Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Rigs

Siege and I are at his friend’s makeshift lab out in the woods. This guy is way on the other side of Dexter weird. He’s set up in a barn lined with rickety wooden shelves with his collection of specimens. He has everything from jumbo sized dung beetles to animal skulls to an assortment of rat brains in formaldehyde. The place gives me the creeps, but this guy is good, so I suck it up.

Siege is standing over him demanding answers. “What do you mean you can’t lift DNA samples? You’re a lab rat. Lab shit is what you do.”

“I can swab all this junk for DNA. What I can’t do, is give you answers right now.”

“Why the hell not. We’re paying you good money.”

“Lifting the DNA from objects is not as simple as swabbing DNA from the cheek of a human being. You do know that, right? Some of these things will need to be prepared before DNA can be lifted from them. It’s a process, Siege. Don’t believe the crap you see on TV, this stuff takes hours, sometimes days.”

I turn from gazing into the eyes of a badly stuffed owl and ask, “How long will it take? Give us a timeline.”

“I’m gonna say at least four or five days, maybe longer. What’s the rush by the way?”

I shake the shoebox in front of him. “Look at this fucking shit and tell me what the rush is? Some asshole is sending this shit to my woman as a form of intimidation. Several of these are literal death threats. We need it done right away.”

Siege speaks up, “Rigs is right. This job is your top priority. I don’t want you to set it aside for any other job. You don’t do anything until this job’s done. Got it?”

Zeek nods, “I promise, but after this we’re square, right? I don’t know you anymore favors whatsoever.”

“Yes of course this makes us square. And remember we’re paying you premium rate, so I want your best work.”

You got it,” Zeek replies eagerly. “I’ll get it done as soon as possible and shoot you a text when I’m finished.”

Siege responds firmly, “I’ll be looking forward to getting your message, Zeek. Thanks for taking the job. It means a lot to our club and to me personally.”

Siege and I step outside. “Can you believe that guy?”

“Yeah, I can actually. He’s like seventeen years old, right? I just don’t think that pressuring Zeek is the way to go.”

“I wasn’t pressuring him,” Siege insisted. “I was merely driving home the importance of the mission. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“I hope so. Look, I need to leave now if I’m gonna be on time to pick Mattie up from work.”

“You’re taking playing her protector pretty seriously. I’m glad to see that, Mattie is a nice lady. I would hate to see anything bad happen to her.”

“There ain’t nothing bad gonna happen to her on my watch. You know that, Siege.”

“Tell you what I know, Rigs. That woman is my wife’s very best friend and the whole world. Nothing damn well better happened to her. And keep your dick in your pants.”

I glare at him.

“Look, I know what you said to her yesterday, but I don’t want you messing with her. She’s been through a lot, she doesn’t need some horny old man chasing after her.”

“What the fuck, Siege? You know it’s not like that.”

“Isn’t it? Well, just remember I’m the one who’s gonna get an earful from Cleo if anything happens to her, so watch your step.” Siege grumbles.

“We need to find out who this Pope character is. When it comes to the syndicate, he’s the last man standing. Once we take him out that should be the end of those sick bastards.”

“I’m hearing what you’re laying down about that, Rigs. Zen’s tracking down every lead he can, we’re cross-referencing every fucker we took down to see if there are any commonalities, places they stayed at, cars they’ve used, doctors they’ve visited anything at all that might point us in the direction of Pope.”

“In the meanwhile, I’ll keep my eyes and ears open in case any of them start snooping around my Mattie.”

“You do that, brother. Let us know if anything suspicious happens and we’ll come running.”

***

I get on my bike and start the long journey back into town. I always prefer solo rides because it’s just me, my bike and the open road. There’s something elemental about that. I enjoy the sights and the sounds as my tires eat up mile after mile, each one bringing me closer to the woman I’m falling desperately in love with.

When I pull up to her office and see her standing there waiting for me, my heart lurches in my chest. She’s smiling and seems excited to see me, and I can’t believe my luck. I know I wanted to start off slow and get to know her. But my body hasn’t gotten the message. When she walks up to me, I see her looking at my lips. It makes me wonder if she’s not thinking about stealing a kiss from me as well. But I quickly realize that’s probably wishful thinking on my part.

