Page 108 of Collide

I hated Riley being angry at me but in my defense, I had warned her.

She should have known there was no way I’d spare The Stag’s life, especially with what he confessed. She was lucky I let Danny take her out of the room before I blew his brains out.It was a good job I didn’t have a gun on me when I went into thebasement, otherwise, that cunt would have met his fate minutes earlier when he called Rileyhisgirl.

Fucker.

One good thing came out of Riley not talking to me, it gave me timeto focus on the problem at hand, finding out just what the fuck The Stags thought they were playing at.

It was too much of a coincidence that Anderson was a cop in the citywhere a gang was plotting my alleged downfall, Anderson had to be working for The Stags, or vice versa.Either way, I needed to get my hands on Anderson as soon asfucking possible.

“Give me some good fucking news, Jimmy,” I said into thespeakerphone on my desk in my office.

Jimmy was the head of my surveillance team who had assisted inHuntsville when we were trying to track down Anderson. After the information from Toby, I sent Jimmy and his team back to Huntsville with one objective: find out who the fucking boss of The Stags was. It was a near impossible task, but there was no way this anonymousprick could stay hidden forever. Carlos, orsomeonein the gang must have some idea who he was, we just had to find the weak link.

“Sorry, Boss, we’ve followed Carlos and staked his home out for thelast three days but nothing.” Jimmy’s deep voice came from the speakerphone. “We’ve got photos of every person he’s met with which I’ve sent to Miles but they are all lower level gang members.”

“Yeah, they are,” Miles nodded, confirming he had received theimages. “They’re all Stags, street level or one rank above, but no one of importance. I’m doing background checks on them to see if any of them have links to Anderson but so far I’ve drawn a blank.”

I nodded and ran my hand through my hair in frustration at the lack ofprogress. It didn’t help that Huntsville was not my city to control. I only had links through legitimate businesses, I had no one under my control within the police department otherwise we would have been making a lot more progress.

“What else can you tell me, Jimmy?” I said, returning my attentionback to the phone.

“He tends to coordinate his business from his home, we really needto get a bug planted inside so we can see and hear what’s going on but there is always someone in the house and the security is tight. I’m going to need a few more days, we’ll need to come up with a distraction plan to draw everyone away from the house so I can get one of the team inside without being caught.”

“What do you need to make that happen?” I asked, willing to throwwhatever resources and money I had to get this fucking problem sorted.

“I’ll need another surveillance team, my team have been on the clocktwenty-four-seven and it’s starting to catch up. I’ll also need an armed backup team if things go to shit when we manage to get someone inside the house,” Jimmy said in a no-nonsense tone.

Jimmy was ex-police. He’d been kicked out of Hollows Bay PoliceDepartment after getting a bit heavy handed with a kid who had been a complete shithead and smacked off his face on crack. He’d fought Jimmy when Jimmy had tried to arrest him and it had resulted in Jimmy breaking the kid’s arm, but because the boy was only fifteen, HBPD had taken his word over Jimmy’s and had kicked him off the force and paid the kid a hefty sum in compensation.

It was HBPD’s loss. Jimmy was an asset and luckily for me, he saw agood deal when I offered him one. He mainly worked on the right side of the law, but he also wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty if what I asked him to do broke a few laws. He was good at what he did, and if he needed more men, more equipment, and more weapons, he’d get it.

“Consider it done. Hendrix will be in touch to coordinate with you.” Ilooked at Hendrix who bobbed his head in acknowledgment.

“Thank you, Sir,” Jimmy replied, professional as ever.

“Keep me posted, I want to know straight away if there are anydevelopments, no matter what the time of day or night is.”

“Of course,” he replied and then hung up the phone.

I flopped back in my chair and rubbed my hand over my jaw whileHendrix sighed, Danny cursed under his breath, and Miles rolled his eyes.

I’d called them into my office so I could get updates on variousbusinesses I was still trying to run while sorting out this shitshow with Detective fucking Anderson and now The Stags.

Danny had been present when Toby disclosed that The Stags knewthings about Riley that would only be known by a select few people, and when he’d questioned me on it, I told him my concerns that someone had been leaking information. Miles and Hendrix had walked in half way through that conversation so I filled them in with my suspicions too. The three of them had been furious at me for even thinking one of them could have been responsible, pledging their allegiance to me and vowing to find the cunt who was responsible.

I felt fucking foolish for considering that one of them could havebetrayed my trust, they were loyal through and through.

“What about their communications?” I asked Miles who was standingacross the room in his usual corner, pressed up against a wall and staring down the tablet he held as if it had personally offended him.

“Can’t tap their lines, they use encrypted phones like we do. I’ve gotsome software running on a computer linked to Carlos’ home address and from the amount of usage, I’d hazard a guess and say he uses the dark web to communicate with whoever the silent partner is,” Miles explained, never once taking his eyes off his tablet.

“Surely you can tell who he is talking to on the dark web,” Danny said,earning him a scowl from Miles.

“It doesn’t work like that, dickhead. If it was easy to trace who youwere talking to, no one would use the dark web,” Miles snapped back.

Danny’s knuckles clenched on his lap, no doubt at being called adickhead. We were all getting frustrated with the lack of progress but the last thing we needed was to start turning on each other.

“Enough. We’re all doing what we can to get somewhere,” I growled,silently cursing Victor as I had done many times for not alerting me to the fact Anderson had visited him all those months ago. If he’d had fucking said something, Theo would have known the meeting at the docks was a setup and he’d still be alive and breathing today.

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