Page 30 of Hawk

“Oh yeah. Have been since before the new year. Maddox was sure you’d make your move on New Year’s Eve. He was quite disappointed in you, so you know.”

“And you?”

“I’m out of the running. I picked the second Daddy Night in February. You know, hearts and Cupid and all that shit.”

“Well, aren’t you a romantic,” I grumbled.

She scoffed. “Not at all, but you’ve been all heart eyes for that boy for months, so I thought, maybe. Now, are you ready to find out how bad this situation might be?”

“Might be?” Kat didn’t operate inmights. She was all about what she could prove, so the fact that she’d saidmight betold me a lot.

“For now. I’m still digging. I’ll know more when my contact in Las Cruces gets back to me.”

“Okay then, tell me what ya got so far.” For right now, I was operating in the dark, and I didn’t like that at all. I’d much rather have some information than none.

“The good news is it doesn’t look like the whole Iron Jackals club is here. The bad news is a lot of them are, and it appears it’s the worst of the worst.”

“Great.” That was just what I needed—a whole group of assholes after Mika.

“They’re involved in all kinds of illegal activity. Your boy’s ex isn’t high level in the club, but he isn’t a peon either. He’s been running with them for years and somehow always managed to avoid legal problems. The club, as a whole, operates outside the law there in New Mexico. Our guess is they have some of the local PD on their payroll.”

“Well, too bad for them that they aren’t in New Mexico now,” I growled.

“Right. But what are they doing here? I can’t imagine the club’s president would send a group of his guys here to help Butch retrieve his runaway ex. There’s no money in that, and from what I can tell, the Iron Jackals are all about the money.”

“So you think it’s a coincidence that Mika is here, and so are they?”

“I don’t know, Hawk. I don’t like coincidence, but it happens. I’m hoping to get more info that’ll tell us why they’re here. Most of the club’s money comes from running guns and drugs, but they also provide security for some really bad dudes on occasion. I just don’t know yet.”

I glanced up from the screen with all the information to see her biting her lower lip, which meant there was something more she didn’t want to tell me.

“What is it? I can’t protect Mika if I don’t know all the details.”

“Some of these security jobs have been for known human traffickers.”

“You think that’s why they’re here?” I’d heard plenty of stories about human trafficking in Austin and San Antonio, but not in Vesper.

“I don’t know yet, but what I do know is that as more and more law enforcement officers in the big cities focus on trafficking, the more the traffickers will spread out to smaller, less monitored towns and cities.”

“So maybe Butch doesn’t want Mika back. Maybe he wants to punish him by selling him.” I wouldn’t tell Mika that theory. He was scared enough as it was.

She shrugged. “Who knows? Could be Butch is obsessed and wants him back.”

“Can you get me a tracker and a panic button?”

“I can. How about a watch? Everyone’s wearing smartwatches nowadays. Does your boy have one?”

“I’ve never seen him wear one, but that would work.”

“Okay.” She walked over to a cabinet and pulled it open. She took out a small box and carried it over to her computer. “I’ll activate this one for you. It’ll be tied into our system. The good thing about this little device is it’s a tracker and a panic button in one. All he has to do to activate the alarm is to press and hold down the crown right here, and it’ll send a notice to me here, and I’ll set it up so you’ll also get the alerts on your phone.”

“Sounds good to me, Kat. I need to go to Mika’s house. I need to let the dog out, but I’m going to take a couple of the guys with me, and we’re going to install an alarm system on his house.”

“Great. Send me the details on that, and I’ll get it all taken care of on our end. By the end of the day, we should have everything all set up for you.”

Chapter eleven

Mika

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