“There,” I said, pointing to the screen. The figure was blurry, almost as if they had on clothes that would distort the image on the screen. Add in they wore black, hoodie, mask and glasses—this wasn’t going to be an easy find. They were giving us nothing to go on.
Was I angry? Fuck yeah. My little girl and her mom were in that house not an hour before the blasts. Just the thought of losing them made something inside me crack. Now that I had them, I’d protect them until my dying day.
“Fuck, I can’t tell shit,” Ryker groused over my shoulder as I tried blowing it up only to have it pixelate and distort more.
“Me either. Let me go back and see if I can freshen it up a bit. Buzz, can you go to here,” I gave him the number to the location I was at on the tape and kept going. “See if you can get any images from the outside.”
“On it.” Buzz started his task.
There were a ton of people still here even hours after the explosions had happened. The fire inspector and police chief were in attendance, mostly to see what we were doing in my opinion as they were watching us more than the rubble. I was all for authority, but this was different. This needed to be figured out by us first.
I scaled the image to as perfect as I could get it. Moving the damn mouse sent a twinge of pain through my arm. That just wouldn’t do. “I’ll run this through facial recognition and see if there’s a match, but it’s highly unlikely with all this shit on their face.”
“You have facial recognition software?” Cooper asked from behind me.
“Of course. It’s the state-of-the-art newest model out there. But you didn’t hear that from me.” Sure, I could get into a shit load of trouble for having it, but it was a good tool to have in my box.
“Right…” my father said, putting his hand on my shoulder.
“I’m headin’ back to the clubhouse to check on everyone. Meet ya there?” His tone was a little hopeful.
“Yeah. Remy and Ensley are there. Once we figure out if any of this’ll help, I’ll be on my way.”
He gave me a squeeze, a soft smile, and then he was gone. It felt good to be able to help, but it felt better to have my father’s approval and see that glint in his eye. It had been a long damn time since I’d seen it.
The scan was over on the face in the picture and it came up with nothing. “Nothin’. Too much shit on his face. You got anything?” I asked Buzz who gave me two different location numbers.
I went to them and tried to pull photos and plates from the car. A cough escaped me, and I could feel my lungs not happy about the smoke. The pain in my body was present, but I turned my mind off to it and pressed on. Finding who did this was more important.
Running the plates, the car was reported stolen about a week ago and was found yesterday abandoned on the side of the road. Who knew when exactly it was ditched, so that was a clusterfuck. The only thing we could do with that was try to get fingerprints, but that didn’t mean that we’d get anything. Who knew who was in that car, but it might be the only option to start the process of elimination.
One of the photos, though, gave me promise. It was a male, I could tell by the hard jawline since his mask had fallen down just on one side.
“This.” I pointed, showing those around me. “Half a face. If I duplicate it and flip it over, that should give us an idea of the lower half of the face. That might get some hits.”
“Try it,” Cruz responded, coming to stand next to me. Had to hand it to the man, he was big as fuck for his age. One would never guess he was up there. He could tear my head off right now if he wanted to. How did I know this? Because I could do it too. It was part of our training and something we had in common.
“We’re goin’ on lockdown. Get your families to the clubhouse if you haven’t already. Prepare to stay for a while ’til we figure this shit out.” He looked directly at me. “You too, Ensley, the baby, and the sister.”
I really couldn’t explain the emotion coming through me at that moment in time. They were all over the place, and the fact that Cruz was giving me a shot, even as small as it was, I was going to grab on to it with two hands. This was my life, and I wanted it.
“Yes, sir.” Came from my lips automatically. No one around us said anything, though, which surprised me.
“There ain’t gonna be shit left…” Ryker sighed, putting his hands on top of his head and looking over the smoldering embers. He wasn’t wrong. The yard was littered with stuff. There was no other word to describe it because it was all pieces. If it wasn’t in pieces, it was destroyed by fire or water. There would be no mementos left.
“You got anything in a fireproof box?” Cruz asked him. Yes, Ryker and Cruz were brothers, but they were also father-in-law, son-in-law. Practically blood, and it showed in the way they were with each other.
“Yeah. It’ll have some of the important papers, guns, ammo and cash, but fuck there ain’t enough cash to rebuild this shit.”
While I knew Ryker was just pissed about the fire, he nor the Ravage MC had any problems with money. Back in my days, when I was looking into the MC, everyone was very comfortable. It’d be my assumption from the nice rides they all had that this was still the same.
“Get the insurance adjuster out here and get this shit figured out,” Cruz ordered, turning to some of the brothers. “Go over and see if they’ll let ya look for anything in the rubble. They probably won’t, but may let you at least close enough to see if anything can be saved.”
Cruz had some serious wishful thinking.
“Fuck man, what happened to your arm?” I heard Nox ask. Not thinking he was talking to me, I continued using photoshop to manipulate the image to run through the program. A punch came to my arm. As I turned to it, ready to lay someone out for punching me, Nox just smiled. “Talkin’ to you, man.”
Arm. Oh fuck. Yeah. I totally forgot about it. I tilted it, getting a good look. “Just a little burn from the fire. No big deal.” It really was. Yes, there was pain, and if I thought about it or moved just right, it would get worse, but I’d learned how to keep my emotions in check for whatever task lay ahead of me. My arm could be completely burned to hell, and I’d still be here typing on this computer. The job came first. Always. The arm could wait.
