Torched: Afterburn (Iron Serpents Motorcycle Club Book 2) Page 10

  “What happened to the sisterhood?” she seethed. “We’re the old ladies, your loyalty should be to us. She’s just a fucking junkie stripper.”

  “My best friend was a stripper,” I hurled back, almost tasting the acid on my tongue. “Fuck you, Dana, this is exactly why women can’t get any respect. We’re too busy trying to tear each other down instead of working together. You have no idea what sisterhood really means if you think that’s okay. Maybe you should look into going back to college, I’m sure there’s some Alpha Delta Bitch sorority you’d fit right in with.”

  Her jaw dropped and she stuck a finger in my face. “You’re unbelievable. Fuck you, Liv, you’ve been here for like five minutes!”

  I grabbed that damn finger and twisted her hand away, eliciting a shriek.

  “Whoa… whoa,” Beanie barked, as he rushed out of the store and stuck an arm out between us. “If you’re gonna get all crazy, bring that shit inside. There’s people watching.”

  “It’s fine, Bean. We’re done here.” Still gripping her contorted hand and squeezing hard, I glared at Dana and sneered. “Tell you what, sweetheart… I actually have things to do today, so why don’t you run along and worry about yourself? Let me know when you get tired of riding that high horse and have to walk in the same dirt as the rest of us peasants. And stay the fuck out of Nadia’s face or we’ll have bigger problems than your snotty attitude. Trust me, I only need one minute to kick your ass.”

  With that, I let her go, turned on my heels, and walked away. I couldn’t keep dealing with these estrogen-fueled shit shows, I’d lose my goddamn mind. It seemed like stupid drama got these bitches off, but all I got out of it was unnecessary anxiety. Sick or not, there was no way in hell Buddha was sticking me with the responsibility of keeping these crazy women in line unless he wanted me to get locked up again.

  I sat down on my bike, pulled out my phone, and dialed Silas.

  “Good morning, Styx,” he cheerfully greeted. “It’s about time you called.”

  “I’m in,” I declared. “Send me the information.”

  : : : :

  | TORCH |

  After a tense and emotionally-draining morning at the clubhouse, Torch took a swig from his bottle of whiskey and lit a cigarette. He watched as Gauge and Mace pulled out the old motorcycles from his garage to load up on the flatbed, his personal contribution to the Cora fund. He and the other brothers who worked in the shop would be putting in long hours to get them restored. Between his numerous reseller contacts and it being peak riding season, buyers were plentiful and they were hoping to get them fixed up and flipped in a few days. By offering them for two or three grand under value, they figured the bikes would go quick and they could pull in almost half of what they now owed Cora. Buddha had talked him into giving them two weeks, but—just as he’d predicted—it came with an extra twenty-five thousand in interest, bringing the total up to two hundred grand.

  Before church that morning, Torch and his president had sat down and held their own private meeting in his office. Despite Buddha’s insistence that he should completely retire for the good of the club, Torch refused to give him the vote he’d need to go out in good standing. Most decisions only called for a majority, but patching in or leaving the MC required a unanimous vote. Between the twenty-plus years Buddha had spent at the head of the table, three decades as a member, he would’ve cut off his own head before walking away without the cut he’d fought and bled for.

  It was a bluff, Torch would never deny him retirement or a club burial if it came to it, but he wasn’t about to give Buddha a reason to quit fighting for his life. The fact that he was talking about retiring instead of just stepping down from his post and going back to being a regular patch holder spoke volumes, it was nothing but self-sacrificial bullshit coming from an emotional standpoint. And emotions had no fucking place in decisions affecting the entire MC.

  They’d come to a compromise. Buddha would step away from the table indefinitely to focus on his treatment and hand over the reins to Torch, who now also held his proxy vote for every decision going forward until the diagnosis became more… certain.

  The announcement had been made in church a few hours earlier, probably the most somber meeting he could remember in his entire time as VP. Buddha took his leave immediately after filling everybody else in, leaving Torch to lead the Cora discussion while his chair sat empty.

