Smoke and Steel (Wild West MC #2)(10)

An operation?

“Maybe you should tell me what you’re thinking,” I suggested.

“I’m thinking of following him and seeing what he’s up to,” she repeated.

Hmm.

“Do you know where he lives or works?” I asked, skeptical of this plan, but not entirely against it.

“I know where he lives, I dropped Bree off there once. I don’t know what he does for a living, and that says something, don’t you think?”

I did think.

Oh boy.

“You know what would stop the Tinder swindler?” she asked.

I knew.

“Marce—”

“A friend or a favorite auntie or someone saying, ‘stop giving that jerk your money.’ Someone doing a deep dive into his shit and finding out he’s full of it. I know that Tinder guy on the documentary had a real racket going, but…come on.”

I didn’t want to judge a sister, especially not those who’d fallen for that man’s shit. Truth, he had the con down to an art.

But yeah, someone injecting a little common sense or doing a little leg work, and maybe a lot of heartbreak and debt would have been saved.

Or better, that guy would have been caught a lot earlier.

Good news: part of what she said, I could do.

“Right, I’ll do a deep dive,” I told her. “We’ll reconvene to share what I find and decide from there.”

“I think we should tail him because, my guess, Bree’s small potatoes. He’s gotta have other bitches he’s fleecing. She says he works a lot. At what, she’s vague about, but I’ll press. And she and Kyra are tight. Maybe Kyra knows. Another guess, he’s working and taking other women’s money.”

I would have that same guess.

“Let’s start with the online stuff first. Okay?” I suggested.

She seemed disappointed, sucked down some of her cold brew and plopped back on the couch.

But she nodded.

I thought about Bree. I thought about Christos. I thought about Tall, Dark, Rough and Ready.

And I thought about Bryan.

I thought about him because he’d failed me, but he was smart and sharp and knew the law. I could have told him about Christos, and he’d have good advice. He would also help look after Bree.

But Bryan was out.

So someone had to save Bree.

And she was ours.

So that was going to be Marcy and me.





3





SHITSHOW





Core





“What the fuck are these bitches doing?”

Core asked that question to the windshield of his truck.

It didn’t answer, and apparently it was go time for Hellen Moynihan and her friend to perpetrate some fucked-up shit that Core was going to have to get involved in.

It figured.

This was his last night on Hellen detail.

Weeks ago, Rush, the president of the Chaos Motorcycle Club, had gotten the intel about the issue coming up from Phoenix, and the possibility it could take a direct line to Jagger’s in-laws, Jagger Black being one of Rush’s brothers in Chaos.

Considering what that issue was, and how she’d behaved in the past, it could manifest itself as a niggle of annoyance, or Armageddon.

Jagger loved his wife and dug his in-laws. Consequently, he was super hip on helping them avoid Armageddon, and he wasn’t real excited about them being annoyed either.

Rush decided the best course of action was to cut it off at the pass and send it home.

The Chaos MC was a club that’d had a rough go of it for around thirty years or so.

But they were now good. Brothers happy. Most of them married and making babies. Businesses raking in a shit load of money. Everyone fat and sassy.

They dipped their wick in things every once in a while, just to keep sharp.

But Rush didn’t want his brother, Jagger, worried, and Core got that. Jagger worried would mean his blood brother, Dutch, would get worried, which in turn would mean their stepdad, Hound, would get worried.

Jagger and Dutch could make a man who could look after himself stand up and take notice.

But no one in Denver, or maybe the whole Rocky Mountain region, wanted Hound worried.

Dustin “Hardcore” Cutler could handle himself, but the thought of Hound pissed off and pushed into protection mode gave even Core a shiver.

His entire club had learned that the hard way.

So Rush called Beck, the president of Core’s club, the Resurrection MC, and asked them to take point on lookout.

Even though this had been a total waste of a shit ton of time, it was an unwritten but unbreakable rule that Resurrection owed Chaos, and they would until all the members who did the base, shitty thing they did to a member of the Chaos family, were dead.

Core was one of those men who did that thing.

That meant now, anything Chaos asked, if it was within their power, they did it.

So Beck had offered the assistance of the Resurrection MC.

Now it had been weeks, and that trouble from Phoenix hadn’t showed. They all had things to do. So Beck and Rush had a chat and they decided, since the brothers were already planning on it, one more night, and then they were going to back off.

He wasn’t the only one from his club on Hellen. He shared her detail with Eight, Muzzle and Rainman, so that meant it was his luck he’d be on tonight when she got up to some dumb shit.