Ride Wild (Raven Riders 3)

His tone was so smug that she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to hit him or kiss him, but she could only laugh. “Duly noted.”

When she was buttoned up again, they walked hand in hand toward the house, past her car—

“Oh, no,” she said, frowning. “My tire’s flat.” The front passenger’s tire sat flat against the ground. And then she gasped. “That one is, too!”

“Sonofabitch,” Slider said, crouching down to inspect it. “That’s not flat, that’s been cut.” He fingered a slit in the black rubber, and then he stalked around the car to find that all four had been sliced.

“Who would do this?” she asked, her belly tossing.

“Davis,” he growled. “Making sure you took his warning seriously.”

The school bus pulled up and Cora tried to shake the worry off her expression. “Are we telling them?”

“No,” Slider said. “Not unless we have to. Take them inside. I’m going to let the club know and get Martin over here to file a report. And then I’m gonna wring somebody’s fucking neck.”

Chapter 22

Slider waited until the boys were in bed, and then he invited his brothers to come over to strategize. Martin had been there hours before to take pictures of the car and get Slider’s statement, but he came back again now for the meeting. Because shit was escalating, and they needed a plan.

When they were all gathered in his family room—to reduce the chances of their voices drifting up the stairs and waking the boys—Slider turned to Martin.

“I want to know what you’re going to do about this Davis situation. Because this shit is now ten kinds of personal to me. He was at my house, harassed my girlfriend, and now he’s sliced her tires to drive home the threat he issued as he left her that day.” Cora sat beside him on the couch, and Bosco lay in a big lump right between both of their feet.

Martin was a few years older than Slider and had gone to school with Dare back in the day. The friendship they’d made then was even stronger now, which was why Martin held up his hand and said, “Dare and I have talked and he’s shared everything you’ve learned. I’m on board. Trust me, I’d like nothing more than to put Davis away and get him out of my office and off the streets. But this needs to be airtight, and that means that I’ve got to minimize the extent to which Raven Rider hands are all over it.”

“No way are we stepping aside,” Caine said. Slider nodded.

Raking a hand through his wavy brown hair, Martin shook his head. “Gimme a little credit here. I’ve known you guys for twenty fucking years. You think I don’t know that already?” He sighed. “I propose the following. First, I’ll have one of my men patrolling by here on a regular basis.”

Slider rolled his eyes so hard they nearly fell out of his goddamn head.

“Second,” Martin said, clearly sensing their frustration. “I’m going to organize a sting on this dogfighting event Saturday night. I’ve already reached out to several surrounding jurisdictions for backup. Take out the dogfighting, maybe some Crew members, and Davis all in one fell swoop. Combine that with the other evidence that you’ve collected about Davis’s activities, and he goes away. For a long time.”

That sounded good, but Slider shared the question that Caine voiced: “Are you asking us to sit out of it then?”

“Ideally, yeah,” Martin said, eliciting groans all around the room. “But I know you fuckers. I try to box you out, you go in anyway and shit goes fubar. So the three of you can go in like you planned, ID Davis for us and confirm he’s there, and then we close in. Obviously, we want to take the dogfighting down, but if our primary target is Davis—”

“And it is,” Dare said.

Martin gave a nod. “Then making sure he’s there is useful to both of us.”

“What about Jagger?” Maverick asked. They all murmured in agreement.

“I can’t control the courts,” Martin said. “But you can sure as shit bet I’ll press the district attorney to review the new evidence. And I’ll get Jagger’s lawyer working on it, too—but not until after Saturday night’s event. We can’t let anything tip Davis off. And that includes all of you. Same routines. Same activities. In case he’s watching—or has someone else doing it—nothing to alert him that anything’s happening. If he was over here interrogating Cora about her statement, then he’s already paranoid enough. We don’t want him acting—or running.”

“He’s already escalating things if he’s the one behind cutting Cora’s tires,” Slider said.

“Agreed,” Dare said. “Send by your patrol cars all you want, Martin, but we’ve also got three details around Slider’s house now. No one will go up or down this road without us knowing it.”