Clean Hack (The Tainted Saints Book 1) Page 7

  Seemed I was always there, on the outer rim, knowing but not really. Caring without a solid connection. I couldn’t explain it and I honestly didn’t want to.

  Months went by. I kept busy. The winds changed and though I wasn’t on the in, I could tell that some of the clubs were shaking with some kind of uncertainty. There was something brewing and I didn’t have any clue about it. I could see it in the men. In the way their shoulders were more rigid. In the way their faces were more stern. The way that they seemed on constant guard. I could see it in the old ladies as they tried to stay strong for the club more so than usual.

  It amazed me sometimes. How they would all come together in the time of need. And the women. If they were good ones, they would become something soft while at the same time stay strong for not only the men of the club but each other as well. I admired the old ladies the most, I think. It couldn’t have been an easy life, falling in love with men that constantly lived on the edge of danger. But from what I’d seen, in more cases than not, these women not only knew what they were getting themselves into but took on that role with amazing strength and power.

  But back to the intense, buzzing, crazy energy that I felt around a few of the MCs that I worked with. It maybe should have bothered me. Also, should have made me itch to know more. If there was something that set them on edge then it quite possibly could have effected me, right? And while I did want to know, I mostly wanted to not get involved. It wasn’t my business and I believe that it wouldn’t even reach me.

  Being me, an outsider, an other, meant that I didn’t have many people to watch out for. It was almost as if I wasn’t there, you know? Like I was highly regarded when it came to needing a job done, but I wasn’t part of anything, so therefore, I was pretty much invisible. I more worried about the law than anything else. While I could imagine that I might be on someone’s list, I knew they didn’t have a thing on me. Cops. FBI. And what have you. No one could find, let alone pin anything on me.

  So really, I wasn’t worried about a damn thing.

  “Hello,” I said answering the new phone I’d just gotten two days before. Again, I wondered how she’d gotten the number, but shook the thought off before I could go too crazy.

  “Moon Hill,” she said in that strange distorted voice. I had come to hate it recently whereas I hadn’t really cared either way before.

  I turned my truck around, I wasn’t all that far out from the small town. It’d been a good while since I’d seen them.

  And because I was tired and hopping from job to job at the moment, I opened my mouth and suddenly didn’t care about whatever thing we had going on before. Whatever kind of unspoken rules that we followed. I wanted to talk and so I decided that I was going to try something new.

  “How’s your night going?”

  Wow, that was so smooth. I was going for friendly but I might not have pulled it off. I could tell that she was a bit skittish—okay, a lot skittish. Something in my tone almost seemed a bit too eager and I would have said a tad on the excited side. Or nervous, maybe that would have explained the sweaty palms a little more.

  I waited and was met with dead air.

  “Look,” I said with a calm, relaxed tone that was maybe even a little soft. “I have already had a long night and it looks like it’s going to be a little longer than I want, so maybe you could talk to me for a few. Help make this drive a little less dull.”

  “I…,” the robotic voice said and I could tell she was maybe sort of trying.

  “I think we’ve been working together, if you want to call it that, long enough now. Maybe you can tell me a little something about yourself. Or we could start with a name so I’m not calling you crazy, random things in my head.”

  I just admitted that I thought about her.

  Maybe she didn’t catch onto that.

  “Uhhh…”

  I could almost see her sitting there shaking, her finger ready to hit the end button. Not that I really knew anything about what she looked like. Strangely in my mind, she was kind of like a blobish entity. Light and without real form.

  “Do you know my name?” I asked a hint of real curiosity in my tone. That was the thing, I knew nothing about her, but how much did she know about me? She shouldn’t have known anything, but I had a feeling that wasn’t the case.

  And then the line went dead. I’d pushed too far.

  With a heavy sigh, I tossed my phone onto the seat next to me.

  The world was dark around me and my eyes were dry and tired. I’d keep going as long as the lines on the side of the road continued to look straight.

  I was weirdly out of it when I pulled past of the gates to the Steel Paragons’ head chapter’s compound. Walking in, I was greeted by several of the members then shown to the basement.

  This was Diesel’s work. I knew it immediately. Diesel was the Enforcer for this chapter. He’d had the title a few years now and I truly believed that it was a good thing for the guy.

  I had a closer connection to Diesel than the others. After all, it was me that brought him to this club. It was me that helped him find his way after life pretty much emotionally kicked him in the balls and then cut his dick off. I didn’t think I’d ever forget the night I found him as long as I lived. It broke my heart all the while pissing me off at the same time. He was drunk, at the end of his rope and all but throwing himself at Death. I later learned—after I took him in, cleaned him up, and got him sober—that he’d lost his unborn child. That was bad enough by itself, but it seemed like the woman he loved and who was carrying his child was responsible for her own death, which resulted in the death of the baby. He blamed himself, I learned that pretty quickly. He hated himself that he hadn’t seen it coming. I’d never met a man so excited about the life he should have been bringing into the world. It tore him up and open. He was still clearly dealing with it. Though, now, he chose to stuff it all down and not really move on. Being the Enforcer gave him chances here and there to expel his anger. Or so I figured it.

