Twisted Mercy (Red Team Book 4) (16 page)

“I don’t think so. Mad Dog checked her out. She’s grateful for a place to hang.” His eyes narrowed. “No, I think it’s you. So does King.”

Hatchet reached into his pocket and tossed a little gold bar on the table. It glowed in the hazy light like an angel’s feather. Pete picked up the little ingot. One ounce. So it was true. King had a treasure room somewhere on the grounds. He’d heard about it for years. He’d even thought that was why Holbrook had been killed. Had Hatchet found it?

“Where’d you get this?”

“Found it.”

“Where?”

Hatchet leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Where do you think? I could show you.”

Pete huffed a dry laugh. Accessing King’s gold was a fast ticket to a new grave. He looked up at Hatchet’s intense eyes. Hatchet had already been marked to die. Let him be the one to interface with King’s treasure room—he could pay for every day he remained alive by bringing Pete some of King’s gold.

Pete smiled at him. “I have a better idea. Bring me a little bit of his gold every night to buy the air you breathe the next day.” He pocketed the flat gold bar. “This buys you tomorrow.”

* * *

The sensors surrounding Max’s A-frame pinged his phone. He checked the cameras to see who was coming up to the house, then opened the door for Kit and Greer. He pushed his futon back into a sitting position and tossed the blanket and sheets in a pile on the floor. Why he bothered, he didn’t know. The guys sat on his weight benches. He didn’t turn the lights on—he was acclimated to the passive light from outside. And he didn’t want Hope to get curious.

“S’up?” he asked as he sat on his futon.

“Just checking in.,” Kit said. “How are you holding up?”

“I’d be a helluva lot better with a full night’s sleep.”

“Wouldn’t we all? Greer has an update on the girl.”

“Got the DNA results back. Her mom entered the WITSEC program when Hope was five. She was the key witness against two WKB officers brought up on drug and human-trafficking charges. In fact, she was their entire case. The reason Hope’s background was blank before she was five is that Hope Townsend didn’t exist.

“Her mom was pregnant when this all went down. She went into labor the morning the court was scheduled to hear the case. On the way to the hospital, her ambulance was ambushed. The medics were killed. They cut Hope’s mom open and took her unborn child. A son. They didn’t kill her, but she only lived long enough to name her assailant. It was Hope’s father. After her mom’s death, WITSEC gave Hope a new identity and sent her into foster care. She’s been dogged by WKB trackers. How they found her, I don’t know. Maybe because she persistently asked questions about her baby brother, and her foster families brought those questions back to her caseworker. Invariably, it caused the marshals to relocate her.”
 

Max leaned forward, bracing his arms on his knees. “Do you think her brother survived what happened to his mother?”

“No idea,” Greer said. “It’s unlikely. He would have been Randall Brawner. She was born Elizabeth Brawner. Her mom never married her father. Like I said, we don’t know if her brother survived. There’s no record of him that we can find.”

Max looked over at them from beneath his brows. “Hope said Lion was her brother.”

“Ohhh. Fuck,” Kit snapped. “I was hoping she was just noise. We don’t need this distraction.”

“It is what it is, Kit,” Max said. “She could be useful. Who’s her father?”

“His name’s John Bealls.” Greer looked at him. He seemed reluctant to say this next bit of news. “His road name is Hatchet.”

Max jumped to his feet. He shoved his hands through his hair, grabbing fistfuls to keep from punching the walls. “Hatchet’s her dad?”
 

Greer nodded. “Yeah.”

“Jesus, this world is fucked up.” He lowered his hands, flexing and fisting them.
 

Kit stood up. “There’s more. So cool the fuck down.” Kit looked at Greer. “Rocco had that meeting with Jafaar. Word is al Jahni’s sending a woman to infiltrate us.”

“And you think it’s Hope.” Max shook his head. “You’re wrong.”

“Why is she here, otherwise? She comes outta nowhere, complete with a tidy new identity. The WKB, who’ve been hunting her for years, now let her onto the compound unharmed?”

Max felt his blood heat up. He saw Hope’s big brown eyes. She wasn’t working for King. No fucking way. “I’m not easily manipulated, Kit, by a pretty woman or anyone else.”

