Page 4 of Cutter's Hope

“Yo.”

“Marlin, Cutter, we have ourselves a situation. Get your ass and the rest of the council in here pronto.”

“Can you give me a heads up, Man? How bad is it?”

“No; talk when you all get here.” I hung up. The entire dialogue my eyes were locked with Tiny’s watery blue ones and he looked positively mutinous. He was standing alone on the sentiment. Dumb fucking cunt.

“You’re really blowing this shit out of proportion, Cut.”

“We’ll see what your brothers have to say about that.”

Stalemate. Tiny and I sat in an angry uncomfortable silence while we waited for the rest of the boys to arrive. Atlas, who was at the bar on his cell making calls, leaned back and gave me a chin lift, indicating Marlin had called him and he would be in with the rest when they came. Nothing showed first, then Marlin. Pyro took the longest but I knew what he was doing. He was out on a salvage tow, bringing a boat back into the harbor. There was no cutting corners in our line of work.

By the time my best friend rolled in, the boys had moved enough bar tables into the room down in front of my chair so that we had a meeting table. Without a word, Pyro closed up the big wooden doors leading back here. We were effectively plunged into silence. I slid the gavel out of its pocket where it hid behind the back of my chair and cracked it sharply on the arm.

“To order,” I called.

“What do you have, Brother?” Marlin asked me calmly. He was a good man, not my best friend, not my worst, but one of the most dependable dudes I had ever met. His eyes were a deep blue, the color of the fish, but that isn’t how he got his name. He got his name for pulling in one of the biggest motherfucking Marlin’s in state history. He was a sport fisherman by trade and ran a deep sea fishing outfit out of a slip a few down from my maritime salvage vessel.

“The Sacred Hearts Lake Run. The first one, I agreed to return one of The Suicide King’s girls to Tallahassee.” I watched frowns crush the expressions of my brothers around the table.

It was a big fucking tragedy what’d happened to that girl, and it was all my fucking fault. I’d put the matter into Tiny’s hands, him and a prospect’s. Told Tiny to ‘take care of her.’ I should have chosen my fucking words more carefully. When we went to head out the day after seeing The Sacred Hearts off, she’d gone missing. Tiny had choked the life out of that girl, scattered her parts all the way down the fucking highway to hell and gone… on my order.

“Why we revisiting this now?” Pyro asked, grim.

“I told you what would happen if anybody came looking and now someone has – “

Tiny interrupted me, “Aw come off it, Cutter!” Marlin stood up, Pyro right on his heels.

“That’s your President, Dude. Show some fucking respect,” Atlas grated.

Pyro and Marlin sank into their seats and I could read it on all of their faces. They were all sick and tired of Tiny’s fuck ups and he’d run clean out of good will with every last one of them.

“Who was she?” I asked Atlas.

“Not sure yet,” he said honestly, “I’ve got calls out to every contact I’ve got. It’d be easier if I had a last name but that’ll come in time. Whole town is lookin’ out now. Won’t be long.” His phone vibrated across the table.

“Speak of the devil.” He scrolled down the screen and nodded, “Andrews, Hope Elizabeth Andrews.” He gave a low whistle like he was impressed.

“What is it?” Nothing asked.

“She’s a fucking badass, but she’s not exactly a cop. She works for ‘em though. Ex-military,” he glanced in my direction, “Army,” he clarified for my benefit, “Tested high with an aptitude for teaching so they made her into an instructor. A good one.”

“Relation to the girl?” Pyro asked for me.

“Nothing yet.”

“How the fuck did you get all that so quick?” Pyro asked with a frown.

“Linked In. Her whole work history is up,” he turned his phone and sure as shit, there was Hope, hair pulled up into a severe bun, face flawless and her dark brown eyes sparking into the camera. She looked every inch the professional badass. Mercenary style. Interesting.

“Names are powerful things, fellas. First and last and you can find just about anything on someone.” Atlas tucked his phone away.

“We need to vote this, I can’t have a Sergeant at Arms bringing down this kind of heat with piss poor fucking decisions. Going off halfcocked on his own fucking program all the time.”

“Now that’s bullshit!You gave me the order…”

“I say strip him.” Nothing said and stared coldly at Tiny, effectively silencing him.

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