“Seems like there was some sort of arrangement, but then this designer fell off the grid. And since we’re the closest, we get tasked with finding them and getting the guns. Two of them. Worth a hundred grand each, it seems.”
“No shit?” I asked, straightening.
Sure, there was a substantial arms market. And getting your hands on certain weapons could set you back, on the high end, eight to ten grand. Maybe fifteen if it was really hard to source.
But a hundred?
“The fuck does it do? Come with a beer dispenser and make naked women come running or some shit?”
“I wasn’t given the details. I don’t think anyone has the details but the buyer and the designer. So now we have to find this fuck who is trying to renege on his deal.”
“Was he paid already?”
“Only twenty grand for each gun.”
“But forty grand can go a long way for a conman,” I said.
“That’s the worry,” Slash agreed.
“So what do we know?”
“The best anyone got down there was that the last email came from somewhere up in Modoc County.”
“Modoc,” I repeated. “That’s the middle of fucking nowhere,” I said, reaching up to rub the slight beard I’d been growing the past few months.
To that, Slash’s brow rose as he waved down toward Shady Valley.
That was fair enough.
There were fifty-eight counties in California. Ours landed way down at fifty-second when it came to population. And Modoc was just a bit lower at fifty-sixth.
That said, Modoc wasn’t exactly close. It was a solid eight to nine hour drive. Then we were in the middle of nowhere with no idea how to locate this person.
It wasn’t like we could walk around and ask where the local black market gun designer lived.
“I mean rural has its advantages and disadvantages,” Slash said. “We won’t have to try to sift through millions of people to find this guy. But on the other hand, smaller towns are more suspicious and protective of their residents, and might not be fond of strangers asking questions.”
“When are we leaving? What?” I asked when I saw the way he sucked in his cheek. When you knew someone as long as we’d known each other, there was no missing those kinds of tells.
“We’re not all going. It’s too long of a trip to be leaving the clubhouse empty,” he said.
“Who is going?” I asked.
I mean, he wasn’t going to send Judge, who had a wife and kid. Crow and Morgaine were in the family way. And something about his face then told me that he wasn’t planning on heading out either.
That left… me.
Detroit.
And Coach.
Since Riff and Raff were in Florida.
“I want you to go. You’ve got seniority. And Coach will be happy to take a trip. I’ll ask Detroit, but I’m not going to make him if he doesn’t want to go. I don’t think it needs to be a three person job.”
“What is the job, though? Find him? Drag him back here?” I asked. “Chain him to a desk until he finishes the guns?”
“Somewhere in-between,” Slash said, shrugging. “Make sure the guns are getting made. Then take it and bring it back. If the guns ain’t getting made, if he never meant to deliver them in the first place, I don’t know. I’m gonna have to call the Florida chapter back and ask them what they want us to do. I’m not interested in delivering someone to be executed for something like reneging on a deal.”
“But if they just pay the forty grand, it’s going to fuck with the reputation of not only the Golden Glades chapter, but all of the chapters,” I said.
“Yeah,” he agreed. Hence the tension in his jaw. “So, the plan is, to make this fucker make the guns he promised.”
“Okay,” I agreed. Technically, leaning on people was probably more Crow’s expertise. The guy with a blood and carnage fetish. But I had more control. And I wasn’t afraid to knock someone around if that needed to happen to ensure the good reputation of our MC. “So what do we know?”
“Not a whole hell of a lot. His name is Murphy.”
“And?”
“And that’s it.”
Murphy.
Not a common name.
It shouldn’t be too hard to find this guy…
CHAPTER TWO
Murphy
“Fuck,” I hissed, pressing my gloved hands to my cheeks, trying to ease the sting on the exposed skin as I made it to my back door, checking the temperature gauge tacked to the wood there.
Thirty-four.
Generally, you think California, and you think heat. And that’s true enough. For some parts of the country, a thirty-four-degree February day was downright balmy.
But it was fucking cold, damnit.
I was spoiled, living more coastal most of the time, letting the sun warm me down to my bones pretty much every day of the year.
Sometimes, though, you just had to deal with the cold.
And when you were having the kind of issues I was having, the kind that chased me out of my nice, warm normal home and into my little shack in the woods, yeah, you just had to grit your teeth and bear it.
I mean, that made it sound like I was really roughing it.
That wasn’t exactly the case.
Sure, this was the only cabin on the twenty-acre piece of land I owned. And, yeah, it was tiny. Meant to be a hunting cabin, not a full-time residence. But it had a working bathroom. Septic, well, a wood-burning stove.
The main space was just one real room with the kitchen and bedroom and living area all in one. But thanks to the peaked little roof, there was a loft upstairs.
No, it wasn’t heated. But the heat from the lower floor rose and warmed it enough that the space was usable. Because I needed a work space.
It was private, too.
If it weren’t for the aforementioned cold in the winter, I would have to admit that it was a superior location for my type of work than my main residence was. A place where people could get nosy, or overhear something, or the cops could come knocking.
No cop was trekking it all the way out to my little cabin to investigate a possible shooting sound.
It wasn’t dear, elk, or pronghorn season, but you could hunt rabbits almost year-round.
And farmers often shot off guns to scare away predators from their flocks.
People were constantly shooting.
Besides, pretty much no one even knew I was out here.
I was careful about that kind of thing.
I shopped for all my supplies before I headed into the main area of town, trying never to have to actually get out of my SUV where people could see me, ask me my name, wonder what I was doing around these parts.
Did that mean that I was currently running pretty damn low on fresh anything? Yes, yes, it did. But I could survive on canned fruits and veggies if I needed to.
I was hoping I wouldn’t be in the cabin too much longer anyway.
“Hey, girls,” I said as I pushed open the door, and moved inside to find my two German Shepherds—one all black, one sable—sitting almost exactly where I’d left them forty minutes ago.
Normally, I would take them with me.
I had them for love and companionship, sure, but mostly for their scary factor, so I typically brought them almost everywhere with me.