Once she slides on the seat and wiggles to make herself comfortable behind me and wraps her arms around my waist I almost groan in pleasure. Instead, I rev my engine and take off out of the parking lot.

I take the back road to Smoke’s house. When we pull up, Mattie is wowed by his house. “Your friend has an absolutely beautiful home. It looks like a mansion.”

“It actually a mini mansion. He bought it several years ago and lives here all by himself. Right now, he’s in San Diego visiting with some friends of his from the military. We’ll go through the side gate into the backyard where the pool is.”

She follows me to the gate and waits while I unlock it.

“The prospects got you a swimsuit, I think it should be okay. It looks decent, not like one of those Miami beach thong things.” I hand her the scrap of fabric. I’d specifically asked them to get something their grandmother would be happy in, because I didn’t want Mattie getting embarrassed. But after sending Luca off I remembered what his grandma had worn that time she’d dropped off some meatloaf for him. Luckily, he’d found a plain black swimsuit that wasn’t too revealing.

“Is it okay to go in the cabana to change?” She asks.

“Yeah. You’ll have to turn your head while I get undressed because I’m really shy about women seeing my cock.”

She laughs. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re pulling my leg.”

“Because I am. I have my trunks on under my clothing.”

“Come on, let’s get in the water and enjoy a swim.”

We waste no time getting undressed, and jump into the cool, refreshing water. We swim a few laps and then sit on the steps to bask in the sun. I’m trying not to perve on Mattie, but it’s hard not to notice when she’s sitting beside me wearing nothing but that black swimsuit. It does cover everything, but the way it clings to her curves has my mouth watering. Reminding myself I’m not a sleazy teenager I park my over-active libido and make conversation.

“How was work today? Did you get a lot done?”

Mattie wraps her arms around her knees and sighs. “I had a pretty rough day. We were really busy and toward the end of the day I had to terminate one of our employees. Apparently, this employee has a bit of a vindictive streak. Even Cleo warned me to watch my back with her.”

“That sounds pretty fucked up. Is there anyone more senior that you can go to about this.”

“Since she didn’t threaten me or anything like that, there’s nothing they can really do.”

“Do you really think she’s gonna do something to you?”

I shrug. “Who knows. I’ll just have to wait and see. If something happens, I know how to handle myself. How about you? What kind of day did you have?”

“I spent most of my day with our club president. We’re trying our best to figure out who the last man standing in the syndicate is. We’ve taken down everyone in their regional management team. Now we’re down to the big boss. It’s very likely he’s the one behind all the threats you’ve been receiving. Needless to say, I’m eager to get my hands on him.”

“I’m grateful to hear that you and your club are still tracking members of the syndicate. That’s gonna be a dirty thankless task. I won’t rest easy until every last one of them is behind bars.”

“I really hate that these assholes are targeting you and making you feel afraid.”

“Yeah me too, but I’ve got you and the Savage Legion MC to protect me.” She smiles at me and wiggles her toes in the water, “. We might as well swim another lap or two and then head to your office and start working on our case.”

“You’re almost all business aren’t you, Mattie?”

“There’s a good reason for that. When I was five, I got separated from my parents at the beach. A man walked up to me said he was going to help me find my parents, but instead he took me to his car and tried to drive away with me. I was so young it took me a second to realize that he was trying to abduct me instead of taking me to my parents. Just as we got to the entrance of the parking lot, my dad’s car pulled right in front of him blocking his way. I kept trying to open the door handle, but he had engaged the safety locks. When my dad stormed out of his car, the man jumped out and ran across the parking lot. My dad was too busy trying to get me out of the vehicle to chase him down.”

“Oh shit, Mattie.” I pull her into my arms and hold her close. “Darlin’, I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

She nuzzled her face into my chest. “I remember how terrified I was when I realized what was happening to me. I felt so helpless and stupid for walking off with him. It kills me a little bit inside every day that these kids are missing. I can’t believe this happened right here in my hometown. I just can’t imagine what those children are out there suffering at the hands of these crazy syndicate members. Sometimes I feel like if I could just find one of them it would be enough to stop the bad dreams and stop feeling so suffocated and anxious every minute of every day. But I know that one will never be enough. I have to find them all.”

