heard Deviant was attacked last night. Sadly, so was the Clairmont. The hotel in Columbus where we'd planned to host the Deviant Games Expo has to close. It will be months before it's open again. There's no way for me to get the repairs done faster, so it looks like we have to cancel the Expo."
"Did anyone get hurt?" Braden called back.
"A few people were seen for smoke inhalation," Adam told him. "One of our front desk clerks got burned pretty good when she went to make sure an elderly couple had made it out. They were all discharged this morning and should recover without complications."
"Least there's that," Braden said.
"Fuck KoG," someone else grumbled.
"And," Adam added, "I'm going to be releasing a press statement once I have the FBI's approval. One that says the hotel is canceling the event due to a domestic terrorist attack. We're going to make sure that the world knows the expo is cancelled because we couldn't do it, not because Deviant got scared away."
"Just means more time to get ready for F5," Rhaven said. "And for those who don't know, his girlfriend there? That's my best friend, so all of you had best tell them thank you."
"Thank you, hotel guy," Jeff yelled.
Immediately after, a bunch of others said the same thing, but while they tried to sound happy about it, Kate could tell they weren't. She knew Rhaven had been excited about this. Hell, Kate had been excited for this too. It was her one year anniversary of these things. It was supposed to have been a weekend to celebrate.
Fuck the Kings of Gaming, and fuck anyone who thought they had the right to hurt others like that.
Chapter 22
Jason and Bradley spent all day at the police station, interviewing the six guys who'd been arrested. Just like he'd expected, they all sang. One after the other, they said it was their way to gain rank with the Kings of Gaming. All they had to do was set the building on fire. No one was supposed to be there. It was just a little vandalism. People weren't supposed to get hurt.
Then there was a man named Drake. Chance had mentioned that he was Amy's ex-boyfriend, and he'd hit her before. Jason had gotten a little rough with him in the interrogation, but Bradley hadn't stopped him. Unfortunately, a little rough didn't come close to what the asshole deserved. So, instead, Jason made sure that he knew this would be his second offense, and the penalties would be a lot worse than the last time.
The problem was that none of them knew anyone's names. They weren't even supposed to know each other's, but quite a few said they'd known Drake a while. He'd gotten them into this group. Supposedly, the man had found out about it while looking up his ex online. Amy's name led to Deviant Games, and that took him straight to KoG.
Which explained why they'd put in the extra effort to finish the job, but it didn't get Jason any closer to making a tie to Arturo Ganza. When he finally got back to Deviant, Dez informed him that Adam Degrass and Kate Gaskill were in town and currently taking Braden and Rhaven to dinner. Zara had spent most of the day passed out in one of the rooms with Crysis watching over her. Besides that, everything was quiet.
So he got to work. First up was a call to Knock. If Jason couldn't find anything on Arturo, then Knock had to. Some tie between Destiny and the man. Knock promised that he'd call back in a few hours either way, but in the middle of that, Jason had another call come in. When he paused to check his voicemail, he decided he needed to take this one outside, preferably with a smoke.
When he reached the far end of the loading dock, Jason first lit his cigarette, and then he pressed the contact. It was answered quickly. "Cyn?"
"Hey, Chris," Jason said. "I got your message. Sorry, I was on the other line with Knock."
"I want one of those confidential informant contracts you're handing out," Dread told him.
Jason just sighed. "You are a new dad, man. You don't need to get dragged into this shit."
"Fuck that!" Dread snapped. "I'm not some punk kid anymore, Cyn. I'm not real worried about if I'm cool and shit. I got a few more years on this circuit, and if you think taking paternity leave is impressing my sponsors, well,