Page 201 of Back in the Saddle

I forgot Harlow was going to be moving in that soon. I needed to ask if she wanted help packing.

“Jess,” Eric prompted in a growly tone.

Mm. Yum.

I shook off my pleasant reaction to his growly.

“First I will share how proud of myself I am that I’ve managed to curtail my homicidal tendencies twice today.”

“Okay,” he said slowly, like he was prompting me to go on, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“My parents are assholes,” I stated the obvious. “But Jeff and I worked shit out. I’ll explain more tonight.”

“Right. So the twice is both your parents?”

“No. I woke up wanting to kill whoever had the idea for the stakeout. Then I remembered it was Harlow, and I thus I determined I wasn’t down for bestie-icide.”

I listened to him chuckle.

Since I wouldn’t hear that much if I was in prison, I was super glad I had such fantastic willpower.

I continued my brief. “Javi put the word out it wasn’t his idea on the raid, but whoever this crew is doesn’t care, and they went after Cody. Javi and Jeff took care of Cody, whatever that means, I didn’t ask, but they did it. Though, apparently, Clarice is Javi’s attorney, and she set up a safe house for them in the mountains. Before they vanished, Jeff wanted to say goodbye.”

“Right,” he murmured. Then he said, “This is good, Jess.”

“I know,” I replied. “One other thing of note, Clarice told me she knew you’d been at work for two hours. I don’t know why, but I think that means Arthur keeps tabs on you.”

“Whoever this guy is probably he keeps tabs on anyone who touches the Angels.”

He didn’t seem concerned.

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“Since we’re looking out for you, if he’s looking out for you too, I don’t give a fuck.”

Great answer.

“Any word on this crew?” I asked.

“We’ve dedicated some resources to gathering intel, and we aren’t liking what we’re learning.”

Damn.

“What’s that?”

“Montoya was right. They’re expanding aggressively. As much as we’ve learned so far, they’ve got three active feuds ongoing, adding the one with Montoya is four. The cops are putting out fires everywhere, and by that I mean draping sheets over dead bodies until the coroner can bring the body bags. These assholes have a burn-it-to-the-ground-then-go-in-and-plant-seeds mentality. In other words, if they want your turf, you back off it or they’ll annihilate your crew and take it anyway.”

This was not good news.

Seriously.

But still, it didn’t answer why they’d be snatching unhoused people.

“Any theories on why they’re grabbing people from the camps?”

“No good ones,” he replied.

“Lay them on me anyway,” I ordered.

---