Page 57 of Lockout

“Enough with the nerd talk,” Butcher muttered. “Just tell us what you found.”

“It’s-”

“In regular English,” Hush said, interrupting him. He grinned in a good natured manner when Rip flipped him off.

Rip sighed and looked disappointed. “Fine. I’ll skip all the exciting shit. I have a backdoor to their operations now. In fact, I know that tomorrow night Hangman has three different operations happening for the Phoenix crew.”

I straightened up, pinning him with a hard look. “You know where they’re meeting?”

“Yup,” he said with a grin. “And how many guys will be there. Shit, I knowwhichguys will be at which meetings and that they’re happening here in Tucson.”

“Okay,” Hellfire said. “That’s pretty cool.”

Riptide pointed at him, looking over at Butcher and Hush like he’d just been validated.

“How does knowing the guys’ names help us?” Smoke asked.

Ricochet shook his head. “It’s a good thing you’re pretty,” he said, tone full of disappointment.

Smoke punched him in the arm.

“Because then I can do a deep dive on each member of the Legion of Shadow. We know about Hangman, of course, but the rest of them? They’ve been ghosts up until this point,” Rip answered, giving Smoke a smug grin.

“How long will it take to pinpoint his officers?” I asked, leaning forward with my arms on the table. This was exactly what we needed.

“Couple days. There’s a fuck ton of ‘em, Prez,” Rip said with a shake of his head.

“You sure the email isn’t a plant?” Priest asked.

“Yeah,” Idaho added, “what if they wanted you to find it?”

“That way they could set up a trap,” Static pointed out.

Rip shook his head. “I guess it’s possible, but I don’t think Hangman would’ve done that.” His eyes met mine. “This gives me full access to his operation. It’s a stupid fucking move if he did it on purpose.”

“He doesn’t strike me as the stupid type,” I said, leaning back again. The knot in my chest started to loosen. We finally had something. I could act instead of sitting here just waiting for something to fucking happen to my family.

Everyone was quiet for a few moments after that.

“So, what’s our plan?” Smoke asked, looking at me as he broke the silence.

“We hit one group,” Hush said, “and we take out some of their players.”

I nodded. “But if we hit all three, we take out a good number of them and possibly ruin their deals with their suppliers. Not to mention we’re going to draw Hangman in. No way he’s going to sit over in D.C. if we’re decimating his crew here.”

Toxic let out a low whistle. “That’s going to spread us thin.”

“Too thin,” Priest said with a scowl. “Do we have the numbers for that?”

“Even with the Saint’s Outlaws and Berserker’s Rage that’s a big ask,” Ricochet replied.

“How many will be at each meeting?” I asked Rip.

“Ten,” he replied. “Prez, that would hit them hard. They’d only have a handful left here in Arizona, plus their officers.”

“Hangman would have to bring in more help from out of state,” I added, eyes flashing around the room. “That’ll take a couple days at least for the backup to get to them.”

“Fuck yeah,” Butcher said with a sadistic grin. “Can we affordnotto take out thirty of these bastards in one blow?”

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