He had an hour on me, though, and I knew he’d have a plan. No one knew me better than Duke.
When he got off the interstate in South Pittsburgh and then back on it, I knew he’d handed her off to someone else. I also knew it would be someone I couldn’t follow electronically, so I went to the compound to confront him.
Duke’s smart, and he’s also a bad-ass, with the muscle to back himself up. I’m smarter than Duke, and I can kick any human’s ass, anywhere, anytime… but against the other wolves? I can hold my own with most of them, but against the best, I’m no match.
That didn’t stop me from storming into the clubhouse and taking a half-dozen swings at Duke before the other men could pull me off him, though.
“Where is she!”
“You’re too close, Brain. Let us handle her.”
“She’ll be in the wind before morning!”
“No. Precautions are being taken, and no one will lay a hand on her. She’s safe.”
“Stupid fuck! Took me a week to catch her, and you just…” I threw my arms up and stormed out of the clubhouse, got back on my bike, and rode home.
I have a room in my house not even my brothers know about. I could cause world war three from this room, and no government in the world would know a piece-of-trash biker had instigated what would probably be the end of the world as we know it.
Not that I considered myself a piece of trash. I’d grown up with money, was raised by people who had an actual say in how the world was run, and I knew they were the true scum of society. I went downstairs, opened the bookcase door into my weapons room, and then the fake wall at the back into my control room.
I cranked everything up, and within moments had monitors showing me the clubhouse interior and exterior, and speakers giving me audio from each place. I made sure I was jacked into Duke’s phone, and sat back and watched.
Of the people Duke trusted most, Gonzo was missing, so I did a search on all of his vehicles. None of them were somewhere they shouldn’t be, but Gonzo’s phone was at the clubhouse, and he wasn’t.
I hacked into Gonzo’s bank account, saw he’d just written a sizeable check. Ten minutes later, I discovered it was for a used Mustang. Damn.
Meeting Duke off the interstate in South Pittsburgh told me nothing, it was more about where to quickly make the change than about where Gonzo was taking her. Still, I could think of a half dozen likely spots.
I checked the routers at the places they’d most likely take her, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary at any of them. Wait… Duke would want a nice cage. The Atlanta chapter had a house in North Georgia they used for new werewolves, and it would only be an hour or so drive from South Pittsburgh. I went back into my records, pinged the router, and wanted to dance when it didn’t respond. Gonzo had unplugged it, just to make sure there was no internet access.
I lived in Fort Oglethorpe, and could make it to the cabin outside LaFayette in under thirty minutes on my bike.
I forwarded my calls to a burner phone, and jumped on a bike not jacked into the RTMC control room. They’d think I was still home, brooding.
It’d taken me a lot longer than it should’ve to figure out where she was, and it was after midnight. I made good time, but it was still nearly one in the morning when I pulled my bike off the road five miles from the cabin and hid it in the woods.
I didn’t want Gonzo to hear me coming.
I knew, when the cabin came into view with no Mustang in sight and Gonzo sitting on the front porch steps, she’d escaped.
I stood twenty yards from him and demanded, “Tell me everything that happened.”
He shook his head, told me how well things had gone, at first. When he got to the part about telling her to use the bathroom on the floor while he went and fixed food, I wanted to deck him. When he told me how it’d smelled, and the anger and violence coming from her when he cleaned up her mess, I didn’t realize I was going to hit him until my fist impacted his jaw.
Ten seconds later I was on my back, on the ground, looking up at him. “Dammit, don’t make me hurt you. She’s in my car, and she’s only been gone a half hour. Bash is on his way to get me, but you can go look for her, now, before she gets too far.”
“How much gas was in the car?”
“Half a tank. I heard her as the front door opened, and was on the front porch as she pulled away. She’s naked, with no money, in the middle of nowhere. She doesn’t have a lot of options.”
“She has options you can’t fathom, you stupid fuck.”
“Well, if you aren’t going after her, maybe you can tell me where I screwed up. She was naked in the cage, metal shackle on her ankle. How in the hell did she get out?”