Stay Vertical (The Bare Bones MC #2)(55)
Ford yelled, “Tell him to hang on a second!”
Lytton said, “I guess he hasn’t received the call from Madison yet.”
Now Slushy had a ceramic grim reaper bong in his hand. “I thought you got Madison to pretend to be an ER nurse, telling him his wife just got hit by a car.”
“I did.” The men spoke in stage whispers. “I gave her his direct dial cell number! She must not have gotten through to him yet.”
Slushy declared, “Or he doesn’t care much about his wife. Begorra! If I ever get crotch crickets, I’ll know what to name them. Ford and Lytton Illuminati.”
Lytton said, “You’re cool. I’ll make sure he gets her call any second now. He’ll never see that Sinaloa truck. The poison bottles are gone. Faux Pas took them with him. I’ll just slip out the back to the coffee shop.”
“Yeah,” whispered Turk, “we just don’t have much medicine left for him to inspect, seeing as how our delivery truck was jacked.”
“Take this,” said Ford, handing Lytton a Sig Sauer he’d taken from a safe. There was a little tug-of-war with the piece before Ford surrendered it. Ford added, “You do this, and we’re even. Anyone will welcome you as a Prospect in our club.”
Ford waved to the security guard to let Saul in while Lytton slid out the back. He nestled Ford’s piece next to his Glock in his waistband, and yanked on some black leather gloves. Saul would find no poison bottles in the trash bin, but that stupid Sinaloa truck could still blunder in there while Saul was conducting his inspection. A seasoned inspector could taste, touch, and smell pesticide, but Saul also carried a microscope. Lytton had already tipped him off to inspect the Sinaloa medicine at a microscopic level, assuring him he’d find enough banned poison back at his “pot lab” to shut the place down.
Lytton just had to prevent that truck from arriving.
Entering through the coffee shop’s back door, Iso was nowhere to be seen, so Lytton called him from out front. Iso ignorantly answered his cell. He obviously had no clue that Lytton would be even slightly miffed at him for any events of the past two days.
“I’m out in the back alley,” Iso drawled. “The inspector’s car is back here. Got front row seats for the show, my man.”
“Who the f*ck says ‘my man’ anymore?” Lytton fumed to himself as he darted down the narrow walkway that led to the back alley. Anything that Iso would say now would set Lytton off on a deadly rampage. He couldn’t show his hand until everything was lined up exactly right.
Just hearing that depraved psycho’s voice put Lytton into a blind, murderous rage. He now fully understood how Ford had felt when he’d realized what their father had done to Maddy. It was something primal, a protective instinct in a man, to seek out and destroy anyone who had harmed a beloved. Maybe it was hanging around the gritty world of biker clubs, but Lytton had developed a lean and mean approach, a take-no-prisoners outlook. Life was just too short and messy to leave loose ends hanging around, free agents that could just come back and bite you in the ass.
Peeking around the corner, Lytton saw Iso waiting impatiently for shit to hit the fan. He’d armed himself with a bottle of Jack Daniels and was restlessly chugging from it as he paced, the stupid chains at his waist jangling. Lytton ducked back into the walkway to punch Madison’s number.
“I left a voicemail,” Madison told Lytton, her voice tinged with worry. “I didn’t say any specifics, because the hospital would never leave a voicemail telling someone their spouse is in critical. That’s too important to say on a voicemail. I just gave the number of this burner for him to call back.”
“Okay. Keep trying. Thanks, Madison.”
Taking a deep breath, Lytton had no choice but to dive on into the scene. He hadn’t even really formulated a script, what he might say to Iso, how he could lure him into the quiet of the truck, if and when it arrived. For now, he had to act casual, an act that went against the grain of every single atom of his being. He just hoped Iso was too wasted to see the rage behind the fake pasted-on smile that he wore when he popped into the sunny back alley, waving as though they were butt brothers.
“Where’s the damned truck?” Lytton asked lightly.
Iso inhaled his cigarette smoke deeply. “I’m starting to f*cking wonder that myself. I talked to Truitt an hour ago, he said he’d just turned off to Red Rock State Park. Should be here by now.”
Lytton had had a meeting with Truitt, Iso, and Zelov to pin down the details of the deal they would offer to Turk for the Sinaloa weed. Truitt wasn’t even an officer of the Dotards, just a hang-around who had the Mexican connection. He seemed like a low-level, small-time criminal just doing enough illegal work to get by, to feed his drug addiction. Lytton didn’t trust people like that, but at the time, their goal was just to funnel The Bare Bones some crappy product. He didn’t need elite personnel for that. “He’s driving the truck?”
“Yeah. I think he’s got a beaner with him so he can talk Mexican to the other netheads.”
“Did they disguise the product as barium sulfate?”
“Is that the white stuff looks like cocaine? Yeah, that’s what they’re using as a cover. Bags labeled barium whatever.”
Lytton could tolerate it no longer. “Tell me something, Iso. How’d you get my security code out of Helium Head? Was it before or after you bashed him over the head with the hammer?