Page 11 of Clean Hack
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A Way In
Lucy
Things got crazy.
Like insane.
I somehow found the very thing I’d been looking for.
For years I’d been searching for this man. And now he was a still image frozen on my screen staring back at me. Half of the members of the Dogs of Wrath MC dead at his feet, slaughtered by him and his men. More would fall after this image had been taken from time. I knew because I’d watched it all. Even the part where the President was later tied up and hauled off to no clue where.
I was having trouble breathing, my chest feeling like there was a boulder sitting on it and my throat was clogged by one of those giant jawbreakers. My eyes refused to blink to the point that they were so dry I wondered if my lids would stay fused open. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t believe it. I was afraid that if I took my eyes from the image for even a fraction of a second then it wouldn’t be real. That the person in front of me would really turn out to be someone else.
Then my mind went haywire.
It couldn’t be him.
Not after all these years.
Just popping up out of nowhere and somehow coming into my world as if he wanted to be seen. But that couldn’t be, because he didn’t even know that I was watching. He couldn’t have. Hell, it wasn’t even like he knew I had been looking for him all these years.
I kept his image up, moving it to the side and pulling up the recorded feed. I played it back. Just like most of the places I watched, there was no sound. But over the years I’d gotten most amazing at reading lips.
“This will be mine. Kill them all. Keep the President, he will make a point for me soon enough. An example, if you will.”
He was moving in. Taking over. Making plans to control everything.
What exactly everything was, I didn’t know yet. But I had a pretty good idea. Guns and drugs to start. There would only be one reason to take out that motorcycle club there and that reason would be to gain control of what they had. The docks there and the incoming supplies.
I wasn’t surprised. And half figured that it wasn’t really my problem. Because it wasn’t. I’d only been trying to track him down to find Allison. I had no idea if he still had her or if she was even still alive. That killed me. But now I had my first lead in years. I felt like I’d always been one, or twenty, steps behind him. By the words he’d spoken, I figured I’d know just where to find him now. He wasn’t going to give up this spot now that he thought he had it. While I didn’t see him settling down at that club’s compound, I had a feeling he wouldn’t go far. He’d find his own space, stake his own ground. Make it known that he was there and that he was the king.
It was time to make a call. This was beyond what my fingers could do. Once he found his place, he’d make sure that it was locked down tight. No cameras, no electronics, nothing that would let me see. And it wasn’t like I could go waltzing up to his clubhouse and demand entry. Like I could somehow go check it out in person. That thought almost made me snort out loud.
“Ashburn Security,” the overly cheerful voice greeted me.
“Trissy!” I called out excitedly, trying to hide how shaky I felt.
“Lulee!” he yelled out with almost a piercing shriek. I had no idea where he’d gotten that nickname for me. He seemed to love it, so I just rolled with it.
Tristan was the head secretary for one of the Ashburn Security groups’ locations. The only one I really dealt with. No real reason behind that other than they had been the first group that I’d set up a connection with. I often contacted them when I had something I needed help with. Or when it was something I knew they’d want to handle themselves. They were first a foremost a security and recovery group. They got paid top dollar for what they did. And because they were good—the best, really, it didn’t come as a surprise that they pulled in the big bucks. Sometimes they took side cases and those were usually ones that I sent their way. On rare occasions, they worked with a few government agencies. They sometimes didn’t handle things one hundred percent legally, but usually only when it was called for.
“How are things?” I asked trying to keep the shakiness and urgency out of my tone.
Yeah, so Tristan was one person I could talk to. Maybe I should add him to my list of three and change it to four. But then again we weren’t on any kind of real friend level though. We didn’t talk when I wasn’t calling with something so-called work-related. But when I did call, we could chat as if we were best friends. I think that was mostly how Tristan was. Everyone was a BFF to him. He had no personal boundaries either. Nothing was off the table when it came to conversations and sharing.
“Single again. Surprise, surprise, right?” he answered, his tone likewhatever. “Apparently I work too much and the fact that I get called in at hours—and I quote— ‘when not even prostitutes are out working’ is just unacceptable. And all of that is just too much for some people to handle.”
“I’m sorry,” I said trying to hold back my chuckle.
“Who cares,” he said flippantly. “I’ll get my hands on another one soon enough. You know I don’t stay single for long.”
And it was true.
“Who’s around?” I asked knowing that there was a handful of operatives that worked there and usually at least half of them were out on a long job at any given time.
“Burke. Everyone else is out. We got a little slammed with cases. This another kidnapping?”
