Page 74 of Gather the Storm

We let the door swing shut behind us and started across the concrete floor that had once held machinery to make floral wire. It was so quiet it would have been easy to think the place was abandoned, but we kept walking, crossing the expanse of concrete until we came to a steel wall.

Not just a wall. A box.

I’d always wondered why Aloha and his team worked in what amounted to a reinforced steel box, but I assumed it had something to do with security and all the sensitive equipment they used for their work.

A door was set flush into the wall, another camera blinking red and pointed at us.

A second later, the door clicked its approval. Then we were stepping inside a high-ceilinged room with no windows, the space stretching into the far reaches of the warehouse like some kind of high-tech dungeon.

The room was lined with tables and workstations, servers and CPUs humming quietly while a handful of people I didn’t recognize tapped at keyboards.

I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t even sure I’d have recognized Aloha’s crew before I went to prison. Five years later, life had churned most of the people I’d known to the bottom of the pile to reveal a shit ton of people I’d never laid eyes on in my life.

Jace made a beeline for a massive guy sitting at a bank of monitors, his broad shoulders filling out a leather cut with the Blackwell Blades’ logo on the back.

He spoke without turning to face us, his fingers flying over the keyboard in front of him, bald head gleaming under the dim lighting shining from the top of the room. “Don’t tell me you’re in trouble again already, Kane.”

When we reached his table, I saw streams of code unfurling on three of his screens. I had no idea what it all meant, but rumor was Aloha was one of the best hackers in the world.

“Not yet,” Jace said. “But the day is young.”

Aloha chuckled, then swiveled his chair to face us.

He stood to reveal his full height and extended a hand to Jace. “Heard you were back, but I must have missed you at the compound.”

Jace took his hand and they did that weird hug thing guys did when they wanted to hug but didn’t want tohug-hug. I didn’t get it, but I’d been raised by my mom, the ultimate hugger, and I’d been hugging everybody my whole life like it was no big deal.

The Blades were a world unto themselves, a world with its own set of customs and expectations. And don’t get me started on the Blackwell Barbarians, their rival MC.

Who knewwhatthe fuck went on over there?

“I’m staying somewhere else for a while,” Jace told Aloha.

“Oh yeah?” Aloha said, raising his bushy eyebrows, a perfect match to his dark beard, like a giant grizzly who’d escaped the zoo.

“Thought it might be good to get some space,” Jace said.

Aloha didn’t push for answers, just nodded and glanced at me. “How’s it hanging, Wolf?”

“It’s hanging,” I said. “How’s life treating you?”

“All good,” Aloha said, sitting back in his chair. “What can I help you with?”

“Wondering if you can get access to the traffic cams closest to Old Mountain Road,” Jace said.

Aloha snorted, like Jace was asking him if he could count to five. “What are you looking for?”

“Everybody who turned onto the road on Tuesday between the hours of two and four p.m.,” Jace said.

It was the only thing we could think of to find out who’d left the package for Daisy — and if we found out who’d left the package for Daisy, we’d be one step closer to figuring out who’d accessed the house to steal the vase.

Otis was taking the box and the vase to a buddy of his who worked in forensics for Blackwell PD to see if he could run prints on the down-low, see if we could ID whoever had left the box or packed it that way.

“Busy this time of year,” Aloha said. “But Tuesday is better than Saturday.”

It was something Jace and I had talked about on the drive over — the fact that warmer weather brought hikers and day-trippers up from the city. But there was no getting around it: this was still the only way we had of figuring out who’d left the package, and at least there were fewer tourists during the week.

“That’s what we’re hoping,” Jace said.

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