Dream Keeper (Dream Team 4)

Take a moment of ugliness and make it beautiful.

Auggie’s warehouse is the perfect place to start.

Yours whenever you need me,

Brett

And with the letter, there was a check for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

I had forgiven him on Thanksgiving.

And we’d be having a conversation about this, maybe when he was over for dinner.

But for then, I tucked that check away and decided, at least, to use it for one purpose.

The universe telling me to follow my dreams.

* * *

Auggie

“I got a dinner to be at, what’s this about?” Auggie asked the minute he slammed his door after he got in the passenger seat in Billy’s truck.

“We got a sitch,” Billy said.

Fantastic.

“And that sitch would be?” Auggie asked.

“That pastor is pissed as fuck, Aug,” Billy said.

Billy had not fallen down on the job. He’d gotten the intel Clyde Higgins/Dickens-when-he-had-been-Bottoms had belonged to a commune and had a number of partners and kids from that time who he’d left behind.

One of these eventually resulted in Jon.

But Aug had no idea Billy was still working Reverend Clyde.

“Feds might be lookin’ into shit,” Billy went on, “but they haven’t brought it to his attention. All he knows is, some of his wives are gone, one of his trusted pastors is gone, those other women he ordered are gone, all the kids, and a shit ton of his money, and right now, he’s about some serious fuckin’ fire and brimstone. He’s jacked up and looking to strike back.”

“He’s got nothing to strike back at, Billy, and the Feds will build their case without alerting him to it. If they did, they’d tip him that they’ve got a case and he would vanish,” Aug told him something he should know. “And they can’t hold him if they don’t yet know what they’ve got on him.”

“Yeah, but that’s gonna take weeks, even months, and he’s pissed now. And him being jacked up means he’s getting his people jacked up. They’re as restless and ticked off as he is.”

“Hawk, Mo, Mag and me spoke with Jon at length about his plan, and the cover he put on their tracks is solid,” Auggie told him.

And they had.

After the garage scene was done, they’d sat down to see if Jon and Saffron needed assistance.

By the end, the way Hawk was looking at him, if they weren’t leaving, Aug had the feeling Hawk would have offered Jon a job.

In other words, they didn’t need any assistance. Jon and Saffron had it covered.

Aug kept talking.

“Those women won’t be found, and Clyde has no idea he held two properties in his name before Jon shifted them. He doesn’t even know Jon is blood. So even if he could track him, he wouldn’t know where to start.”

Billy nodded, but said, “I got a guy, I mean, I know a guy. We aren’t…he owes me,” Billy gritted out, words that didn’t give much, but Billy gave the impression he still didn’t want to give them. “I sent him in, and to keep him safe, I’m tailin’ his ass, as well as Clyde, because Clyde’s exposed, and this isn’t righteous-indignation shit to cover himself. He’s not talking a good game while he’s grabbing what he can in order to get the fuck out of Dodge. He’s settling in for the long haul.”

Auggie watched him closely. “You’re telling me this because you’ve got something else to tell me.”

Billy didn’t lose eye contact. “My guy’s been going to services now for weeks and he’s counted four known police detectives are members of that church, Auggie. And a man who has serious shit happen to him to make him realize he needs to cut his losses, up stakes and get the fuck gone, and doesn’t do that, instead, he doubles down. That means he’s got protection. That means he feels untouchable. That means he’s got someone at his back. So my gut told me to keep on him. And when I followed Clyde just now, I saw him have a meet with those cops.”

“Shit, Billy,” Auggie muttered, worried Billy did this alone, but impressed with his reasoning as to why he did it.

“I broke in after,” Billy carried on. “And I found a stockpile of some serious shit. Stolen goods. Lots of them. Decent street value, but under-the-radar type of thing no one would go to lengths to search for it.”

Auggie felt the skin all over his body tighten.

Billy kept going.

“And they got files. They’re paying a load of attention, Aug. To you. To me. To Hawk. Lee Nightingale. Luke Stark. Eddie Chavez. Brock Lucas. Rush Allen. Dutch Black. Knight Sebring. I don’t gotta tell you the rest. All of us. And they got about seven thousand pictures of some gorgeous Black chick who I don’t know who she is, but they’re all over her ass.”

That gorgeous Black chick was need-to-know and Billy, until then, did not need to know.