Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
“Is that a nice way of saying blackmail?” Saint asked.
“It is.”
“Who did you blackmail?”
“Married men, mostly. A club full of beautiful women… it’s not hard to honeytrap a philanderer into a compromising situation.”
“You fucked these guys to blackmail them about it?” Slash asked.
Dylan’s eyes flashed at that.
“No, we didn’t fuck guys to blackmail them. It doesn’t have to get that far for an angry wife to get her panties in a twist and her lawyer on the phone.”
“That’s taking a lot of risk,” Sway said.
“Is it? When the rest of us were around to make sure the jobs went as planned.”
“So, how did you come across Roach?” Slash asked.
“That was one unfortunate night,” Dylan said, exhaling hard. “We were over in L.A. for the night, working on two separate jobs at once. Which we’d done a bunch of times before but it must have made what we were doing more obvious to someone paying attention.”
“And Roach was paying attention,” Slash said.
“Yep. I guess he started staking us out. As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, the clubhouse was pretty rural. Lots of ways not to be seen. And they weren’t. Seen.”
“How’d they get in to take it over?”
“That was on me. I went out of town for a month to be with one of the girls while she had surgery and through some of her recovery. By the time I came back, it was too late.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” I said.
“And yet…” she said. Her finger slipped under the soda tab, making it click and hiss as she popped it.
“Your girls were that far gone that fast?”
“Haven’t really known people who use meth, huh? It’s a fast addiction. Especially if you are injecting, and especially if you have the money to keep getting more each time it wears off. And Roach would have been supplying them around the clock, knowing his window was limited.”
“And what about the clubhouse itself?” Slash asked. “How’d he get to keep his hands on it?”
“The bastard drafted up fake lease agreements and proof of payments.”
“Proof of payments?”
“One of my girls used to help me with the banking and the books. She would have cashed the checks, I guess. I’m locked out of the accounts now, so I can’t say for sure.”
“Still, I don’t think that would have held up in court,” Rook said.
“The lawyer I contacted had mixed feelings about it. Apparently, he’d switched all the utilities over to himself and started paying them. It all looked legit. All I had was my word. He had paper trails. He said I could revisit it once the term for that contract was over.”
“What was the term?” Slash asked.
“Two years.”
“So, it was time to take things into your own hands,” he said.
“Yep,” she said, popping the p.
“What took so long?” Saint asked. “It’s been a year. What took so long to start making moves?”
“I got sick,” she admitted. “Really sick. And then after I got better, I got a different kind of sick. It took me a while to figure out it was Type 1 diabetes. Then I was focusing on trying to figure out how to manage that. And getting Sugar…” she said, patting the dog’s head.
“Can I ask why you picked a dog over a continuous monitor?” Rook asked.
“The doctor asked that too. But I couldn’t exactly tell him that I was worried that the app that goes along with that might be able to create a trail that led right to me and any illegal activities I was carrying out. Sugar can’t snitch on me.”
“That’s some pretty good forethought,” Slash said. “So, you said that Roach broke into your place, right?”
“Yeah. I didn’t think they saw me, but someone must have.”
“How’d they find you, when we can’t find you?”
“I told two of the girls where to find me when I’d been trying to get them out. I’m assuming Roach leaned on them until they spilled it.”
“And you’re sure you didn’t leave any clues to where you might be going?”
“Seeing as I didn’t know where I was going until after they left, no. But, I mean, you have to assume they are looking into you guys now.”
“Why’s that?” Raff asked, pills rattling in a bottle as he got his dose of painkillers.
“Because they’re going to assume we are working together.”
“And now you’ve made it so we are,” Slash said.
“You need me if you want to take these guys out for trying to kill Colter.”
“And you need us because you stand no chance against them on your own now that they’re onto you,” Slash said.
“Not a pleasant situation for either of us,” she said. “But we have a mutual enemy. We have something to offer each other. It makes sense.”
“Yeah,” Slash agreed. “Alright. I guess we’re in this together. But I don’t find my men expendable, so we are going to need you to sit down and help us jot down everything you know about all these guys. And your girls.”