Page 62 of Montana Mystery

“I’m sure.” I held up my hand as evidence. The bruising there was darkening. It hurt. Not badly enough that I needed to do anything about it or that I would let it stop me from doing anything fun with Kate, but it was a reminder. “When I walked in, there was a dogfight happening. They were taking illegal bets. There were guns. And Max basically sold Kate to me like he owned her. There’s more than enough.”

He held up his hands. “I’m with you. Just want you to be prepared.”

“I can have Kate come if you want,” I said. “She’s at the house, and I can guarantee she’d be more than happy to tell Charlie what she saw.”

Liam’s face returned to his normal teasing grin. “She’s at your house?”

Lucas and Jude hadn’t told them everything then. “She is.” He laughed, and I cut him off. “Feel free to get all of it out now.”

“Oh no,” Liam smirked. “I’m going to take my time. Really curate some of these jokes that I’ve been saving.”

Daniel laughed and stood. “You can let them simmer on the way.”

There had been times when Charlie came to meet with us. But especially for this, it felt important that we go and meet him on his turf. We were asking him to muster a huge amount of resources that we didn’t have. And he’d already done it once with nothing to show for it.

The Riders were a good target. But especially in places like rural Montana, there weren’t infinite resources, and pulling a lot of cops and even wrangling a SWAT team wasn’t a thing you could do over and over.

“Coffee on the way back?” I asked.

“We’re probably going to need it,” Daniel said.

Daniel’s eyes were on the road. He hadn’t seemed off back at the lodge, but there was a tightness in him now. “Something I don’t know?”

“No,” he said. “But Liam is right. When I told Charlie what we were coming to talk about, he wasn’t thrilled. I’m guessing the way the meeting goes, we’re probably going to want something to take the edge off.”

“If that’s the case,” I said, “then coffee might not be strong enough.”

“We’ll see.”

The Garnet Bend police station was small but secure. Thankfully, everyone knew us. We didn’t have to waste time getting checked in, we were just waved back. But I did note a couple looks we got. Had I really fucked up our reputation that badly by calling in a false alarm?

I probably had. Until now, we hadn’t done that. When we told people there was something wrong, they believed us.

Daniel knocked on the door to Charlie’s office. “Come in.”

We entered, and he looked up from a stack of papers on his desk, glasses slipping down his nose. I doubted many people saw this side of Charlie, where he seemed more like an old-time newspaper editor than a chief of police. But Charlie wasn’t a man who belonged behind a desk. He was skilled, sharp, and in shape. It was good to have him as an ally.

If he still was.

“Take a seat.” He looked between each of us, one at a time. “You’re coming to set up another sting?”

“This time it’s credible,” I said.

Charlie sighed, his face softening. “You said that last time, Noah. What’s different?”

I held up my hand like I had for Liam. “Last night, we went in again. There wasn’t much choice in the matter. I saw enough to put people away, and I doubt that you’d have to dig very far to find a hell of a lot more.”

He looked at me for a long moment before nodding again. “Tell me.”

I did, trying to outline the evening as objectively as I could, despite the fact that I felt far from objective. The emotions connected to that... Kate and my past and feeling good taking that guy down. They weren’t going to go away with one night.

“He called this morning.” Daniel and Liam looked sharply at me. “Told me that there’s a special event going down tomorrow night. That’s where he expects me to collect the money. I gave him the impression I might fight and bet again if he makes it interesting. He wanted me to bring Kate back too, but I pretended I didn’t know where she was.”

Charlie raised his eyebrows. “Where is she?”

“Safe.”

Taking in my face, he nodded once. “All right. I’ll bite. I didn’t doubt you the first time, and you couldn’t have known it would be a test. This kind of operation is still not something I can tolerate. Tomorrow night?”

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