  Thankfully, all of the guys had sided with him when it came to a gun deal with Largo Scully being a last resort. Muling, extortion, robbery, anything that could start even more problems they didn’t need were all off the table for now. They’d worked their asses off for years to keep their noses clean and the club running legit, two hundred grand wasn’t worth dismantling all that progress and potentially bringing down fresh heat from the law.

  Unfortunately, aside from Zed, none of them wanted to entertain the idea of asking Liv for the money either. Torch had pushed it, willing to swallow his pride to avoid bringing down the torrential wrath of Cora on top of everything else, but his brothers felt that sticking their hands out would go against everything they believed in. They wanted to do this on their own, not keep running to his old lady for help. Squid also pointed out that she’d ask too many questions and they’d just be transferring the loan. Torch countered that she’d give them way more time to pay it back, and they could spend the next two weeks looking for the assholes who robbed them instead of slaving away to appease a blood-thirsty loan shark. There was also the matter of Buddha’s medical bills—the whole reason they were in this goddamn mess in the first place—but the boys wanted to wait to worry about that too.

  Needless to say, shit hadn’t panned out his way. After a vote where Torch’s conscience forced him to use Buddha’s proxy to go against himself—Pres had privately made his stance abundantly clear one last time before stepping away—the idea landed dead in the water. He would respect the democratic process, but that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it.

  So, for now, Zed was scrambling to drum up extra repo and protection jobs, Squid was combing through their books to figure out if they could put off any bills or sell some assets, and Biff had been tasked with scouring internet auctions, classifieds, and coin store websites to watch for Double Eagles suddenly popping up. Torch was convinced the latter was just a huge fucking waste of time, but the table had also spoken when it came to divvying up responsibilities and Buddha hadn’t given him the proxy to abuse it for his own gain.

  They were spreading themselves thin, too thin for comfort. But again, it wasn’t his personal call to make.

  After the boys got the last bike on the truck and Mace went to work fastening them down, Gauge walked over and joined him for a smoke. “What’s on your mind, brother?”

  “Fucking everything. This shit’s just—”

  “A total clusterfuck?” Gauge finished for him with a smirk.

  “Yeah.”

  “You pissed about the Liv vote?”

  Torch flicked his cigarette butt and rubbed his beard. “I wouldn’t say pissed, I just think we’re making this a lot harder on ourselves than it has to be. And I still can’t help thinking this was a Cora set-up and we’re making ourselves look like fucking idiots anyway.”

  They’d talked about the possibility of Cora being behind the ambush, essentially setting himself up to collect almost double—three hundred and fifty grand to be exact—but most of them had written it off as not being the guy’s style. Torch wasn’t so sure.

  Gauge blew out a lungful of smoke and frowned. “An ambush would be up Cora’s alley, but when’s he ever hidden behind masks and shit? He hasn’t built a brutal reputation by lurking in the shadows. I mean, he stands to gain, but the guy’s got millions.”

  “I know. But how the fuck did these assholes find out about it then? Buddha swears Cora’s the only one who knew.”

  “Yeah, but Buddha didn’t tell him where the coins were coming from. Biff called the seller after church, the guy said Buddha
was his first call, he didn’t offer the coins to anybody else.”

  “Did you check our bikes for trackers like I asked?”

  Gauge nodded. “Yeah, they’re all clean. Pres went to the hospital for blood work, so I swung by there too.”

  “They could’ve followed us out, it’s not like we were going that fast.”

  “One of us would’ve noticed a tail,” Gauge pointed out. “I don’t think it was him, man. Cora’s not an idiot, he’d know we’d look at him first and he’s got maybe fifteen guys. Would he risk starting a war with an MC of over five hundred members between all the chapters? Robbing a president who needed the money to treat fucking cancer would end with a bloodbath for him, we’d wipe out his entire organization.”

