Cole
“Call me this evening when it’s time to come pick you up, and I’ll be right here,” I told Lilah as she got out of the car. It was entirely too early in the morning to be up and running around, especially after being up with her all night, but I felt a lot better about letting her go to work if I could at least see her.
“Will do. Thanks for the ride, but you didn’t have to,” she said as she got out of the car. I had borrowed one of the black sedans belonging to the MC to take her to work.
“I feel better this way,” I insisted.
She closed the door and walked around to my side of the car. She leaned down to the window. “I’ll be safe. You don’t have to worry,” she said before turning around to go back inside.
“You certainly will,” I said under my breath as she walked into the library. I drove around to the back of the building where Trent’s prospects were waiting. We were putting those boys to work again.
They stood by their bikes, waiting for me, both dressed in relatively normal looking clothes. I saw that they had left their kuttes at the clubhouse like I’d requested. I didn’t want them to be identified as bikers, much less as Steel Devils. If anyone was around who shouldn’t have been, I didn’t want them to tip them off.
“Alright, guys. You know what to do,” I told them. “Call me if you see anything. Any threat to her at all. And if it gets ugly, handle it. Then, call me. Make sure she’s safe in there. Also, do what you can to remain unnoticed. Browse books, whatever you need to do, but try to be as inconspicuous as possible.” The things we had our prospects do to earn their place.
“Got it,” they both said in unison. They looked at each other, surprised they’d spoken at the same time.
“The place opens in thirty. Don’t be the first ones in,” I told them. Then, I drove off. There were other things I needed to do. I only had the prospects watching the library because I couldn’t.
Even though I didn’t like the idea of Lilah being at work and out of sight, it gave me time to investigate her ex a little more. I had decided not to say anything to her until I had more information, so I needed to get it.
I drove back to the clubhouse after dropping her off and making sure the library was secure. I needed to find her ex. I needed to verify what the guy at my tattoo shop had told me, and I desperately needed to know what his endgame was. What was he trying to pull? He wasn’t just jealous of our relationship. I had a sense that there was something bigger at play here. My intuition told me that he had a real plan, and he’d just been playing with us to distract us from it.
I called Buck, our resident investigative hacker. If the information were out there somewhere, he’d find it. It was amazing the things he could find about people and businesses.
“Saw, what’s going on, brother?” he asked when he answered the phone, sounding a bit groggy.
“Not a whole lot, but I need your help. Would you mind coming by the clubhouse? Bring your laptop,” I told him.
“On my way, brother.” I heard him chuckle as he hung up the phone.
A few minutes later he pulled up and parked in front of the building. He came in with his laptop in a messenger bag strapped across his back. He walked over to one of the tables near the bar and opened it up, logging into our Wi-Fi network while I grabbed us a couple of drinks and joined him.
“Whaddaya need?” he asked as I sat down, taking the beer from my hand without even looking up from his computer screen.
“I need to know everything we can learn about Troy Romero,” I told him. “With a K.”
“Everything? Let’s be more specific. Why do you need to know everything there is to know about Troy Romero? I mean, I can tell you his date of birth, the time and location, his social security number, and the number of parking tickets he’s had already, but what are you looking for specifically?”
“You’ve already got all that?” I asked, leaning over to try to look at his computer screen.
He turned the laptop slightly so I could see. Sure enough, it was all there. It was in different windows, which I assumed meant he’d used different applications, but it was all there and more.
“I can tell you he flunked geometry the first time he took it in high school even, so why do we need info on this guy?” He sat back and sipped his beer. He poked his chest out in pride and wore a smug little smile on his face. He was so proud of himself.
“Alright, I’m trying to help out his ex, Lilah Romero. He’s run off with her son, and he has sent people to break into her house and vandalize my tattoo shop.”
“Whoa, wait a minute. Are you seeing this woman? Is she your old lady or something?” He sat forward in his chair and put his beer on the table. His tone changed to one of concern and almost anger.
“Or something,” I admitted. “I think she’s in danger. I want to help her find her son, and I want to take this guy out. He’s becoming a nuisance.”
“Let’s do it, then,” he said, turning his computer back to face him. “Welcome to Buck’s Pest Control. I’ll help you locate your pest, figure out what its next move is, and even give you the tools you need to exterminate it.” His fingers flew across his laptop keyboard while he talked.
I sat back with my beer and watched his eyes read across his screen while he typed away and searched for whatever he could find on Troy Romero. He would occasionally pause while he took a moment longer to read the screen. Then, he was right back to it, tapping away on the keys.
“Alright, I’ve got a few different properties in his name. I don’t know how certain I am that he’d be staying at one of these places, but I’m working on that right now. His name is listed with Lilah’s on a house just outside of town.”
“That’s her house. He left it to her,” I interjected.
“That one’s out. There’s a rental property he leased a few months ago, but if he’s up to something, I wouldn’t count on it.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a suite at the Hyatt downtown,” he told me, looking up from his screen. “Are you thinking about having someone check it out anyway?”
