Carter ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “I’m going to be real honest with you, Cole. Your father was a piece of shit and when he died, I celebrated with drinks. It was one of the happiest days of my life, knowing that the man responsible for my sister’s death was dead. Then I got lumped with fucking investigating that death when Rogue turned up with his bullshit information, accusing you of killing Marcus. My partner is all over that investigation, but I’m not. Now that Rogue is dead, I’ll be doing my best to shut that down. For all I care, you could have tortured your father for a year before killing him and I wouldn’t give a shit. And so long as Storm keeps its hands clean of drugs, I don’t care what else you do. But next time you want to suffocate one of my informants, give me a head’s up, so I can get the information out of them that I need before they die.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of him, and I sure as shit wasn’t admitting to anything, but I was ecstatic to hear he’d be ending the investigation into Marcus’s death. The less I had to worry about, the better.
“Where does this leave us?” I asked, ready to get back to Harlow, but needing to know what lay ahead.
“As I suspect you already know, Julio has gone missing. Bourne’s left Adelaide and is heading to Brisbane from what I have been told, but he’s not here yet. I want you to let me know if you hear from Bourne. I believe he’s coming here to kill Julio, so I need to know when he hits town.”
I held his gaze, and lied to his face. “I’ll be in touch if I hear anything, but for now, I need to get back to the hospital.”
No fucking way was I giving up Bourne. To do that would mean also giving up my opportunity to kill Julio, and I wasn’t giving that up for anyone.
That honour would be mine.
16
Scott
I stared out the window of the clubhouse office and contemplated everything I knew, which seemed to change so often I wasn’t sure what to think.
I’d spent the night with Harlow at the hospital last night and done my best to focus on her and put what Carter and Blue had told me, out of my mind for the night. The doctors had agreed to let her go home this morning and once I’d gotten her home and settled, she’d told me to leave and take care of Storm business.
I loved that woman.
I loved that she gave me the space to do what she knew I needed to do.
I’d been at the clubhouse for the past hour with Griff, J and Nash, going over scenarios for how to deal with Julio. We’d worked out a plan, but then Carter had called to let me know four of Julio’s men had been found dead. That information confused the fuck out of us.
I turned to face them. “Who would be killing Julio’s guys? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t get it either,” J replied, looking as confused as I felt.
The rumble of pipes caught our attention and I turned back to the window to see five bikes making their way into our driveway.
“King’s arrived,” I said. “Maybe he can shed some light on this.”
I sure as fuck hoped so.
We made our way outside and watched as he walked our way with a grim look on his face. He’d brought Kick, Hyde, Nitro and Devil with him. His go-to guys when shit was going down.
He knows something.
“How’s Harlow?” he asked.
“She’s doing good today.”
He nodded. “Thank fuck for that.”
“Tell me what you know,” I threw out, fed up with not knowing what he knew. Someone had clearly told him we needed help, and I wanted to know who it was.
He slapped me on the back and walked me inside. “I can’t. Not yet, anyway. But as soon as I talk to my source and confirm some things, you’ll be the first to know.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Kick asked.
“Before we go through that, I discovered last night that Marcus was the one who snitched on your club ten years ago,” I said to King.
“Who confirmed that?” he asked.
“My uncle.”
“Good to know, but I wish to fuck I’d known before he died. We would have enjoyed the payback.”
“Yeah, you and me both, brother,” I muttered, thinking about what I now knew of my father. He would have deserved everything King would have done to him.
Griff stepped in, eager to get today underway. Fuck, we all were. “Julio’s gone into hiding so we need to flush him out, and then we want him dead. Fucking around trying to get shit smoothed over before we kill him is holding us up too much, so we’ll just deal with the fallout once it’s done.”
“To be honest,” I added, “I think his crew will fall apart once he’s dead anyway. Bourne seemed certain there would be a lot of blowback, but I don’t see it, or at least, I don’t think it would be anything we all couldn’t handle now that you guys are here and Blade’s guys are on board. And I just got word that four of Julio’s guys have turned up dead, so we now have less to deal with anyway.”
King frowned. “Any idea who killed them?”
“No. It’s odd,” I said.
He pulled his phone out. “I’ll make a call; I may know who it is.” He walked outside to make his call in private.
While he was gone, we divided up the list of places to check for Julio between everyone we had. Blade’s men were also out looking, and I hoped to have Julio by the end of the day.
As everyone began breaking away to head out on their search, King came back inside. “I’m gonna go see this guy and try to get the information out of him. As soon as I have any new info, I’ll call you.”
Griff and I watched him go. “Jesus, you’d think he could share what he suspected with us,” Griff muttered, clearly as frustrated as I was.
“You’d think so, but he always has kept his cards close to his chest, I guess.” I stretched the kinks out of my back as I thought about Harlow. Once we had Julio and all this crap sorted out, I was making good on my promise of a proposal. But fuck if she thought I would wait to get that ring on her finger. As soon as she said yes, I’d be walking her down the aisle and calling her Mrs Cole.
“I’m just gonna check in with Harlow and make sure she’s okay before we head out,” I said as I grabbed my phone and walked out to the clubhouse bar.
She answered on the first ring. “Hey, baby. Is everything going okay?” I heard the concern in her voice. My mission today was to wipe that concern from her mind.
“It’s all good here. You feeling okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good. Mum and I are just going over the café insurance paperwork, and Scarlett is here giving Wilder a hard time. It’s kinda fun to watch.”
I’d asked Wilder to keep an eye on them today. I was kicking myself that I hadn’t asked him to watch out for her all this time, rather than getting Rogue to do it.
“I’m just a phone call away if you need me, sweetheart.”
“I know,” she said, softly. “I love you, Scott.”
And there was my reason for everything.
Her faith.
Her trust.
Her love.
“I love you, too. I’ll call you in a few hours and check in again.”
After the call, I was even more determined to find Julio and right all the wrongs we had at the moment. And regardless of all the shit Storm had been through over the last couple of years, I would build it back up to be the strong club it had always been.
“You ready to go?” Griff asked a few minutes later when I found him in the office.
I nodded. “Let’s do this, brother.”
The clubhouse was eerily quiet as we walked out of the office. It was unusual for there to be no one around, but between sending members out to search for Julio and others out to keep an eye on our families, there wasn’t anyone left to stay at the clubhouse.