  I liked the guy. I, in some ways, felt responsible for him. I wanted him to find the happy in life again and that was part of the reason why I’d told him to take a ride with me one day. At the time, he didn’t know what my job was. And when I brought him here, he didn’t know that I’d come to get rid of a body for the club as well. Even when I left him after making introductions, he didn’t know that I was down in the basement, making parts of a man they had tied up down there. Diesel knew now though. All too well.

  So, I’d learned over the years how his work turned out in the end. And I’d figured out by the finished result what level of closeness each job had. This guy was tied to a table, only after he’d been beaten to a bloody pulp. The skin on his back was bubbled up and oozing, clearly burnt off. I took a moment to get a closer look. There were colors around the charred skin. A tattoo, I guessed. Whatever it was, Diesel thought this guy didn’t deserve to die with it on him.

  As I untied the guy and flopped him onto my tarp, I got the sense that the end of this job had been rushed. I didn’t wonder why because that wasn’t who I was. I didn’t need to know these things and it wasn’t a requirement to do my job.

  Hours later, I was back at the clubhouse, body long gone and money in my pocket for a completed job.

  I sat there at the bar because Cal, the President, had offered me a beer as he slid me an envelope full of money. He often ended it this way. I had nowhere else to be and I never wanted to seem rude or disrespectful, so I sat. And drank. Even if it was awkward because neither of us said anything.

  The clubhouse was quiet. It was so late at night that it was almost early. If that made sense. The time of day that these guys called it a night. Which was late because they were party-all-night kind of guys. Cal left me half a beer in, clapping me on the back as a thanks and telling me to stay and finish. I did, because it didn’t feel awkward to sit there alone even if I didn’t wear the patch.

  I was a little shocked when not much later, Diesel himself plopped
his big, tattooed ass down next to me. We didn’t really acknowledge each other in a normal sort of way. But I studied him through the mirrored wall on the back of the bar. There were deeper lines etched on his face. Which told me that there was something more weighing on him than what I knew about.

  I couldn’t help but to check on him in a subtle way.

  That was when I noticed the new officer’s patch over his heart. Sergeant at Arms. It looked like he had moved up from Enforcer. I wanted to congratulate him, but I sensed a heaviness about it. Like maybe there was something behind that spot being open for him to take. I wondered why he was still doing the Enforcer’s job then. But it hit me, he did the job because he felt responsible for some reason. I opened my mouth to ask if he was hanging in there, but his body went stiff beside me.

  Then I caught it. A tiny as fuck girl—no, woman—came running out, scurrying along the edge of the room heading away from where the men had rooms there. She wasn’t wearing much, and if I had to guess, she didn’t have anything under that huge men’s shirt she had on. There was an innocence about her. There was also no hiding the fact that she was pregnant. My gaze turned back to the mirror just in time to see something flash across Diesel’s face.

  “That yours?” I asked almost on a grunt.

  “Yeah,” he said in a clipped tone.

  So I sort of sighed on the inside. I saw him almost as a little brother…an estranged little brother because we didn’t really talk all that much now. But still. I felt the need to insert some words of wisdom or something.

  I opened my mouth without looking at him. Telling him that whoever this girl was, well, she wasn’t Rachel. She wasn’t the woman that killed his unborn child. And that he shouldn’t let his past cloud what he could have now and in the future.

  Well, something along those lines anyway. I was sure what came out of my mouth wasn’t as great as how I imagined it in my head.

  “Everyone’s got words of wisdom all of a sudden,” he said in a half pissed-off tone. I could tell that under the grumbling anger he was really thankful for my brilliant insight.

  I slapped him on the back and got to my feet. Then let him know that if he needed me, he knew how to get a hold of me.

  “Hey,” he called out just as I reached the front door. “How the hell do you always get here so quickly? I know you service all up and down the coast. And I also know that even if you have more than one place that you stay, that you still couldn’t get here as fast as you do. So, how the fuck do you know how to almost always be less than thirty minutes away when we call?”

  I could see the confusion clear as day on his face as he tried to work out some sort of answer for himself.

  “I have a psychic,” I said and sort of drifted off not even realizing that I’d said that out loud.

  I shrugged, not really knowing any other way to explain it. Also, not sure that I wanted to. Part of me wanted to keep her as mine. But I didn’t have the first clue as to why.

  Then I left, heading off to the closest place that I owned to get some damn sleep and praying that I had enough energy left in me to make it there.

  -8-

  I Need Some Fucking Answers

  Lucy

  “Did you get settled in?” I asked Nadya with a slight chuckle in my tone.

  We were doing the rare video chat. It was like we got a wild hair every now and then and decided we needed to talk as face-to-face as we would allow ourselves. She looked tired but still beautiful. I mean, she was a tall bombshell. Magnetically cold eyes that I couldn’t even begin to describe. And thick hair that anyone would envy.

