“Put me down!” I yelled, hitting his back.
Spill ignored me and carried me back inside, putting me down on the couch.
“Sorry,” he said, looking away, “but you have to stay.”
The two pledges left, closing the door behind them.
I sat there staring after them, anger flowing through my body.
Not only did Ford leave me, but he locked me up in his damn cabin like I was a prisoner.
That asshole. That bastard. He was going to hear about it.
As soon as I figured out how to escape from these goons.
Chapter Twenty-Two: Ford
“What’s your name?”
The Snake was tied up to a chair in the armory basement. He was sweating and bleeding, but not fast enough that he was in danger of dying anytime soon.
“Chris,” he said.
“Okay, Chris.” I sat in a chair across from him. “Tell me what I want to know.”
“Why? You’re just going to kill me anyway.”
I shook my head. “Maybe not. If you tell me enough, I might just decide to convince our president to use you as a messenger to your club.”
He snorted. “Not likely.”
“No,” I agreed, “not likely. But there’s a chance.”
He looked at me for a second, and I could see that the seeds of doubt had been sown.
Back when the Demons were in a full-time war, back in the dark days, interrogations had been something of a specialty of mine. For some reason, I was good at reading people, at figuring out when they were lying and when they weren’t, and at finding pressure points to jab my fingers into.
From what I could tell, Chris was a pretty low-ranking Snake, maybe even new to the club. I didn’t think he was ready to die for them, and I had to exploit that.
“Why did your people ambush us?” I asked him.
“Fuck yourself.”
“Are the Rebels involved? Are you working with them?”
“Fuck yourself harder.”
I sighed. “Work with me here, Chris.”
“Fuck. You.”
I stood up and backhanded him across the face. He grunted and I hit him again.
“Make this easy on yourself, Chris. You’re still bleeding from that leg wound. It’s not bad, but it can definitely kill you if we don’t patch you up soon.”
“If I talk, I’m dead,” he said. “If I don’t, I’m dead. So I might as well keep my fucking mouth shut.”
“Depends what you tell us,” I mused. “Secrets would get you killed, sure. But the fact that you guys attacked us first isn’t in dispute. All I’m asking is why.”
“Fuck you.”
I put my hand over his leg and pressed down on his bullet wound. He screamed.
“Come on, Chris.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” he sneered through the pain. “You have the girl.”
I stopped pressing, surprised. “Why do you guys care about her?”
“She was with that traitor fuck Rebel.”
Traitor? What was that supposed to mean?
“She doesn’t have anything to do with this,” I said.
“Not according to my boss. She’s deep in this shit.”
“What do you think she did?”
“That drop, that was supposed to be a drug deal. But that Rebel fuck tried to pass off some fake fucking drugs instead of the real shit, and so we killed him.” He paused, taking deep breaths. “Leadership thinks the girl has our drugs.”
“Shit,” I said.
“Shit is right, man.”
That explained it. That was what had started all of this. That fucking idiot Rod had tried to rip off the Snakes, and he’d gotten himself killed in the process. When we took in Caralee, we made it seem like she was a part of the operation. They probably thought we stole the drugs.
They thought we had started this whole war, or at least that Caralee was central to starting it. Meanwhile, it was the fucking Rebels that tried ripping off the Snakes. We only made the mistake of trying to protect an innocent girl.
Fucking dumbass bikers. Thought more with their guns than with their brains sometimes.
“What do your people want?” I asked him
“Your fucking territory and your lives now,” he said. “You think the Snakes are going to roll over and let you guys murder us?”
“Guess not,” I said, sitting back down in my chair. “Last question: What do the Mezcals have to do with all this?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Wrong place, wrong time.”
“I don’t believe you.” He cringed as I stood up. “But you’ve given me enough.”
“You’ll let me go?”
I turned and walked away, nodding at Clutch. He walked in, cocking his pistol.
“Hey, wait!” Chris yelled.
I heard the gunshot ring out as I left the basement and walked upstairs.
Chris had been right. The second we rolled up on them was the second he was dead.
Larkin was standing in the kitchen, waiting for me. “Our boy talk?”
“He told me some interesting things,” I said.
“Come on. We’ll talk in private.” I followed him back into his office. He shut the door and sat down in his chair with a grunt. “So,” he said.
“You know the fucked-up thing?” I asked him.