Titan’s Creed (9)

9

“You trust Brick and Dozer enough to bring them in on this?”

Capt. Jack leaned over the table as he pushed his half-eaten plate of 4 a.m. pancakes out of the way, “Brick hates Cameo for all the shit he pulls on Rylynn. He loves that girl like a sister and Dozer would follow his brother to the grave. Those are the only two I know for a fact keep their distance from that fuck-tard and his pill popping crony. We can’t take on this shit alone and I don’t know how trust worthy the Lynch Men are, family or no, we can’t put all our faith in them not being total shit bags. Hammer had a reason for keeping them at arm’s length from his girl.”

Wraith agreed with Caps assessment. He leaned back in the bench seat of the ratty booth they sat in and tossed his arm up to rest on the seatback and kicked out his long leg to stretch. He had either been on his ride or sitting in some wooden piece of shit chair for the last 24 hours. He needed to be horizontal and the sooner the better.

A scrawny, well used frizzy headed blonde waitress scurried over to refill their coffees. Wraith covered his mug with his hand telling her he had no interest in the coffee and his eyes told her he had no interest in anything else she may have been peddling. Cap on the other hand was game for pretty much anything she was willing to toss on the table, including her ass.

“I’m gonna head to the club and hit the racks, man. Let me know when you have reached out to the brothers,” Wraith grumbled as he lifted himself out of the saggy booth. He tugged his wallet from his back pocket and then threw down two twenties. It would cover the sad attempt at a meal and hopefully a box of heavy duty steel plated condoms. Wraith chuckled at Cap as the waitress leaned over showing more than her interest, “Double bag that shit, man,” he smirked. Two condoms at once didn’t seem enough for her overly used snatch, but Wraith was too exhausted to fight Cap on his plans with her. He pointed his very tired body toward the door leaving them to their vices.

“Always do,” yelled Cap as he tugged the waif of a woman down on his lap.

Wraith made the ride to the club in a matter of minutes. It was closer than Hammer’s place and he was too tired to push it any further. He was in need of a shower and a sheet. He would settle for the sheet. The club had a dozen rooms barely bigger than a cell available for their men in need of a bed. Most were taken by brothers who were bedding down a honey or two for the night. Most had their own places, but kept club shit in the club and that included club pussy. You only took home what you wanted to keep and Wraith never took any of that shit to his own bed. What and who he wanted was in his bed at that very moment, but not alone. She was cuddled up to a brother’s baby boy. Someday, it would be their baby she would be holding. That made him smile as he wandered the hall looking for an empty room.

Closing doors wasn’t a priority when fucking a bitch. The brothers cared less than the honeys did. It was an open invitation to join in if a door was open and you saw something you liked. So as Wraith hunted for a space to crash he got a heavy dose of limp dick, tits, and ass staring back at him as he passed each haphazardly open doorway. His footsteps faltered for a heartbeat as he passed a room where Cameo lay passed out between two club honeys. This wasn’t odd. Odd was Pez passed out naked as fuck in a chair next to the bed with his foot propped up on the edge of the mattress in the face of one of the honeys. Pez was facing the bed like an audience to the activities that were played out.

The fucker, Cameo, had been screaming about marking Rylynn as his property, but was banging anything within reach. ‘Did that include Pez?’ Wraith wondered and then shook the image and thought from his exhausted brain. He knew brothers stepped out on their bitches and ol’ ladies, but never understood why. If you were going put your claim on a woman, mark her as yours and yours alone, why would you want to touch used club snatch? He would never do that to his Jewel. She would be his property and he would be hers.

Wraith found a series of vacant rooms at the farthest end of the hall. He chose the last room for more privacy and quiet when the club began to wake. He closed and locked the door behind him. His trust for the brothers in that house was about as high as a snake’s belly button so he pushed the small dresser that sat beside the door over the thin wood of the only door. It wasn’t much of a barrier, but it was better than the plank of wood alone. He hung his cut with due respect from the headboard while the rest of his clothes hit the floor in a pile. He would go back to Rylynn’s place when he woke to take care of Nox, but he didn’t sleep for shit wrapped in her sheets and scent. He would have to crash on the couch or Hammer’s bed if he expected to get any shut-eye. As his eyes drifted closed she appeared behind his lids smiling at him with her arms extended, offering him her embrace. Wraith fell into her grasp and was pulled under the fog of sleep wrapped in her arms.

Wraith had only collected three hours of solid sleep before he was jerked awake by an insistent hammering coming from the door.

