Page 59 of Jasper
Striker glances over at me. “That who I think it is?”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “That’s the mayor of Cedar Falls.”
The woman is carrying her purse and smiling as she wrangles the two kids into the SUV. They kiss before getting into the vehicle. The footage holds there for a few more seconds, as they get into the SUV and shut the doors. The vehicle pulls away, and then the drone pulls back, rising slowly as it follows them.
My old man speaks up, “Only that ain’t his wife.”
“Can you get a geolocation on the house?”
Mitch’s hands fly across the keyboard, and he gasps. “It’s two counties over. What in hell is he doing?”
Again, my old man provides the answer none of us want to come right out and say. “It looks like he might be either cheatin’ or keepin’ a whole ‘nother family.”
A short silence spins out between us as we think about what all this could mean.
Finally, I ask, “What’s the date on that?”
Mitch checks the metadata. “Two days before they set fire to your bike.”
I stare at the screen, while that bad gut feeling multiplies in my stomach. My jaw clenches, but I don’t say anything for a long minute. The Hyenas weren’t just watching me. They were watching the mayor.
Striker scratches his jaw. “That ain’t surveillance for fun. That’s leverage. You don’t film a public official cheating on his wife unless you’re planning to blackmail him.”
“I agree,” I say. “If they’re trying to set themselves up to get away with large-scale criminal activity, the mayor is the perfect target. He’s well connected and can call in a lot of favors.”
“What kind of crime—trafficking, drugs, or guns? What are they trying to do here?” Mitch asks.
“Probably all three,” I reply.
Striker goes off on a tangent. “It could also include zoning. If they can squeeze him, they get a shortcut into permits, land deals, supply routes. Maybe more.”
I shake my head. “I doubt any of them are smart enough to know what to do if they had a mayor in their pocket. It could be they just want to own him. Make him their ace in the hole in case they get in over their heads.”
I don’t like where my mind goes with this. If they were willing to burn my bike in the open, then they’re not done pushing when it comes to our club. This kind of surveillance doesn’t stop with footage. It ends with pressure for the mayor. Or blood for the Sons of Rage.
“Cue up everything else in video format and let’s run through it,” I say.
Mitch filters by location tag. “There are two more clips, both low altitude. It doesn’t manage to capture any faces, just cars. Might be plate numbers if we clean the frame.”
“Save it. I want it backed up twice and scrubbed from this machine after.”
“You got it.”
They keep working, voices low, tapping keys and dragging files into folders. I stand over the drone casing, still cracked wide on the table, and run a hand across the exposed wiring. Whoever sent it didn’t expect me to shoot it out of the sky and hack the damn thing. They sure as hell didn’t expect it to give us a glimpseinto their operation, to find out that they weren’t just looking at us. They’re much more ambitious than we thought. And I’ll be damned if I let them get away with it.
By the time Mitch finishes the second backup and Eli shuts the laptop, I’ve already made the call. “Let’s call Church, club officers only.” Glancing at Mitch and Donnie, I say, “Remember, the two of you have a NDA attached to your contract. So, mum’s the word.”
Mitch responds, “We know what we signed and would never talk about confidential club business with anyone. It’s not our place.”
“Thank you. You did good work today. Leave your invoice with the garage, and I’ll pay it by the end of business day today.”
Mitch zips up the case and stands. “Keep me in the loop if it escalates.”
“It already has escalated, but I’ll let you know if we find any more tech to hack.”
I stay back long enough to double-check that the drone footage’s been wiped from the working laptop and stored on two separate drives. One goes in our club’s safe in the club president’s office, the other straight into my cut pocket. That way there is no cloud storage and no trace of what we found.
Mitch walks out without another word with Donnie in tow.
