“So will we. You bring the money.”
“I got your money. Don’t you worry. You just keep the law or anyone else from tailin’ ya. You bring trouble with ya, boy, and you’re all gonna be dead.”
Diaz listened as they discussed the designated meeting place. They’d have to alert Grange so they could get the Feds assembled and in here for the takedown.
The ATVs took off and headed out. Diaz and the others stayed low. Diaz instructed Crush to stay down until Rex and his group took off on their bikes. When the roar of their exhaust faded away, they stood.
“What the fuck is going on?”
Diaz figured Crush would be the first to talk. He just wasn’t sure he was ready to provide any answers.
Jessie had stayed quiet the whole time, too. “Is that what you expected to find?” she asked.
He gave her a short nod.
“Is someone going to tell me what the hell’s happening here? Do you two know what’s going on?”
“Yes.”
Diaz turned a sharp gaze on Jess.
“Tell him. He doesn’t know.”
“He doesn’t need to.”
“Tell me what?”
“Diaz. It’s obvious he’s not part of this.”
“We don’t know that.” The longer they stood in front of Crush talking about it, the more he was going to learn. It could be a setup. Crush could be acting, learning what he could about Diaz and Jessie. This whole thing could blow up in their faces.
“What the hell do you two know about what we just saw? What arms were Rex talking about? Who were those guys?”
Jessie held up her hand. “Crush, please. Just give us a minute to talk about this.” She turned to Diaz. “Tell him. He can help us.”
“We don’t need help. And he can’t be trusted.”
“I think he can. Come on, Diaz, he doesn’t know anything.”
“Goddammit! Somebody better start talking or I’m going to go beat the shit out of Rex until he tells me.”
Jessie turned to Crush. “We believe Rex and the others are working a deal to sell illegal arms to a group of survivalists.”
Shit. There went their cover, and possibly this entire mission.
Crush went still, his eyes wide. “Say that again.”
Jessie repeated what she’d told him. His gaze narrowed. “How do you know this?”
“We work for the United States government and we infiltrated your gang to find out who’s selling arms to a known survivalist group here in the hills.”
“Jesus, Jessie. Why don’t you give him our Social Security numbers while you’re at it.” Diaz dragged his fingers through his hair and began to pace. He couldn’t believe she’d told him. Grange was going to have his ass. What the fuck was Jessie thinking?
“Are you serious?” Crush ping-ponged his gaze between both of them. “You’re government agents? Like ATF or something?”
“That’s not important,” Jessie said. “What do you know about this impending arms deal?”
“Nothing. Fuck.” Now Crush joined Diaz in his pacing. “How the hell could Rex do this to me? We’ve been friends since high school.”
“And you knew nothing about his activities?”
“No.” Crush fisted the fingers of both hands. “I’m in the dark here. I need some answers. I thought these men were my friends—men I could trust.”
Crush sat on one of the fallen logs, dropping his face in his hands. “What Steph said makes sense now.”
“What did Stephanie say?” Jessie asked.
He lifted his head. “Six months ago after they broke up, she complained that Rex had gone off the deep end. She said he was going overboard with talks of moving to the hills, roughing it, living on their own where they could be free and protected. Steph said he’d changed and she wanted no part of it. I blew her off, figured Rex was maybe talking about building a log cabin someplace rural. I didn’t think he was joining survivalists. I never made the connection.”
“No reason for you to,” Jessie said.
Crush lifted misery-laden eyes to Jess. “I should have listened to her. I should have asked Rex what was up, but I didn’t want to get involved. Shit. No one plays me like this—no one uses my gang to front illegal arms deals or anything else.”
Crush stood and started to walk away, but Diaz stepped in front of him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Back to the lodge to mete out some goddamn justice. The Skulls will take care of Rex and the others.”
Exactly what Diaz hadn’t wanted to happen. He shot Jessie a glare. She glared right back.
“No. You’re not going to do that.”
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do with my people, Diaz.”
Jessie moved to Crush’s side, laid her hand on his shoulder to get his attention. “Crush, if you go to Rex right now and bring this out in the open, you’ll blow everything we’ve worked so hard on. I understand you want payback for Rex’s betrayal, but our job is to grab those firearms before the survivalists can get to them. The last thing we want is for those guns to fall into the wrong hands.”
Crush didn’t say anything, just stared mutely through the trees.
“Please, think about this,” she continued. “Work with us. Help us take down Rex and the survivalists. There’s your justice.”
Crush craned his head to the side. “You’d let me help.”
Jessie looked at Diaz, who shook his head.
“Maybe. It depends. We’ll have to talk about it, see where you’d fit in.”
Diaz rolled his eyes. Clearly, he’d lost control of Jess, and this mission. He’d have something to say to her about this later. No way in hell was he involving Crush in this.
“I can’t believe I didn’t peg you all for Feds. Spence, too?”
Jessie nodded.
“Goddamn. You don’t look like Feds.”
Jessie grinned. “That’s the idea, Crush.”