“Um ... fucker, that thing has boils on it and is red as fuck. Your fuckin’ skin is gone in some places. You need to get that shit taken care of.”
I shrugged, still contorting the image so we could catch this asshole, and then I could beat the daylights out of them. That would be sooner rather than later.
“It’ll be fine. Once we figure this shit out, I’ll deal with it,” I answered, focused.
“Seriously?” Ryker questioned, coming up to me and grabbing my arm. It had burned from the back of my elbow almost up to my shoulder. I knew it had happened when Austyn and I drove to the clubhouse. I just chose to keep my mouth shut. “You need to stop and get this looked at.”
I fully stopped and turned to Ryker. “I need to do this. My arm is an arm, flesh and bone. Ensley, Remy, Austyn—that is life. This is more important.” I needed him to understand what I was feeling at that moment.
Ryker said nothing for quite some time, and I’d thought I’d stunned the man. He said nothing, but I responded, “Yeah. Let’s get this.”
Finishing the image, it looked about right, and I ran it through the program.
“What about you?” I asked Buzz. “Anything of them comin’ up or from the road?”
“It seems they came from the west side onto the lane. I’m tryin’ to track backward, but the cameras in this town need to be fuckin’ updated.”
“Want me to try?” Deke asked, and Buzz sneered.
“I got it.”
I had no idea what the hell that was about. A question for another time. Not talking about the club the past few years, I really didn’t know the dynamic between everyone. If some didn’t like others. If some were pissed at others. I had no clue.
Getting to know all of that would take time. That was all I had these days.
Looking back at the program, it said one hour forty-five minutes to complete. This was typical. The first one didn’t have much, so it didn’t pull up many options. This one had more to go on, so there would be more possibilities.
“This is gonna take about two hours to run,” I told them.
“Fuck,” Cruz responded, but didn’t ask why, trusting my word. “Let’s pack it up and head to the clubhouse. We’ll get back on it there. There ain’t nothin’ else we can do here anyway. Besides, damn cops keep tryin’ to find out what we’re doin’. Better to do it on our turf.”
With a nod, several of the brothers headed out. What was awesome about my equipment was I could just push it back into the SUV, and it would still do its thing while I drove.
“Meet ya back there,” Buzz said, moving to his bike.
The brothers all pulled out and I drove behind them. It was a respect thing. A small thing I could do to show it to them. Also I’d be back here if anything should happen.
Grabbing my phone, I hit the green button and called Ensley. She answered on the first ring with, “Are you okay?”
This made me smile. I liked that a fuck of a lot. Unfortunately, coughing started, and I had to get through it to talk. “Yeah. On my way to the clubhouse now. You get ahold of your sister?”
“No. I left a message, but she’s at work and hasn’t called back.” Damn, it was great hearing her voice, but not that she hadn’t nailed down her sister.
"Call the store. Get her to get her stuff too.”
“Okay. I can do that.” She sounded a bit scared over the line.
“It’ll be fine. We’ll take care of it. Just need you to take care of yourself and our baby girl. That’s all ya gotta do. We’ll handle the rest.”
There was some rustling on the other end of the phone like she was moving somewhere. “Micah. Someone blew up Austyn and Emery’s houses. This is crazy. Who does this?”
“Some asshole with a beef with the MC. Who knows? Just know that I’ve got your back. No one will touch either you or Remy. That I can guarantee.” Because I would do anything to protect them with my fucking life.
“Are we safe here?”
I smirked. “Yeah. You are. Wouldn’t have my girls there if you weren’t.”
She didn’t say anything, so I asked, “Ens?”
“You said ‘your girls’?”
Shit. I hadn’t realized that, but yeah, I did. “Yeah. I’m on my way. Be there soon.”
“Okay. Bye.”
We disconnected, and I dialed Dryerson who answered on the second ring. “Yeah.”
“Need you to pack me a bag and bring it to the clubhouse.” Dryerson and I had been together for years, and he knew exactly what I’d need for any kind of stay. He was good like that.
“Why?”
“You’ll see it on the news. A couple of houses blew up today that belonged to the MC. So we’re here.”
“Bombs? In Sumner, Georgia?”
He didn’t know the half of it. This was nothing from what it could be. Before I’d left Sumner, I’d had my fair share of crazy shit happen in this small town.
“Yeah. Pack yours too. I’m gonna see if you can crash here. Before you come, though, I need you to go to the grocery store.”
“Bro. Seriously? I do not shop,” he said before I could finish.
“Shut the fuck up and listen.” Silence came from the other end. “Ensley’s sister works there. Her name’s Katie. I got no fuckin’ clue what she looks like, but need you to follow her to her place and then to the clubhouse. Can you do that?”
“She gonna know I’m tailin’ her because I do not want to be arrested any time soon?”
I chuckled. “I’ll talk to Ensley here in a few and make sure she tells Katie you’re comin’.”
“Alright. I’ll play babysitter,” he joked. Dryerson had a very easy-going nature about him. Not a lot ruffled his feathers. It was one of the main reasons he was great to work with out in the field. There was a problem, he compartmentalized it and figured out the solution. Calm. Cool. And Collected.
“Good. See you at the clubhouse.”
“Do I even know where this clubhouse is?”
Fuck me. How the hell would he know? After giving him the directions, I pulled into the clubhouse behind the brothers who went left to their parking spots as I went right to park in the spare spaces that were becoming few and far between.