I sat up and kissed them both. Then it was time to move.
My brothers filled the chapel, crowding round the table as Rubi laid out his notes, an earbud still jammed in one ear as he continued to monitor the Crows. Focused. His concentration absolute.
I laid a hand on his shoulder. “You eaten?”
“Yup.”
“Slept?”
“Caught a few hours. Came back to find Nash breaking everything.”
Nash’s glare ran as hot as it ever did. “Your system is complicated.”
“No, it ain’t.”
“All right, all right.” I silenced their bickering and looked to Nash. “You good?”
My VP nodded. “Got some shut-eye while Rubi was fussing over his biro collection.”
Fuck me running.
I moved to the door and found Decoy, Ivy nowhere in sight.
“At her mum’s,” he said to my unspoken question. “Get her back at the weekend.”
“Got time for some guard duty?”
“Always.”
He stepped up and took his place by the chapel door, the only brother outside of the council I trusted to be so close to club business without a seat at the table. Decoy was a fortress. Battened down. Nothing he overheard would ever pass his lips and I pitied any fool who tried to pass him.
I returned to the table and took my seat. The others took theirs, Alexei lingering, smirking at my scowl until he found his natural place at Saint’s side. “There’s still two extra chairs.” I pointed across the table.
Alexei ran his tongue over his bottom lip.
His only answer, apparently.
Accepting defeat, I pounded the gavel, then gave Rubi the floor. “Speak.”
Rubi took a breath and jabbed a finger on the pages and pages of coded notes he’d gathered. “I’m gonna give you the short version because we’re running out of time. First shipment of skin is due in the port tonight. There’s a container ship heading out of Portsmouth.”
“Not Plymouth?”
“Nah. They fed Rocco a pile of bullshit. Or they changed their plans out of our earshot. Either way, they’ve bought access to the port. Truck’s gonna drive straight into the container ten minutes before it gets loaded onto the ship. Slick as fuck if it goes to plan.”
“Albanian assistance?”
“Yup.”
I reached for the cigarettes Saint had dumped on the table. Lit up and expelled a lungful of smoke. “We need the route of the truck. Find the quietest point and run the damn thing off the road.”
“Too easy.” Saint claimed his own smoke. “If they’re expecting us, they’ll be expectingthat.”
“And this new information does not support your theory that the first run is bait,” Alexei said. “Albanian gangs do not wait around for bikers to play games.”
“What would you do?” Embry plucked the question from my mind and laid it out for all to see.
Alexei shrugged. “I would detonate the bomb beneath the Crows and kill them all without thought for my conscience. But I believe we are too late for that. If a truck is due in Portsmouth tonight, they will already be on the road to escort it. We can destroy the compound anyway—it will likely be empty, after all—but derailing the shipment is a fluid operation, one that must begin now.”