Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(74)
Suddenly, Badger realized he understood it completely. No longer working it out as he spoke, now he saw it all. It was like Adrienne’s life. Her father, and then the fire, had torn away all her moorings to what had been, and all she was left with was what could be. “Clean slate. New start. Sam just lost his civil war before it even started.” He looked around the table. “This helps us. It doesn’t hurt us.”
“He ran the ball into the wrong end zone.” That was Tommy, getting it—in his own way.
Isaac gave him a lopsided grin. “Good man, Badge. That makes damn fine sense.”
“We gotta know how the cartel figures.” Len had spent most of the meeting listening. Badger knew he’d been absorbing the information, looking at it strategically. Doing his job. “What I see is Santaveria isn’t gonna give much of a shit who’s running his product, as long as his product gets run. But he’s not gonna allow a vacuum. He has competitors, too. He can’t take his routes offline, or he’ll lose more than just the take. So, if the LA crew breaks away…he’s gonna need somebody to pick up his product at the border.”
“But not necessarily California.”
Isaac cocked his head. “What’re you thinkin’, Dom?”
“Just that the border is longer than just Cali, and Santaveria’s reach is long. What if he brings it up through the Southwest instead—Texas or New Mexico. If you think about it, maybe he controls it better if he sends it up the middle. He’s never farther than, like, a thousand miles or so. If he’s thought of that, maybe he’s not so inclined to help Sam out.”
“And does that help or hurt us?”
No one had an answer.
“We need to know, brothers. We need our eyes wide open. Dom—you’re on that intel, too. But for now, we got more to talk about. Because we got shit flyin’ at us from all sides these days. Show—news on the fire.”
“Investigation is done. They’re sayin’ inconclusive for arson. Sniffed around us for insurance fraud, but they came up empty—since we didn’t f*ckin’ blow up our own place. Now I guess Lilli and Shannon are gonna have to wrangle with the insurance, get a payout.”
“We’re rebuilding, right?”
Isaac laughed. “Fuck, Badge. Lilli would’ve had us out there when the damn place was still smoldering if we’d’ve had the jack to get started. Yeah, we’re rebuilding. And the town is in. Strange to say it, with all we lost, but that fire had an upside. I still think somebody set it—that full cancellation is hanging me up— and I want to know who. But I’m glad that one good thing happened. Having everybody working together on that fire reminded people what we do for our town, I guess. Seems like things are back to normal in that respect.”
“Long as we keep our shit out of town, anyway.”
Isaac nodded at Show’s observation. Badger also thought Show was right. They shouldn’t get too comfortable in the town’s regard. They had people outside the club who’d lost kin to club violence, and they had people calling themselves townsfolk now who’d only lived in Signal Bend a couple of years.
People who didn’t know the way of things. The days of the Horde being the undisputed leaders of the town were coming to an end, at least in the way they had been.
“Next up: Seaver. Dom, tell the table what you and Lilli have on this code idea.”
“Yeah, boss. We got distracted by the fire, so we’re still working on it. But it for sure is a code. Lilli thinks he’s talking to a Fed, but we don’t have much detail yet. Maybe this is why it looked like the Feds dropped their convo with Seaver—because they moved to a code and bounced their transmissions. That could be trouble. But one thing we haven’t picked up yet is any clear mention of the club—Lilli says that doesn’t mean anything, though. They could have a code inside the code…or something like that. She knows better what that means. Anyway, we’re on it.”
As he tried to sort and stack all the information reeling through his head, something occurred to Badger.
“Wait, boss. Anybody think it’s strange that there was a bomb that destroyed the Scorps LA clubhouse not long after we had an explosion at the B&B? That’s a big-ass coincidence, right?”
Isaac gave him a keenly interested look. “It is indeed. Keep talkin’.”
He hadn’t thought this out any more than he had the cartel stuff—less—but he talked it out. “I’m just hearing about the bomb in LA, so I’m just playing out an idea. But like we said before, coincidences aren’t so easy to swallow. So is there a way the fires are related?”
Show ran his hand over his chin and beard. “What’s the link? We know Sam’s behind LA. What’s his interest here?”
“Only two things link Signal Bend to LA: Bart and the cartel.” Isaac’s brows drew together.
“Well, we know Bart didn’t blow the B&B.”
Isaac nodded. “Obviously. But why would the cartel? We’re behavin’, by all appearances. They got no beef with us. There’s been no opening yet to stand against them.”
“You think they know the bug is dummied?”
The whole table stared silently at Badger’s question. They’d discovered months back—not long after Havoc had been killed—that the Perros had bugged the duffels in which the Horde took their payment.