“And he’s never missed anything before, huh?” I say with a huff of a laugh, thinking about a few others we let in the club who we thought nothing about till things took a turn.
This time Casper glares, and there’s a hint of irritation in his voice. “You saying we can’t trust a brother?”
“Not saying that.” I shake my head. I’d never not trust a brother. “Just saying that it wouldn’t be the first time the club missed something. I know we have a lot going on, and some things are bound to slip through. Even if we didn’t have our hands in so many jars, I doubt we’d catch everything. The world is changing.” I shrug. “It’s getting harder to tell who you can trust these daysis all.”
They both hum in understanding. This isn’t about trusting a brother’s ability to hack into a person’s background, or saying that we’ve got a lot going on, and maybe one man isn’t enough to look over everything like it used to be. We have the best of the best. We either buy it or recruit it. But the world keeps growing, evolving. Even amateurs can make a decent fake ID now. You bring in someone with a little talent, and it’s easy to see how they could get something past us. I saw it more than once when I worked up north.
“I can ask Flint to do a deeper dive,” Casper says with a nod. He might not be the VP or the president of the club, but Casper has a lot of pull around here. As the club’s enforcer, his job is to keep us all safe. The VP deals with making sure the club runs smoothly, and the president looks over everything to keep us on track. The enforcer has one of the hardest jobs from my perspective.
“Thanks, man.” I tip my whiskey to him with gratitude, and he indulges me by raising his beer to tap my drink.
Call it what you will. Either the girl got me bugging out over a few simple words, or maybe I was in the field too long and stopped trusting anyone who wasn’t a brother. We usually send people home for R&R once they do a mission, but I honestly never saw setting up a training facility for Operation Hell Hound as a mission. Maybe I should have, though. Because it wasn’t just moving things around and getting the housing figured out for when sister chapters came to train. We also set up the primary hub to run all the incoming requests for our services and a home base of operation to track all field operations that go down. Not every Hound was in the military, but we have enough who pointus in the right direction on how to set things up so we’ll succeed and not fail.
We won’t take every job, and we don’t just pick a job based on the money. The club has to decide. Got a team up north that will vet each job, then upload them on a secure shared drive for each chapter involved in Operation Hell Hound to vote on. If it’s a tie, Law gets final approval. Being the main boss of the mother chapter has its perks, but it’s still not a job I ever want to have. I like my gig, being the comedian. Even if I’m not feeling very funny at the moment.
“Anything new from the Crazy Eights?” I ask more to change the subject than because I care.
Sure, they got a debt over the club’s head since Chains claimed his old lady a ways back, but as far as I know, they haven’t stated what it is they want yet. Flint warned us when we got involved with them that they weren’t to be trusted. He saw them enough when he went through the dark web, how they took what was “owed” to them. They’ve got no problem forcing someone into doing the dirty work for them, then going around and pinning the whole thing on them with enough evidence that the police don’t even think twice. But I think I can speak for the entire club when I say we’d do it again to make sure an old lady and her cubs are safe.
Duke got it right when he said they’re our weakness. Another pain in the club’s side. The bastard better stay dead if he knows what’s good for him. Going after family has always been against the rules for any club the Hounds deal with. And while Duke was part of the Devils Damned, he never seemed to honor that rule.
“Nah, they’re as dead as Duke,” Chains says after a long pull from his beer.
I look at him with a raised eyebrow, expecting him to continue, and he doesn’t leave me hanging.
“Or as dead as they want us to think they are. Flint said they went quiet on all the chatter on the dark web a few weeks after you left. Since then, not much has popped up on them.”
“Think they went dark for good?” It would be awesome if we didn’t have to deal with them. Not having the threat of a possible “favor” hanging over the club’s head would free up so much headwind. I might not care what they want, as I don’t like to get worked up about the what-ifs of the world, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a break. While Duke is supposedly dead, we’ll still keep tight reins on our families for a bit longer. We ain’t about to let down our guard so soon just to get our asses handed to us at the first opportunity.
