Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Rigs

The minute Chief Popelstone showed up in court, I shot Siege a quick text, telling him to send out the cavalry and put us on lockdown. At first, I didn’t realize who he was, but when the Chief of Police for the entire fucking county of Las Salinas shows up at a custody hearing, especially with trumped up charges against a kid, I knew there was something big going down.

It wasn’t until we’d left, and I saw the tow trucks that it all clicked into place.  When we pull into the clubhouse, the other old ladies and kids are already there. The prospects are busy locking the place down.

Mattie comes up to me when we were all out of the van. “Tell me you’re not going to use yourself for bait.”

I shake my head. “Pope doesn’t give two shits about me. He wouldn’t cross the road to spit on me if I were on fire. We’ll have to figure out what he does care about and use that for bait.”

“Not his family, right?”

I snort a laugh. “Men like Pope don’t give a shit about their families. They’re too selfish to care about anything but themselves. Their focus is on money, power, and luxury. Those are the things we will turn into bait.”

She pats me on the chest. “Just promise me that you’ll be safe out there. I’m getting to be quite fond of you. It would be a shame if some asshole took you away from me.”

“And Evan,” I remind her. “You might need a good man in your life, but that boy needs a good male role model after all the shit he’s been through. I never thought I’d have one good thing in my life to come home to, much less two.”

Her face lights up. “I like the sound of that. Once this is over, you and I are going to get hitched and live happily ever after.”

“Am I going crazy, or did you just propose to me?”

Mattie goes a lovely shade of pink and laughs, “I never thought I would end up falling in love or getting married. But since meeting you, that’s all I want to do. So yeah, I guess you could say I proposed to you. You don’t have to tell me yes or no right away.”

“Of fucking course I want to marry you. You’re all I’ve wanted since the very first time I laid eyes on you back at Siege and Cleo’s wedding. You were the prettiest damn thing I’d ever seen. Little did I know that in addition to being beautiful, you were smart, resourceful, and dedicated to a cause greater than yourself. No man in his right mind could resist a woman like you.”

Before she can respond, Evan walks up to us. “Some big dude with a loud voice has been yelling your name, Rigs. I don’t know how you couldn’t hear that.”

“Do me a favor, kid. Tell him I’m on my way.”

The minute Evan wanders off, I pull my Mattie into a tight embrace and kiss her for all I’m worth. When we finally pull apart, I can tell she was aroused. Trauma will do that to a person, especially once that burst of adrenaline decides it needs to go somewhere.

My cock is fit to burst in my pants. Memories of the last time we were naked together flit through my mind. How smooth and soft her skin was, how sweet she smelled, the taste of her arousal on my tongue.

Mattie is thinking the same thing. I can tell because she glances down at my raging hard-on and then her tongue comes out to wet her pretty pink lips. I cup her face in my hands and give her one last tender kiss before whispering, “Later, I promise, sugar.”

I force myself to turn away and stalk into the clubhouse before I lost what tiny shred of self-control I had left. I walk into our meeting room, where Siege is talking to Zen. “What did you find on Pope? Anything useful?”

“Of fucking course,” Zen say proudly.

“Well, we’re gonna need to do something, cos I got pulled over twice getting from the courthouse to the clubhouse,” Smoke said as he walked in. “Popelstone impounded my Beamer right out of the parking lot at the courthouse. I had to borrow a car to get here. Got ticketed by two different cops between the courthouse and the clubhouse. Good thing traffic tickets follow the person, and not the car, or my friend would be pissed.”

“It seems as though he’s put the word out that all members of the Savage Legion MC are to be harassed good and hard. He’s not gonna stop at that though, he might have been hiding in plain sight, but now he knows we’re onto him shit’s gonna hit the fan real soon.” Siege said. “I want eyes on all our businesses, make sure we’ve got twenty-four hour recording. I wouldn’t put it past him to try and set us up. We know our businesses are clean, but we need to make sure it stays that way and no syndicate fuckers plant anything on our properties, you on it Zen?”

“On it,” our IT guru says as he heads back to his office.

“What do you know about this guy, Smoke,” Siege asks.

“That he’s a gigantic prick who misuses his power as Las Salinas County Chief of Police, but it’s mostly zoning and construction he focuses on. It’s an open secret that he takes backhanders from developers, but no one has made anything stick. He comes from old money and is untouchable.”

“What about links to the syndicate?” I ask.

“Nothing that Zen could find, that’s why he wasn’t on our radar. If we went after all the corrupt officials, then we’d still be on the starting blocks.” Siege paces across the floor looking like he’s about to implode. I guess we’re all reeling from finding out who Pope is. For fuck’s sake the clue’s in his fucking name.