  She finally had a job. One I didn’t know much about and I honestly didn’t think she did either. She hadn’t said much about it other than the fact that she might be sitting on this one for a while.

  “I’ve been here three days and I already hate this place,” she said flatly.

  Things had been mostly quiet on my end. I hadn’t given up my search but I’d pulled back just a little. It was hard but I had to believe that Burke would handle it. That he wouldn’t let me down. I just had to keep reminding myself that he was treating this like a job and that he was fucking amazing at what he did. That helped, sometimes.

  What didn’t help though, was that the other clubs had started to grow antsy. Many of them had gone on lockdown at different times. There had been things that had happened. Lives lost and hard decisions made. The Steel Paragons seemed to be the biggest club caught in the middle of all of this. I hadn’t seen Savage again, but I knew he was the cause for all of it. While watching, I’d figured out that there were at least five clubs that I’d been keeping an eye on that had been caught up in his web. Most of them bowing down and giving into his demands after one or two attacks had been made on them. Which, I couldn’t really blame them because that shit came out of nowhere. Savage was a sneaky motherfucker. And he didn’t like to get his hands dirty. Sending out men to do his shit work. Like the last clean up I’d called Clean for at the Steel Paragons Moon Hill chapter. Savage was down a man. I didn’t feel sorry. A close man, being that it was his secretary. Stupid title, but it was a pretty high one. However, it had been close to six months and I had no doubt that that position had once again been filled.

  I’d seen the Secretary kill the man, Stone was his name. I had access to the Steel Paragons cameras that were outside of the compound. The one in back of the garage they owned was the one that caught the whole horrible thing. I saw it, much like they did. I watched as Savage’s man beat him and left him for dead. I saw the faces of the men that found him. I saw the club as they broke over their fallen man. He had a family, a wife and three kids. It broke me to watch as his wife tried to stay strong for herself and her children, as well as the club. In the end, she’d made the decision to leave. I’d seen that too. And I couldn’t blame her.

  I still had no clue if Burke had gotten a permanent foot in yet. I still didn’t know if he’d found Allison.

  But I did see how evil Savage could be. And I hated to think that she was there, somewhere, dealing with Savage’s wrath on a daily basis.

  I felt like I was so close to answers but unable to get them. It sucked.

  I wasn’t in their world. I was an invisible shadow in the corner of the room. But I saw everything that went on and I hated it for all of them. Each and every single one of them doing their best to keep their clubs safe, figuring out the right move to keep the man that terrorized them happy.

  The Steel Paragons weren’t as willing to lay down and let Savage and his club run all over them. Sure they were still working with him for the gun runs. Or for him was probably more accurate. But they’d collectively made a decision right before Stone’s death, not to give in to demands that had been made about running drugs. Which, I believed was the reason behind the death of their man.

  So in other words, things were tense.

  And I could feel it even though I wasn’t there.

  Back to Nadya. She’d finally gotten a job after months of nothing. Having a job go...somewhat sideways, would do that to a person. But I had a weird feeling that though a job had come along, it wasn’t really a good thing. I just had to keep a close eye on her and try to keep her from going in the wrong direction. Sometimes, I got the feeling that she didn’t really think about the jobs she did and took. However, you wouldn’t catch me telling her that.

  “Where are you staying?” I asked because I hadn’t really talked to her the last few days.

  “A motel on the outskirts. Real shit place. And it smells like feet and pickles.” I could make out some of the room on the edges of the screen. It didn’t look spectacular, that was for sure.

  “That is oddly descriptive and gross. I think I can almost smell it myself.” I laughed and she snorted.

  “I’m going to go set everything up tomorrow. I’ll call you when I need you,” she said and I knew the routine well enough by now.

  No sooner did I hang up the phone, I knew something was wrong. I didn’t know w
hat. Had no clue. But whatever it was, it had to have been really bad.

  There was a tension and panic that buzzed around the Moon Hill chapter of the Steel Paragons. It was apparent to my eyes as I watched the many different feeds. I could feel it too like it was curling itself outward and reaching towards me. A few strokes and I had access to Bocca’s tablet, and more importantly, the noises and voices of what it was picking up.

  It wasn’t great. But as the men moved frantically around, I could make out someone saying the name Ellie. Diesel’s woman. Or as I referred to her, the tiny little badass. Because…well, I’d seen what she could do when the people she loved were threatened. I didn’t know her, but I had a huge level of respect for the woman.

  Then I heard a lot of clipped things. They were coming through in bursts, but I was sort of able to put them together.

  “Diesel.”

  “Explosion.”

  “Tank’s house.”

  “Grass.”

  Then a string of cuss words and a lot of what sounded like boots on the ground. Or a heard of elephants. It was pretty much the same. The tablet sounded if it clamored to the ground or a hard surface and I heard people barking orders.

  The air froze in my lungs. I didn’t have eyes where I needed it the most so I had no idea how bad the damage was.