I was too focused on him.
On watching the smile I wanted to twist in my grip and rip from his face.
I was too lost in winning.
The sound of the engine roaring to life behind us didn’t register until it was too late.
“Shit!” Jedd cried, and when I turned around to see what the fuck was going on, I saw Owen making his escape.
The rat on the run.
He was getting away, and with one look in Jedd’s eyes, I knew he knew what the hell was going on now.
The world seemed to move in slow motion as I leaned forward, used all the power I had within me to yell at my men. “No! Fuck. Stop that motherfucker. Stop him now!”
Chapter Thirty-Five
AYDA
Ifelt weird being alone in the utterly empty Hut.
Gone were the usual signs of life, the usual rumble of conversation, chatter of a television, or even the quiet hum of a radio playing music. There was no rumble of motorcycle engines, the gurgling of coffee makers, or the clinking of beer bottles. There was nothing but silence. Not even the chorus of cicadas could penetrate the stillness that surrounded me.
It felt wrong.
Worse than that, I couldn’t seem to bring myself to step over the threshold into Harry’s room. The one thing Drew had asked from me, and here I was choking.
I’d watched them all roll out of the yard, and I’d even gone about mundane tasks, every one of my senses trained on the silent building, waiting for someone to jog in because they’d forgotten something, It hadn’t happened.
I’d approached Harry’s room and flung open the door, stopping dead in my tracks when that scent of motor oil, beer, and cigarettes hit me like a warm embrace. It was a full and brutal reminder that he was gone.
“Okay, Harry,” I said, finally stepping through the door and glancing around. I took a deep breath and headed to thenightstand. I searched two drawers before I came across a small arsenal. The long bowie knife he always carried with him was laid atop his 9mm and a .38 special. There was also a heavy set of brass knuckles with the reaper and hound beveled in the business end, as well as a switchblade and a Glock 1911 and a .22, which looked like a toy gun next to some of the others. The last gun I found looked like a damn cannon, and from what I could see, it was a desert eagle. The rest was ammunition.
I knew where to come if we ever needed a munitions cache. The man was prepared for World War Three.
I took my time moving around his room after that. I was respectful of his things and the order in which he kept them. His space was organized chaos. There was a stash of porn and biker mags that would make a teenage boy envious, and photographs of him with women I’d never seen before filled a lockbox that hadn’t been locked in decades if the latch was anything to go by. His whole life had been condensed into one room, and it was in this moment of reflective silent solitude that I was finally beginning to realize what a life he’d had.
As much as I wanted to sit down and follow the story he was telling, I couldn't. I had a job to do. I had a purpose. Harry had suspected someone of betraying the club, and I knew the man well enough to understand he’d had his eye on Owen, even if he hadn’t been willing to say it aloud or point the finger of accusation at him directly. Harry didn’t do things in halves. He would have had the start to the paper trail we’d just followed through to the end. I just had to find it first.
I moved around the room trying my best to be clinical in the way I looked at things. I tried to get into Harry’s mind, following the path of least resistance. When I searched hisdesk drawers, I found nothing and moved on, but something was nagging at me. Something obvious that kept drawing my eyes back to that 1970’s metal monstrosity of a desk he had taking up a good third of his room. I moved back to it and dropped to my knees by the largest drawer.
The lock had been jimmied at some point, the dent in the metal a big red flag, and when I pulled the drawer open again, I looked at it all a second time. Someone had been through these files recently, I could tell. Scanning the tabs, I saw names of every man in the club, and at the back sat mine, Tate, and Rubin’s names, too.
I didn’t bother looking at the boys’ files. I already knew what I would find in there. Instead, I pulled mine from the very back and dropped it to the floor in front of me. It was all standard background checks and files on my college days, hospital reports, report cards, and bank statements. None of which shocked me. Behind all of that, there was a file on my parents. I pulled it out and opened it, swallowing hard as I pulled a thick padded envelope from inside. My parents’ names were printed on the front, and the envelope was sealed. Whoever had gone through his office hadn’t looked into this one at all.
“Oh, old man. You knew us all too well,” I murmured, turning the envelope over and breaking the seal.
Pulling out the contents, I almost whooped in excitement. The file had nothing to do with my parents, their deaths, or their financial statements. The whole thing was exactly what I’d been looking for. Harry had hidden it all in plain sight. He’d known that if I hadn’t found this, Drew would have at some point, and curiosity would have ensured that he would have opened it sooner rather than later. To anyone else, it wasjust another background check, and Harry being his usual, thorough self.
I thumbed through the papers, not really understanding much of what I was reading. There were some stills taken from the pawnshop’s video camera of Owen talking to someone on his cell phone. He obviously thought he was out of range of the camera, and almost was. There were a couple of photocopies of the club’s finances, membership papers, newspaper clippings, deeds and titles, financial statements, bank records, stock market shares, even off books clinic visits that weren’t from the club’s usual doctor. These were all things I knew Drew, or even Eric, would understand more than I would. I just knew this, beyond even a reasonable doubt, was evidence, and it was what I’d been looking for.
I pulled the file back together and tried to push it all back into the envelope with as much finesse as I could manage. I’d been sitting on the floor for so long my ass had gone to sleep, and my legs were stiff. Glancing up at the clock, I realized that the boys had been gone for hours now, and I had no idea how long it would be until they started to wander back through the front door. I had to get out of Harry’s room and hide the file in our room before anyone returned. I also needed to make sure Harry’s things were as he’d left them.
Making a quick choice, I sprinted to our room and slipped the file into a small drop box at the back of the safe. It was hidden, and only went one way, so there was no risk of anyone retrieving what I’d just put inside. Not until Drew opened the door and looked for himself, anyway.
It didn’t really escape my notice that I’d just delivered Owen Sinclair’s death warrant in a pretty manila envelope. In fact, I felt proud of myself for it. The bastard had always beenon the peripheral watching everyone as though he were the king and this was his court of fools. It was one of those silly things that nudged my irritation, but I always brushed it away as another one of those weird dynamics they had in the club. It felt like some kind of justification to know my intuition hadn’t been wrong about the guy.
As I stood staring at the safe in satisfied wonder, the silence that I’d grown so accustomed to in the last couple of hours was disturbed by a slamming door somewhere inside the building.