  “I get what you’re saying, brother, but it doesn’t add up. I asked Biff to try and get into the cameras on I-25, maybe he’ll spot the van somewhere and track it.”

  “I doubt Biff’s got the skills, he only got a few weeks of hacking training with Liv before all that shit went down last year.”

  “Yeah, well, you assholes won’t let me ask her to help out,” Torch huffed.

  Gauge tensed his jaw and stared at him. “Tell you what, let’s do what we can to get the money together and see if Biff comes up with anything. We’ve got fourteen days, if we figure we’re fucked after ten, call another vote and I’ll back you up. We should have at least half the money by then, so it’s not like she’d be covering the whole thing. I can live with that. You know you’ve got Zed on your side too, and with Buddha’s proxy, it’ll be a majority.”

  He shook his head. “Buddha wouldn’t—”

  “Buddha’s out of commission, maybe for good. You need to fucking step up and do what you need to do, brother.”

  “I’m heading back to the shop,” Mace called out.

  “Alright, man, we’re coming,” Gauge replied. He turned back to Torch and poked him in the chest. “Figure your shit out and own it. There’s a reason you’ve been VP all these years.”

  : 11 :

  | LIVIA |

  Over the course of the next week, it became abundantly clear there was more going on within the Serpents than Buddha’s cancer battle. Torch had morphed into a man on a mission, living and breathing the club, while my confused ass was left behind at base camp. All he did was work on those old bikes, sometimes until three or four in the morning, but he’d had them moved to the shop instead of doing it in our garage. I would have assumed he was just trying to stay busy to keep his mind off shit, but it wasn’t just him, I’d seen a lot of the guys in and out of the shop at all hours. I knew because I’d swung by a few times to make sure my husband was still alive.

  I was the one who’d suggested he step up to the plate for Buddha, but spending twenty hours a day running himself ragged just to fix up some bikes wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind. It didn’t really make a lot of sense, one had nothing to do with the other in my mind. And as if Torch wasn’t busy enough, he’d even done a few repo runs. Or so he claimed.

  My brain kept trying to assure me there was a perfectly reasonable and simple explanation, but my gut said the MC was making moves or up against something serious. I was relatively new to club life, but I certainly wasn’t a stranger to how things worked in the streets. I suspected the endless workload had to do with money, but it was definitely about more than just paying some bills. I wasn’t fucking deaf or dumb, Torch may have thought he was fooling me but his demeanor certainly wasn’t. The fact that he’d bitten my head off at least twice now when I offered my services was enough to tell me he was hiding something.

  What could I do though? Our deal was that he’d give me a heads up about threats, and there didn’t appear to be any considering he was doing quite the opposite of hovering. He was also sticking to our agreement of staying out of each other’s business, not once had he brought up my hacking job after I let him know I’d taken it.

  So, despite my irritation at being left in the dark, I did my best to give him space. I fell back into the old habit of working until my eyes bled, mostly from the home office because hanging around the clubhouse and worrying about Torch wasn’t conducive to productivity. If he didn’t want to share, I wasn’t going to force him, but I wasn’t going to just sit there and bite my nails either.

  Even with the added freedom and spare time, Silas’ job had taken a lot longer than intended. Considering the kind of organization we were dealing with and who its backers were, I wanted to be thorough. There was a strong possibility the culprit would end up at the bottom of an ocean and I wasn’t about to finger the wrong person.

  But, I finally had answers for his client and was on my way to meet Silas at a truck stop outside of town. Just in the nick of time too. After several more emails containing copies of sensitive documents, the CEO of FTX had finally received a demand for two million dollars and his time was up at midnight.

  I almost felt bad for taking fifty grand from him for what had turned out to be a time-consuming but relatively simple project. There were no high-tech hijinks being plotted against FTX, I’d scoured every single line of code and looked for any possible holes, malware, or encryption flaws. The so-called attack on their servers had turned out to be nothing but a ruse, designed to specifically penetrate only an outer layer of protection and throw the IT people off track.

