Rile motioned for us to be seated at the table. “Let’s run through this.”
“Before we get started, there’s something you all should know.” All heads turned to Mac.
“Rebel wasn’t Possum’s first rape, attempted or otherwise. Word from one of my sources is that he was warned about the attention he was drawing to the organization. My guess is that his arrest at the Branch the night he assaulted Rebel was the last straw. He wasn’t out of jail twenty-four hours before he was found dead.”
“Someone within the ABT arranged for his release,” said Grinder.
I looked over at Rile. “Either that or the Aryan Nation. Or both.”
He nodded and made a note. “I’ll touch base with Smoke.”
“Why pin it on Rebel, though? Why not a rival gang?” Casper asked.
“Possum wouldn’t be worth a war. All the ABT wanted was to get rid of him.” What I also knew and they didn’t yet, was what Hammer got out of Rebel that day at the jail. She’d admitted that she wanted to kill
Possum. She’d said it had something to do with her mother’s death. Maybe somehow the ABT knew that too.
“There’s more,” said Mac. “Word is there’s a splinter group supposedly loyal to Possum.”
I scrubbed my face with my hand. If that was the case, our job just got exponentially more difficult. “They’ll want revenge for his death.” I looked to Rile a second time. “It’s imperative we know if we’re on track with thinking this was a hit. If we are, we can’t go in until we know whether the ABT or AN ordered it.”
“Understood.”
When Rile left the room, every face at the table looked as solemn as I knew mine did. When he returned a few minutes later, he was brushing his lower lip with his index finger.
“What did you find out?” I asked, too impatient to wait.
“Smoke says the AN didn’t call for the hit on Possum.”
“Bloody hell,” I muttered.
Rile held up his hand again. “Therefore, this mission has two objectives. One, to get the ABT to give up Possum’s killer.”
“Why would they do that?”
Rather than respond, or even look at me, Rile continued. “The second objective is to neutralize the splinter group.” He looked at Casper first and then me. “That’s your job and your cover. AN is sending you in because there’s chatter about a split in the chapter.”
“You think they’ll give up Possum’s killer in order to smooth things over with AN and then clean their own house?”
Rile’s eyes stayed riveted on mine. “Exactly.”
If this went the way Rile was suggesting it would, the ABT would not only take care of Possum’s killer, but any threat from this splinter group would end too. Whoever they were, they’d all be dead.
17
Rebel
I should’ve known this whole gig was too good to be true. Or at least too good to last. When Tee-Tee asked me to clear the remaining dishes that a couple of asshat ranch hands had left on the tables in the dining hall, I thought they’d all left.
“I wasn’t done with that,” I heard a voice say from behind me as I dumped what little food remained on the plate into the garbage.
“Too bad. We’re closed until lunch,” I said without turning around to look at him.
Within seconds, I felt a tight grip on my arm. “I’ve been sent with a message, you bitch. Lynch wants you to know that, one way or another, you’re gonna pay for what happened to Possum. Call your dogs and your fancy lawyer the fuck off. Ya hear?” He shoved me away from him hard enough that I stumbled into the table behind me and the plates I’d been holding crashed to the floor.
“Que está pasando aqui?” Tee-Tee ran out of the kitchen and over to where I was on my hands and knees picking up broken pieces of glass off the floor. “What happened?”
“That asshole…” I raised my head, but there was no one else in the hall but Tee-Tee and me. I shook my head. “Um, I was cleaning off the tables and ran into someone on his way out. My fault.”