Page 107 of Lake
“The fuck?” I asked quietly because I could tell that Laurel was upset and I didn’t want to make it worse.
“I found a recording of Keften speaking in both English and Croatian. A buddy of mine had tapped into his phone about a year ago and saved it. I was letting Mouse and B-ry listen to it. Laurel was waiting for him outside my room…”
“And she heard it?” I cringed because that was club business. But I couldn’t figure out why she was so upset unless there was something said about his trafficking. Yeah, that would have been bad.
“Yeah. And she recognized Keften’s voice.”
My head whipped to the side to look at him.
“Steve was working for Keften?” I asked as all the little pieces started coming together in my head.
“That’s what I’m getting, though I think we really need her to confirm that in words.” Cable didn’t seem too happy about dragging her through all of it again.
And I tended to agree. She’d been through so much already and it seemed like she was just beginning to climb her way out of that hole and try her best to move on. We all knew it wasn’t something she’d get over. No one could. And while it could have been a lot worse, it was still something that would leave a scar and a pang of fear in the background for the rest of her life.
B-ry was murmuring lowly into her ear. Her head was buried in his chest and I couldn’t hear anything from this far away.
A moment later, B-ry looked over at us with a scary as fuck fire in his eyes. With a nod, he told us everything we needed to know.
“Fuck,” Mouse said looking down.
“We need to go to Iron,” Cable said like we all didn’t know that already.
I had a feeling we needed to call Axe and Bocca as well. Maybe there were some missing chunks of what had happened that we could fill in. I had a good idea of a few things that hadn’t been figured out so far.
Like, that Steve had actually been a huge missing link.
An hour later, Iron called Church and we were sitting around the table with his phone in the middle on speaker.
“I listened to that file, that’s definitely him,” Bocca said though we didn’t have any doubts. “And Laurel recognized his voice?”
“Yeah,” Iron responded.
He’d had a quick sit down with Laurel but made sure not to draw it out. She was positive that was the men she’d heard when she was locked in that cage for three weeks. She never saw his face because Steve kept her in a separate room. But she said there was no denying it was Keften.
I couldn’t help but feel a little dumb that we’d missed it.
How the hell didn’t we put that together?
I guess the fucker was a little better than us.
But he was about to find out what happened to you when you fucked with us.
You know, just as soon as we found him.
He had evaded us this long but now we knew where he was, sort of. We knew he was in the city. And I had no doubt that we’d turn over every rock and look in every crack until we had him.
“He was working with Steve?” Bocca asked like he was trying to make sure he had all the facts straight.
“Yep. Honestly didn’t see that coming, though I should have.” Iron gave a sad shake of his head as if he was disappointed in himself for missing it.
“You didn’t get any answers out of Steve?” Axe asked jumping in.
“No, fucker held out until the end. Which was surprising since he was a spineless fuck,” B-ry answered and I could hear the deadly edge in his tone.
There was a knock at the door and we all froze.
With a chin jerk, Iron signaled for Ky to get the door.
