Page 45 of Pope's Penance

“Your family?Boy-O, we both know those kids came straight from my lusty loins.You were merely holding my place.Is that what pisses you off?That you’ll never be me?”

Cypher lets me know he needs another sixty seconds because the signal is bouncing all over the place.

Frankie starts again before I get the chance to speak.“Any guesses on what I’ll do once I have them back?I plan to introduce your kids to some very eager individuals who are interested in meeting them.Then I’m going to record while I fuck my wife so you can watch her scream and beg for me to stop.”

Rage chokes me as it descends over my body.A red mist coats my vision, his vile words thrumming through my head.I grab the knife I keep at my waist, twirling it through my fingers as I try to get my body temperature to lower.

“Hey, Frankie,” I say in a low tone, the undercurrent of my rage threading through it.“After I sever your head, I’m going to skull fuck it.Then I’m going to piss on your corpse before leaving it for the wolves to feast on.”

Another text comes through.

CYPHER

30 more secs

Frankie hums.“Our time has run out.I’ll be seeing you soon,brother.”

There’s an undertone to the way he murmurs the last word that sends a chill up my spine.

He ends the call with twenty seconds still to go.

“Motherfucker,” I snarl.

Frankie fucking knew we were tracing the call, or he at least suspected.

Cypher’s name flashes over the screen of my phone as it rings.

“Tell me you fucking got him,” I answer.

“Wish I could, Prez.He’s good at bouncing his signal.Just when I had a lock on him, he’d jump it to another location.”

“Anywhere close to here, or the last known location Birdie was before here?”

“No.He had it jumping to every fucking state then overseas.It bounced back and forth but started slowing down when I told you I needed thirty more seconds.Colorado, Kentucky, New York, New Jersey, and Florida were the states my program narrowed in on.”

I sigh, running a hand through my hair.“Fuck.Okay.We already know he has a connection to New York because of my parents and here in Florida because that’s where he and Birdie lived at.See if you can find any kind of tie between him and the other states.Maybe it’ll help us find where he’s at.”

“Understood.I’ll see what I can do.”

“I don’t know if this will help you out, but he called me brother the same way all of us do.”

“Interesting,” he murmurs, the clicking of the keys of his laptop coming across the line.“Just adding some parameters to my program.This will take a while.I’ll let you know when I get hits on anything else.”

After he ends our conversation, I call Manic.

“Prez.”

“I need to speak to Kyrie.”

“One second.”

He muffles his voice as he lets Valkyrie know I’m on the phone.A few seconds later, she takes over the call.

“Turd nugget,” she drawls.

I shake my head with a smile.“Kyrie, your sister is going to need you.Frankie called her.”

Valkyrie spits out a curse.“How the hell did he get her burner number?”

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