Page 84 of The Belle and the Biker

"Axl's better at that shit than me," I say. "He's the brains. I'm the brawn. And he just kicked me out of the club."

He squints at me with a look of disgust. "Do any of you numb-nuts ever just sit down and have a damned conversation, or do you all just throw temper tantrums like a little bitch?"

"I guess the latter." God, I could use a shot of whiskey right now. Just one. I can almost feel it burning its way down my throat.

"Wait," he orders me.

He walks into the office, and he's gone for a couple of minutes, and then he comes back and holds out his phone.

Axl's on the other end.

"You're not thrown out of the club, dick breath, but I do owe you a future ass-kicking," he growls. "I just talked to Tawny, and we had a good heart-to-heart. She says she forgives me, but she's also going to kick me in the balls when she sees me." He sounds proud. "I'd expect nothing less."

"You talked to her?" My heart leaps with hope. "Where is she? Where's Savannah?"

"All they'll tell me is they're somewhere safe and hidden. Oh, and Savannah has a German shepherd now."

"Since…yesterday?"

"Since this morning. It was a stray."

What the hell is it with that dog-hating woman adopting every damn dog she sees?

"She named him Rhett, and he's very protective," Axl adds.

This doesn't make me feel any better. Yeah, German shepherds are very protective, but the shooter has a gun. Bullet versus dog is no contest.

"We need to end this thing with the shooter," I say. "I have something of an idea, but I need help with it. We can take advantage of Savannah's exposure on social media and the news. She'll be back in the killer's crosshairs, and I think we can find a way to flush him out. I need to do some strategizing, though."

"Tell you what. I can fly there and meet you in a few hours. Let's work on this together."

"Amen, brother," I say.

Four hours later, Tank and I are picking him up at the airport, and as we drive, we formulate our plan.

"I think we're going to have to let Sheriff Buckley in on this," I say. "I don't like it, but he can pull together more resources than us, and it's crucial that we get this right."

The plan involves using Savannah's phone, the pink sparkly one that I handed over to the Skeleton Crew guys when we first arrived in South Carolina. They've kept the phone turned off so it couldn't be tracked. They've also got my old phone.

We're going to set up a trap for the shooter. We'll make him think that Savannah and I aren't together right now, and she's coming to meet up with me. We'll pick an isolated spot to avoid innocent bystanders getting caught in the crossfire.

We're going to use Savannah's phone to send a message to my phone, arranging the meetup. We're hoping our theory was correct, that the shooter somehow has access to her phone and can monitor her messages.

Sheriff Buckley is cautiously on board with the plan and admits that he can get Savannah to discuss it with her.

He calls me back a few hours later to let me know they've agreed to try it, and it'll go down tomorrow afternoon. Then he tells me the location they've chosen for the fake meetup, and I don't like it at all. It's an old abandoned warehouse about an hour outside Swampy Bottom County, off one of the roads that lead into town but not a main road.

"There's no reason why we'd meet up there," I protest. "It doesn't make sense, and he's going to know it's a trap. We need to pick a better spot. Like a strip shopping center, we can set it up for an empty part of the parking lot."

"Too risky. We'll just have to sell it as well as we can," he says. "We need to do this as far as out of the way as possible, and I'm not having some civilian getting hit with a stray bullet."

I want to curse him out, to tell him he's an idiot. This is our best shot at flushing this guy from his hiding place, and I'm afraid we're going to blow it. I can tell he's got his mind made up, though.

So I let him dictate the terms. He tells me exactly what to say in the fake message and when to send it. After I send the message, we're going to turn off both her phone and mine. That way, the shooter won't be able to track the phones' locations and see that they're both still sitting there in South Carolina.

Sheriff Buckley has talked to Savannah, and she's going to work with him. She'll post on her social media accounts, saying she can't wait to meet up with her man again tomorrow afternoon.

I wonder if he knows where she is right now. "Did you tell her what I told you?" I ask.

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