Page 6 of The Devil’s Escape (The Devil’s Soldiers #7)

CHAPTER FIVE

BULLET

I never leave a brother behind, and we’ll do whatever it takes to get him back.

I’m going to rip some heads off before this is fucking over, and I don’t give a damn if it’s going to ruin an alliance of over a decade. I listen to the video again, my blood boiling but my head already spinning on what this means. What it signifies.

After the second play-through finishes, I motion for Cryos to start talking. I need details and fast. We don’t have a lot of time to get Hulk back. Who knows what Vlad and Nikolai are doing to him. And why the fuck did they take him and not Cobra. None of this is adding up.

“I analyzed the voices,” Cryos says, typing away on his computer.

“The problem is that it’s so low I can’t quite make out a definite answer on who it might be.

I did, however, isolate some of the sounds once I took out the voices.

You can hear a couple of car doors slam, and a bike engine rev.

It’s faint, so I can’t make out any sounds on the bike that might pinpoint who owns it, though. ” Frustration covers his face.

I, Sniper, Shadow, Viper, Stone, and King, are sitting in Syn and Stone’s living room, one of the only places that we know the Misfits won’t be listening, with Cryos trying to show us things on his small laptop screen.

All the rest but Frost and Bowie, who are back out looking at the area where Hulk got taken, are at the clubhouse watching over Thea and Rose, and keeping an eye on the Misfits.

We don’t have a lot of time before Arson and his guys notice that we’re not there so we need to figure this out and get back there.

“Is there any way to tell who it was that betrayed Hulk?” Shadow asks him, his voice tight.

Cryos shrugs. “I’d need voice patterns on everyone and that would take a long time. We don’t have that.”

“What about Cobra?” King asks, eyes narrowed. “I mean, why would they take Hulk but only beat him up?”

“Maybe Vlad only asked for Hulk and wanted Cobra to be a warning,” Stone replies, though he doesn’t look convinced. His eyes are lined with worry, and I know most of that has to do with finally convincing Syn to go with Sage and Izzy out to California.

“Are any of our guys, or any of Arson’s guys, unaccounted for in the hours before or after Cobra and Hulk would have gone out there?” I ask Cryos.

Cryos shakes his head. “All of our guys are showing their phones to be where they said they were going to be. Either with their women, at the clubhouse, or in the case of Frost, checking out one of the other locations on the other side of town with Silver.”

“And we’re sure Silver was with him?” I ask.

“Frost never said he wasn’t,” Viper confirms. “When Bowie called him, he said that Silver was with him and they would head back as soon as possible.”

“Alright, so we can rule Silver out as being in on this,” King remarks.

“Not yet,” I correct him. “He might not be the one to knock him out, but that doesn’t mean he’s not involved.

He’s not happy that Thea proved to be smarter than him in figuring out those journals.

He’s ego-driven, and that is going to be a blow.

Especially when he makes a big deal about having such high smarts. ”

Sniper scowls. “Fucker glared at Thea earlier and I barely managed to keep from punching him. He saw me coming and walked away. Coward,” he adds with a sneer.

“Brother, where you’re concerned, I’d be a fucking coward too,” King jokes lightly. “But yeah, if anyone had the smarts to pull something like this off, then it’s Silver. Though it strikes me that he won’t do much without Arson’s okay.”

“Arson took Silver under his wing when he first joined the club,” I inform them. “Pretty sure he sponsored him and then helped him rise in the ranks. So if Silver is involved, Arson will be too.”

“To play devil’s advocate, we don’t know it is them,” Stone points out. “We’ve had one traitor already, and for all we know, Vlad was able to find another one.”

Just the thought of it burns my gut. Anyone who would still go with Vlad or follow a plan that Dagger set forth after he killed Hammer will suffer a worse fate than any of the others did. I’ll gut them myself.

“We already vetted all our own brothers and the prospects,” Cryos reminds him. “And all of them came up clean. And Crypt and Theo are our newest and they weren’t even in the country then when this all happened, so we know they’re clean.”

“Just because we cleared them doesn’t mean they haven’t turned since,” Shadow cautions him.

Cryos nods slowly, but his expression is sour at the thought that someone would be able to hide something from him again.

“And they were talking about repayment. Someone owes the Russians money, so we need to figure out who might be having a problem.”

“I’ve already started running checks on all the Misfits and our guys again,” Cryos says, looking at me.

“But it’s going to take time. That’s a lot of people and data to go through.

And while our shit is easy enough to find, the Misfits are used to hiding things so the law doesn’t find anything if they’re raided, which means it’s going to be harder to sort through. ”

“Keep on it,” I order him. “Until then, we need to keep our eyes and ears open. My gut is telling me it’s something to do with the Misfits, but I’m not going to rule out our own guys other than those in this room.”

Cryos nods. “If there’s anything, I’ll find it.”

I look at the others. “Anyone sees anything, texts only, no conversations for now. Keep your phones on you at all times. We don’t want someone getting a hold of it or seeing something they shouldn’t and tipping them off.

” They all nod. “Good. Now, we need to figure out how we’re going to find Hulk.

