Priest: A Motorcycle Club Romance (The Viking’s Rampage MC: Tucson Chapter Book 2)
Priest: A Motorcycle Club Romance: Chapter 29

Idragged my eyes open after only a few hours of sleep. Lockout had sent a text last night saying we’d have church early this morning. He wanted to get everyone together before the day crew went out to watch over the cult compound.

Sliding out of bed, I leaned over and kissed Jenny’s forehead before I pulled on my clothes. I checked in on each of the girls and kissed them as well before heading downstairs.

The officers and enforcers were gathered in the meeting room. The rest of the members were out in the living area, waiting to hear what our decision would be on how to move forward with the cult.

I sat down and looked over at Riptide. “Damn, man. When they said you hit the ground I didn’t realize it was with your face.”

Hush choked back a laugh. Butcher and Toxic didn’t bother to hold back and their laughter rolled through the room.

Riptide was sporting a shiner and a busted up cheek. His eyes narrowed on me. “That’s the fucking thanks I get for helping your ass?”

I sobered at the reminder of why he wasn’t looking his usual pretty boy surfer self. Before I could answer, Toxic had to double down. “I think your face is proof that you weren’t much help.”

“Fuck off.” He gave Toxic the finger, but smiled while doing it.

“Seriously, thanks, Rip. I appreciate it.”

He sighed. “No. You don’t have to thank me. I’d do anything for those girls and your old lady. Fuck. There isn’t much I wouldn’t do for you, you fucking asshole.”

Everyone chuckled at that. Lockout walked into the room and sat down. “What’s funny?”

“I just wanted to thank all of you for everything you did for my family last night,” I said to the room, ignoring his question.

“They’re our family, too,” Lockout said.

The others nodded and that was the end of it. It was just another reminder why I chose this group of men as my family. We’d do anything for each other, even fight a bunch of cops and get tossed into a cell for most of the night.

A knock on the door drew my attention. My brows shot up when Static walked in. He grinned at Lockout and walked over to him, handing him a file folder. “Once you take a look at that, give me a call.”

Lockout frowned and opened the folder as Static went to leave. “What the fuck?”

Static tossed a grin over his shoulder. “Told you you’d want to see what I had.”

“How did you get this?” Lockout asked, handing the folder over to Riptide.

“Lady came in last night and bitched out the Chief. Gave me a chance to sneak into his office and copy a few things.”

“That was my old lady,” Hush said, pride ringing in his voice.

“Hell of a lady.” Static gave him a wink then walked out.

“What’s in the file?” I asked.

Riptide shook his head as he read. “It’s all the background they have on Chet. No wonder they ended up wrapping up the investigation early. Chet was in deep shit.”

“What kind of shit?” Hellfire asked.

Riptide handed me the folder and I started skimming through it. Whistling between my teeth, I looked over at Lockout. “No wonder Chet abandoned his life to live out in the middle of the desert with a bunch of crackpots.”

“Will someone just explain,” Butcher snarled in frustration.

“Chet is wanted for embezzlement,” Riptide told him. “Guess he was some hedge fund guy and he ended up skimming money off the top from the company he worked for. Apparently he fell into drugs, bad. Coke, heroin, and psychedelics. Probably skimming money to pay for the habit. It all came down when he had a mental breakdown. Broke out of police custody and skipped town. That was right around the time Sherry and Cait moved out here.”

“How come none of this came up when we searched for him?” I asked

“Because he did it under a different name. Holden wasn’t Chet’s real last name. It’s Chet Young. According to these records he’s suspected of several scams under a half dozen different names. Normally he just takes a chunk of money and runs. This last time though, he just lost his mind. He’s never done anything illegal under his real name. Hell, he’s never done anything under his real name, not even get married. He did that under the name Holden. In the last decade he hasn’t so much as gotten a credit card under the name Chet Young. We didn’t replace anything for Chet Holden except for that apartment and when Rat searched police records under that name, nothing came up, not even his marriage certificate. The man’s history is a rat maze of names and crimes.”

“But when the cops got his prints in the morgue they found his real identity, Chet Young,” Lockout continued. “They had his wallet, according to the report, and figured out he was using a fake ID and then started digging into him and found all the aliases he’d used in the past. Once they had his real name and a photo, it all went quickly from there.”

“So anytime he did something illegal he shed that identity and started a new one,” I mused.

“Exactly. It wasn’t until he started snorting his way through life that it all came apart. Then Sherry left him and he lost it.”

“So he decided to follow her since he had to get the hell out of dodge anyway,” Hush concluded.

“I found something last night, too,” Riptide added.

Lockout frowned. “You didn’t get home from the hospital until after one a.m. How did you have time to replace anything?”

Riptide shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“This have anythin’ to do with the woman we saw out at the compound?” Hush asked with a sly look.

We’d been keeping a close eye on that place and we hadn’t seen the woman since the day she’d taken the beating for the little girl. I hoped like hell they hadn’t killed her. Something about her had piqued Riptide’s interest and he wasn’t going to forgive himself if she ended up in a shallow grave because we hadn’t intervened.

“You want to know what I found, or not?” Riptide asked, scowling at Hush.

Hush shrugged and waited, knowing our friend wouldn’t keep the information to himself.