“Well, Popelstone checks all the boxes for the leader of a criminal enterprise. Does he have family we need to work around?”

“Nope. Word on the street is his wife left him and moved to the East Coast years ago. Thank God the stupid prick never had any kids.”

“Anything we could use to bait him with? Because I’m eager to do to him what he tried to do to us back at the courthouse,” I say.

Zen pops his head around the office door, “Forgot to say, I found something on Pope, he’s got a nice spread out on route seventy, with horses, a walnut orchard, and a collection of antique cars. The taxes on that property suggest it’s worth a fuck ton. It thinking this is clearly his weak spot,”

“Real estate, antique cars, and horses are costly hobbies for a police chief. I wonder how he explains it all to people curious enough to ask about it all?” Tank says.

“Family money. What I want to know is how we should go about luring him out to his multi-million-dollar property,” Siege says.

“I say we create a distraction in town and take a team out to his house. I want to have a look around and see if I can dig up even more incriminating evidence on him.” I was all too eager to begin taking his life apart one piece at a time.

Siege nudges my shoulder and jerks his chin toward the doorway. I turn to see Evan standing there. His arms are folded high across his chest, and he’s pulling on his bottom lip with one hand. He looks anxious as hell, but like he had something he wanted to say.

I go over to him. “You okay kiddo? Is Mattie alright?”

“Yeah. I want to tell you what I saw that made that man want me dead.”

“Do you need to talk in private or can you tell the brothers?”

“I’ll tell anyone that will listen. I owe Ben that much.”

I lead him into our meeting room and sit him down next to me in one of the chairs. I turn to Siege. “Better call everyone in here.”

When the rest of my brothers are seated in the meeting room, I put a gentle hand on Evan’s shoulder. “Talk whenever you’re ready.”

Evan takes a deep breath and say, “The police chief has dogs and I saw what he does with them.”

“What do you mean he has dogs?” I ask, confused.

“The police chief breeds dogs and then he makes them vicious.”

There weren’t any dog fighting rings around for hundreds of miles in any direction. I should know, we put them all out of operation years ago. Dog fighting makes me sick, but given what the syndicate do, it’s small fry. I’m not sure where Evan is going with this, so I try and coax him to talk, “How do you know about that?”

“A friend of mine, Ben, worked for him, feeding his horses, and mucking out the stables, it was a weekend job. There were dog kennels as well, Ben wasn’t allowed to go in there, but he heard the constant barking. He knew they were for dog fights, but the money was good. He said every so often the chief would have these parties where lots of men would come to the house, on those weekends he was usually sent home mid-morning.” Evan pauses and I can see he’s starting to look distressed.

“It’s okay kid, you’re doing good,” I say encouragingly.

“One Saturday afternoon Ben came over to see me, this was when I was living with my foster family. He was really upset, he didn’t want to tell me at first, but I kept asking him to. I was scared I’d never seen him like that. He’d been working that morning and he realized he’d left his cell phone there, so he went back to get it. There were cars lining the driveway and he could hear shouts coming from the barn behind the kennels. There was barking and cheering, Ben grabbed his cell phone, and he was going to run home when he heard screaming, it sounded like a person. So, he went to take a look and- and—”

The poor kid is shaking, “You’re doing good son,” I say to him and pat his shoulder. “I can see this is hard for you. You’re safe here. I’m not gonna let anyone hurt you.”

The kid takes a deep breath as if he’s preparing himself for the worst. “It was a woman. They had a naked woman in the ring and the dogs were tearing her to bits.”

“Fucking bastard!” Siege spits out.

My other club brothers make sounds of disgust. We’ve seen the depravity that sick fuck’s organization feeds on, I didn’t think the syndicate could hit lower than the trafficking, but this was way up there in sheer evilness.

“He didn’t know what to do, he was terrified and vomited. But he filmed it, only a few seconds before he ran. But it was enough to show what they were doing. We didn’t know what to do with the evidence though—they were cops, important businessmen. Even with evidence as soon as we talked then he’d kill us.”

“Holy shit, Siege gasps. “What did you do?”

“Ben was terrified, so was I. I said we needed to go back there, see if we could find anything else. Maybe physical proof, I didn’t know who we could take it to. Ben was too scared so I went early the next morning, someone had cleaned up, but I could see the bloodstains. It was even more horrible than I thought it would be, I was so frightened. I found a bloody tooth lying on the ground and thought it might have been the woman’s and I went running back to Ben’s.”

