Page 57 of Bruised MC Bear

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Axe

Axe spentthe first hour of their trip updating Angel on every detail he had learned since his trek to Mom and Dad’s storage locker this morning. By the end of his run through, Angel was in tears and exhausted. She soon rested her head on his shoulder and dozed off. Although Axe had a splitting headache from the gravity of processing all the facts at once, it helped him to make up his mind about where he would go next.

Vincent.

His name could not be on the list by coincidence. He had to have a piece of this puzzle. Kade’s father had laid out the scope of events, and sure, it was logical for a longstanding state politician and an army Colonel to have played a part in a conspiracy of this magnitude. Vincent’s name just did not fit in with the rest. Not when he was the one who had turned up to save Axe and Nancy on the night of the murders. His eyes were tired from all the driving, but he did not make a single stop until he was outside the gates of Vincent’s mansion.

He didn’t have to use the buzzer to be let in. Some members of the perimeter security detail were his men from the clubhouse. One of them waved him in and radioed a message to announce him at the main house.

Victor was waiting at the front door when he rolled up.

They wasted little time with pleasantries and introductions. Less than five minutes after arriving, Axe parted ways with Angel so he could grill Vincent privately. A housecleaning staff led her to get some sleep in one of the many bedrooms upstairs. Axe and Vincent retreated into his study.

“I imagine you must think I had some part in this,” Vincent said from his office chair, his usual spot in the room.

“I’m not thinking anything. I’m asking, because I don’t trust anyone as much as I do you, Nancy and Silas. Maybe Angel too, but that’s beside the point. Your name was on that list, Vincent. I would really like to understand why my mother would group you in with a fellow victim and two powerful men who could have orchestrated Mom’s abduction as a teenager, and later returned to murder Mom and Dad.”

“I need to update you on what’s happened since you left your sister’s.” Vincent must have registered the immediate alarm on Axe’s face, because he quickly added. “Nancy’s fine. They all are. Nothing’s happened to them.”

Axe pressed his hands to his temples. “Jeez. Try not to scare the fuck out of me like that, brother. It wasn’t easy ditching that burner phone and being completely out of communication with everyone for all that time. So what’s the update?”

Vincent leaned back in his chair. “Simply put, it’s over.”

“What’s over? What are you talking about?”

“Everything to do with the names on that piece of paper, you and Nancy, and Kade’s family. It’s done. No more panthers will be after you, no armed men from secret government agencies are going to swoop in from nowhere in the middle of the night. It’s over.”

Axe shook his head and started pacing back and forth in front of the armchair he had been sitting in. “Are you shitting me right now? It can’t be that simple. First of all, how did all of this go down? Who arranged what, when, where and why? And how are you certain there’s no wild card waiting in the wings for us to put our guards down so Angel or Nancy or the kids can end up in a bad situation?”

“You said you trust me. Do you really? And while you’re thinking about that, consider a few things. How old am I?”

“Old as fuck, the last time I checked.”

Vincent smirked. “Do you think I may be old enough to have stopped the men who took Keith and your mother in the woods behind their high school?”

“It’s possible.”

“Okay. Let’s set that aside for a minute to look at who I may know, and who I may or may not have a level of influence over. Do you see where I’m going with that?”

Axe nodded, and then he shook his head. “No, you lost me there.”

“I’m talking about the Governor and the General.”

“So you stopped them? When? Back then, or now?”

“What I’ll say is that we go way back. I’ll tell you that back then, Director Riley gave a little too much interim power to the then Colonel Travis, who I view as a loose cannon, although he may call himself a patriot. After what happened with Natalie and Keith…and several others around the United States, I should add…a few of my associates and I were able to remind Riley that it was in his best interest to tighten the leash on Travis, so to speak. You’re still with me, right?”

“Yes. You saved my mom and got Riley to stop Travis from running experiments. Before we go on though, tell me something. What kind of experiments were they doing, to be able to introduce something in the bloodstreams of my mother and Kade’s father, and end up kick-starting the shifter gene in my niece and nephew?”

“The shortest answer is, do you want to be up all night? Because that is about how long it would take to tell you only about the hours Natalie and Keith were missing. We’d need a few weeks to cover before and after that time.”

“Fuck. Is there’s an abridged version?”

“One phrase. Super soldiers.”

“But why turn them early?”