Warlords MC: Book 4 – Deuce : Chapter 8

“Would he reach out and call another shooter in to help him?” Shay wanted to know.

Luna shook her head. “No, he wouldn’t. He’d want the glory of the kill. He might call in another flunky though. Someone further down the pecking order, someone he can boss around, someone he knows would never try to strip him out of the deal.”

“Do you know who he would call in?” Ace asked.

Luna snorted. “Oh yeah, there is such a man or he thinks he is. But I have a feeling Guthrie is about to find out, he’s not as smart as he thinks he is.”

“What does that mean?” Shay frowned.

“Guthrie thinks he’s got a yes man in Traven Killjoy. Traven has been with my dad for about seven years now. He doesn’t say much but he likes to watch you. Traven likes to sit back and watch people but in my mind, Traven is anything but a yes man. He watches everything and when the time is right, he strikes. But he only does that if he feels the situation warrants it. And when he does strike, it isn’t the way Guthrie necessarily wants it to go. Guthrie likes the blood and gore, sometimes too much, Traven likes a neat kill. He always gave me the creeps because he used to stare at me all the time, almost as if he was trying to figure me out or he was looking for something he could never really find. He’ll probably wait until Guthrie calls him in and then when Guthrie least expects it, he’ll strike. He’ll take Guthrie out and then things could go one of two ways. Either Traven comes after me for the money or he cuts his losses and walks away. You never know what he’s going to do, until he does it.”

“So this isn’t over yet then,” Ace said.

Luna shook her head.

“I have a team that’s taking over your father’s estate now,” Shay announced. “They will go in and gather whatever they can find for evidence. Is there anywhere they can look to get all of what he’s got?”

Luna thought for a moment then replied, “In his office, the second panel toward the corner on the right there’s a panel about eye level. If you press the panel in the right hand corner, it will open the wall. He’s got a floor to ceiling safe there and the combination is his birthdate, 7-14-57. I don’t know what’s in there but he had the safe hidden for a reason.”

“We’ll check it out.” Shay nodded.

“Should we hunt this fucker down and end it before this snake gets here or wait?” King wanted to know.

“That’s entirely up to you,” Luna stated. “But you should know that if Guthrie is wounded and you force him to defend himself right now, he’ll take every advantage. You’ll think he’s weak when he’s not. You might hesitate when you think he’s done and he’ll kill you for it.”

“You seem to know him pretty well,” King stated his opinion.

Luna shrugged. “He’s been around for a while. Like I said he likes to brag.” She looked away then said, “He asked my father if he could marry me. This morning, I was running from him as much as I was running from my father. I refused to even think about marrying him but my father gave him consent.”

“Your father would have forced you to marry this bastard?” Deuce growled.

Luna couldn’t look at him or any of them. She couldn’t even shed a tear at the cruelty of her own father. She turned to look at Shay and said, “You nail my father to the wall.” She growled. “Dot all your I’s and cross all your T’s if you want, but do not let him skate on anything and when the time is right, you lock the cell door behind him and throw away the fucking key. If anyone deserves, it he does. You better freeze his accounts too, he seems to think money can buy his way out of trouble. His attorneys are probably already on their way to wherever he’s at.” She huffed in disgust. “My father knows his rights.”

King shook his head. “That’s so wrong in so many ways.”

“My father thinks he can’t be judged by mortal man. He thinks common laws don’t apply to him.” Luna looked over at Shay. “You have to stop him. You have to. If you don’t, he’ll come after you and no one will ever know the truth about what he’s done. If he can’t bribe you, he’ll kill you to shut you up. I think he knows he’ll never be able to bribe you, Mr. Montross. And your death won’t mean a thing to him.”

“If that happened where would he go?” Ace asked.

“He’d go to a country where he couldn’t be extradited from, of course. He’s got accounts and contacts all over the world. If he gets on a plane, you’ll never find him again, that’s just the way he works. He’ll get a new team over there and the men he leaves behind here, will be on their own. He knows it even if they don’t. Travern is aware of that too. The rest might think he would never leave them behind, but my father believes he’s the only one that matters.”

