“Brotherhood’s the same, though,” Forrest said.
I nodded.
“I really wanna see inside that room,” Eli said as the door behind the bar opened and the men filed out.
“Don’t even think about it,” I warned, shooting him a look. “At best, you’d have broken bones if you tried it.”
“At worst?” he asked, grinning.
“You been waitin’ long?” Dragon asked as he pulled up a chair at our table.
“Not long,” I replied, hoping Eli would keep his mouth shut for once. I didn’t worry about Lu and Forrest—they were like chameleons, they could read a room and blend in anywhere.
“First off, I wanna thank you for everything you’ve done,” Dragon said seriously as the rest of the men found seats. I braced. If the next words that came out of his mouth were anything close to telling us to leave and let them handle the Free America Militia, we were going to have problems.
“Of course,” I said, realizing that he was waiting for a reply.
“We don’t usually bring outsiders in on shit that’s happenin’ with the club,” Grease chimed in.
“I’m well aware,” I replied flatly. Seriously, if they thought they were going to cut us out, shit was going to get nasty.
Grease’s mouth curled up in amusement.
“With that said,” Dragon murmured, “we realize that this is a different situation—not only because you came through in a big way for Casper. Hell, boy, we raised your ass. You can’t trust your children, you ain’t any kind of parent.”
“Boys have been fillin’ me in on what I missed while we were down south,” Casper said. “I’m thinkin’ that, while we were dealin’ with the head of the snake down in California, they were dealin’ with the rest of it up here.”
I sat up straight as the implications of that sunk in.
“Mack and Rose were kidnapped by a couple of skinheads,” Grease said darkly.
“Excuse the interruption,” Forrest drawled, “but skinheads are a dime a dozen. What makes you think it’s the same group, and not a couple’a good old boys with a flare for dramatics?”
“Two things,” Casper said. “One, that Copper, a former brother and Rose’s ex, is the one who hired them, and two, that FAM had some information on a shipment that they couldn’t have gotten anywhere except from inside the club. The Free America Militia had an inside man up here, an inside man in Sacramento, and a random pair of skinheads kidnapped my niece and her man? No such thing as coincidence.”
“Copper was your inside man up here?”
“Yes,” Dragon said.
“How can you be sure?” Lu asked, staring at Dragon.
“We’re sure,” Grease replied firmly.
I shot Lu a look before she could say anything else. By Grease’s tone and body language, Copper must’ve given them plenty of information—and it didn’t matter how many times Lu asked, there wasn’t a man in that room who would tell her how that had come about. There also wasn’t any way that our team could interrogate him. The man was definitely already dead.
“From what Copper said, those boys he hired were low-level shitheads and the only people he was in contact with,” Dragon continued.
“Do you know who the leak in Sacramento is?” I asked.
“Got some ideas,” he replied enigmatically. “Nothin’ concrete.”
“Yet,” Casper added.
“From what Casper said, you were thinkin’ of goin’ around the big man and usin’ his group to take him down,” Grease said. “Smart move.”
“But that ain’t gonna work for us,” Dragon said. “Might make Cecilia safe, might not, but either way, it’s not a long-term solution. Creatin’ a power vacuum in a white supremacist group is askin’ for more trouble.”
“What do you propose?” I asked cautiously.
I knew in that moment that whatever they decided, I was in. As far as I was concerned, the less power the FAM had, the safer Cecilia and Olive would be. However, I didn’t know that my team would be behind me. I couldn’t blame them. We were venturing into dangerous territory with an outlaw motorcycle club, and while we’d all skirted the law for a greater good in the past, this was different. There was a level of immunity that working for a government contractor gave us, and we’d be completely without that cushion if something happened.
“We go to them,” Cam said, speaking for the first time since they’d come into the room. “No more waiting for them to strike.”
“Because they will,” Grease said. “Sure as I’m sittin’ here, once they realize we know that it’s all connected—Cecilia, Rose and Mack, and Copper—they’ll be on their way.”
“How the fuck is it all connected?” Eli said, his face screwed up in confusion. He lifted his hand when Casper started to explain it again. “No, I get it. I see the connections. What I mean is, how the fuck did Cecilia somehow get caught up with this shit at the same time that you’re dealing with those asshats up here? No coincidences, my ass. This is the weirdest shit I’ve ever heard, and I have a grandpa that’s also my uncle.”