Page 192 of Lone Star

Candy lifted his brows.

Maddox put his hands in his borrowed pockets, shoulders slightly rounded like a kid offering up bad news to a parent. My how quickly things changed.

“There was a case last year in Pennsylvania,” he said. “Girls – young women were being reported missing all across the state. No pattern; none of them were friends, not even on social media, none of them went to the same schools or worked together. All different races, hair colors, body types, just like these.” He nodded toward Eden’s printouts. “And then one of them turned up in Manhattan. It was a fluke – she’d gotten loose. Some goon got careless, and she slipped out a back door. Barefoot, and dirty, and she fucking ran right into an Italian restaurant and started screaming for help.” He shook his head. “She told the cops everything, described a warehouse full of other girls, and buyers coming in to look them over: guys in suits, rich old guys, pimps, gang leaders. I’m gonna bet some cartel bosses, too. NYPD got the FBI involved, and she led them right back to the place where she’d gotten loose. The place had been cleared out. Forensics found a shit-ton of evidence, but nothing that could lead us definitively to any one organization.”

“So you have no idea who did it,” Candy said, disappointment heavy in his gut.

Maddox bristled. “Oh, we have anidea. The ES-8 cartel, for one. The Russo family. There’s a Russian crime syndicate that leaves Cyrillic tags all over everything. But you can’t go around arresting people on gut feelings and likelihoods.”

Candy flashed his teeth in a semblance of a grin. “Did I say anything about arresting anyone?”

Maddox glared at him a moment, then swore and glanced away.

“You aren’t thinking Luis was working cooperatively with other crime families, are you?” Eden asked, one skeptical brow raised. “It’s a big leap from Texas to the East Coast scene.”

“He was fascinated with the club, though,” Michelle spoke up, frowning contemplatively. “And I do meanfascinated. He said he’d been studying us. It was like…like he didn’t understand, but he wanted to.” Her frown deepened. “There was a lot of bollocks about power. He’s obsessed with it.”

“Traumatized by his father’s abandonment,” Fox said. “And trying to both please him with his performance, and challenge him. His father’s a cop, so he decided to become a criminal – a rich and successful one.”

“And childhood trauma can make a person dothat?” Candy asked.

Fox sent him a level look. “Childhood trauma can make you do all sorts of things.” Case in point: the assassins sitting at this table currently. Case in point: Mercy and Michael, on their way home now with Walsh.

The Knoxville Dogs had left before first light, save Fox and Albie. In his lengthy phone conversation with Jaffrey this morning – no doubt smoothed by Eden’s competent sweet-talk when she’d visited the precinct – Candy had pinned the theft of the police van and roughing-up and binding of four officers on Cantrell’s cartel contacts. Jaffrey had made noises, but with Mercy and Michael unknown in the area – and gone, now – all prints carefully wiped-down, and bigger fish to fry, Candy felt confident the club would skate out of reach of the law on this one.

There was still the problem of Luis, though. Of the threat he could still pose in the future.

Candy took a sip of coffee and shifted his gaze away from Fox’s – still and cold. “Where does that leave us with the Chupacabras?”

“Back where you started,” Maddox chimed in again. “The cartel was shattered the last time they were in Amarillo. Luis revived them – but only a portion, and with him in the wind there’s nothing left to hold it together.”

“Twelve are dead,” Eden said, “and fifteen were arrested. Officer Jaffrey tells me they’ll be coming down hard on anyone who was involved, like Sandoval and Gilliard.”

Maddox nodded.

“The Chupacabras are no more.”

But he didn’t feel relieved, not really. “I guess…that’s that, then.”

Eden, face carefully blank, shared a look with Michelle, then gathered her paperwork together again. “I suppose so. The club isn’t a law enforcement agency.”

Candy wondered what that look had meant.

“We’ll keep ears to the ground,” Fox said. “All chapters on high alert for specific activity.”

“Yeah.” Candy knew it would be a while before he felt safe letting Michelle go off somewhere on her own. She would buck at that, but he’d be damned if he let her get captured again, by anyone.

He glanced toward her now, and watched her lean over and say something quietly to Axelle, who nodded. How could he keep them safe, he wondered, when they were just as stubborn as him?

~*~

He went to see Jinx after breakfast. His friend sat propped up with pillows, paging listlessly through a bike magazine, wearing a Lean Dogs t-shirt, his hair in wild disarray, his beard in need of combing. Someone had brought him breakfast, and an empty, grease-shiny plate rested on the nightstand beside an array of pill bottles.

He glanced up when Candy entered, and Candy hated the way – for a fleeting moment – he saw fear, doubt, and guilt flash in his best friend’s eyes. He thought about Blue lamenting Jinx’s absence last night, and his own terse, cold response. A regrettable response on his part.

He offered a smile. “They keeping you in the good stuff?” he asked, nodding toward the nightstand.

Jinx closed the magazine and set it aside, expression going careful; a manufactured sternness that seemed prepared for the worst. “Gringo had some oxy left over he said I could have. Catcher gave me an edible.” His mouth twitched, a near-smile. “Cletus is doing okay?”

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