“I want them out of my gang. I want them to pay for their betrayal, and I want it done publicly so the other Skulls can see what happens to traitors.”
Jessie looked to Diaz.
“We’ll take care of it,” he said. Apparently he had no choice. His plans for this mission had been irrevocably altered. Staying under the radar was now out of the question.
But maybe, just maybe, Crush could be of some use. He led this gang. He had connections and ins they didn’t have. He wouldn’t burn his bridges with Crush just yet.
“One caveat,” Diaz said. “You’re the only one who knows who we are and we want to keep it that way. As far as the rest of the Skulls know, we’re still the new guys. You spread the word about us and we pull you out of the picture. And by out of the picture, I mean you won’t even be in Arkansas. There’ll be a convenient reason given for your absence. Verifiable, well documented, foolproof. And don’t think we can’t do it. One phone call and you disappear. Understood?”
Crush gave a short nod. “Got it. I’m less interested in who the three of you are than who my so-called friends turned out to be.”
“Then we’re clear,” Diaz said.
“One more thing,” Crush said, turning to Diaz. “I make a much better ally than enemy. I really can help you with this. Maybe you should listen to Jessie. I can be trusted.”
“Jessie trusts you. I don’t—not completely. You’ll have to prove it. In the meantime, we need to head back. I want to fill Spence in on what happened, then I need to make some calls and we need to plan.”
“You’ll bring me in on everything,” Crush said as they walked back to the bikes.
“Everything we’re able to,” Diaz said. “Some things you can’t be privy to, and there’s nothing I can do about that. But as far as the plans for how we take down Rex and get hold of those arms and see how many of those survivalists we can bring to justice, then yeah, we’ll pull you in.”
“Good enough.”
Back at the main lodge, Crush came with them to talk to Spence. Initially, Spence looked surprised to see Crush with them, but after they told him what happened, he rolled with it.
“At least no one else got shot tonight,” Spence said, moving around the room with a lot more ease than he had the day before.
“Hey man, I’m sorry about that,” Crush said. “I had no idea.”
Spence shrugged. “If you didn’t know any of your people were involved in this, then it isn’t your fault. You didn’t fire the gun.”
“Speaking of, how do you feel?” Jessie asked.
“Good. A little stiff, but I can walk, sit, stand, and I can damn sure ride by tomorrow. Even the doc said I could.”
Diaz nodded. “Good. We need you. We’ll figure out a plan in the morning. In the meantime, I need you to rest up—don’t do anything stupid.”
Spence pointed a finger at his own chest. “Me? Do something stupid? Please.”
They left Crush and Spence at the lodge and returned to their cabin at the bottom of the hill. Once inside, Diaz locked the door behind him and turned to Jessie.
“Okay, tell me the plan,” he said, dropping onto the couch and planting his feet on the coffee table.
She shrugged out of her jacket, heading toward him with a frown. “My plan?”
“Yeah. Since you seem to have taken over this mission as leader, I’d like to know what the next step is.”
She took the seat next to his. “Diaz. Sometimes you have to go with gut instinct. Crush wasn’t involved. It was obvious.”
“And you shouldn’t rely on blind faith without proof. People have died doing that.”
“My instincts have never let me down.”
His job was to train her. What better time than now? “Instincts aren’t the same as evidence, as waiting until someone is proven innocent. You risked not only yourself tonight, Jess, but all the Wild Riders by revealing who we were.”
She lifted her chin. “I didn’t tell him who we were, only that we worked for the government.”
“You told him too much. You shouldn’t have said anything at all. You aren’t in charge of this mission. You are, at best, what I would consider a junior on this assignment—an apprentice. This is your first case, a chance to learn from me and from Spence. We’ve done more than a few of these and I’d like to think we know what the hell we’re doing, even though we don’t approach things the same way you might. I don’t want to have to remind you again that you aren’t the lead.
“You fucked up, Jessie. If we’re really lucky, Crush isn’t part of all this. If we’re unlucky, then right now he’s blowing the entire arms deal and we’ve lost. And if we lose, then the blame will rest entirely on your shoulders.”
She opened her mouth to speak, then clamped her lips shut, turned away to stare down at her boots.
It was obvious she didn’t like what he had to say. He hadn’t liked saying it, but it was necessary. She’d overstepped her bounds. If it had been one of the guys he wouldn’t have hesitated doing the smackdown. He’d have been ruthless, in their face, and told them in no uncertain terms where and how they screwed up. He couldn’t treat Jessie any differently. She wouldn’t respect him if he did.
“You’re right,” she said, surprising him. “I grossly overstepped my authority. I jumped in and made a decision that I had no business making. One that could have cost us this mission.”
He wanted to comfort her, but that was the part of him that cared about her. He resisted, instead let her stew.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she continued. “I was so eager, so excited, and I really feel like I’m right on this, Diaz. Crush isn’t involved.” She folded her hands in her lap, went quiet for a few more minutes.