Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(83)

“Put the vote up, boss.” Show’s voice was low.

“All in favor of taking out the Brazen Bulls on Perro Blanco orders? Nay.”

They went around the table. Nobody even paused. Unanimous.

Isaac smiled a different kind of smile from the one he’d worn so comfortably in the Hall, watching his kids play with puppies. This smile was a grim rictus, an expression of weary resignation. “Okay. We have a couple of weeks before the next run. That’s the time we have to plan. Dom, I need to be able to talk to Hoosier in depth off the grid. Can you and Bart do your code thing today and get a message out?”

“Yeah, boss. No sweat. And I have other stuff to bring up.”

“I know. Let’s clear this first. I want to bring Becker in. Whatever we got goin’ is goin’ down on his turf —or at least it’s starting there. Any discussion about that, extending our trust that far?”

Badger shook his head, and saw his brothers doing the same.

“Okay. Show, Len, Badge—when we get it set up, we’ll meet with the Bulls.”

“I don’t like that, boss.” Len leaned forward, his arms crossed on the table. “You know it’s not good to put all the leadership on the same run, not with shit so hot.”

“Gotta be us. We show him respect and trust when we put the whole top of the table in front of him.

We’re telling him heavy news. It’s us.”

“But why me, then?” Badger wasn’t club leadership; he didn’t understand his role on the run.

“Because I want you there, Badge.”

At Isaac’s simple statement, Len turned to Badger with a knowing smile. Was this more ‘future of the Horde’ stuff? Badger didn’t know and didn’t wish to confront the idea while sitting at the table. So he nodded and let it drop.

Isaac leaned back. “Once again, Dom, the weight’s on you. And you’ve got news for the table, right?”

“Yeah, boss.” Dom looked around the table. “It’s Seaver. A lot of news. We had a breakthrough with the code—not all of it; names are coded differently. But some detail. Something else first. I think it was Seaver who did the fire at the B&B, and I think I might know why.”

The rest of the table reacted, but Isaac only nodded. Of course, Dom would have brought this news to Isaac first, but the boss was giving the floor to Dom. Badger was glad to see it. Dom had struggled to fill Bart’s shoes; his learning curve had been steep. But it looked like he was topping it. “It’s not proof. With everything else going down, I don’t know if I can find proof. But I found a connection to Signal Bend. A reason that Seaver might have such a hard-on for us. And I was thinking about what Badger said, about Seaver trying to turn the town against us and maybe bein’ mad when they had our back at the Spring Fest. I was tryin’ to think why he was after us so hard, so fast.”

“Get to it, Dom.” The impatience in Isaac’s voice was clear.

Dom cleared his throat. “Mac Evans and Leon Seaver are cousins.”

Show sat up. “What? Wait—we know his kin. He came up here in town.”

“Not this kin. Mother’s side.”

It felt to Badger like the whole table was working that through in unison. When Show nodded, signaling that he’d processed the new information, he did so for the group and then asked the next obvious question.

“Okay, go on…why blow the B&B and hurt people?”

“Evans has known our fist more than once, Show,” Isaac answered. “We about crippled him the last time. He’s a smarmy little puke and deserved what he got, but if they’re close, it might be cause to take extreme measures to get us gone.”

“They’re close. Summers together when they were kids. Holidays together still. He was probably coming from Seaver’s house the night he hit Nolan.”

“Still doesn’t add, does it?” Len asked. “Would our law-and-order Sheriff get his hands this dirty?

Arson—and murder? Attempted murder? That’s heavy shit.”

“He tried to clear the place. We know he wasn’t anywhere near the fire, because he slowed you guys down when you were on your way. Think about that: He slowed you down. I think he put out a contract and the guy he hired muffed it. Or just didn’t care if somebody got killed. I don’t think Seaver wanted anybody hurt, though. Except us. I think his plan just went balls up.”

“If that’s true—if he has an innocent death on his conscience, that could be a way in with him.” Show swiped his hand over his beard, pulling it thoughtfully.

“If he has an innocent death on his conscience, I don’t want a way in with him, Show. I want to end him—life or career or both.” Isaac sat back.

The table was quiet, taking all that in. Badger’s head was whirring frantically, making new connections.

A whole lot was beginning to come clear. It was beginning to feel like all the disparate tensions that had been pulling the Horde in too many directions to manage, trying to pull them apart, might not be so disparate after all.

And then Dom said something that filled in the final piece. “I got more. The code. Seaver is definitely talking to a Fed. He was talking to two of them for a while—the one in St. Louis put him with another guy.

Now he interfaces with the other guy on a regular basis. He’s DHS. And he’s inside the Perros. Lilli’s sure of it.”