  In reality, the information their “hacker” had threatened to release was stolen the old-school way, by copying and pasting it to a flash drive and sneaking it out of the building. Just as Silas’ client suspected, it was an inside job by one of his own software engineers, a man named Jesse Wright. It didn’t take a genius to realize that both whistleblowers and blackmailers usually took their time, so why the FTX people only checked data back a month and hadn’t expanded their research to at least the prior three was beyond me. It would have saved them a lot of money and aggravation.

  The files had been taken nine weeks before the fake attack, which explained why Wright passed the sweep of his computer and eluded detection. I’d been able to find the exact day he’d done it simply by checking the USB history logs on his computer, every machine kept a record whenever one was inserted or removed. After that, it was simply a matter of using video surveillance to piece his movements together. Lo and behold, I’d busted our little rat on a hidden camera in one of the labs, he used a heat pen to remove the USB chip from his flash drive and then inserted it into a fake key fob. Keys were hand-checked and passed around the outside of the body scanner, explaining why security hadn’t caught him. Beyond that obstacle, all he would have had to do was solder the chip back to an identical circuit board in a different USB stick and plug it in.

  I had a feeling FTX would be instituting a new policy of leaving keys with devices at the door.

  I pulled up next to Silas’ car in the lot and saw him sitting at a nearby picnic table. He was wearing his usual designer duds and looked completely out of place. As I hopped off my bike and started walking towards him—sans helmet since Torch wasn’t paying enough attention to bitch about it—he spotted me and stood up. The sun was just starting to set and I planned on getting in a ride to stash the money and clear my head afterward.

  He greeted me with a kiss on the cheek. “Lovely to see you, Styx. Thank you for the heads up, Mr. Wright is already being questioned.”

  “Good.” I dropped my backpack on the table, fished out a memory stick, and handed it to him. “Everything your client needs is on there, he shouldn’t have a hard time making the guy spill.”

  “You’re positive it’s him?” he asked. “We only have about six hours before the deadline.”

  “It’s him,” I promised. “I found a copy of the attack code on his personal laptop and his arsenal of stolen documents hasn’t included anything saved on the servers past the day I caught him plugging in the USB.”

  “I knew I could count on you,” he said, handing me my finder’s fee in a black plastic bag. “My client sends his gratitude, he was extremely relieved to fin
d out it was simply a greedy employee who could be cornered, he feared a much worse threat.”

  “Your client should probably do a little refresher training so he doesn’t have to waste money on a hacker next time, but I’m happy to take it off his hands. Pleasure as always, Silas.”

  “Indeed.” He held out his hand for a shake. “I’ll be in touch, my dear.”

  “I’m sure you will. Happy travels.”

  I stuffed the cash inside my backpack and walked back over to my bike. As soon as his car pulled away, I hopped on and took off in the other direction.

  Torch didn’t know where I hid my money and he’d never asked. Aside from the stash he’d found in my go-bag while I was locked up, he had no idea just how much I’d saved over the years. Some I kept in an offshore account, some in bitcoins, the rest in cash; and that cash was currently located at the club’s safe house about ten miles outside of town. It was the first place Torch and I had made mad, passionate, rain-soaked love after reuniting.

  The cabin stood on about five acres of land and club members mostly just came out for shooting practice. Other than that and the occasional emergency, the house generally stood empty.

  I made it there quickly and took the money inside. Off from the kitchen was a walk-in pantry, the perfect hiding spot in a house belonging to a bunch of dudes because nobody ever organized non-perishables or tossed food unless it stank. Kneeling down on the floor, I pulled out some expired cereal boxes and reached under the shelf to slide out my combination-secured steel box. I punched in the code and added the day’s haul, before putting everything back the way I’d found it.

  After locking up and getting back on my bike, I glanced over at the grassy clearing that had been the site of one of the best days of my life. Torch and I had made scores of new and wonderful memories since then, but the safe house would always hold a special place in my heart. Maybe we could spend a weekend there once everything—whatever the hell it was—blew over.