Page 19 of Clean Hack
-8-
I Need Some Fucking Answers
Lucy
“Did you get settled in?” I asked Nadya with a slight chuckle in my tone.
We were doing the rare video chat. It was like we got a wild hair every now and then and decided we needed to talk as face-to-face as we would allow ourselves. She looked tired but still beautiful. I mean, she was a tall bombshell. Magnetically cold eyes that I couldn’t even begin to describe. And thick hair that anyone would envy.
She finally had a job. One I didn’t know much about and I honestly didn’t think she did either. She hadn’t said much about it other than the fact that she might be sitting on this one for a while.
“I’ve been here three days and I already hate this place,” she said flatly.
Things had been mostly quiet on my end. I hadn’t given up my search but I’d pulled back just a little. It was hard but I had to believe that Burke would handle it. That he wouldn’t let me down. I just had to keep reminding myself that he was treating this like a job and that he was fucking amazing at what he did. That helped, sometimes.
What didn’t help though, was that the other clubs had started to grow antsy. Many of them had gone on lockdown at different times. There had been things that had happened. Lives lost and hard decisions made. The Steel Paragons seemed to be the biggest club caught in the middle of all of this. I hadn’t seen Savage again, but I knew he was the cause for all of it. While watching, I’d figured out that there were at least five clubs that I’d been keeping an eye on that had been caught up in his web. Most of them bowing down and giving into his demands after one or two attacks had been made on them. Which, I couldn’t really blame them because that shit came out of nowhere. Savage was a sneaky motherfucker. And he didn’t like to get his hands dirty. Sending out men to do his shit work. Like the last clean up I’d called Clean for at the Steel Paragons Moon Hill chapter. Savage was down a man. I didn’t feel sorry. A close man, being that it was his secretary. Stupid title, but it was a pretty high one. However, it had been close to six months and I had no doubt that that position had once again been filled.
I’d seen the Secretary kill the man, Stone was his name. I had access to the Steel Paragons cameras that were outside of the compound. The one in back of the garage they owned was the one that caught the whole horrible thing. I saw it, much like they did. I watched as Savage’s man beat him and left him for dead. I saw the faces of the men that found him. I saw the club as they broke over their fallen man. He had a family, a wife and three kids. It broke me to watch as his wife tried to stay strong for herself and her children, as well as the club. In the end, she’d made the decision to leave. I’d seen that too. And I couldn’t blame her.
I still had no clue if Burke had gotten a permanent foot in yet. I still didn’t know if he’d found Allison.
But I did see how evil Savage could be. And I hated to think that she was there, somewhere, dealing with Savage’s wrath on a daily basis.
I felt like I was so close to answers but unable to get them. It sucked.
I wasn’t in their world. I was an invisible shadow in the corner of the room. But I saw everything that went on and I hated it for all of them. Each and every single one of them doing their best to keep their clubs safe, figuring out the right move to keep the man that terrorized them happy.
The Steel Paragons weren’t as willing to lay down and let Savage and his club run all over them. Sure they were still working with him for the gun runs. Orforhim was probably more accurate. But they’d collectively made a decision right before Stone’s death, not to give in to demands that had been made about running drugs. Which, I believed was the reason behind the death of their man.
So in other words, things were tense.
And I could feel it even though I wasn’t there.
Back to Nadya. She’d finally gotten a job after months of nothing. Having a job go...somewhat sideways, would do that to a person. But I had a weird feeling that though a job had come along, it wasn’t really a good thing. I just had to keep a close eye on her and try to keep her from going in the wrong direction. Sometimes, I got the feeling that she didn’t really think about the jobs she did and took. However, you wouldn’t catch me telling her that.
“Where are you staying?” I asked because I hadn’t really talked to her the last few days.
“A motel on the outskirts. Real shit place. And it smells like feet and pickles.” I could make out some of the room on the edges of the screen. It didn’t look spectacular, that was for sure.
“That is oddly descriptive and gross. I think I can almost smell it myself.” I laughed and she snorted.
“I’m going to go set everything up tomorrow. I’ll call you when I need you,” she said and I knew the routine well enough by now.
No sooner did I hang up the phone, I knew something was wrong. I didn’t know what. Had no clue. But whatever it was, it had to have been really bad.
There was a tension and panic that buzzed around the Moon Hill chapter of the Steel Paragons. It was apparent to my eyes as I watched the many different feeds. I could feel it too like it was curling itself outward and reaching towards me. A few strokes and I had access to Bocca’s tablet, and more importantly, the noises and voices of what it was picking up.
It wasn’t great. But as the men moved frantically around, I could make out someone saying the name Ellie. Diesel’s woman. Or as I referred to her, the tiny little badass. Because…well, I’d seen what she could do when the people she loved were threatened. I didn’t know her, but I had a huge level of respect for the woman.
Then I heard a lot of clipped things. They were coming through in bursts, but I was sort of able to put them together.
“Diesel.”
“Explosion.”
“Tank’s house.”
“Grass.”
