Page 155 of Prey

I tensed. “Fuck that. If it’s not them, then who?”

“Someone smart. Someone working on the inside. The fucking brain behind the operation, who kept his identity hidden, letting the Mansen brothers take risks by showing off their ugly mugs,” Dominic theorized.

“Not possible,” I argued. We would have known. Wouldn’t we?

“Then who did Julian just talk to, claiming to be the head of the Manson Brotherhood?” Dominic asked.

“Who?”

“He said his name is Brent Ledger. You ever heard of him?”

“Why the hell would I have heard of him?”

The name didn’t even ring a fucking bell, but something about Dominic’s voice gave me a pause.

“Because I looked into him and found out he trained under Bennett Hudson after getting his law degree. He was close with Ryleigh's family until about seven years ago when he moved to Chicago for a job. That was also around the time the Manson Brotherhood got sloppy, and we had been able to take control.”

I tried to think of what I had been doing seven years ago.

It was around the time I joined the club.

I had cut off the head of Casey Sullivan, a high-ranking officer for the Mansen Brotherhood, who had wormed his way into the King’s Men, working as a rat on the inside. It was pure fucking luck that I caught the fucker on the phone and followed him. It was also how I rose up in rank to VP so quickly.

But he was right.

The King’s Men were nowhere as big then as we were now. And it was all thanks to the sloppy running of the Mansen Brotherhood.

“He’s still alive?” I asked about Brent, though something told me he was.

Dominic confirmed with a grunt. “Alive and spotted recently in Sacramento. He’s also gathering up his men for war.”

That uneasy feeling I had all day came back in sharp focus, and I put Dominic on speaker while I checked out Ryleigh’s location.

My blood ran cold when I found her.

She wasn’t at her parents’ house like I expected, but at a certain cliff that I hadn’t been to in seven years. Not since I found myself moving back to California.

What was she doing there?

A memory suddenly came back to me.

Not possible… was it?

It had been years, and I could hardly even remember that little girl on the cliff, barely remember the deranged little fucker that had thrown her over, but she had been about fourteen.

I did a quick math in my head.

Ryleigh would have been fourteen at the time, just two weeks from her fifteenth birthday.

“What the fuck?”

“What?” Dominic said sharply.

“I have to go,” I said.

“Go? Go where?”

“Ryleigh’s in trouble, Dom.”

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