Those fuckers have him, and if they haven’t killed him already, they won’t keep him alive forever. ”

“Do we think they’ll try and ransom him?” Sniper asks grimly.

“Doesn’t seem to be Vlad’s style,” Shadow points out. “If anything, he might keep Hulk alive to draw us in and try and take us out as we try to get him back because he knows that we’re not going to leave him behind.”

“Hopefully, Bowie and Frost will be able to find something soon,” Viper says. “If anyone can track him, it’s them.”

“What was the point of taking him though?” Stone asks, leaning forward. “What does Vlad gain?”

“Maybe he’s trying to figure out what Hulk knows, which would be what the club knows,” King suggests.

“I don’t want to suggest this, but it has to be said,” Viper says carefully, and I see him glance quickly at Sniper, who instantly stiffens, his face darkening. “Vlad tried to take Thea when everything went down, and he didn’t get her. What if he’s going to try and trade Hulk for Thea?”

“Fuck,” Sniper hisses, jumping to his feet to pace through the room, clearly agitated. I understand it. His brother or his Old Lady. That’s a kind of choice no man wants to have put in front of him, though I know what the answer will be. What any of our answers will be.

“We’re not going to allow anything like that to happen,” I say firmly.

“Hulk won’t want that. I also think that Vlad knows it too.

He knows we’re not going to give up one of our women.

It goes against everything we stand for.

Hulk would kill himself before he’d allow Sniper to make that choice.

I think our traitor gave them a heads up where they were going, and they saw the opportunity to grab one of us.

Either for information, ransom, or just to see if they can lure us in. ”

“You think they’re going to try and set a trap for us?” King asks.

I nod. “He knows we’re going to go looking for him.

It could be a way to lure us out and pick us off.

They might kill a few of the Misfits to blend things in so we don’t suspect that we’re being betrayed, but they won’t kill the people giving them the info.

Especially if that person is close enough to know the information of where we’re sending people. ”

“We could set a few traps of our own,” Shadow suggests, a cool smile sliding across his face. “We give some coordinates that we’re sending people, make sure a few of them are wrong, and see where Vlad and his men end up.”

“We’d have to warn our brothers though and we can’t do that if one of them is in on this,” Stone reminds him.

“No, but we can make sure that the ones with the wrong coordinates have one of us who can be trusted with them so that no one gets caught by surprise,” Shadow answers.

Stone nods, catching on.

“But if it’s more than one person involved in this, they might catch on to it and warn the others,” Cryos interjects.

“Could it be possible that we have someone in our group and someone from the Misfits working together?” King wonders. “I mean, maybe Vlad has someone in our MC and he figured out something on one of the Misfits to hold over them or coerce them into helping betray us?”

“If that’s the case, then we would need to make sure that some of the groups are just our people so we can catch them,” Viper agrees.

“Is Thea up to continuing to look at the journals?” I ask Sniper, making him stop his pacing to look at me.

“She’s still in pain, but she told me earlier she was going to try and work on them again,” he finally answers, jaw clenching.

“She’s determined to keep working on it, and I’m sure once she hears that Hulk is missing, she’ll insist on it.

There’s also a chance that something in those journals might give us a clue on where Hulk might be being held, and she’ll want to find that as soon as she can. ”

I’m still not sold on if her being around the women is going to be a good thing, but Thea is tough and smart, and without her, we’d still be chasing our tails to try and figure out where Vlad has been operating.

“Alright. If it’s too much for her right now, we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way with boots on the ground, but we still have a few places that we can check out in the meantime.

We might be able to figure out where they’re holding him in one of those. ”

“We need to grab one of their men and get the information out of them,” Sniper adds. “Could be that one of them might be able to lead us to them.” Everyone else nods in agreement.

“Alright, here’s the plan. We need to get to work on getting Hulk back, but we need to be careful how we do it.

Shit’s going to already be going around the clubhouse now that Cobra has been brought back and Hulk didn’t, but we keep this on a need to know.

We tell everyone the facts, and we let everyone know that Frost and Bowie are working on tracking them.

I want you all to keep an eye on faces and body language.

Anyone that seems off, nervous, smug, or anything off, make a mental note and send it through text communication.

Don’t care if one of them is worried they’re going to shit themselves and that’s all it is.

I don’t want another brother dead because of this bullshit.

“We’re going to check out the other locations that we haven’t checked yet, and then we’ll also make up a few other locations that we claim are in the journal as additional dummy locations or ones that have changed over time or something.

We see what information ends up going out.

Cryos, you keep digging on your end to see what you can dig up.

Everyone else, keep your eyes open to see if you can grab one of Vlad’s men and see what we can get out of them.

Everyone else, no one goes out alone. You let someone know who you’re with and where you’re going.

And we’re going to get to work on finding Hulk as fast as we can.

Put the word out to your informants, and we go as hard and as fast as we can.

We’re not taking any chances. We bring our brother home no matter what. ”

Hammer and I worked to bring this club out of the dark ages, and I’m not about to let it fall back. I’m also not about to leave a brother behind, and I won’t lose one either.