Page 71 of Cougar

“I’m going to start with, Knuckles doesn’t know any of this. You’ve beaten your brother again for something he didn’t even do.” He yells at them. I glance around, and a few of my brothers have the decency to look ashamed. I want to chime in, but I’ve got nothing to say.

“Artem reached out to me,” Whitley starts, cradling his arm. “He knows I’m a fed. Don’t ask me how. I stopped asking questions to the shit he knows. He knew I was slowly on the outs with Connard and his men. That shady shit thought I wasn’t trustworthy enough,” he scoffs. “So, when he and his men cornered me and outed me as a fed, I was given options. He would turn me into Connard and let The Company have me, or I get the cocaine plus out of lock up, and we swap information. I tell him what I know, and he tells me what he knows. I chose the one that would keep me alive.” Whitley finishes.

He glances over at me, and I see the tears in his eyes. He’s now pleading with me to believe him. I see his mouth moving, but I don’t listen. From a logical standpoint, I understand, but my heart has been shattered. He’s been lying to me. He made me fall in love with him. How can I move past this?

I break our connection and look around. It feels as if there’s a chill in the air as a few of my brothers look from Whitley to Artem. The only information Artem had was from us here, and he was sharing privileged information with the feds. Why? My brain starts going back to my chart and all the information I had. Could Artem be the link? Was it him, or one of his guys, that went after Judge and Storm? Was he the one using our facilities to hide Mallory?

“That’s when I saw the accident with Aletta.”

I tune back in as Whitley continues talking about the events of tonight—at least, I think it’s still tonight—the events that have changed this club forever.

“I didn’t know it was Aletta and Mallory at first. I drove up on the accident. As I was pulling up, the driver-side door of the back car flung open, and a man rushed out. He was tall and lanky, but he didn’t look toward me, so I don’t know what he looks like. What I can say is he rushed into the rich neighborhood. He threw himself over the wall and kept going. I could see other bodies in the cars, so I made the choice. Go after him, or help those who were in the cars. I rushed to help them.

“When I got to the car, I noticed Mallory slumped over, but she had a pulse. I rushed to the other car and found it was Aletta. I called an ambulance for the girls, and once they were both loaded in and gone, I headed to Knuckles.” His eyes are on me again as he speaks this next part. “I was going to talk to you about the area the accident was in, but I could hear you arguing with someone. That took over all my baser instincts, and I busted in. Only to have Cougar put a gun in my face.

“I could see your panic, Sa-Knuckles. I could see something was wrong and breaking you down. I needed to get you settled before I could share anything. I didn’t want to burden you more. You’re my number one in this Knuckles.” I hate the twinge of disgust I feel when he uses my road name.

I am not Knuckles to him; I’m Sandy. I’m his Ol’ Man.

Bile starts to creep up my throat. I have to get out of here. I try and walk away, only to realize these mother fuckers never let me down. “Get me the fuck down, assholes.”

They turn to me and see that, yeah, I’m still fucking hanging here. Turd gets me down, and I fall to the floor. Zombie attempts to help me up, but I push him off. I’ve never acted this way, but then again, they’ve never beaten my other half before.

“I might not have any fucking answers or know what the fuck I feel right now regarding the nuclear truth bomb he just dropped, but Whitley is mine. Mine! My Ol’ Man, and you all did that! I would never, ever lay a hand on one of your women. Yet you wasted no time beating the fuck out of my man. Fuck all of you.” I have tears in my eyes, but I don’t let them fall. I’ll figure out where I stand with Whitley, but I won’t do it here with all of these assholes.

Regardless of how I feel about them, I need to get answers. I stagger but start walking. I need to get home to my computers and look at the charts again. I have a feeling the missing piece is there. I’m so close. I know I am. I also know when I find the answer, it’s going to punch me in the face.

I exit the barn and see an old farm truck by the house. I’m laser-focused on getting home, and I don’t care to see if someone may be following me. I head for it, knowing the keys are always in the visor. Thank you in case someone needs it for the chores plan. Jumping in the cab, I start the truck to head home.

Judging by the lack of people joining me in the passenger seat, they don’t seem to think I am a threat anymore.

I gun it home. I make a mental list of what I need to do. Where I need to get the information to get the answers required. I am running on hope and adrenaline now, but I will find out who shot Judge and Storm. This person did as much damage to my family as Bigfoot did, if not more.

I pull into the small parking lot, not caring if this is my spot, and stumble up the steps. Ah, the PTSD this causes. I practically break my door down, as no one bothered to lock it when they dragged us off.

Dumbasses.

I shoo the cats away from the computer chair and start looking at ambulance records to find the area the accident was in. Once I have that narrowed down, I’m able to know the exact spot of that rich neighborhood Whitley said the man jumped into.

Think Sandy. Think.

Sometimes, when I’m overworked, I start overthinking. Or when I’m at the end of a project, I wonder about everything I’ve missed? That’s where I am. Questioning myself over everything. I’ve done checks into neighborhoods before, yet right now, I can’t remember what the fuck I need to do. How am I supposed to know who has security cameras? I don’t have a list. Fuck!

I sit there with my head in my hands for about twenty minutes. Phil jumps up onto my lap, and when I look down at him, he tilts his head. “Hey, baby boy. Daddy is having a hard time right now. But I’m okay.” I tell him as I scratch behind his ears. As soon as I stop, the dick hole smacks me across the face. “What the fuck, Phil?” I ask, but as soon as he jumps down, it’s like a damn light bulb goes off. “Thanks, buddy,” I tell my asshole cat and get to work.

I’m seriously so stupid! I want to smack myself in the head, but I don’t have the time. Plus, my head hurts. Phil hit my smarts back into me for me anyway. I have an IP hacker. I can use it to see whose WiFi has a ring or security system attached to it and see if I can get into the cloud backup.

“I’m about to find you, mother fucker.” I say to my screen.

Because this is a small town, you would think there wouldn’t be a lot of need for security, but no one here trusts our police force. Hence why most of the time, we take the law into our own hands. I luck out, and there is one house with a ring camera that has motion detected in the time frame of the accident.

I watch through the clips the camera catches. This house is a good distance from the neighborhood. So, unfortunately, there’s a huge chance whoever did this doesn’t come up. As I go through the clips, because these cameras seem to record when a bird tweets or the wind blows, I start to get discouraged. But, right as I’m about to give up, a figure comes into frame. They slow to a jog and then stop right in front of the house. I can only see their profile, but they’re in the middle of the road. He’s bent down, attempting to catch his breath. When he stands up, he turns and walks to the curb, but that’s not what I’m focused on. What matters to me is his face, and fuck my life.

“Fuck!” I hit the desk, and it causes my cats to scatter. I normally feel bad about that, but I can’t this time. I look from the screen to all the pictures I have up on the wall, all the moments documented since everything happened. How did I miss this?

Looking at it all, it’s becoming clearer. I start going through camera feeds from everything I can find. I cross-check it with my notes and start taking screenshots. Picture after picture. The answer was always right there, right in our faces, and not a single one of us saw it.

Take away what my brothers did to Whitley, I love this club. I love everything we stand for and our mission as a whole. When Bigfoot betrayed us, I was shocked. He was such a huge part of this family. But now, to see this? While we may have some very dark gray, if not black, spots on our souls, we do right by the people of this town. Why is this happening?

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