“We all are easily played, at one time or another.”

“Does she know about Hatchet?” Greer asked.

Max crossed the room to lean against the kitchen counter. He rolled through all of his interactions with Hope, including her near-initiation. She’d been shaken afterward, for real, but she’d never said a word about Hatchet. She could have said her father was a member, but she hadn’t. She’d gone straight to her brother. Why had she done that? Did she know who Hatchet was and avoided mentioning him on purpose? Or did she really not know who her dad was?

“I don’t know. I don’t think she does.” Max wished he could answer unequivocally.
 

“So why is she looking for her brother here and now?” Kit persisted.
 

“The only way we’ll know whether she’s a plant is by digging into her a bit more. There’s no subterfuge in her eyes, Kit. I think I can read a person.”

“Desperate people do desperate things. She’s searched for her brother most of her life. What if they gave her what she most wants in exchange for you?”

“Okay. I’ll deal with it. You heard about the meeting today with Jafaar?” Max asked, changing the subject before Kit extracted from him a promise he couldn’t keep regarding Hope.
 

“Yeah,” Greer said. “We’re already looking into their cybercurrency business.”

Max crossed the room and sat on his futon. Kit took the cue and sat back down as well. “Greer, I need to know something,” Max said. “King told Jafaar and Pete there’s a mole in the western region WKB. I know we talked about this before, but tell me again what happened when you went after the guys in the van who were recording the cat tapes.”

“The two guys in the van were both dead before Angel and I got to them. The hard drive with the videos was missing. However, a few flash drives had been left at the site with all the footage. I’ve been through it twice. The footage covers the span of time from our arrival in Blade’s house to your discovery of the cat’s transmitter. It doesn’t appear to have been altered. Your face was never captured in the general footage—Sebastian never went down to the bunker, and he avoided the common rooms when we were all in there. He was most active at night and spent a lot of time hunting outside. However, there is a jumbled image of you when you found the transmitter.”

“When we went back later,” Kit told him, “the site was scrubbed.”

Max frowned. “That’s what I never understood. Why didn’t they scrub it to begin with? It’s almost like someone’s helping us.”

Kit nodded. “It’s an open question, for real.”

Max looked at Greer. “Were you able to find out who’s been through that door into the old section of tunnels?”

“Yeah. Hatchet went through there several times in the last few weeks. And two Syadne employees did as well.”

“Together?”

“Not that I can tell. The logs record their successful access attempts on different dates and times.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, which Greer broke after a while. “So you gonna tell him the real reason for the visit?”

Kit grinned, a full-on, show-all-your-teeth and light-up-your-eyes smile. “Fuck. Me,” Max growled. “That’s a wedding smile. You’re actually gonna do it.”

“Yup.”

“Congrats, man. That’s been a long time coming.”
 

“I hope you can be there.”

“If Ivy’s inviting her crew from the diner, I can’t. Some of them saw me there as Mad Dog.”

Kit nodded. “She gave those staffers a week of vacation. They aren’t coming to the wedding.”

“Then hell yeah I’ll be there. When?”

“Saturday, week after next.”

“I’ll make it happen.” Max grinned. “How’s Owen handling all the females joining the mix?”

“Better than I would have thought,” Kit said.

“So what’s the real scoop on Selena? Why’s she staying?” Max asked.

“I asked Owen to keep her onboard,” Kit said. “She’s perfect for guarding the women. And Casey likes her. There are times when the girls might like to get out and about without one of us crowding them. Selena can do what we can’t.”

“Geez. You’ve got balls. Don’t think I would’ve put a leopard in charge of baby chicks.” Max looked at Greer. “How’s your girl?”

Greer made a face. “I don’t have a girl. What I have is an interest in how the Friendship Community is treating its young. Forcing them into a life of crime for the jollies of the elders is totally fucked up.”

“When Max gets back,” Kit said to Greer, “you can look into it. I can’t run without one of you in the command center.”

“It’s cool.” Greer leaned forward and bumped fists with Max as they got up to leave. “See you in a couple Saturdays.”

Max smiled at Kit. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

Max left the lights off after they left. He went outside to sit on his front steps. He looked over at Hope’s tent, wrestling with the weight of the new information he had on her. And her fucking father.
 

