforcer does it. After Blade’s finished with a man back in Tucson he throws up, that’s no secret though we don’t talk about it. I wouldn’t mind betting Mace, who’s currently looking calm and collected and ready to go a few more rounds, is similar. But if it’s to help Stevie, I’ll swallow my repulsion down and use that anger inside me to use an unarmed and helpless man as a punchbag. When they stay silent, I take another step forward and draw back my fist.

“Stop! For the ever-lovin’ fuck of God, stop!”

“God’s not here,” I growl menacingly, though staying my hand. “You’re dealing with Satan.”

“We were just following orders,” Cray cries out. His betrayal causing tears to roll down his cheeks.

“Who gave you the orders?”

“Mad Bull.”

“Your president? He’s in the pen.”

“He got a message out.”

“Your orders were to…?”

“Find the blind bitch and take her out of the picture. He gave us the info about where she was. There’s an app on my phone, it traces the dog’s tracker.”

“Took his phone from him, Prez.” Thunder steps up and passes it over.

Demon looks at it, then moves over to Cray. His hands are tied behind him, Demon manages to awkwardly get his finger on the right spot. He plays with a few keys, then nods. “Okay, I can open it myself now. I’ll get Cad to look at it.”

He shows me the screen. He’s found the fucking tracking app easily. Every step Stevie had taken with her dog, they were able to follow.

“Why didn’t you come immediately after she was reunited with the dog?” I question, harshly.

“At first we didn’t think the dog would recover. It spent so much fuckin’ time with that vet. Then thought she’d moved on without it. Didn’t bother to check, then one day we did. Then we went after the signal. Buck came up first and was watching the cabin from a distance as we still didn’t know she was with the dog. We saw you, saw your patch. Then saw the dog and the bitch. Knew we had to come prepared. Needed to get brothers up from LA.”

“So you came prepared to kill her?” Demon asks, his tone more reasonable than mine. Mind you, he’s not talking about the woman he’s coming closer and closer to claiming.

Both men nod, or Seeker does the best he can in his painful position.

“That was my woman you were going to kill,” I observe through gritted teeth. My comment makes Demon’s eyes flash to mine. I reply to his unspoken question with a slight raise of my chin. No doubt about it in my head. The intense rage I feel faced with these two men tells me my gut feeling’s right.She’s mine.I’m never going to let danger come close to her again or risk losing her.

“Man, we weren’t going tokillher.”

“You threw a fuckin’ bomb in her house.” I round on Cray incredulously.

“We were told to silence her. After she proved difficult to take out, we came up with a different plan.”

Seeker, not seeming to realise the danger he’s in, adds, “She’s a good-looking bitch. And being blind, she wouldn’t have minded who she was opening her thighs to.”

Before anyone can stop me, he has my fist in his stomach. As he tries to draw his legs up and gasps for breath, I turn on the man tied to the chair and he gets my fist to his jaw so hard I feel bone crack.

“Way to get them talking, Brother,” Mace casually observes, but there’s no censure in his tone. He knows, as well as I do, we’ve probably got all we’re going to get out of them for now.

It’s who gave them access to the app that’s the question we need answered. We might punch them to within an inch of their lives, but they’re not going to be telling what they don’t know. I’ve been around clubs long enough to know this pair are typical foot soldiers. They follow instructions, they don’t issue them.

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