Page 50 of Bones

“No one did. That’s the point.”

“Yeah, but this is Mr. Bruton we’re talking about.” Big sounded skeptical as he told him, “He’s like seventy-something, and he’s lived here for as long as I can remember. Hell, he’s on the town council. I find it hard to believe that he’s our guy.”

“Yeah, I thought the same until I got this.”

I took my phone out of my pocket and showed them the message I’d received. Cotton sounded pissed when he roared, “What the fuck?”

“How the hell did he know you found him?”

“I have no idea.”

“You didn’t say anything to anyone else?”

“No. I came straight here.” I looked at Big as I said, “We secured the server, so I know he wasn’t watching me there. Maybe he had his name flagged or something.”

“Possibly, but how did he know it was you?”

“Oh, shit.Wait...I forgot. I saw Maverick.” With everything that had happened, I’d totally forgotten that I’d spoken to him. “I told him that I’d found something on Bruton and for him to go find you.”

“Where was this?”

“Right outside my door.”

Stitch sounded distressed when he asked Big, “When was the last time you two did a sweep of the club?”

“Not since the New Year’s gathering, but nobody’s been here. Just us. There’s no way anyone could’ve planted something without us knowing it.”

We had all the necessary devices to check the clubhouse for bugs and hidden cameras, and even though we’d used them frequently, we’d never actually found anything. I wasn’t surprised. There were always two or more brothers at the gate, guarding against any intruders, and we had cameras that we monitored on a daily basis, especially when we had outsiders on the grounds.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

I could feel the tension radiating off of Stitch as I offered, “We could do a sweep now and see if we can find anything.”

“No. We’ll take care of it.” Cotton replied. “Right now, I need you and Big to find everything you can on Davenport. I want to know what kind of business he’s in and who he has on the payroll.”

“We’ll see what we can find out,” Big answered.

Cotton turned back to me as he said, “And if he reaches out to you again, I want to be the first to know about it.”

“You got it.”

Without saying anything more, Big and I turned and walked out of Cotton’s office. We’d just started down the hall when Big asked, “You got any idea how he got your number?”

“No clue.”

“Damn.” Big shook his head. “David Bruton. I never would’ve thought it.”

“I’d say that’s what he’s countin’ on.” My mind was still clouded with doubt, so I added, “I’m not positive that he’s the one behind all this, but the pieces seem to fit.”

“Then, let’s see what else we can find on him and see where we stand.”

As soon as we got back to the office, I showed Big everything I’d found, and he agreed that Bruton’s past definitely looked suspicious. “We need to find everything we can on his time at Interpol. From what cases he was working on to who he was working with. We also need to know if he made any arrests or if he’d made any contacts.”

“Their security is going to be intense. Hacking into their database isn’t going to be easy.”

“We can do it.” Big started up his laptop. “It’s just going to take some time and a little fancy footwork.”

I nodded, then we both got to work on breaking into Interpol. As I feared, it was heavily secured, but thankfully, it wasn’t anything that Big and I couldn’t handle. After a couple of hours, we’d made our way in and were searching for everything we could find on Carl Davenport. I was just as eager as Big to find out what was going on with the guy, but I’d been at this thing for days.

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