“Wha…” he grumbled without even so much as lifting his throbbing head.

“Yo, it’s Brick.”

“Yeah, so what?”

“Open the fucking door, man,” he growled and then landed a fist on the door so heavy it shook the dresser that was braced in front of it.

Wraith grunted as he sat on the edge of the lumpy mattress, “Hold up a sec,” he groaned as he pulled on his jeans. He begrudgingly moved the dresser and then pulled open the flimsy door.

Brick pushed his way in and slammed the door behind him, “Veep told me and Dozer what’s what with lil’ Hammer. What the fuck, bro? Why didn’t you say something earlier?” Brick hissed as he shoved Wraith who was happy to sit back down on the bed.

He leaned over to grab his boots and pull them on far earlier than he intended. Wraith shuffled around pulling on his tee and cut while explaining his reasoning to Brick, “Brother or not, man, I didn’t know who I could trust in this house and you fucking know it.”

Brick thumped his chest, “I would never taint my oath to this house. I thought you fucking knew that?”

Wraith dropped back down on the bed, rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his tired head into his hands, “I had to be sure, Brick. I had to know that whoever I reached out to was above the shit. I had to know they weren’t looking to hurt her or hand her over to Cameo.”

Brick stiffened and shook his massive fist in Wraith tired face, “I worked with her every fucking day. Hammer bled out in my bay at the garage! I am stepping over the stain left by our Presidents blood and you doubt me.”

Wraith was on his feet and face to face with Brick in a nanosecond, “Yes, I doubted you. I doubted every fucking piece of shit in this club that ever shared a beer with the bastard! One of your brothers killed your President, the President of the National Chapter. One of you lied about Rylynn to cover it up. I didn’t know which until I talked to her. Even still, I don’t know who is workin’ with that bastard, so back the fuck off and help me figure this shit out if you want to protect her.”

Brick stumbled back a step as the words slammed into him. The truth can be a bitter pill to swallow. “Fuck,” he murmured as he shook at the idea that one of their own betrayed the entire brotherhood.

“Yeah, fuck.”

They both stood silent as they fought with their loyalties to the club and the dis-loyalties of its members. “Come on. Cap and Dozer are in the office talkin’ plans. We better get in there before Dozer convinces Cap to blow something up.”

“I know someone I would like to see in pieces.”

Brick nodded, “Apparently there are two. So I know two fuckers I’d like to see in a pile of pieces.”

Brick and Wraith walked down the hall Wraith had entered far too few hours before. Some of the doors were still open, but the beds vacant of most of the men. A few honeys still slept or were taking their sweet time getting moving. Wraith took note that Cameo and Pez’s cluster fuck had cleared out completely, “Where does Cameo work?”

Brick canted his head and furrowed his brow, “The hell if I know, man. It never crossed my mind to find out.”

“We need to know and Pez’s job too.”

Brick held the door to the office, “We need to get eyes on them like now.”

Cap rocked back in the creaky office chair that Wraith and Rylynn use to spin around in for hours as kids, “Eyes on who?”

Wraith curled his lip, “Fuck-face and his favorite Pill Popper. I was asking if we knew where they worked.”

Dozer leaned against the rusted filing cabinet and grinned, “Cool, code names. Mine’s Dick-zilla.”

“Cuz you are a monster dick,” clarified Brick at his little brother’s expense.

Dozer grabbed the crotch of his jeans and shook it as his brother, “Cuz I got a monster in my pants, big brother. What’s the matter? You get short changed in the family gene pool?”

Brick smirked, “Nah, that’d be you.”

Wraith raised an eyebrow at the display while Capt. Jack called them back to the issue at hand, “If you two are done fucking jerking off, maybe we can crack some skulls and clean house here?” asked Cap eyeing them. “Yea, good, now listen. Flint sent word that they have recon on both Cameo and Pez. They both work in the warehouses on the outskirts of town. Pez is a forklift driver and Cameo works logistics on the floor or some shit. The intel they received at this point is that they believe Cameo is in deep with the Diablos Verdes, Green Devils, out of Mexico. Were talkin’ guns, drugs, and women. We’re not sure where Cameo fits into this trio of shit, but we need to know how and why they were using our club.”

Wraith leaned back against the door and crossed his arms over his chest, “Ry said there was a money trail that she caught. Maybe they are scrubbing cash through club accounts. I can call her and see if she can follow the numbers.”