It’s Casper who shrugs, drawing my eyes to him on the other side of me. “Don’t know. Got half a mind to ask Jimmy Travis to confirm.”
I suck air between my teeth. Jimmy Travis isn’t a friend or a foe—he’s family. Sort of. He’s the uncle of the old lady to the sergeant at arms, Mad Max. A big motherfucker who no one wants to piss off, as he was named for a reason. Still, the guy is like a damn puppy compared to Travis. He might not have the bulk like Mad Max, but he’s got the brains to make up for it. CIA doesn’t recruit just anyone, only the best. And they also don’t let mistakes happen, which is why Travis is in prison for a crime he didn’t commit but took the fall for—unwillingly, I might add. Despite being behind bars, Travis knows more than most, including the Hounds. He offered us aid once, which the club hasn’t cashed in on. Not sure if we want to use our leverage on something like this just to knowif a threat is or isn’t out there. The Crazy Eights aren’t the enemy, at least not yet. They just have the potential to become a problem.
Chains’ phone ringing pulls all our eyes, and we watch him take it out of his pocket and frown. Something he doesn’t do often since he got his woman in his life, which has me and Casper both tensing.
“Mama Bear, what’s wrong?”
I check the time on my watch and see it’s well after midnight. After Wyatt’s party ended, the brothers came here to throw me my own party. Okay, it was just an excuse to drink, but with me, the life of the party. Didn’t realize it got so late. I hope I didn’t put any of the brothers in the doghouse because we stayed out too late and they didn’t make it home to their old ladies.
But as I look behind me, I see that most everyone is gone. It seems I’ve been lost in thought for far longer than I expected before my brothers joined me at the bar.
“Wait, babe, going to put you on speaker. I need you to slow down and say all that again.”
I straighten at Chains’ words. No one puts an old lady on speaker unless shit is going down. We keep personal stuff, well, personal. Until a brother fucks it up and needs something, most old lady stuff stays between a brother and his woman.
“Right, okay.” I hear her take a deep breath to calm herself. “I was in bed, and Oliver woke me up. I don’t know how he got into the house, but he did. He woke me up and asked me to help him. Said he didn’t want to go again. That he wanted to stay. I asked him where his mom was, and he just shook his head. Said Milly sent him away, but he didn’twant to go away and wants to stay. Babe, I’m scared. He’s freaking me out, and with the kids here, I don’t know what to do. I swear, not a single alarm went off. I have no idea how he got into the house.”
“On it.” Casper is out of the chair and headed down the hall to Flint’s office. Actually, he calls it his cave, and with how dark he keeps it, it makes sense. Well, that and all the technology he has in there.
“Okay, babe, Casper is going to check the feeds. Flint went home a while ago with Kitten, and we didn’t have anyone manning the live stream. He’ll check to see how he got in without any of us getting notified.” Chains looks to me as I pull up my phone and shake my head.
Like him and Mama Bear, I received no notification that someone breached their place. When someone broke into their place and it was almost too late to know about, Chains installed the latest security system in his house and linked it to all the club brothers. That way, if something went down, no matter who was close or far, they would know so they could help. But this flaw in the system could be bad—real bad. Especially since Law installed the same system into every piece of property owned by any brother after the shit went down with Duke; attempting to kidnap all the old ladies and Law’s kid.
“Yo.” Casper runs back into the main room and shakes his head before going back the way he came.
“Shit. Okay, Mama Bear, I need you to stay calm.” Chains is out of his seat, and I’m right there with him. “Need you to get the kids and head to the safe room. Take the gun in your nightstand with you, and I’ll be there in a second.”
Icatch the clubhouse’s door a second after Chains, hot on his heels as we exit the building. Domino and Kooper are talking by the bikes, and I nod at them once before nodding toward Chains. My action puts a pause in their conversation enough for them to head in our direction. Not sure how many brothers we’re going to need, but Hounds don’t go in alone if we can help it.