Riptide tipped back onto the back legs of the chair, a habit for him, and gave us all a grim smile. “In order to get those court documents so quickly Chet had to go down to the courthouse. They eventually put all that shit online and you can look cases up by people’s names, no problem. But since the paperwork had only been filed yesterday morning, he must have been told he had to go in person to access it. They make you fill out some paperwork when you go to the courthouse.”

I leaned forward, elbows on the table, wondering why he looked so fucking smug. We already knew Chet’s name and the last address he’d stayed at and still our best techies—Riptide included—hadn’t been able to replace anything on the weasel.

“Imagine my surprise when Chet Holden didn’t request the information.”

We all glanced around in confusion. Ricochet voiced the question we were all wondering. “Who did then?”

“Derek Holden.”

Smokehouse grinned and slapped a hand on the table. “That can’t be a coincidence.”

“Exactly what I thought, so I hacked into the courthouse security footage. It wasn’t Chet who went to the courthouse. Did a bit more digging and found out that Derek Holden is Chet’s cousin.”

I flipped through the file folder in front of me and a grim smile covered my face. “Care to guess where else Derek worked?”

“No shit?” Toxic asked. “He worked for the same company as Chet?”

“Gladen International,” I said in confirmation. “Says here he went missing right around the same time as his cousin. Cops suspect he had something to do with the embezzlement.”

“Found a bunch of emails between the two once I had Derek’s name,” Riptide continued. “Turns out Derek was in charge of setting up the offshore account and making sure the money was squeaky clean before the cousins planned to use it. He was in Tennessee working on that up until a week ago. The plan was to have him come here and join the cult. It was the perfect hiding hole for them.”

“They could disappear off the grid for a while and by the time they resurfaced the heat would have died down,” Butcher said, shaking his head. “Not a bad plan.”

“But he couldn’t let Sherry go,” Ricochet added. “Little did he know that would end up getting us involved and himself killed.”

“Were you able to replace out anything else about the cult?” I asked.

Riptide shook his head. “They didn’t talk about that over email. In fact, they never directly mention it. They just talked in circles, but if you know about the cult it wasn’t too hard to figure out.”

“Back to square one there,” Hellfire muttered, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Actually… I have an idea,” Riptide said, his eyes straying to Lockout.

Lock’s jaw tightened and he looked pissed off, though a bit resigned. Whatever Rip was about to say he already knew about it.

“What’s that?” Hush prompted.

“One of us joins the cult.”

I snorted. “There’s no way they’re going to just let some random person waltz up to their compound and ask to join. And we have no clue how they’re replaceing their people. Pretending to be a hiker out in the desert is likely to end in a death sentence for one of us.”

“Probably not one of the women,” Butcher offered. When every eye glared his way, he shrugged. “I was just saying. I didn’t mean we were sending one of them out there, fuck.” He closed his mouth and scowled at us.

“How does this idea work, Rip?” Smokehouse asked, getting us back on track.

“I’ll take Derek Holden’s place.”

Silence fell over the room and we all looked over at Lockout. The dark look on our president’s face told us he wasn’t fond of this plan, but honestly we didn’t have a lot of choice. We hadn’t been able to dig up anything on this cult and infiltrating it was going to give us the answers we needed.

“That’s fucking dangerous,” Butcher muttered. “These types of people aren’t the kind you want to fuck with.”

“You’ll be alone,” I added. “Derek wouldn’t just be showing up with friends in tow.”

Riptide nodded. “It’d just be me.”

“Why you?” Hush asked.

“First, it was my idea. Second,” he motioned to the file and I looked down. His point didn’t need to be spoken out loud. He looked similar enough that if anyone had been given a picture of Derek Holden they wouldn’t question it. Especially not with Riptide’s longish hair. He’d cut it recently, but it still hung down past his ears. It was a surfer thing, he’d told me once before. He liked having it long and had only ever cut it short because of military regulations.

“We’ll give it a few days,” Lockout told everyone. “Think it over. We’re voting on this, so if majority says no, we replace another way.”

Riptide looked pissed, but he knew better than to challenge Lockout on the decision. Instead, he looked around the table. “I can do this. I need to do this.”

“Is it because of that girl?” Hush asked him, pinning him with a dark look. “You don’t owe her your life, Rip. And that’s what could fuckin’ happen out there. If somethin’ happens to you, we won’t be there to back you up.”

“I know. And no it’s not her. Or not just her,” he amended. “We need to shut this shit down for good.” He cast us all a beseeching look. “Let me do this.”

“Two days,” Lockout told us. “That will give us time to get Derek Holden in police custody and ensure we have enough time to think it over. Plus, we need time to go over the recordings and notes from the recon team.”

He ended the meeting and we all filed out of the room. A hand closed over my shoulder and I glanced back at Riptide. We stood aside and let the rest of our brothers move down the hall.

“I have something for you,” he told me with a shit-eating grin. He handed over a USB.

“What’s this?” I scowled down at it.

“The little film you made for me last night.” When I frowned in confusion, he chuckled. “You always forget…I have cameras all over this compound, Priest. That way if our patrols miss anything, I’ll still see it.”

Realization dawned with those words and I glared at him. My hardened gaze didn’t stop the words from escaping his mouth, though.

“You need to tan that ass. It was like a fucking beacon on the video while you were thrusting away.” He laughed and took off down the hall before I could get hands on him. He knew better than to mention anything about my old lady, not that he’d make fun of her in any way, but I knew I’d be hearing about this for some time to come.

God damn it.