Shay shook his head. “Too bad, we can’t freeze all his accounts.”

“Why can’t you?” Luna asked.

Shay shook his head again. “We’d never find them all.”

“I can give you most of them,” Luna offered. “I have all that information uploaded to a cloud, he cannot touch, nor does he know about it. I’ve worked at taking him down ever since I found out what he did to my sister and what he planned for me. I don’t want him to have anything if and when he ever gets out of jail. He may have contacts all over the world but I’m praying that they will all turn on him, somehow… someday.”

“That probably won’t happen, you know that right?” Shay told her.

“But I’m hoping you find enough in the emails that it could. If the threat of prosecution gets out to his contacts, they might not be so willing to protect him.”

Joker came to the door and said, “Jack just contacted me. The news reported Whittaker’s arrest and they are on their way back.”

Shay swore under his breath. “The local news leaked the story? Well, hell…” He looked over at Ace. “I didn’t even know they were here.”

Luna laid back against the pillows. “That’s probably my dad’s attorney. He’s trying to muddy the waters and get his client out of jail.”

“Your father isn’t going anywhere.” Shay growled.

Luna sat up and snapped, “Good, you charge him with everything from soup to nuts and you make those charges stick. You dog him like a dog with a bone and you don’t let go. Make him pay for every miserable thing he’s ever done! I miss Collette so much. She was my twin and I felt it when she was gone. I knew when she died. It hurt so much…” She burst into tears.

Deuce wrapped his arms around her and held her while she sobbed.

Everyone in the room filed out and then it was just the two of them. Deuce just held her. Murmuring hushing sounds in her ear until she finally settled down. And still, he held her.

Finally, she stopped crying. Her forehead was resting on his chest and she seemed to be completely wiped out. Instead of laying her down to take a nap, he hauled her into his arms and he held her.

“What’s going to happen now?” she finally asked in a quiet tone.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“I don’t want to have to hide for the rest of my life,” she whispered. “Gunther is still out there somewhere.”

“I’ll protect you,” Deuce vowed. “We all will.”

Luna lifted her head off his chest. “But why would you?”

Deuce nodded. “I know it might sound odd, but I feel like I’ve always known you. I have to confess that I saw your face on Facebook, on Whitaker’s company profile and… well, I just could not forget you.”

“We just met today and I don’t trust easy but I never thought about if I should trust you,” she whispered. “I just did. Being in your arms is like coming home to me. That’s something I’ve never felt before. Home for me was never safe.”

“Well, just remember, home is where I am now. You’ll be safe here with me.”

Luna looked up at him. “Will your brothers agree to that? They don’t seem so forgiving to me. They’re laying the blame for my father’s sins at my feet.”

Deuce let out a heavy sigh. “My brothers are for the most part, fair men but your father stepped over the line on more than one occasion with them and with me. King lost seven men because the equipment your father sent wasn’t worth spit. I saw him giving guns and ammo to our enemy and couldn’t make anyone believe me. But that’s on your dad, not on you.”

“So what’s the story with Annabelle?” Luna asked finally. “How did Collette’s daughter end up here?”

Deuce shifted on the bed and ended up leaning against the headboard. “That’s a long story. The man you knew as Gauntlet kidnapped a woman named Sable to bring up his daughter near here. Sable didn’t know who her mother was or what happened to her, she only knew Gauntlet brought her a newborn baby, just a few hours old. He told her she would live as long as she took care of the child. Then a few weeks ago, we aren’t sure why but he strangled Sable and took her sister, Jaden hostage. He left Annabelle with her, then we thought he was blown up in an explosion so we brought Jade and the baby here. Jade got together with my brother Jack and they got married yesterday. They are in Billings or were. They should be here soon.” He exhaled slowly. “That means you probably got more rights to Annabelle through blood than Jack and Jade do.”