“Call her now,” ordered Cap, “We need to get on this.” Cap reached down and scratched at his groin. Wraith chuckled as Cap flipped him the bird. Condoms can’t stop everything.

Wraith pulled his cell from his back pocket then called his girl, “Hey, Jewel, you in a secure place?…Go up to the apartment and lock the door…No, all is fine. We have some leads and need to talk to you about that stuff you found…Okay, I’m putting you on speaker,” Wraith looked down at the screen and tapped the speaker icon, “Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you. Who all’s there?”

“Hey, lil Hammer,” croaked Cap, “It’s good to hear your voice, lil girl.”

Rylynn gasped, “Oh, Cap, I’m sorry I had to run. It was the only way.”

“I know, lil girl. Wraith filled us in.”

Brick stepped closer to the phone Wraith laid on the desk, “I’m here too, and Dozer. Miss your face, baby girl.”

“I miss my boys,” she smiled across the line. “Okay, I have booted up the computer with the documents I have. What are we doing?”

Cap filled her in on what they knew up to that point. “Is there a way to follow the money? Where it came from? Where it was going?”

They could hear clicking resonating through the phone, “Well, it looks like most of the deposits were done in cash, but there are a few I think can be tracked. Also, it looks like they occurred about every two weeks and if I’m correct…,” more ambient noises of shuffling papers and clicking, “there should be money movement sometime in the next three days or so.”

Wraith placed his palms flat on the desk either side of his cell, “Can they still access the accounts with the logins changed.”

“He can still deposit cash, but he won’t be able to move it or take it out without the new codes. There are…were only three of us with the power to make changes to the accounts, me, grandpa, and Chip, but he has been out West for a few weeks now. He may not even know I changed the codes. Cap? Do you have the checks locked up?”

Cap leaned back and stooped down, “I talked to Chip the night…that night. He didn’t say anything about the codes, but I didn’t know anything about them either.” They could hear spinning and clicking until a large lock disengaged. Cap sat up with a binder in his grip, “Here we go. I have ‘em. They were the safe.” He opened the binder to see that check numbers matched what was logged. “Checks look good on our end, but there’s no way to know if he took any deposit slips,” he stated then put the checks back in the safe.

“Deposit slips don’t matter. They know him at the bank. They would do a deposit with a counter slip,” explained Rylynn. “It’s easy to put money in, but he can’t sign for money movement.”

He gave the locking mechanism a good spin when the door closed.  “If he can’t move the money then he is fucked if he is working with the Diablos Verdes. That’s why he is pushing to finding you, lil girl. He needs the codes to get to the cash.”

Dozers stepped forward from the corner he had been resting in, “But why send us after the Lynch Men. He knows she’s not with them.”

Wraith huffed and crossed his arms back over his chest, “I don’t know.”

“A distraction, maybe?” chirped Rylynn. “If you are busy looking at the Lynch Men then he is clear to look for me.”

“Possible, would he know to look for her where she is?” Brick asked Wraith.

“Would he know anyone here?” Rylynn gasped. “Am I safe here?”

“You are safe. Even if he knew someone there I know them better,” snarled Wraith. “I would never put you somewhere you wouldn’t be safe, Jewel. As for the Lynch Men, he wouldn’t have expected us to reach out to Flint either.”

Dozer stepped forward, “Okay, but we still need to follow the numbers, right?”

“Right,” Cap added. “Can you do it, lil girl?”

“Wraith, is there anyone here I can reach out to that might know banking. Someone I can talk to?” asked Ry.

“Yeah, I’ll make a call.” Wraith picked up his phone and held it out the men in the room, “Say good-bye.”

“We will get you back home where you belong, Ry,” declared Brick with Dozer agreeing and patting his brothers back.

“Take care of you, lil bird. Wraith has you covered. We got your back,” said Cap through the thickening in his throat.

“Bye guys! I trust you all…” was all they caught when Wraith tapped the speaker to mute her words to them.

“It’s me,” he whispered into the phone as he turned to leave the office. He looked back at Cap and quickly added, “I’ll be right back. I need a minute,” then closed the door behind him. “How are you doing?” he asked.

“Okay, I guess,” she sighed. “I miss everyone, but am thankful to know you are all working on this for me.”

“Anything for you,” Wraith growled as he leaned against the wall in the narrow hallway. “You know that right? You know I would do anything for you, baby?”

“I know…and I would for you.”

“Just a couple more days and this shit will be over, Jewel.”

Rylynn sighed, “Back to normal?”

“Better, beautiful, I promise it will be better.”