Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
“That a threat?”
“A promise.”
“You’re exhausting,” she said, but her eyes told me she understood the difference.
I left without slamming the door. Slammed doors are for men with witnesses.
On the way out, I called Waverly. She picked up on the first ring. “Talk to me.”
“Hampton Stanley visited IvaLeigh Walsh on campus,” I said. “Pulled a chair up in her room like it was his parlor.”
“I’ll get the campus visitor logs,” she said. “And their security footage. Public university, public records. If they balk, I’ll threaten to call the attorney general’s office.”
“Do it quiet,” I ordered. “I don’t want him knowing we know.”
“Parallel construction,” she reminded me. “I remember they all build up and fall down together.” She paused. “You okay?”
“No,” I shared. “I lost control of the situation.”
“Want me to reach out to her? Woman to woman?”
“She turned her phone off after she texted me.”
“Ah.” Waverly exhaled, measured. “Okay. We stand by.”
“Not too far by,” I shared. “I don’t trust her old man not to weaponize concern as a way to manipulate. Putting Shanks on a soft eye at their place. No contact. No leaning on the glass.”
“Copy.”
I hung up and called Burn. “I want proof he was in that apartment. Waverly’s on that. We have to move on Hampton now, he lit the fuse today going to IvaLeigh.”
“You’ll have it,” he said. “Also, I pulled a wire on a janitor at city hall. Hampton’s safe got opened two nights ago.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know yet. But something moved, because the inventory the night before was one more folder than it was last night.”
“I don’t want quiet movement,” I commanded. “I want him pinned to the fucking wall.”
“You’ll get him,” Burn said. “But you need to breathe long enough for me to bring the nails.”
I killed the call and stood in the parking lot letting cold air sand down the heat under my skin. Somewhere on campus, a bell tower chimed the hour like that meant anything. Time flexed and snapped back. I got on the bike and pointed it toward a house with shutters and a study behind a pretty gate.
I didn’t ring the bell. I never do.
I watched from the curb long enough to see a curtain twitch and a silhouette move and thought about knocking anyway. Then I pictured her mother’s hands shaking as she set down coffee and her father’s face when he realized the storm at his door came from Hampton Stanley after all.
I turned and twisted my throttle, pulling away. Not because I didn’t want to crash through. Because sometimes keeping someone safe looks like staying where you don’t want to.
The clubhouse was already buzzing when I rolled up. Word moves faster than a bullet in a family like ours. By the time I hit the vault for church, they were all there: Burn with a laptop and a folder he shouldn’t have had, Pull with a legal pad fat with notes from Waverly, Loco restless as a dog that’s supposed to heel.
I paced around the table and looked at my brothers. “He went to her. He told her I was using her. He told her that her old man belongs to him. She’s home. She turned her phone off. She’ll be safe there for now.”
Burn didn’t say I told you so. He never does. He clicked a key. A still frame from a security camera filled the screen: apartment lobby, front desk, Hampton Stanley in a suit leaner than his soul, signing the visitor log like good manners were the same as permission.
Pull slid me a printed copy of the log, the name H. Stanley in a hand that belonged to a man who thought his signature mattered more than his word. I had glanced at the paper and recognized it in an instant, taking it in as face in this moment cut a little deeper. “Time in, 3:14 p.m. Time out, 3:48 p.m. He was there long enough to poison a room.”
“Any campus cops with him?” I asked.
“Nope,” Burn stated. “Just his own shadow. He thinks he is the cops.”
Loco cracked his knuckles. “We gonna pay him a visit?”
“No.” I put the word down heavily. Loco settled. “Not like that. Not yet.”
“What then?” Loco asked, eyes flat as a lake.
“We tighten the noose,” I explained. “Waverly pushes the requests in the legal ways. Burn keeps the pipeline hot. Dippy sits on the bank VP’s wife. Shanks—remains soft eye on IvaLeigh’s parents’ place. Anyone other than family approaches, I want to know. No contact. Nobody breathes on her unless I say so.”
Nods around the table. Purpose is a meal; you can feel a room eat when you serve it.
“GJ?” Disciple asked. “You want me to get word in, or is that a you thing?”
“Peanut keeps him looped in and breathing because we got Grip on the inside now as his cellmate,” I stated. “I’ll talk to him tonight.”