Had Hatchet known she was his kid when he attacked her? He closed his eyes and bent his head, rubbing the back of his thumb over his forehead, shutting his mind to what would have happened had Feral not cornered him into intervening.
 

Damn it all, she’d gotten under his skin. And given her connection to Lion, she was more tied in to what was happening here than they’d thought. For damned sure, Hope wasn’t Jafaar’s spy. She was doing her best to avoid Max, a piss-poor technique for getting him to reveal his secrets.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Things at Hope’s bike shop were progressing nicely. The club members were happy with her work and kept her busy. It was only a week after her arrival, but it seemed she’d been here for ages. She always traded her labor for theirs, never worked for money. It somehow made what she was doing here easier to swallow.
 

It also meant that her house was almost habitable. She’d be able to move in anytime. And once there, she could resume her efforts to connect with her brother.

The guys whose bikes she was working on today had agreed to paint and caulk the outside of the little shack. She was to provide the materials they’d need, and they were to provide the parts she’d need. The work had kept her mind off a certain six feet and some inches of crazy biker. She wasn’t in a hurry to see him again. They’d been avoiding each other for days. He was asleep when she showered and left the house in the morning. He was out when she quit each night, letting her come through his house to use the bathroom without any issues.

 
A shadow fell across the bike she was working on. She looked up to see Feral step into her shop. They nodded at each other. He moved nervously around the shop. Hope stood up. This was the first she’d seen him since the fiasco she’d caused her second night here. What had Mad Dog done to him because of her? She looked at him, wondering how to ask the question. He met her look briefly before his gaze bounced away to skitter over her tools.
 

“Feral—” she started.

He dipped his head as he flicked some of the tools on the workbench. “It’s okay.” He shrugged.

“I’m sorry.”

“He didn’t do anything. Just gave me a pass.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and turned toward her, his shoulders a little hunched. “So, I guess I have to thank you.” His gaze drifted to the floor. “Was it terrible?”

“Was what terrible?”

“With him. After I left.”

She felt a shaft of heat slice through her, a remnant of the fire he’d started and walked away from. She shrugged.

“I should have warned you.”

“About what?”

“Mads. He likes pain. Needs it to get off.”

God. She didn’t even know what to say to that. “It was okay.” Yet another reason to stay away from him. “So we’re cool?

“We’re cool,” he answered. He started to walk away, but she stopped him.

“Hey, Feral. Who are those boys that live over that way?” She nodded in the direction of their Quonset.

“I don’t know. They’re here, but not really part of the club. They sorta creep everyone out. Some of the guys train with them, but they don’t ever talk about the boys. If I were you, I’d stay way clear of them.”

“I agree,” a deep voice said, interrupting their conversation and startling both of them.
 

Heat washed through her at the sound of Mad Dog’s deep voice, followed immediately by a wave of cold when she thought about his twisted appetites. It made breathing hard.

“You got someplace to be, Feral?” he asked.

“Yeah.” The kid looked her way. “Yeah, I do.” He headed out of the open overhead door, leaving her alone with Mad Dog.
 

He walked over to her counter and hoisted himself up. Leaning back against the steel wall, he bent one leg and draped his wrist over his raised knee.

He said nothing. And she could find no words that made it past the tangle of her tongue, so she knelt down and continued working on the bike. After a while, she looked over his way, only to see his hard gaze following her movements.

“Something you need, Mad Dog?”

“Nope.”

She leaned back on her haunches. “Thanks for not being too hard on Feral.”

He didn’t answer her, just left the weight of his restraint hanging in the air between them. “There a reason you’re so interested in the kids?” he asked.

She swiped a strand of her hair off her face, and felt the smudge her greasy glove left. “I thought my brother might be over there.” She had to look away from him. It was as if his gaze could penetrate her mind, read her secrets.
 

“You want to go over there and meet him? I’ll take you.”

“For real?”

“Whenever you’re done.”

She stood up and pulled her nitrile gloves off. “I’m done. Let me just wash up.” She put her tools away, then started for the door to the house. “Wait.” She looked back at Mad Dog. “What’s the cost?”