“Live?” I asked.
“Yes. They didn’t secure them. I mean, there was a password, but that isn’t secure. A child could hack it.”
“You’re fucking badass, man. Can you feed that to my phone?”
“Yeah. Give me a minute. Okay, open that file,” he said just as something popped up on my screen.
“That’s amazing,” I said, looking down at the many screens of the cameras in the facility. “You…” I started, then realized he’d already ended the call. That was Arty for you. The thrill was in figuring it out, not getting praise from someone about it.
“Alright. Arty just made our lives a hell of a lot easier. I can guide us through the facility and hopefully keep us from getting surprised by anyone,” I said, clicking through the screens to the ones with people in them. “Think we know which unit they are holding Myles in,” I said, turning my phone to show him the two guards standing beside one closed door.
“Looks like some of the other guys are moving out,” Seeley said, clicking another of the feeds.
“That’s their enforcer,” Cato said, pointing at the guy with the bandage on his neck from where Lyle had bitten him.
“How do you know that?”
“This is the Locust crew,” Levee piped in, brows furrowed like he didn’t understand how I didn’t know that.
“The what?”
“The Locust Crew. They grew up in the Locust Apartments,” Cato supplied. “Decided they wanted out of the shitty area.”
“How do you know this?”
“Grew up in Locust,” Cato said, shrugging. “My brother used to fuck the leader’s little sister until they put an end to that.”
“You didn’t want to join up with them?” I asked, wondering why they would have given up the opportunity to get out of the area earlier if it was right in front of them. Especially since they clearly weren’t opposed to being criminals.
“The leader. Anthony. He’s a dick,” Cato explained. “His initiations include beating the shit out of some random innocent person. Even women. He doesn’t care.”
Clearly.
“And that enforcer,” Levee piped in. “He’s arguably worse than Anthony himself. Fucked in the head, always was. Used to beat up kids on their way to school for their lunch money or their electronics if they had any. When he was an adult, mind you,” he explained. “Word is he has a lot of bodies for the crew.”
Great.
That was just great.
“You guys okay with this?” I asked.
Loyalty could be weird.
Especially to the place you grew up in.
“The Locust Crew isn’t the kind of group anyone has loyalty to, man,” Cato said, shaking his head.
“The neighborhood would be better off without them,” Levee added. “They don’t even help out their own. The Dark Gables crew at least gives back to their community. The Locust guys… they don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves.”
“Alright. Good. Because Huck made it clear this job is about you guys proving yourself,” I told them, getting surprised brow raises and firm nods out of both of them, acknowledging that they understood that this was the make-or-break job that would determine if they were the right kind of guys for our club. “You ready?” I asked, motioning toward the car.
And with that, we were off, heading across town to the storage facility that was located close to Locust Crew’s old stomping ground.
“Here,” Seeley said, handing out ski masks similar to the one I’d seen Lark wearing, but in a lighter, more breathable material, so we hopefully wouldn’t be sweating so badly that we couldn’t see well enough to shoot straight.
We were parked a few blocks away from the facility, but on a backroad in case of lookouts.
“Figure since we can’t get ‘em all, we might want to hide who we are,” Seeley explained as I took mine, not realizing my brow was furrowed until he explained.