Protect & Serve(195)

13





The ride back to the dilapidated bar felt like it lasted hours, although it was only maybe twenty minutes before we pulled up into the gravel.

The bikers strolled into their headquarters, and began tending to their wounded. Three of them had taken bullets – one in the shoulder, and two in the leg.

These club members weren’t going to see action for a little while, but Hunter ensured that they were well taken care of. He said they had a sympathetic doctor hanging round a nearby after-hours clinic, and I watched the three of them get hauled off to get patched up.

I took a seat at the bar countertop, sipping a glass of water. Hunter was busy checking on his men, but kept glancing over my way. When his phone buzzed, he stepped aside to take a quick phone call.

Grizz was left in charge, and he took the moment to step behind the bar. He looked me over briefly before pouring a tumbler of whiskey.

“You look like you could use something stiffer than tap water,” he muttered as he placed the short glass in front of me.

“How could you tell?” I asked, gratefully smiling as I kicked back the drink.

“Just a hunch,” he answered.

We stayed in silence for a moment – me, glancing over the bikers as they shed their equipment and cleaned their weapons, and him, eyeing me cautiously.

“Why are you here?”

“Excuse me?” I asked, turning back to face Hunter’s second-in-command. The question was so direct that I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“I asked, ‘Why are you here?’” He repeatedly softly, his piercing eyes trained onto mine. I almost felt like he was looking right through me, into my very soul.

“I… because I’m looking for missing girls,” I answered quickly. “Cheerleaders.”

“Right,” Grizz nodded contemplatively, before suddenly shaking his head. “No, that’s not right. What are you really here for?”

“I don’t know what answer you’re trying to angle for there, buddy, but you’re doing a pretty bad job of it.” I laughed, taking another swig of whiskey.

“You know what I mean.”

The awful part was, I did know.

“It’s not like that,” I insisted.

“Like what?” He tilted his head thoughtfully.

“You think I’m just here for Hunter, and that I don’t really care about my case at all.”

“I never said that.”

“Oh, come on,” I insisted, setting the whiskey glass down. “You think that I’m here to fuck your boss and play at being a detective? I’m following a lead on a case – my first case. I’m here because you guys were doing a private investigation into the missing girls, and I want to know what you came up with. And Hunter…”

“Hunter is being who he is,” Grizz shrugged.

“Something like that.” I thought on this for a moment. “What do you know about the missing girls? You’re his right-hand man. Do you know anything else about them?”

Grizz thought for a moment.

“I know that we found them once.”

If I’d been holding the tumbler in my hand in that moment, it would inevitably have shattered against the floor.

“You… you what?!”

Grizz shrugged again. “Hunter didn’t mention it?”

Hellfire spilt down into my veins; my sight went blurry with building, condensing anger. I was so enraged to hear this that I could have spit straight poison.

I glared straight into those pale eyes.

“Tell. Me. Everything.”

Grizz met my furious glance, pausing uncomfortably. His sharp, pale eyes were suddenly occupied with a disarming sadness.

“We tried to help,” he simply spoke.

“You tried to help how?”

For a moment, he glanced over my shoulder at the busy bikers – all spread around the club and clearly exhausted.

“It was two weeks after they were kidnapped. Hunter found evidence that they were closer than the authorities thought, and we caught wind that they were there in Tucson, hidden in a cartel-owned warehouse…”

“And you… found them?”

“Briefly,” he clarified quietly. “Hunter was the one to discover their location. They were under lock and key, surrounded by members of Víboras Verde. There were too many of them. We were outnumbered two to one.”

“…What did he do?” I demanded.

“He had a very difficult choice to make,” Grizz explained apologetically. “Striking the cartel would have put his men and the girls at risk… Or he could alert the police and try to call down a raid on the warehouse. Everybody knew how much money was being poured into this investigation by the state… ”