“I need to have more facts.”
“Fine. Rubin has the laptop Ayda grabbed from Owen’s place…” Eric interrupted, dragging my attention to him. “Once I got it unlocked by some guys I used to know down in Corsicana… I guess that’s when I really knew we were going to be okay.”
I found myself leaning closer, desperate to put myself nearer a definite happy ending that was being dangled in front of me like a fucking carrot.
“Cut the shit, Eric. Give it to me straight. Tell me what we’ve got on him.”
“Yeah, man, spit it out. I’m fucking dying over here,” Slatergrumbled behind me.
“It turns out Owen really did have a lot of insurances in place of his own: taped meetings between him, Jon Taylor, and Mayor Walsh. Photographs of warehouses filled with guns, drugs, and a basement or two that showed pictures of safes being stuffed with money by guys dressed in black. Owen knew he was running a dangerous gauntlet, and that fucker wanted crash mats all around him if anyone from the other side ever decided to turn.”
My blood boiled at the thought of one of our own deceiving us that way, but then my mind went to something else. “Which meant he had all those insurances on us, too.”
“He had a fuckinglotof shit on us, Drew.”
“What kind of shit?” I asked, my heart picking up speed.
He tilted his head to one side, his sympathy pouring out of him in the form of a sigh. “Owen had cameras all over The Hut. In cars out in the yard, on bikes.”
“Myfucking bike?” I asked in a rush. “How the fuck wouldn’t I have seen those?”
“They make them the size of a needlepoint now. You’d have to be looking, and since we didn’t expect a rat…”
“We didn’t see shit.” I slammed my fist down angrily, pushing my fists into my forehead as the rage built up inside of me. “Tell me what he had,” I ground out, too furious to look up. Memories of random kills in the nights with Eric taunted me, where grief provided too much of a blinker on any consequences, and rage was the fuel that kept us hurting people. Flashes of Hernandez and The Emps. Nights where Ayda and I had ridden out and…
My head shot up at once. “Did he have pictures of Ayda?” I growled. “Did that sick fuck have pictures of my girl?”
“Drew, you—”
“Tell me, Eric, or so help me...”
He blinked twice before he answered. “He had pictures ofeveryone. Videos, too.”
I found myself jumping from my stool, needing to burn off the energy by pacing back and forth.
“JesusChrist,” I hissed.
“Brother,” Jedd said as he tried to reach for my arm, but I shrugged him off. Sinclair had seen my girl naked, hadn’t he? He’d seen us… both of us… doing… what? Everything. Every fucking thing. What had he seen? What had he heard? What had he passed on to Walsh and Taylor?
Placing my hands on my hips, I came to a stop, closed my eyes and let my head hang.
“If he wasn’t already dead, I’d rip that man to pieces all over again. I’d tear his tongue from his mouth and feed it to the sewer rats. I’d spoon his fucking eyeballs out and then shove them down his raw, bleeding throat.”
“What’s done is done, Drew,” Eric told me firmly, no emotion in his voice. I looked up slowly and met his gaze, sadness coating my eyes. “And everything he ever had on us is gone,” he added. “Tomorrow, we’ll get Kenny and Slater to sweep every building we own. They can make sure there are no more cameras in place.”
“Did you see it?” I asked sharply, not caring about tomorrow, just needing to know. “Did you see the shit Owen had on my girl?”
“I’m not that sick to watch.”
“And where is it all now?”
“It’s like it never existed,” Eric confirmed, his confidence shining through with the slight lift of his chin.
“How do we know he hasn’t, you know…” I waved a hand around flippantly. “Whatever Tate and Rubin always say they’re doing with their cells. Backed stuff up or whatever?”
“The guys in Corsicana helped me delete all the accounts it could be connected to. If any of it is in cyberspace, it’s a million light years away.”
“And you can trust those tech guys?”