“Don’t worry, darlin’. No matter what we’re gonna find every single one of them. And I promise you that I will personally take apart anyone who has hurt them piece by piece.”

“I know that being okay with a statement like that probably makes me a bad person, but I don’t care. I’m tired of fighting the good fight to find these missing kids, and always coming up empty handed.”

“If you want, we can go ahead and leave and get back to work on those files. We’ve had our swim, we can come back again tomorrow.”

She nods.

As we get dressed, I ask, “How many people have you shared your story with? Does Cleo know?”

“I’ve never told that story to anyone. Just me and my parents know what happened that day. It’s hard to talk about and I have never been in a situation where I honestly needed the other person to understand.”

“Well, I’m glad you shared that with me. It helps me understand what’s driving you so hard. Those kids lucky to have someone like you on their side.”

***

When we get back to the clubhouse, we pull out everything we have on Evan White and start going through it.

When I was reading through the file this morning, I found something that struck me as odd. Did you know that the foster father worked as a teacher and football coach at Evan’s school?” I ask.

“That’s not all that unusual.”

“According to one of police interviews conducted with Evan’s friends, the foster father forced him to join the team and was harder on him than any of the other players.”

“I don’t think I ever got around to reading that particular report, but I question how reliable the report of the peer was. Teens don’t always have a good grasp on things like that.” Mattie says.

“Someone copied Evan’s report cards for the file. It looks like the one and only class he failed was the one his foster father taught.”

“This is beginning to look like verification that there was some interpersonal conflict going on between the two of them that may be the foster father minimized when he asked for Evan to be removed from the home.”

“It’s pretty early in the evening. What do you think about paying the foster father a visit? We could ask him to describe what was going on in a little more detail and try to get a feel for it whether or not it was just a teenager acting out or if the foster father had some genuine resentment toward Evan.” I say, it’s a longshot but it’s somewhere to start.

“I’m totally game for that. I can tell the foster family then I’m wrapping up the details of his case, which isn’t far from the truth.”

“I’m curious about his actual disappearance. How in the world did that happen? I can’t get a good handle on it from reading his chart.”

“A CPS worker, who is no longer with our agency was assigned to transport Evan from the home of his foster family to a therapeutic halfway house for violent teens. The worker came back, made a note in the chart that transfer had been made successfully, and even had a signature for the person who supposedly took possession of him at the halfway house. We do thirty-day and ninety-day checks. The thirty-day check went off without a hitch, with the employee on the other end of the phone verifying that he was still there and actively engaged in treatment. The ninety-day check was a completely different story—they didn’t know who I was talking about and there had never been an Evan White admitted to their facility.”

“And the staff member who did the transport is no longer with the agency, right? I’m going to assume the signature of the receiving facility was discovered to be from a former employee who is no longer there.”

“It’s worse than that. The signature of the person from the receiving facility was for someone who never worked there. It was the same individual who answered the thirty-day follow-up call.”

“I can’t believe somebody walked into that facility with that young man and there was no record of it. No security footage. Nothing.”

“That struck me as odd as well. At some point I started to suspect that perhaps they never made it to the facility, but the contact on the inside was in place, and ready to say all the right things. We tried to track down the employee but it’s like they just vanished into thin air.”

“Or it was a false identity to start out with.”

“That’s a possibility I hadn’t even thought of. I guess it’s just difficult for me to believe that someone could have lied to a federal agency about their identity.”

“It happens more often than you think. There are some people who forge documents so well no one would ever know they’re fake. Can you get your hands on the employee’s personnel file? If so, maybe our IT guy can try to figure out what’s going on. He uses facial recognition software so a copy of the image they used for the employee ID would really help.”

“I don’t know if that would be possible. Being a manager, I can access client records all day long and even check them out for auditing, but employee records never leave HR.”

“Okay, maybe gather as much information as you can remember about the employee. See if there are any company pictures that include a clear picture of their face, maybe a holiday dinner or some kind of team building event.”

“I could definitely do that.”

“Let’s go ahead and head out to the foster family’s house before it gets too late.”