“Might as well.” I turned around and motioned for Mick to come over from the bar.
“What’s up?” he asked, drying his hands with his bar towel.
“We need someone to run by and check on the penthouse suite at the Hyatt downtown. We think Troy Romero is staying there,” I explained.
“As in Lilah’s Troy?”
“Right. Tell whoever you send to be careful. If he’s there, he’ll have their son with him. No confrontation, just scope it out and get back to us, and let us know if he’s there or not,” I continued.
“What if he’s there?” Mick asked, taking my directions like taking an order.
“Hang out and keep an eye on him until I show up.”
“Hold up. I’ve got a cabin in his name just a few miles from here,” Buck interrupted.
I nodded to Mick to go ahead and send the guy to the suite before turning my attention to the hacker sitting next to me. He typed furiously on his keyboard. His eyes pored over the information on his screen.
“He’s there,” he said suddenly. “He’s at the cabin.”
“How do you know?” I asked, sliding my chair around to see his screen. Unfortunately, the interfaces he used weren’t as sophisticated as what showed up on TV and in the movies. Every window he had open looked like either a web browser or a DOS prompt.
“See this right here?” he said, pointing at a line of information that didn’t make any sense to me, but I played along. “This is his laptop. It’s connected to a mobile hotspot at that cabin.”
“What else can you tell?”
“Well, if he’s online, I can give you whatever’s on his computer. Give me a moment to work some magic.” He tapped away on his keys, working to gain access to the computer.
Meanwhile, I walked over to the bar for another beer.
“Still need the guy?” Mick asked.
“Yeah, tell him to scope it out and hang tight. I might need him to go through the suite to see if we can find any dirt on him. Or maybe just ransack the place for the hell of it,” I told him.
He smiled as he opened another bottle for me and sent me back to the table.
“Bingo,” Buck shouted. “I got into his email. Oh, man. Saw, you’re going to want to hear this.”
“What’s going on?” I asked, sitting back down.
“He’s been emailing some woman in Belize. There’s something here about getting passports for himself and his son,” he told me.
“You’re kidding me.” My heart sank into my stomach. Was I hearing this correctly? Was he planning on leaving the country with his son? “Check his bank statements if you can. See if there are any plane tickets, hotel reservations, or anything else in his name that would indicate he’s got a trip planned.”
My heart pounded in my chest in anticipation of his answer. He typed a few words or commands and clicked on a couple of things, moving a little more slowly than before. I assumed he was slowing down because he was looking for something very specific.
“Got it. Two plane tickets, destination: Belize,” he said.
“When?”
“In about a week,” he said after searching a moment longer.
“Why so long?” I wondered aloud. It didn’t make sense for him to take his son so far in advance – unless he had some other business to handle first. It was my job to make sure that business didn’t get handled.
“Now, that I can’t tell you,” Buck said with a shrug.
“Alright, where’s that cabin?” I asked him.
“Texting you the GPS coordinates for it now,” he said, without even pulling out a phone.
My phone notified me of the text, and I checked it. Sure enough, the coordinates of the cabin were included as an attachment. I tapped on the link and pulled up the map image of the cabin’s location. I knew exactly where it was.
“So, what do you want to do now?” Buck asked me, closing his laptop. His tone and the look in his eyes told me that he wanted to storm the cabin.
“I’m not sure,” I told him. “I feel like I’m still missing something. If he’s been planning this trip the whole time, why did he put the flight out so far, and why did he have someone ransack the house? Why did he try to break into my shop? It seems so unrelated.” I shook my head.
“Maybe he’s trying to misdirect you guys, so you don’t realize what he’s doing. When did he get their kid?”
Then it hit me. He wasn’t planning on already having Micah. “He got him from school after Lilah’s house was ransacked. He wasn’t feeling well at school, and she couldn’t get him herself because she was handling the break-in. Okay, that makes sense now. He was originally planning on it taking longer to get Micah.”
My blood froze in my veins and chills ran down my back. My jaw went slack, and my vision went out of focus, staring off past Buck at nothing in particular.
“What is it?” he asked.
“We don’t have long. Now that he’s got the kid and Lilah is away from home, he might decide to pick up the pace. Keep an eye on his email, especially if he starts talking to that lady again. He might decide to move the date up on the flight, if possible, and get out of here before anyone catches on. Especially now that I’ve talked to one of his men.”
Buck nodded as I sprang up from the chair and hurried over to Mick at the bar. I felt like I was walking under water. My heart started pounding in my chest, but my motions were restricted.
“Hey, call the guy off,” I told him. “We don’t need Troy to know we’re onto him.”
“Got it,” he said, pulling out his phone and texting the guy he’d sent to the suite.
I had no idea what to do with the information I had. I had to talk to Lilah at some point about it. She needed to know what I knew. She needed to know where her son was and what our options were for getting him back before he was taken out of the country.