I wondered if he had the tooth, hell, I wondered if his friend still had the video recording. Not wanting to interrupt his train of thought I wait for Evan to continue.

“His parents were both out, his dad’s away a lot, and his mom works long hours. Anyway, there was suddenly a loud knocking on the door and the chief was yelling for Ben, saying he hadn’t shown up to work and he needed to talk to him about something. Saying if he didn’t open up then they were coming in. Ben realized that he must have been spotted somehow, and he made me hide, because he said if the Chief found me there, he’d kill me too.”

“What happened to Ben?”

“They dragged him out of the house, and I followed them on my bike back to the farm. There were four of them, Chief Popelstone and three younger men. They took him out to the barn, and I climbed up into the hayloft. I wanted to make sure Ben was okay.”

Evan’s snaps his mouth closed and looks to be on the verge of tears. I want to tell him it’s okay, that he doesn’t need to tell us what happened. But I can’t, we need to know.

“Almost done, son” I say gently.

Swallowing thickly, he continues. “I remember it like it was yesterday, it’s all I see when I close my eyes. He picked up a rock and just smashed it into Ben’s head.”

“Did Pope catch you snooping around his place that day?”

“No, but I was scared they would. No one would believe me, I think they had Ben’s phone. I still had the woman’s tooth but that wasn’t proof enough without the video. I didn’t know what to do, I couldn’t tell my foster father, he was constantly having a go at me, saying I was a troublemaker and I guess I was. Ben’s mom thought he’d run away, I couldn’t tell her the truth. I was too frightened to sleep at night, and I started acting out. Then Mr. Strawn said he was going to send me to a facility for bad kids, and I was scared of going there. I knew I had to tell someone, so I called the only person I knew I could trust—my case worker at CPS and he said he would help me. He came to collect me that evening but instead of keeping me safe, Charlie chained me up, it turns out he was working for Chief Popelstone as well, but for some reason he wanted me alive. I was there for months. Then Mattie showed up and saved me.”

“Kid, I can’t even begin to comprehend what you’ve been through. But you have my word that no one is going to hurt you again, at least not while I can draw a breath.”

“I don’t wanna see you or Mattie get hurt. But I don’t see how you can stop him, I know his secrets and now he knows I’m alive, he won’t stop.  Ben’s parents think he’s a runaway. They don’t know he’s buried out behind the barn.”

“He’s buried there?” I ask.

Evan nods.

I look at my club brothers. If we can get law enforcement to go to Pope’s property before he gets his men to clean up, then that’s evidence. “Another reason to pay a visit to the farm.”

Tank and Dutch both nod their agreement, while Siege continues pacing.

We need to discuss details, and I don’t think Evan should be around to hear that. “Is there anything else you want to share with us about this situation, kid?” I ask.

“I don’t know how you’re planning to get rid of him, but I don’t think putting him in jail would work. He has too many cop friends and someone would probably just let him out.”

“Don’t you worry about any of this. My club brothers and I will take care of it. You can trust us to do what’s right. He’s not going to be getting his claws into anyone else in this town.”

“Watch your back with him, Rigs. He’s tricky. I don’t wanna see you or any of your friends get hurt.” Evan warns.

I give him a feral grin. “Don’t worry kiddo. Taking care one murdering asshole is not gonna be a problem for the Savage Legion. We’ve taken out tougher men than him.”

Evan’s shoulders relax and he nods.

“Why don’t you go upstairs and sit with Mattie, so she doesn’t worry. I’ve got lots of movies there for you guys to choose from.”

“What I want to do is go with you,” he says sincerely.

“No, you don’t. You’re only fourteen years old. You need to concentrate on being a teen and leave the heavy lifting to the Savage Legion. The day will come when you get to be a badass hero, but that day is not today.”

“I want to get revenge for my friend.” Evan’s stubborn expression reminds me of myself at that age.

“I know you do. And that proves that you’re a good person. But I’m not allowing you to put yourself in danger. You just got out of the hospital. You need to take it easy and recover your strength.”

“Alright, but if you change your mind let me know,” he says, then makes his way out of the room. I don’t know if it’s the relief at finally unburdening himself of the shit he’s been weighed down by for months, but in that moment, he seems almost like a carefree teenager.

“You’ve got a mighty fine kid there, Rigs. You and Mattie are very lucky to have him,” Siege says.

“I agree. With any luck, he’s gonna grow up to be a fine brother one day,” I reply. “Now, let’s get down to the business of hunting down and eliminating our final syndicate asshole.”